The water hyacinth, a free-floating perennial aquatic plant native to tropical South America, is suffocating Lake Victoria, the second-largest fresh-water lake in the world. The water hyacinth moves seasonally with the waves from bay to bay blocking water-ways and affecting aquatic life as it sucks oxygen from the water.

Entering Nairobi's fetid slums the senses are first assaulted by a gagging stench and the sight of rubbish everywhere, some even hanging from trees or smouldering in acrid fires. The city government does not recognise the "informal settlements" where more than 60% of the population live, so no services are provided and no garbage collected. The result is frighteningly insanitary conditions.

Car washer Githogori Maina remembers swimming in the "Indian Ocean" – the nickname of a once flowing part of the Nanyuki River in Kenya’s Laikipia district that now runs almost dry. "Back then, you could see the water. We also used to fish here," he said, pointing to a shallow part of the river. "Now you have to walk several kilometres to catch a single fish." The Nanyuki River has become shallow and full of stones. Sometimes, there is no flow downstream, and the remaining water is stagnant and dirty.

Fifty years after the Tonga people were forcibly removed from the Zambezi Valley to make way for the Kariba Dam between southern Zambia and northwestern Zimbabwe, the community is still trying to find its feet. Over the past decade a number of development programmes have been initiated to improve the Tonga people's lives, after their eviction by the former governments of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to make way for the hydroelectric power project that created Lake Kariba.

Activists have launched a bid to shame some of the world's largest mutual fund companies into dumping Chinese oil majors they accuse of complicity in what the U.S. government calls genocide in western Sudan's Darfur region. "The American people do not want to invest in genocide," Zahara Heckscher, divestment campaign manager at the Save Darfur Coalition, said Wednesday as coalition members said they would target five investment firms with a mix of negative advertising, protest, and investor pressure.

Twenty-one Botswana Bushmen arrested in June and July for hunting to feed their families are celebrating after all charges against them were dropped. They appeared yesterday before a magistrate in Gantsi. After an attorney had presented arguments on their behalf, the police withdrew all charges. However, six Bushmen arrested last week, also for hunting, are still waiting for their case to be heard.

Planting trees in Mount Elgon National Park in eastern Uganda seemed like a project that would benefit everyone. The Face Foundation, a nonprofit group established by Dutch power companies, would receive carbon credits for reforesting the park's perimeter. It would then sell the credits to airline passengers wanting to offset their emissions, reinvesting the revenues in further tree planting. The air would be cleaner, travelers would feel less guilty and Ugandans would get a larger park.

The seizure of prime land in Kenya by white settlers taken during the colonial era and the land grabbing which occurred post independence by powerful black elites are responsible for abject poverty amongst indigenous and nomadic communities in Kenya today. The story of the poverty caused by land dispossession, abuse of local workers by ranch owners, harassment, intimidation and other human rights violations are told in a new documentary called 'Stolen Heritage: Land, Poverty and the Legacy of British Colonial Rule in Kenya', released by Imani Development Ltd.

More than 100 people have died in flooding that has also spread disease and destroyed agricultural crops, officials have said. The release of the toll comes a day after the United Nations appealed for $20m to provide clean water, food and shelter to more than three million people affected by flooding from the River Nile and its tributaries.

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls comprising about 55 islands, with a total land area of 60 km2. Between 1967 and 1971, an estimated 2,000 inhabitants of Chagos were evicted from their island home of Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, to make way for a US military base. The majority were forced to exile in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius and some in Seychelles.

Bujagali Falls, roaring and frothing just downstream from where Lake Victoria flows into the Nile River, has long been treasured as a resting place of ancestral spirits, a thrilling rapids for whitewater rafters and a spectacular feature of the natural landscape. It will be a memory. Construction has begun on a $772 million hydroelectric dam that will turn the falls into a reservoir. The project, financed by the World Bank, is intended to reduce the acute power shortages that have badly hampered this East African country's development.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) filed a request for inspection of the World Bank's Kwabenya landfill project in Accra, the capital of Ghana. They argued that the project would displace a significant portion of the Agyemankata community and cause health problems for residents, who were not adequately consulted.

Namibia is to set up two special offices to implement obligations related to climate change control under the Kyoto Protocol. Namibia acceded to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in July 2003. To implement the Protocol, Namibia needs to establish a Designated National Authority (DNA) and a Clean Development Mechanism Office (CDM). At its latest meeting, Cabinet decided to create these two offices.

The UN refugee agency is working with internally displaced Sudanese to rehabilitate the environmental degradation that has been both a cause and a consequence of the Darfur conflict. Earlier this year, UNHCR through its implementing partner INTERSOS started a community-based environmental rehabilitation project in three localities in West Darfur: Forobaranga, a small town bordering Chad, in Garsila and in Um Kher village

Sierra Leone holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday, the first since U.N. peacekeepers left two years ago and a watershed in its recovery from an 11-year civil war fuelled by "blood diamonds". President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a war-time leader re-elected on a wave of euphoria after a 2002 peace deal, is stepping down under the constitution amid dismay at his Sierra Leone People's Party's (SLPP) failure to provide water, power or decent roads in one of the world's poorest countries.

Summonses have been served on Anglo Platinum, Potgietersrust Platinum and nine other defendants, including the ministers of agriculture and of minerals and energy, to prevent the relocation of Limpopo’s Mohlohlo community and to set aside certain lease agreements.The government and Anglo Platinum have the next few weeks to decide if they want to defend the action .

"Sick and tired" residents of Clairwood, Merebank and Merewent have dug in their heels against Transnet proposals for the extension of Durban Harbour and vowed to petition the Constitutional Court. Transnet representatives and project consultants met with the residents this week to discuss the proposals and to view a presentation outlining plans to widen the harbour entrance and enlarge the Bayhead area to accommodate higher volumes of traffic passing through the port.

Within the context of developing a Land Policy framework in Africa, the consortium of the African Union Commission (AUC), Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and African Development Bank (ADB), in collaboration with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), is planning to organise a regional consultative workshop on land policy in the Southern Africa region. Scheduled to take place from August 29th to 31st, 2007, the regional consultative workshop would be hosted by the Government of Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia.

African environmental experts meet in South Africa in August to strategise on a continental position to incorporate climate change adaptation programmes in national development policies.

Sadly, many people in southern Africa are dependent on the benevolence of landowners or the protection of the government for their housing needs, thanks to the vestiges of colonialism, which placed land resources in few hands. Recognising these inequities requires that African courts apply the law in such a way that addresses housing needs while enforcing traditional property law.