What’s the best way of investing in the developing world? One organization is empowering families by investing in mothers. Hands to Hearts International (HHI) is a non-profit organization that seeks to provide simple and cost-effective programs with tools for women, caregivers, and organizations to improve the early development of children surviving in orphanages, refugee camps, and severely impoverished or conflict-ridden communities.

The result of the recent elections in Ethiopia might have come as a shock to many. What lies behind the near total defeat of opposition parties in the recent elections is the combination of reduced trust in and decimated opposition at the political landscape. It is a logical extension of political developments since 2005

The Prize Committee met to discuss the award of the 2010 Mo Ibrahim Prize. Following its deliberations, the Prize Committee informed the Board of the Foundation that it had not selected a winner. Last year the Prize Committee announced that it had considered some credible candidates, but after in depth review could not select a winner. This year the Prize Committee told the Board that there had been no new candidates or new developments and that therefore no selection of a winner had been made.

Selim Y Gool responds to Neville Alexander’s speech, ‘South Africa: An unfinished revolution?’, from the perspective of historiography, the current economic crisis and alliance politics.

Walter Rodney's contribution to our understanding and actions for change in the world was cut short, but it was seminal, and we should celebrate as well as mourn his time among us, writes Bob Thomson.

Following Barack Obama’s tough stand against BP for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, victims of the Bhopal gas disaster are calling on the US president to hold to account the US business interests implicated in the incident. Dow Chemicals, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, refuses to accept its liability for cleaning up the toxic wastes at the closed factory, which is still harming citizens of Bhopal.

The 1994 genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi never happened. This is this unfounded and disturbing allegation at the heart of a new book by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, writes Gerald Caplan. Instead the authors claim that that it was part of an elaborate American conspiracy to “gain a strong military presence in Central Africa, a diminution of its European rivals' influence, proxy armies to serve its interests, and access to the raw material-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo”. Why they want to create such gratuitous hurt for the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda is ‘impossible to fathom’, says Caplan, but their ‘egregious views’ ‘relegate them squarely to the lunatic fringe’.

The crime of ‘democricide’ is being committed in Ethiopia both by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and a hoard of accessories who cheat the Ethiopian people out of fair elections, free press and aid, writes Alemayehu G. Mariam. Those complicit in this crime include the political bureaucracy that pumps out shining reports on ‘development’ and the donors themselves, who continue to prop up regimes like Zenawi’s and stifle democracy in the name of stability.

Kenya’s High Court may have awarded Wachira Weheire compensation for his unlawful detention and torture, but it did not set any meaningful judicial precedent with the case, writes Tennille Duffy. In its ruling, the court neither denounced ‘the outcome of torture as well as the practice’ nor brought ‘home the point to those in power today that violation of constitutional rights by the state is not acceptable and will always be severely penalised by the courts.’ Not only has the court failed Mr Weheire, argues Duffy, it has failed all those who continue to suffer unlawful detention and torture at the hands of the state.

Rooibos tea is as uniquely South African as Champagne is French and Parmesan Italian, writes Glenn Ashton. It should be one of the country’s roaring success stories while providing a platform for the upliftment of its traditional owners, the indigenous people who introduced it to the colonialists from its home range of the Cederberg Mountains. But while the Rooibos market has grown over the years, indigenous emerging farmers remain largely marginalised and have yet to reap their just rewards.

Land reform in Zimbabwe is widely stereotyped as ‘a corrupt land grab by Zanu PF and its cronies’, precipitating ‘a calamitous decline in agriculture’ from which the country ‘has never recovered’, writes Ben Cousins. Clearly agriculture in Zimbabwe has experienced significant problems in the years following radical land reform, says Cousins, but based on the findings of a three-years study, the notion of “total failure” is not accurate. So what does this mean for future land policy?

Not only did the Soweto uprising mark a radical shift in consciousness, it also sparked a renaissance in black South African cultural creativity, writes Mphutlane wa Bofelo. While in the 80s and 90s, ‘literature, theatre and the arts were an integral part of political work and writers and artists were visible and audible in political spaces and platforms’, argues Bofelo, today the arts ‘have been marginalised’ by the ‘pop culture which is utilised by the political establishment to de-politicise the masses’. But there are encouraging signs that radical underground artists are finding ways to keep the arts, theatre and music of revolution alive.

Senegal and other African countries are the victims of state power that has become ‘over-centralised, personalised and trivialises the institutional safeguards that are supposed to keep it in check’, writes Amy Niang. Niang explores the available avenues for reversing this restraint on civil society’s political agency, and suggests it is the diaspora that has the potential to offer new perspectives and become an ‘incubator of political revolution’.

Members of the ‘Yes’ camp in the run-up to Kenya’s constitution referendum continue to reject the legitimacy of a recent ruling by the Constitutional and Judicial Review Division of the High Court of Kenya that deemed the inclusion of Kadhi’s courts in the country’s draft constitution ‘discriminatory’, writes Dana Wagner. Wagner investigates how the inclusion of Kadhi’s courts in Kenya’s constitution has become a contentious issue in the country, and how this issue has given constitution debates a sharp religious edge.

Writing in response to a New York Times article by Henry Louis Gates, Antumi Toasijé strongly challenges the view that we should simply 'end the slavery blame game'.

Following comments from South African Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu around the need for the country's defence force to be a 'rite of passage' for young people, Nicholas Tucker suspects such remarks to indicate moves towards 'a massive recruitment campaign for the AFRICOM [US Africa Command] programme'. Conscription is not a 'rite of passage', Tucker stresses, 'unless of course your country happens to be Sparta'.

Love is not what they claimed inhabited our relationship
It was desire masquerading as adorement
I spit in the face of tough love
This was not love when you left me
Outside in the rain; umbrella-less
You walked on
Made me choose between my divine path and you
Love is what warms me when I am alone
It screams my name and hugs me
Wipes my tears and tells me to laugh hard
Because it is my audience of one
Smiles when I leave its wings
Because it knows I one step behind my destiny
And it is following me
Love will be with me when I fail
Pick me up, kiss me and push me back out
It tells me that I am priceless
Everything about me is valuable
And no man deserves my virtues
It reads my palms and sees my future
Which it is an unvarying factor of,
Love is the void in my heart
For it is waiting for another heart
Voided just as big for a perfect fit
When I am no longer clouded, with teenage infatuation
When I have found the other heart,
I will tell you
So many times have given mine out first
This time; they will engage me with theirs
But for now
Love is what speaks to me at night
In morning tells me, I am a queen
And walks with me day after day.

This year’s edition of the AEO finds Africa’s economies weakened by the global recession and at the same time under pressure to make additional efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The world economic crisis brought a period of high growth in Africa to a sudden end. Average economic growth was slashed from about 6% in 2006-2008 to 2.5% in 2009 with per capita GDP growth coming to a near standstill. The global crisis of 2009 had its strongest effect on southern Africa, where growth was slashed (from the average over the preceding three years) by almost 8 percentage points to negative growth of around 1%.

Allegations of massive fraud during May’s local elections in Burundi have cast a shadow over the country's democratic transition, prompting international calls for compromise rather than confrontation. Attributing the ruling CNDD-FDD’s landslide victory to ballot-box stuffing, vote-buying with state resources, the illegal use of proxies and a lack of secrecy in some polling stations, 13 opposition parties have announced a boycott of the 28 June presidential race, leaving President Pierre Nkurunziza as the only runner.

The corruption case against South Africa's President Jacob Zuma, which was dropped by the prosecution before he became President, still haunts national politics. The opposition fights for documents in the Zuma prosecution case.