Clan elders in northern Somalia's breakaway enclave of Somaliland voted on Friday to extend President Dahir Riyale Kahin's term on condition that a voter list be finalised and a date set for a presidential election. It was the third time since April 2008 that Somaliland's upper House of Elders has extended Kahin's term, which was due to expire on October 29. Opposition politicians in the lower House of Representatives have demanded the president be impeached.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced it will manage a $44 million fund to promote the peaceful staging of presidential, parliamentary and local elections next year in Burundi, which was been wracked by ethnically-based strife for decades. Through the fund, UNDP will assist the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) organize the polls, promote civic education about the election process, encourage media coverage and try to boost the participation of women in the elections.

Senegal has called for United Nations support for the “Great Green Wall” project in which African countries have agreed to plant trees in a band across the breadth of the continent to try to lessen the effects of desertification. President Abdoulaye Wade told the General Assembly’s annual high-level debate that he wishes the UN will endorse the project, “which contributes to the protection of the environment,” help in the battle against climate change and would mobilize thousands of people.

African leaders are at the forefront of a landmark initiative to protect all those at risk from malaria with life-saving interventions by the end of 2010, the United Nations Envoy for efforts to defeat the deadly disease says. The African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) is tasked with ensuring that more than 240 million insecticide-treated bed nets are distributed throughout malaria-endemic countries on the continent by the end of 2010, with the aim of ending unnecessary deaths from the disease by 2015.

Angolans are tired of waiting for presidential elections and may soon take to the streets in protest against delays, the head of the main opposition UNITA party has said. Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, in power for 30 years, has pushed back a presidential poll at least three times since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002.

Zimbabwe’s troubled constitution making process is facing new challenges after the coalition principals in the unity government packed the executive of a committee managing the reforms with trusted loyalists. The process to craft a new supreme law for the country that must be completed within two years is a key area for the unity government formed by President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Police in Zimbabwe battled rioters in Bulawayo as members of the leading pressure group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), continued marking the United Nations 'International Day of Peace' with street protests. As the protesters took to the streets, marching and chanting slogans, Zimbabwe's riot police reportedly chased them with the aim of dispersing them.

The World Bank (WB) has said it had suspended funding for two key projects, worth US$ 166 million, covering education, water and flood management in Kenya's western region, pending investigations into fraud and corruption. The Bank said the projects, including the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) and the Western Kenya Community-Driven Development and Flood Mitigati on Project (WKCDD), were suspended over corruption involving Bank staff and Kenyan officials.

Officials of the Ivorian Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) have held a meeting with religious leaders to enable them to better understand the current electoral process in the country.

Sokari Ekine recently met with [mp3] is also available.

In this week's Pambazuka News, Isaac Newton Kinity urges the International Criminal Court (ICC), the African Union and the United Nations to move the tribunal for Kenya’s post-election violence out of the country due to security concerns.

Etyopian Simbiro discusses Ethiopia's political situation and argues that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's resignation is long overdue. Although Zenawi seems to be holding onto power endlessly, Simbiro perceives certain cracks in the framework of power. Firstly, Simbiro argues that Obama’s Africa policy has changed significantly from that of the previous administration, meaning that the governments of Africa are going to have to be more democratic before receiving aid and entering into an open alliance with the US. Secondly, the author argues that the Forum for Democratic Dialogue (FDD) is a promising opposition coalition that stands a chance against Zenawi in the 2010 elections. Finally, Simbiro argues that the Ethiopian people have had enough of Zenawi’s rule and the way he treats the population.

Adelson Rafael

Vilma Reis

Juan Almeida, the only Afro-Cuban to hold the title of Revolutionary Commander, died on 11 September. The second person after Che Guevara to be elevated the this rank, he remained the Cuban revolution’s ‘Number Three’ behind Fidel and Raul Castro throughout his life. Llusif Sadin Tassé, Cuba’s ambassador to Senegal, spoke to Pambazuka News about the life of this hero, who is credited for the famous battle cry: ‘Nobody here is going to surrender!’

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Concerned by African leaders' reluctance to support the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrants, Dieu-Donné Wedi Djamba argues that the failure to cooperate severely undermines global efforts to tackle impunity. While Africa's leaders consistently present the ICC as a tool of Western oppression which purely targets Africans, their lack of support actually reflects a fear of being the next arrested and a desire to offer mutual protection to allies, Wedi Djamba concludes.

With Rwanda's application for membership of the Commonwealth likely to be on the agenda at this year's Commonwealth heads of government meetings, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) expresses serious reservations about the country's credentials. Evidence pointing to the suppression of freedom of speech and a climate of fear represent significant causes for concern, the CHRI argue in this week's Pambazuka News, and ultimately point to the need for an independent body designed to assess applicants' and existing members' records on democracy and human rights.

The battle to oust Thabo Mbeki from ANC leadership brought ‘two diametrically opposed groups’ together in support of Jacob Zuma, William Gumede writes in Pambazuka News. Now though, President Zuma finds himself walking a ‘tight-rope’ between the opposing groups, with one side seeking genuine party reform in favour of the people, and the other simply wanting its own place at ‘the feeding trough’. Will Zuma take the side of democracy? That depends on whether he wants to secure another term for himself, or to ‘rescue’ the ANC’s ‘democratic legacy’.

In this week’s issue of Pambazuka News, activist Nawal El Saadawi writes about the inter-relationship between the power of the military, the police, capitalist markets and media, and religion, both at a global and local level. El Saadawi recently founded the Global Solidarity Movement for Secular Society, ‘to save women and men, globally and locally, from unjust laws forced on them under the name of God or religion.’ Religion is ‘a very personal individual private matter’, argues El Saadawi, and should be ‘totally separated from public life.'

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has signed a five-year poverty reduction compact granting $540 million to the Republic of Senegal for road rehabilitation and food security initiatives in some of the poorest regions of Senegal. The grant was signed by the Acting Chief Executive Officer Darius Mans and Senegalese Minister of Finance and Economy Abdoulaye Diop, with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal presiding at the signing held at the US State Department in Washington, D.C.