UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked his Special Envoy for The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, James Victor Gbeho, to return to West Africa to promote peace between the two countries, the UN reported on Monday.

With millions facing starvation in southern Africa, the United Nations warned its top managers Monday against ostentatious entertaining at an environmental summit later this month in Johannesburg.

A new round of negotiations between Burundi's government and rebel troops is scheduled to open in Dar-es-Salaam on 6 August. However the prospects are still weak that the talks will result in a sustainable and all-inclusive ceasefire, according to a new briefing from CrisisWeb News.

The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CEPACS), Faculty of the Social Sciences, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, is pleased to announce its second in-take into the new Master's in Humanitarian and Refugee Studies (MHRS) Professional Degree Programme. The programme was begun in the 2001/2002 academic session, with the support of the Association of African Universities (AAU), based in Accra, Ghana.

Is global warming making you hot under the collar? Take Action! Let the world's leaders know you want them to establish an International Sustainable Energy Fund at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg this summer.

Burundi's Group of Five pro-Tutsi parties have withdrawn their threat to suspend participation in state institutions, so that Tuesday's planned ceasefire talks between rebels and the transitional government could have a better chance of success, a Burundian news agency, Net Press, reported.

At least 17 people have been killed and 10,000 people have fled after rebels attacked a camp of Sudanese refugees in the north of Uganda.

Heavy fighting has again broken out around the villages of Qayadsame and Al-Hamdulillah, near the town of Qardho, some 260 km south of Bosaso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, local media sources said.

The anti-privatisation strike planned for October 1 and 2 by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) with the backing of the South African Communist Party (SACP) threatens to plunge the tripartite alliance into its worst crisis ever and could make a split unavoidable, alliance leaders said this week.

For years, populations in northern Cameroon have had to live with bandits and the impact of banditry on economic activities, transport and ordinary people's lives.

The UN World Food Programme regional director for Central Africa, Holdbrook Arthur, has said that US $14,212 million is needed to help some 1.2 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This amount equals 38 percent of the annual agency's budget for the country.

At least 350 people fleeing fighting between Mayi-Mayi militias and troops of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebel movement arrived in Kindu from the village of Kailo, some 50 km to the north, in east-central Democratic Republic of the Congo, UN spokesman Hamadoun Toure said last Thursday.

Colonial and post colonial external influences on Africa have reduced the capacity of many societies in Africa to adjust to ecological and economic shocks and led to the economic and political exclusion of many groups.

The proliferation of automatic weapons throughout the Karamoja region has led the Ugandan government to initiate a regional disarmament programme, but onging tensions between tribes-people and government forces offer little hope for longlasting peace in the region.

Bishops from Sudan and Uganda have lashed out at Ugandan MPs for insensitivity to the plight of Sudanese refugees in Uganda.

The southern Somali town of Baidoa is reported to have fallen to forces loyal to Colonel Hassan Mohamed Nur Shatigudud. More than 110 people died and some 200 were injured in the battle.

Registered political parties in the self-declared republic of Somaliland have agreed on conditions necessary for holding free and fair elections in the region, IRIN reports.

The United States and Zimbabwe have reached agreement on supplying emergency food to the famine-stricken southern African nation, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner says.

Heavy fighting continued raging on Wednesday for the second consecutive day in Baidoa town between the forces of the president of the southwestern regional government of Somalia and those of his deputy chairmen in the Rahanwein Resistance Army faction.

Save the Children, the UK-based international aid agency, on Monday warned of mass migration of starving people from Zimbabwe to neighbouring South Africa within the next three months.