Namibia President Hifikepunye Pohamba, earlier this week likened the European Union's trade negotiations with Namibia to the days of apartheid, saying the powerhouse is refusing to treat the country as an equal and listen to its concerns about the controversial economic partnership agreement (EPA).

Madagascar's leader stormed out of internationally mediated power-sharing talks in the early hours of Friday, threatening to derail attempts to form a national unity government and end months of turmoil. Andry Rajoelina, who seized power in a March coup, insisted his leadership of the Indian Ocean island, increasingly eyed by investors for its oil and minerals, was not up for negotiation.

The United Nations refugee agency has rushed relief items to help tens of thousands of Angolans expelled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) last month. A Boeing 747 jet from Johannesburg, South Africa, touched down in Angola’s capital, Luanda, over the weekend carrying thousands of tents, sleeping mats and blankets, as well as a prefabricated warehouse.

Africa’s efforts to meet the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their 2015 deadline are threatened by the impact of the global financial crisis on the continent’s economies, said Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday said he had called off a boycott of power-sharing ties with President Robert Mugabe that had paralysed the fragile unity government for three weeks. His announcement comes after a Southern African leaders' emergency summit aimed at ending the power-sharing deal impasse in the country.

AU Chairperson Jean Ping Tuesday called on the four Malagasy political leaders here to put the interest of the people before every agenda of their crisis talks to resolve the political crisis in the country.

West African neighbours, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, have called for national reconciliation in Cote d'Ivoire to ensure a peaceful vote to climax peace efforts in the country that was torn apart by civil war about a decade ago. They have also expressed appreciation about arrangements towards the forthcoming elections which Ivorian Preident Laurent Gbagbo said would take place in December 2009 or January 2010.

The UN Deputy Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Southern Sudan, Lise Grande, has welcomed the first-ever rescue, by the Southern Sudan Police Service, of 28 abducted children in Pibor County, Jonglei State. The children, aged between 2 and 14 years, were released on late last month.

Kenyan Attorney General Amos Wako confirmed Wednesday November 4th 2009 that he is banned from travelling to the United States and announced his intention to sue for defamation.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) staff member Thulani Ndhlovu who was arrested on Wednesday 28 October in Dete, Hwange has been granted bail out of custody by Magistrate Ms I. Munamati Madzorere. Madzorere ordered Thulani to pay $200 bail and report twice every week (Monday and Friday) at Bulawayo Central police station.

Wow, I have gone through and am deeply touched and also disgusted by persons who even after having knowledge on albinism still act like they need more education on it, while the government is giving support, mere talk isn't as important we need to see action, and measures being taken to protect all the persons with albinsm in Kenya. We are right behind such moves, that work to improve the quality of lives of persons with albinism.

by Yohannes Woldemariam is one of the best written analysis I have read on this matter in a long time. Good points on the policies of the Eritrean government that are driving hundreds and thousands out of their country, the role of EU's migration policy and the overall responsibility of the global community. Thank you.

P.S. I happened to be visiting Italy, in Sicily at the time of this and you can read more of the findings of my organisation from www.BlackAllianceBlog.blogspot.com

‘I write as a fellow African to take a stand with the people of Guinea and to let you know that Guinea and Africa as a whole are better off without you in power', Mawuli Dake says in an open letter to Guinea’s President Camara. Referring to the events of 28 September, Dake writes that the ‘horrendous massacre and flagrant abuse of human rights’ by men under Camara’s command, combined with the president’s ‘lamentable attempt to absolve’ himself of any responsibility by asserting that he ‘cannot control the security forces and their actions’, clearly make him ‘incapable and disinclined to remain in power as leader of Guinea'.

In this week’s Pambazuka News, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde discovers why titles matter in the Nigerian context, where not properly addressing ‘certain people with their earned, dashed, or forged title, could get one into trouble’. ‘Some Nigerians, it seems, do not like to be ordinary people,’ Abidde writes, ‘They have to be somebody. They have to be important, a very, very important person – whether or not they add value to the community they live in.’

In this week’s Pambazuka News, Phanice Shamalia reports on ‘Sexually Speaking’, a lively discussion among 30 Kenyan women hosted by Storymoja as part of its monthly Women in Leadership forum. After ‘an afternoon of candid conversation’ on how various issues of our lives affect our sexuality’, Shamalia writes, participants concluded that it ‘is possible to have a healthier sex life, a confident sex life, and an educated sex life. One step is by attending sessions such as this one, with informed, opinionated women who are willing to share their knowledge.’

Wazir Mohamed and Esau Mavindidze report on a recent symposium aimed at creating a space for Zimbabweans to discuss the present and future of the country. Bringing together representatives of government, civil society, human rights groups, scholars and Zimbabweans in the diaspora, the symposium – hosted by Syracuse University’s Africa Initiative and the Newhouse School of Public Communications – provided ‘a rare avenue’ to ‘assess the progress, status, challenges and opportunities for lasting peace, healing and reconstruction for the people of Zimbabwe’.

Unless post-independence South Africa sees success as ‘lifting the widest number of the black majority out of poverty, in the shortest time', it will fail as a country, William Gumede writes in Pambazuka News. And it ‘will join the club of developing countries that just muddle along, with a small political and economic elite in charge, and a poor majority trapped in poverty, from which a small numbers occasionally join the ranks of the rich'.

‘Greedy colonial-racist interests’ are ‘the common historic cause for Africa’s woes’, including those of Zimbabwe, Udo W. Froese writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. The ‘Rhodesian lobby’ has 'to date worked hard at destabilising and isolating Zimbabwe' in order to retain its 'interests in agriculture, mining and resources', Froese argues. The Movement for Democratic Change’s links to this lobby and to the West, Froese suggests, make the party a ‘non-starter’. ‘SADC heads-of-state would find it difficult to support an old colonial, race-based order, where their kith-and-kin have no access to land and the wealth of their land,’ writes Froese.

Despite cheap available solar and wind options, the World Bank’s portfolio of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in Africa focuses on hydropower, methane-capture and other toxic investments, Khadija Sharife writes in Pambazuka News. Unpicking the links between energy, investment and ecological degradation across the continent, Sharife argues that rather than leading to real reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, offsetting simply allows industrialised nations to ‘utilise Africa’s “underdeveloped” status as yet another exploitable resource'.

The fervour with which foreign commercial interests are forcing their agricultural 'solutions' on the African continent represents nothing more than an established endeavour to protect profits and access to resources, writes Joan Baxter. For all that they are dressed up as 'help' and 'knowledge', these ostensible solutions are about one thing: Money. So long as powerful initiatives like the Green Revolution and agribusinesses are able to trample on the continent's sovereignty, Baxter argues, Africa's land, traditional knowledge, biodiversity, seeds and crop varieties will remain in liquidation.