Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki fell further behind his main challenger, Raila Odinga, in opinion polls on Friday, just three weeks before elections that are expected to be the East African country's closest. The latest Steadman poll gave opposition leader Odinga 46% to Kibaki's 42%. Its last poll two weeks ago had the 76-year-old incumbent running neck-and-neck with Odinga, with both on 43,3%.

he United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) representative for Somalia on Friday voiced his concern at the increasing number of rape cases in the country's war-torn capital, Mogadishu. "Sexual violence and rape are part of the game now," Christian Balslev-Olesen said at a press briefing on the deteriorating access to health in Mogadishu.

Aides of Jacob Zuma have drawn up contingency plans to try to force his rival President Thabo Mbeki out of office early, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Friday. If Zuma was elected party leader at the African National Congress's five-yearly conference in a fortnight, he would insist on being privy to big government decisions, according to a close adviser, the influential daily said.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Thursday said it had commenced demarcating voting constituencies for next year’s House of Assembly election, with Harare, Bulawayo and the two Matabeleland provinces that back the opposition set to get 67 constituencies.

Alter-Eco is published by a group of non-governmental organizations, indigenous people's organizations and social movements at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change COP-13. The groups came together to make a unified call in support of real solutions to climate change and against the false market-based solutions to climate change that are being implemented under the Kyoto Protocol.

Senegal has joined Africa's economic tigers [South Africa and Nigeria] to openly declare its refusal to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPAs) with the European Union. Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade, said his government would not endorse the agreements simply because they did not "defend Africa's interests."

African states should address the needs of local markets and of their regions before looking at what can be exported globally, and not the other way round as is currently the case. This proposal was made by a participant at a meeting of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from November 27-29.

Nigeria has revoked its last contract with Siemens and suspended dealings with the industrial group pending a probe into allegations it gave 10 million euros ($14.6 million) in bribes, the government said. A German court fined Siemens 201 million euros on 4 October for bribes paid to Nigerian, Russian and Libyan officials by a former manager of one of the group's telecoms equipment units.

South Africa will not include maize in the initial stages of the country's biofuels policy in order to keep a lid on high food prices, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Thursday. The decision followed the South African cabinet's approval of a long-awaited biofuels plan, which officials hope will revive the ailing agriculture industry. Maize farmers, who have in the past struggled to stay profitable as bumper harvests pushed maize prices to multi-year lows, have also pinned their hopes on biofuels. But critics fear using maize as a source of alternative energy could drive up prices of the staple food.

The Zimbabwean group behind a series of billboards sprouting up in South Africa has finally opened up to the media and spoken about their campaign. Although still concealing his real identity, Reverend Nkululeko from Zimbabwe Democracy Now, spoke to our Behind the Headlines programme this week and says they are motivated by a desire to see democratic elections in Zimbabwe. He said elections should meet the SADC guidelines, which are there specifically to promote an environment for free and fair polls.

Robert Mugabe on Tuesday courted controversy by announcing that only friendly nations would be invited to observe the polls. The presence of foreign observers at the elections is one of the conditions the MDC is insisting on at the talks. Mugabe’s statement Tuesday revealed that he has not given in on this issue.

Liberia has cleared all overdue debt service payments to the World Bank, marking the beginning of a new era for the country as it normalizes its relations with the international community. Clearance of arrears to the Bank and other multilateral agencies will make Liberia eligible for full debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) programs, thereby contributing to the country’s ability to achieve growth and recovery in the coming years.

Cote d' Ivoire will receive a grant of 20 million Units of Account (UA*), about US$ 31.43 million, approved on Wednesday in Tunis by the Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF), the concessional window of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, to finance a Post-Crisis Multisector Institutional Support Project in the country.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the 1994 Rwandan genocide has sentenced a former witness to nine months in prison for giving false testimony during the trial of the country’s former higher education minister. The witness, identified only by the code name GAA, pleaded guilty to one count of contempt of court at a hearing this morning of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which sits in Arusha, Tanzania.

The United Nations and African Union Special Envoys for Darfur have met with the regional partners to the peace process in the war-torn Sudanese region to assess the progress so far and try to forge agreement on the way forward. Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim held talks in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh with the foreign ministers of Chad, Egypt and Libya and senior representatives of the Eritrean President, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters.

The ongoing fighting in eastern Chad is preventing humanitarian workers from reaching more than 400,000 refugees and displaced persons, setting the stage for a situation that could worsen rapidly and lead to significant loss of life, the United Nations has warned. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), armed conflict is hampering the ability of aid workers to move freely and safely in most parts of eastern Chad, cutting off vulnerable groups from vital humanitarian assistance.

ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, with the Kenya Section of the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Kenya Correspondents
Association (KCA) has launched a Guidebook on Election Coverage for Media
Correspondents in Kenya.

The Kenya Domestic Observers Forum was recently launched at an event at KICC in Nairobi. The co-chairs for the organization say they hope to have monitors at all of Kenya’s 35,000 polling stations on election day. The forum will also monitor the political process running up to the elections. “Our strategy is to undertake election day and thematic observations,” says Oliver Kisaka, one of three co-chairs of the forum. “Kenya remains in transition. Each election year we could check whether the country is moving forward in its democratic culture.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_01_mirrorofjustice.g… writes about the improvement of the food situation in Malawi after the government ignored advice from the World Bank and USAID and subsidized fertilizer and seed to farmers:

“Clearly leaving things to market forces didn't work. Equally clearly, the subsidized fertilizer is having a dramatic positive effect - not only can do people now have enough food to feed themselves, but they have food to sell to other countries. Are government subsidies perfect? Probably not, and doubtless there is some displacement of commercial fertilizer sales. But government programs aimed at helping people become self-sufficient are a different matter than those that simply hand someone a bowl of food.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_02_ndagha.gifMalawian blogger Victor Kaonga commemorates World Aids day by discussing the challenges of Aids sensitization, primary among these, the stigma and silence that still surrounds the disease:

“Admittedly, it is not easy to disclose one's status because there are so many fears and consequences. Though this years' theme is on leadership, I have some worry over the performance of most of our leaders in Malawi…

AIDS is an area where silence still reigns. I just pray and hope that as leaders, they (and some people claim I am also a leader in my own right!) need to be more aggressive. May be this year's theme will remind them (us) about our roles when it comes to AIDS.

I think the theme is ideal as most leaders are men in our region and yet very few of them ever disclose their sero-status. My observation is that it is mostly women who easily disclose their sero-status. No wonder that often when it comes to programming, most of the interview voices on air have been those of women who are free to say they are living with the virus.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_03_whichwaynigeria.g…Which Way Nigeria comments on the recent declaration by the Nigerian Senate that the handing over of the disputed Bakassi peninsular to Cameroon by the Obasanjo administration was unconstitutional:
“One wonders, if this ceding off of Bakassi is the only unconstitutional act of Obasanjo? The Senate should spend their time on legislating and carrying out their oversight functions to see that all the depilated infrastructures are functional. The mobile telephone service providers are ripping off Nigerians with diverted calls, dropped calls and poor reception. A handful of schools in Nigeria are paying either in pounds or dollars, yet Nigeria is a Sovereign state. While sympathizing with the displaced Nigerians of Bakassi extraction, one is tempted to say that these displaced people are better off being Cameroonians than Nigerians.
The degradation in the Niger Delta – the goose that lays the golden egg – is a pointer that most oil producing areas are better off in their own Republic. This unwarranted declaration of war by the Nigerian Senate, is most unfortunate as Nigeria parades herself as giant of Africa and parrots that Africa is the at the heart of Nigerian Foreign Policy.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_04_sierraeye.gifSier… Leonan blogger Sierraeye reproduces an article from Worldpress which reviews the downward spiral of the Sierra Leonan civil service in the past decade:

“At the dawn of independence, Sierra Leone's civil service was one of the best in Africa. The work of the civil service was widely accepted and respected, as it worked to serve the people of Sierra Leone. That reputation of the civil service has quickly been eroded since the late 60's. The civil service became entirely corrupt and grossly inefficient. And it did not get better even when after the war ended in 2002, and the international community rallied behind Sierra Leone as never before, supporting efforts to build capacity and helping to address the problems of the civil service.
[…]
Sierra Leoneans have paid a heavy price for being too susceptible to the deviant and corrupt practices of civil servants nullifying the competence of the civil service once enjoyed in colonial times and the years immediately after independence—a civil service that was rooted in a preference for being honorable over exhibiting selfishness, for being progressive over showing lack of will to make a difference. At a moment in history when the country's most pressing problems require unprecedented civil service performance, [former President] Kabbah's lenient administration only contributed to the ruin of the nation.”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_05_pitsotsibs.gifThe ANC Women’s League endorsement of Jacob Zuma for the ANC party presidency has been hotly debated in the African blogosphere. South African blogger Pitso Tsibolane is among those bewildered by the choice of the Women’s League:

“But why? Why did the women choose the “Kanga-Man”, one who exposed his attitudes about women and sex when he slept with an HIV+ woman (Kwezi the faceless one, now exiled lesbian and a family friend) without protection? The same man who is polygamous and yet divorced? Do they condone his actions?

Allow me to think aloud;

- Could it be that most women of the ANC believe that JZ’s troubles are all a conspiracy by Mbeki?
- Could it be that most women of the ANC actually believe that Zuma is a good man, and actually do not share the “more bourgeoisie sentiment” that he is a ticking time bomb, bad for the country’s image?
- Could it be that most women in the ANC really believe that there is nothing wrong for their future president to be sleeping with friends of the family and begging for money in brown envelopes from convicted fraudsters?
- Could it be, that most women in the actually choose to see the good in Zuma, the humble man, the people’s person, a real MK man, a soldier, a survivor, rags-to-riches genius, the victim of the aloof jealous leader president!

Allow me to surmise, Zuma sure knows how to rise to the occasion when he has to, he outsmarted the “intelligent native” with his charm. However, he has not swayed me to his side; I actually do not believe he is what South Africa needs now. I do hope he chooses his deputy and cabinet well for South Africa’s sake (but first he must win at Limpopo!)”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_06_chippla.gifThe case of the English teacher who was jailed in Sudan for naming a teddy bear “Mohammed” is still generating lots of discussion on the blogosphere. Chippla’s Weblog looks at the broader implications of the actions of the Sudanese government:

“What the Sudanese authorities ought to have done was to educate Ms. Gibbons on the religious and cultural values of the Islamic parts of Sudan (Khartoum, where Ms. Gibbons taught, is in the Islamic part of Sudan). Instead, they ended up doing something reminiscent of the backward Middle Ages—sentencing her to jail. An event like this sometimes makes rational people laugh at the chocking effect of blind adherence to religious faith. And few things could be more potent than when the state exalts religious dogma and has religious laws against ‘blasphemy’!”

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/331/blogs_07_meskelsquare.gifT… view is similar to the one expressed by Sudanese newspaper Al-Sahafah which is quoted by Meskel Square:

"If this issue had been raised to the Prophet he would have sided with the innocent children who gave their beloved toy his name. He would have considered this as an example of love and truth... Commoners, let alone elites and educated people, can easily distinguish between what really angers God and his Prophet, and who is striving to take advantage of some issues for other reasons...

Whoever creates a battle where there is no place for one in the name of religion thus insults Islam and its Prophet, and creates a wrongful impression of the religion making it to be hated by people, is committing a great offence incurring the wrath of God and his Prophet."

* Dibussi Tande, a writer and activist from Cameroon, produces the blog Scribbles from the Den, http://www.dibussi.com

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

The Kamusi Project, the web’s leading Swahili language resource, needs coding help in a hurry. We have a lot of old code that works pretty well for what we’ve been doing (running a collaborative online Swahili dictionary), but we need to modify and modernize our back end in order to get where we’re going: a free and open source interlinked dictionary and learning center for dozens of African languages. If you can volunteer, please contact [email][email protected]