A new initiative to support production of renewable energy in Mauritius may provide a model for other countries to follow suit. 'We have got so much sunshine here,' says Andrea Gungadin, rector of the Hindu Girls College, a private educational institution in Curepipe, southern Mauritius. 'Why allow it to go waste when we can use it to produce electricity at a time when fossil fuel is becoming scarcer and more expensive?' The college, which has 1,400 students, is producing 14 KWh of clean electricity daily from a three kilowatt solar system mounted on its roof. This represents about a fifth of the school’s energy needs.

With the Sudanese referendum this week, Nnimmo Bassey looks back at Nigeria's civil war in 1967, what is at stake for South Sudan and the role of oil in the region.

With Egypt setting up a ‘Nile Basin Tournament’ for countries across the region, Chambi Chachage considers football’s political role and the broader diplomatic stakes surrounding the tournament.

This paper from the South African Institute of International Affairs notes that oil production in Southern Sudan has 'degraded agricultural lands and caused mass displacement and suffering of local pastoralist and agriculturalist communities'. The paper looks at the legal system around environmental issues arising from oil production in Southern Sudan after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. This agreement guarantees the right to compensation to those whose rights have been violated by the activities of the oil companies.

President Zuma’s latest plan to address stagnating land reform is a positive move, say land and agricultural experts, but clarification of the details, the input of all stakeholders, and government support for black farmers is crucial to its success. Speaking at the ANC’s 99th birthday bash in Polokwane this weekend, Zuma said land reform would be based on the de-racialisation of the rural economy to enable shared and sustained growth, as well as the democratic and equitable allocation of land across gender, race and class.

African climate researchers and applied scientists are invited to apply for fellowships in African climate science. The fellowships are offered as part of the Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP) between the Met Office Hadley Centre (MOHC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK government. The CSRP aims are to improve the understanding and prediction of African climate on monthly, seasonal and decadal timescales and to strengthen climate science capacity in Africa.

The international diamond watchdog, the Kimberley Process (KP), has reportedly denied giving Zimbabwe permission to carry on selling diamonds from the controversial Chiadzwa fields. According to the news service for the US based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network (RapNet), a KP representative has refuted the claims made by Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Gift Chimanikire. 'No decision has been made yet,' said a spokesperson for the new KP Chairman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Namibia is set to develop its rich uranium resources and intends to pursue uranium enrichment locally. It also plans to build its own nuclear electricity plant. Nuclear energy experts from Finland’s Nuclear and Radiation Authority are currently helping the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) to draft Namibia’s first ever nuclear policy, which is to be completed mid-2011, together with relevant laws. Namibia plans to generate electricity from its own nuclear reactor by 2018.

The head of Egypt's Coptic Church appealed for calm as protesters clashed with police for a third day last week after a New Year's Day blast killed 23 churchgoers. Pope Shenouda III also called on Egypt's government to address Christian concerns about discrimination. Late on Monday, protesters again clashed with riot police in Cairo, demanding protection and justice.

In the last six years, there has been a dramatic increase in foreign investment in land deals across Africa and the Malibya deal - a 50-year lease agreed by the Malian and Libyan Presidents - has become totemic of the fear that this new phenomenon of land grabbing will deprive subsistence farmers of their land and their food, reports The Guardian. Mali is one of the countries most affected by the scramble for land, and Segou, the country’s rice basket, is at the eye of the storm, with buyers from Senegal, South Africa, and Asia, as well as domestic companies snapping up leases on thousands of hectares.

There’s a nagging misconception that all significant environmental progress begins in wealthy nations, which then shoulder the noble task of aiding and arm-twisting poor nations to do their share in taking care of the planet. But the developing world doesn’t simply do less of what’s wrong, they also have taken some bold steps in embracing a greener future, writes Jay Walljasper on Just last month Kenya adopted a 'new constitution' that declares in Article 42, 'Every person has the right to a clean and healthy environment, which includes the right—a) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through legislative and other measures.'

Ghana and Qatar’s announcement that they will jointly farm 50,000 hectares of land is the latest in a sweeping, but controversial, trend rolling across Africa. Cash-rich countries are securing land in poorer states, which they hope will provide them with food security. But critics warn that in the rush to secure food for themselves, investors and African governments risk alienating large sectors of the populations, for whom land ownership is an ongoing, emotional issue.

South Africa is no stranger to hosting major United Nations (UN) events. In 2001 the World Conference Against Racism was hosted in Durban and in 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) took place in Johannesburg. In late 2011 the contentious climate change negotiations will continue at the UN 17th Conference of the Party (COP 17) in Durban where the South African government is hoping they could clinch the deal for a 'fair, balanced and ambitious outcome', on climate change. Judging from the outcome of the recently concluded COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico; obtaining a multi-lateral agreement through which those most to blame for causing climate change take responsibility for the damage they are causing to those most affected by climate change, is unlikely to happen, writes Michelle Pressend, who coordinates the Trade Strategy Group (TSG) at the Economic Justice Network and Global Network Africa at the Labour Research Services in Cape Town.

Positive spin about the global climate summit in Cancun is based on reaching international consensus and establishing instruments to manage the crisis using market-based strategies – even though these are ‘failing everywhere they have been tried’. Looking ‘soberly at what was needed to reverse current warming and what was actually delivered, negotiators in Cancun ‘failed by any reasonable measure,’ Patrick Bond writes from Mexico.

Previously reviled as ‘land grabs’, international institutions increasingly paint the global land rush as ‘large-scale land investments’, providing fertile ground for ‘win-win’ development schemes. But, caution Saturnino Borras Jr and Jennifer Franco, ‘any scheme that guarantees only winners and no losers deserves our scepticism and a closer look.’

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage. The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial 'Copenhagen accord', the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

The Omusati Region of northern Namibia is on the margins of what any farmer would consider arable land, with temperatures routinely hitting 40 degrees Celsius or more and rainfall seldom exceeding a pitiful 270 millimeters per year. To make matters worse 83 per cent of the little rain that does fall evaporates as soon as it hits the ground. In a report to the United Framework Convention on Climate Change, the government of Namibia has predicted global warming will cause a temperature rise of between two to six degrees Celsius in Namibia, while annual rainfall could diminish up to a further staggering 200mm.

More South African farmers expect to receive land offers in Mozambique as they seek to expand across Africa amid uncertainty over land reform at home, an official from a mostly white farmers group said on Monday. South Africa - Africa's biggest economy - has one of the most developed agricultural sectors on the continent and its farmers are looking to expand into other countries. Some 800 South African farmers are already farming in Mozambique.

The government of Djibouti permitted the controversial private US security firm Blackwater 'to operate an armed ship from the port of Djibouti' and to 'use lethal force against pirates'. The permission was given in February 2009, it is revealed in a cable from the US Embassy in Djibouti, published by WikiLeaks.

The world's governments agreed on Saturday to modest steps to combat climate change and to give more money to poor countries, but they put off until next year tough decisions on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The deal includes a Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year in aid to poor nations by 2020, measures to protect tropical forests and ways to share clean energy technologies.