Addressing the issue of resettling the tens of thousands of people displaced in post-election violence will be the first significant test of Kenya's new coalition government. It is no surprise that a quarter of the members of Kenya's new super-sized cabinet are from the Rift Valley - the area worst affected by the post-election violence.

The Zimbabwean newspaper claims that Robert Mugabe’s regime has illegally sold US$1 million of ivory as part payment for a shipment of ammunition, grenades and mortars from China. The paper claims that Poly Technologies, a state owned arms manufacturer received payment for the arms on the 1st April, when information began filtering through that Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe had lost the elections. The controversial ‘An Yue Jiang’ ship is said to contain weapons purchased via that deal.

Civic groups in Zimbabwe have released a document detailing evidence of state-sponsored murder and violence against opposition supporters to southern Africa's chief elections observer. The document handed to Jose Marcos Barrica, Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission head, the factual evidence of post-election violence. The evidence included pictures of opposition supporters who were extensively tortured by the military, political activists and Zanu PF youth militias.

Renewed fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province has forced the United Nations refugee agency to halt the distribution of aid to internally displaced persons and to call off a drive to register newly displaced people in the Rutshuru area.

Central African leaders and the UN have been urged to secure the release of more than 350 men, women and children thought to have been abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in recent weeks. The abductions took place in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Southern Sudan while the LRA was ostensibly preparing to sign a peace agreement with the Ugandan government.

A shipment of Chinese weapons headed for troubled Zimbabwe will be returned to China because there is no way to deliver it to the landlocked country in southern Africa, China said Thursday. Countries neighboring Zimbabwe refused to allow the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang to dock at their ports. That followed heavy pressure from African unions, churches and human rights groups, bolstered by behind-the-scenes pressure from the United States.

The Nigerian senate has warned Nigerians travelling to and living in South Africa to be wary of incessant attacks, even as it called on the Federal Government to issue a travel advice to all Nigerians travelling to the country. The lawmakers said the travel advice had become necessary in view of the strident attacks on Nigerians in that country.

As the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang and its cargo of arms intended for the Mugabe regime heads for Namibia, the TUC has today (Wednesday) written to the President of the Southern African country urging him to turn the shipment away.

The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour is responsible for covering up the murder of the deceased President of Rwanda, the President of Burundi and many other persons who were assassinated on April 06 1994, a senior attorney with the UN Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has alleged. Lead Counsel Christopher Black who is defending General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, former Chief of Staff of Rwandan Gendarmerie says that Louise Arbour - as Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR conspired with some countries to cover up investigations into allegations against the RPF.

The Coalition for an Effective African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Coalition), which comprises African and international non-governmental organisations (NGO) working in and on Africa, individuals and national human rights institutions in Africa, was formed in Niamey, Niger in May 2003 to advocate for an effective and efficient African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Coalition will be holding a panel discussion on the African Court at the Royal Swazi Sun in Ezulwini, Swaziland on 11 May 2008.

Stories of the abuse and exploitation of refugees in South Africa abound. In cities and informal settlements across the country, many refugees live in fear of being arrested, attacked and victimised for being ‘foreigners’. Xenophobia has lead to major eruptions in townships such as Atteridgeville, Shoshanguve and Laudium, where community members have turned on and attacked ‘foreigners’, sometimes burning their homes, shops and severely assaulting them.

A ship carrying arms, including 3 million rounds of ammunition, bound for Zimbabwe is currently trying to find a way of delivering its deadly cargo. It is highly likely that these weapons will be used to fuel violence, killings and intimidation in Zimbabwe’s growing political crisis. THE ARMS MUST BE STOPPED. Please help stop these arms getting through to Zimbabwe.

Josephine Akello had hoped the peace talks between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) would finally end with rebel leader Joseph Kony signing a peace accord on 10 April. Then she heard that the elusive Kony had failed to show up at a much-publicised signing ceremony due in Ri-Kwangba, near the border between Southern Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Togolese officials have embarked on a nation-wide consultation on the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to heal the wounds of the 2005 political violence in the West African country

An armed group in Nigeria's southern oil-producing region claims to have sabotaged a major oil supply pipeline belonging to Anglo-Dutch oil group Shell. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said that it had carried out the sabotage operation on Thursday evening in Rivers state, in a statement on Friday.

Ethnic Somali separatists have been fighting government forces in the east of Ethiopia for more than 13 years now, but the long-running conflict has been largely invisible as Addis Ababa has restricted access to the region. There have been numerous clashes between the Ogaden National Liberation Army (ONLF) and the military in recent months, with both sides claiming successes.

This brief examines the state, identity politics, and the struggle for resources in Africa. It contends that identity politics obscures the real reason behind exclusionary practices, namely the struggle for and access to resources. It uses the recent conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan and Chad to illustrate how initial identity tensions laid the foundation for a struggle for access to resources that has re-ignited violence in those
societies.

Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars. "I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."

Just over two months after the latest major eruption of fighting in Sudan's West Darfur region, the UN refugee agency has transferred some 5,400 new Sudanese refugees to two camps in eastern Chad. But UNHCR estimates that another 8,000 people remain scattered in several villages along the volatile Chad-Sudan border.

Rebels from Burundi's last active guerrilla group fired mortar bombs at government positions in clashes that killed 10 rebels and four soldiers, an army spokesman said on Friday. The fighting, which started late Thursday and continued into Friday morning, was centred on the rebel stronghold of Bubanza some 50 km (30 miles) northwest of the capital Bujumbura, the military's deputy spokesman Colonel Justace Ciza said.