Egyptian experts have completed a mission in Kinshas a aimed at evaluating the construction of an ultra-modern hospital and hydro-electric power in DR Congo by Egypt.These projects are efforts to contribute to the accessibility of quality care and provision of electric power supply in DR Congo.

Ethiopia's first and biggest hydroelectric power generating plant that does not have its own dam was inaugurated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and a senior official from the project financier, Italy. The 281 million euro (US$ 407 million) plant, Gilgel-Gibe II (GII), uses water from another dam constructed more than 26 kilometres from GII for an earlier comm i ssioned power plant, called Gilgel-Gibe I (GI), has an installed capacity of 420

As famine and hunger envelop Ethiopia, Alemayehu G. Mariam asks why the alarm is not being sounded. Instead, with Ethiopia’s leaders flatly denying the existence of famine and the international community hiding behind the jargon of ‘food insecurity’, Mariam sees a predictable pattern to Ethiopia’s history of responses over the last four decades: ‘Always too little, too late’.

A recent outbreak of violence between migrant workers from Africa and the townspeople of Rosarno in southern Italy higlights the country's uneasy relationship with illegal immigrants, many of whom are trafficked into Italy by the mafia to provide cheap labour during the fruit-picking season, writes Annar Cassam.

Chérif Salif Sy

‘Our deepest sympathies to the entire Haitian population’, writes Jacques Depelchin, ’and in particular to those who, prior to the earthquake were already suffering too much, simply because they were continuing a struggle started more than two centuries ago.’

The ‘Nigerian bomber’, the attacks on the Togolese football team, LGBTI politics in Africa, the mafia and migrant workers in Italy and a murder in London are among the topics in Sokari Ekine’s roundup of the African blogosphere.

Challenging Ugandan MP David Bahati’s assertion that homosexuality poses a grave threat to the ‘traditional African family’, Sylvia Tamale looks at the social meaning and legal implications of the country’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill.

Muslim marriages have no legal recognition in South Africa, writes Waheeda Amien, but the use of written marriage contracts – the terms of which are enforceable in a secular court – offers a form of protection for parties, both within marriage and upon divorce.

Niger exports enough uranium to France to generate 50 per cent of the latter’s electricity supply, writes Khadija Sharife. But ordinary Nigeriens reap little benefit from France’s control of their country’s uranium resources, with over three-fifths of the population living below the poverty line and reports of radioactive contamination of water, air and soil by multinational mining operations.

Isaac Newton Kinity asks if a ‘political, secret shadow examination board’ is ‘still alive in Kenya’.

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill would, if enacted into law, violate international human rights law and lead to further human rights violations, a report from Amnesty International has said. This extract from the report offers a human rights analysis of the bill.

Dale McKinley looks at what the new decade holds for South Africa, as politicians, corporate mandarins and the media attempt to gloss over the “dirty” realities of the country's ‘grinding poverty, homelessness and mass inequality’ ahead of the World Cup.

‘If we want to turn around black education in South Africa, we must start by changing prevailing anti-learning attitudes’, argues William Gumede. ‘Anti-learning attitudes’, says Gumede, are compounded by a ‘lack of political will from leaders to do something beyond mouthing off rhetoric, wrong official priorities and absentee black parents’.

Cameroon is reversing its scientific brain drain by boosting the salaries of university academics. The early signs are that a government fund of 4.2 billion Central African francs (almost US$9.5 million), created in early 2009, has increased the number of scientists and stabilised the research environment.

Solar-powered irrigation systems can boost food and income levels in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, researchers have found. Irrigation is known to reduce poverty in Asia, they wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week (5 January), but the success of the technique is not well-documented in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Zimbabwean government has been working hard to attract international investors to revive the country’s failing economy. Success on this front in 2010 may hinge on the coalition government convincing investors their capital will be secure.

South Africa has expressed frustration over the slow pace of talks aimed at ensuring a definitive solution to the crisis in Zimbabwe. Lindiwe Zulu, the international relations advisor to President Jacob Zuma, told Talk Radio 702 in Johannesburg they were not happy with the slow pace of the talks.

A top UN official has revealed the world body's intention to boost its missions in Africa and beyond as a result of an unexpected increase in its budget for this year.

Angola is to use the first quarter of 2010 to adopt a new constitution for the country, announced the president of the National Assembly, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos.