East Africa is in the middle of a major scramble for oil and gas resources as exploration firms rush to seal deals and optimism grows about more oil strikes. Last year saw at least 17 notable deals in East Africa, including five corporate ones worth over $250 million combined, more than double the number in 2010, which was just eight. Mid this year, Tullow, a wildcat oil prospector, is expected to announce the results of the wells it is currently drilling in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The Council of Canadians, Food and Water Watch, and Focus on the Global South invite you to virtually Occupy the World Water Forum – a corporate trade show aimed at giving the world’s largest water multinationals privileged access to high-level policy making behind closed doors. Many social justice and environmental groups will be in Marseille to denounce the World Water Forum and promote an alternative vision at the Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau (FAME). You can support our protests virtually from anywhere in the world by occupying the World Water Forum online.

A fire that killed two workers and destroyed a gas exploration rig off Nigeria's south-east coast has gone out after 46 days, Chevron has said. Friends of the Earth, which said this was the world's worst such accident in recent years, welcomed the news. The environmental group has urged Chevron to compensate local Nigerian fishermen for income lost while the fire burned.

It is necessary to implement legislation to address violence against women in Africa. Yet women must tread the fine line between cultural expectations and legal systems that often deny them justice.

Over the last seven years Karuturi Global has acquired rights to 311,700 hectares of land in Gambela and Bako region in Ethiopia for the purpose of agricultural development. But Karuturi’s practices in Ethiopia has also attracted less welcome attention from human rights activists. Investigators from New York-based Human Rights Watch paid a visit to a Karuturi lease area in Gambela in May 2011 where they found that maize, sorghum, and groundnut crops planted by local Anuak farmers had been cleared without consent and residents moved off their land.

Eldoret North MP William Ruto has agreed to give up a 100-acre piece of land he is accused of grabbing from an internally displaced person. Ruto has offered to leave the land belonging to Mr Adrian Gilbert Muteshi, who was displaced during the 2008 post-election violence, by April 10. In a concession filed in court on Monday, the Eldoret North MP said that he required two months to remove his properties including fences and hedges from the land.

Zambia environment authorities on Saturday closed a copper mining plant operated by the Mopani Copper Mine company after health complaints from local residents continued to drag the mine. The move was seen by locals as an attempt to crackdown on poor conditions at mines across the country and comes after environmental activists called on the government to enhance oversight on mining operations in the country. The plant, which is controlled by Swiss commodity trader Glencore AG, was placed under the spotlight for its pollution levels.

Angola's attorney general has summoned witnesses to testify in a case that implicates some of the top figures in the country's military and security establishment in acts of torture and murder in the diamond fields of north-eastern Angola. The witnesses' hearings will start on 5 March in Luanda. Respondents in the case include General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias "Kopelipa", Minister of State and head of the Military Bureau in the Angolan presidency, as well as a close confidante and business associate of President José Eduardo dos Santos. The case was brought before the attorney general, on 14 November 2011, by Angolan human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais, who has been investigating rights abuses connected with the diamond industry since 2004.

The new Egypt seems a lot like the old Egypt, especially in terms of its continued control of Nile River water. Last year, the interim Egyptian government said it would oppose an Ethiopian plan to erect a damn along its territory’s Nile water. Egypt claims it cannot give up their share of water, as it could lead to water shortages in the future. But millions of Egyptians suffer from water shortages on a daily basis. Today. Adel Mohamed, blames shortages on new upscale developments being erected for Egypt’s wealthiest people, reports

White jelly forming on the top of boiled water, sickness due to the water, land stained black. This Mail and Guardian reports on the devastating effects of acid mine drainage on the town of Carolina and how the town's residents are suffering because of a polluted water supply.

The ANC released its policy discussion documents in Johannesburg on Monday, saying it would take the country into its 'second transition'. Land reform and adjustments to 'elements of the Constitution' were two of the discussion points mentioned. 'The recommendation in this document expresses the view that the current willing-buyer, willing-seller model tends to distort the land market through inflating the prices of land earmarked for restitution, and this has the dual effect of making land reform expensive and delays the process of increasing access of the poor to land.'

Namibia’s indigenous Himba and Zemba people of Kaokoland in the far north-west of the country, long thought to be voiceless, isolated and marginalized, are demanding that the Namibian government ends forced land grabbing, halts plans for the Orokawe Dam in the Kunene region, stops interfering in ancestral tribal institutions, provides culturally sensitive schools and allows them to move freely across the border with Angola.

'Troubled Waters: How Mine Waste Dumping is Poisoning Our Ocean, Rivers, and Lakes' is a new investigative report from Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada that documents how mining companies are using the world's waterways as dumping grounds for their toxic mine wastes. These mine wastes, or tailings, can contain up to three dozen dangerous chemicals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide. Each year, mining companies dump over 180 million tonnes of these hazardous mine wastes into rivers, oceans, and lakes

Everyone in Uganda is enjoying the windfall from oil.

On a recent hot Saturday afternoon, tempers flared outside a school building in the village of Madina as organizers tried to work out who could and could not attend the meeting inside between the visiting government delegation and community representatives. The meeting's agenda was clear: the activities of Sime Darby Plantation Liberia (SDLP) and their impact on the surrounding land and its inhabitants. One of the most prominent in a club of new, high-profile investors committed to long-term projects in Liberia, SDLP's future activities are meant to bring Liberia billions of dollars in revenue and some 35,000 jobs.

In 'Corporate War Crimes', law professor James G. Stewart offers a roadmap of the law governing pillage as applied to the illegal exploitation of natural resources by corporations and their officers. The text traces the evolution of the prohibition against pillage from its earliest forms through the Nuremburg trials to today’s national laws and international treaties. In doing so, Stewart provides a long-awaited blueprint for prosecuting corporate plunder during war.

Advocating a risky market fix to a massive market failure under circumstances of widespread market melt is the latest version of state failure.

The plaintiffs are relatives of victims murdered by Nigeria’s former military regime which was allegedly recruited by Shell to eliminate the opposition to oil exploration in the Niger Delta.

Egyptian researchers claim to have found a cheap, easy method for detecting and clearing landmines, using plants and bacteria. The three-stage process for deactivating anti-personnel mines - landmines designed for use against humans - first detects the mine before corroding its cast-iron body and, finally, neutralising it.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has joined dozens of sites and organisations in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). These two US bills, if passed, represent an unprecedented threat to the open internet as we know it, with impacts felt far beyond the borders of the United States. APC believes the internet is a global public good and is joining today’s protest in solidarity with those who fight to uphold internet-related human rights.