Following Basil Davidson’s passing, Ama Biney salutes the historian’s work as a European scholar who was not blighted by ‘a Eurocentric, prejudiced paradigm’ in analysing Africa’s past.

Released in response to Gambia’s ‘Freedom Day’ on Thursday 22 July, this joint statement from civil society organisations aims to draw attention to Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s ‘appalling human rights record’. The statement underlines that: 'Freedom remains an illusion for most Gambians, who live in fear of arbitrary arrest, torture, incommunicado detention, unfair trials, rape, disappearance and extrajudicial executions.'

In an audio interview with Muna Ali of CHRY, Sokari Ekine discusses a worldwide dominant discourse around sexuality, assumptions in Africa around the absence of LGBTI people, the role of right-wing and Christian fundamentalism, and the scapegoating of vulnerable people (available under the heading 'African Perspectives').

An organisation representing former freedom fighters says it wants its members to be apolitical and is fighting to have this included in the new constitution. The Zimbabwe Liberation Platform, ZLP, a liberal organisation that claims to be “a progressive section of former independence war fighters championing democracy and social equality” told The Zimbabwean that war veterans needed to regain their independence to avoid being manipulated by selfish politicians.

117 African Health, Social Development, Gender Based, Human Rights Organisations, and Trade Unions have written to the July 2010 15th African Union Summit of Heads of State holding in Uganda - urging governments to uphold, improve and urgently implement African and global health and social development financing commitments.

Since the second half of the 1970s, and in particular since the first major world conference on water (organized in 1977 by the United Nations at Mar del Plata, Argentina), world leaders have been aware of the scale of the problems concerning access to water of sufficient quantity and quality, and of the risks associated with growing shortages and degradation of the supply. The Mar del Plata conference set out the basic facts and made water one of the top issues on the international political agenda. And yet the ‘water crisis’ has continued to worsen

The East African Community (EAC) has allowed governments to run their custom services individually, ending weeks of uncertainty over the possible impact of the planned common tax collection on members’ revenue targets. The formation of the common market on July 1 had provided for a common revenue team to collect customs taxes from the entry points such as sea and airports and sharing it out among the five member state

Burundi is east Africa's most corrupt nation according to an anti-graft watchdog, while Kenya, which usually tops Transparency International's (TI) annual list of graft-prone countries in the region, was third. Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda were included in the East African Bribery Index survey 2010, commissioned by TI-Kenya for the first time this year.

Constitutional outreach members from all the ten provinces, with drivers and technicians included, are threatening to down their tools due to poor working conditions and a breach of agreements by COPAC. Barely a month after the launch of the Constitutional Outreach, aimed at coming up with a new constitution under the auspices of the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee, threats of its cessation are growing everyday as problems mount.

Three cabinet ministers from the two MDC formations, plus Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, were in London addressing two separate meetings that sought to woo investors and donors to help with Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. The ministers were accompanied by their permanent secretaries and other senior civil servants from their ministries.

The West African countries of Burkina Faso and Niger have submitted a dispute over their common border to the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) as part of a wider agreement by the two States to resolve the situation peacefully. In a joint letter, the ICJ – which is also known as the World Court – has been asked to delineate the border between the two nations from the Tong-Tong marker to the start of the Botou bend.

They are huddled together in a group in the midst of an animated discussion to which each has something to contribute. Eager to make her point is Barbara Kyomugisha. At just 24 years old, Barbara is a single mother living with HIV. The contribution she makes towards this discussion is first hand. To her, the affordability of health services is just as important as accessibility in addressing the rates of maternal mortality in Africa.

Incidents of bribery in Rwanda are negligible, anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International says. Rwanda, which has been striving to rebuild itself following the 1994 genocide, was by far the least corrupt country in East Africa. Rwanda and its neighbour Burundi were included in the East African Bribery survey for the first time.

Zanu-PF says there is “no reason” for Zimbabwe not to hold elections in 2011, but analysts believe the polls could be much later over demands for more reforms to guarantee a free and fair vote. President Robert Mugabe, 86, was forced into a power-sharing pact with rivals Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara more than a year ago after a crisis over a 2008 national election that local and foreign observers say was marred by violence and vote-rigging.

Nigeria's Senate has voted to move up general elections to January, pressuring President Goodluck Jonathan's ruling party to resolve a split between the mainly Christian south and majority Muslim north. The House of Representatives must still approve the new election rules after the Senate decided on Wednesday to change the constitution to allow for a January vote in the world's eighth-largest oil exporter. Senators voted through a proposal to hold the general election "not earlier than 150 days and not later than 120 days before the expiration of term of office," of either the president or a state governor.

The Congolese Minister of Finance, Budget and Public Portfolio, Gilbert Ondongo, and the French Ambassador to Congo, Jean-François Valette has signed an agreement under which France will write off Congolese debts of 645.7 million euros (or 424 billion FCFA), a French official statement said. France, which has pledged to write off all of Congolese debts, will write off 33 1 million euros of the total amount under the present arrangement while furthern egotiations for more debt relief will continue.

Basil Davidson wrote so passionately about Africa it was assumed he was an African, writes Cameron Duodu, paying tribute to the late historian, whose work ‘enriched the world's understanding of Africa’. Davidson was ‘not only an inspiration to progressives inside academia, but was an important resource for African leaders themselves’, says Duodu, at a time when the majority of ‘histories’ depicted Africa as ‘a land full of barbarous peoples “until the whiteman came”’.

Tidiane Kassé

Dame Babou

Khadija Sharife

Defence chiefs of staff of the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have finalized a detailed plan on the deployment of 2,000 troops to Somalia, according to a press release issued in Addis Ababa. It said at the end of their three-day meeting, the military chiefs and architects from member countries of the East African grouping deliberated on the creation of a central command for Somali security forces; who should contribute what and how many of the troops; when they should be ready for deployment; how and when the African Union (AU) should provide the logistics the forces need; and the establishment of a Joint Command.

The ‘War on Terror’ has provided US-NATO commands in Stuttgart and Brussels with justification for securitising ‘dangerous’ West African Muslim states, writes Caroline Ifeka. But competing with China to control strategic resources from oil to subterranean water around the Sahara and Sahel, they’re also quietly manoeuvring leases to exploit resources vital to US and EU capital accumulation. The principal cause of youth militancy around ethnicity and Islamic reformism in these regions, says Ifeka, is the ruling classes’ failure to share the rental incomes from – traditionally – community-owned resources. Community capacity building and restoration of a sense of agency and ownership rather than the militarisation of development, says Ifeka, is better strategy for diminishing discontent and building trust in democracy among the youth.