This Corner House briefing argues that the distinction between industrial tree plantations and biodiverse landscapes organized in conjunction with commons regimes is not just a distinction between various vegetable assemblages, but also a social/technical/political distinction. The slave-worked plantations of the past and the industrial plantations of today do not merely prop up colonialism; they are constituted by colonialism. Today's industrial plantations are also intertwined with overaccumulation, overproduction, financialization, and many other so-called 'social' things. Talking about 'sustainable' industrial eucalyptus or oil palm plantations is like talking about 'sustainable colonialism' or 'sustainable overaccumulation'.

Malawi journalist Justice Mponda has been charged in court for publishing false reports. Mponda was arrested Monday morning, for among others, reporting that Tanzanian High Commissioner to Malawi Patrick Tsere had been declared persona non grata and ordered to leave Malawi within 48 hours.

Four farmers whose farmlands were washed away by the flood that has ravaged Nigeria's central Kogi state, among other states, have committed suicide, the local media reported Monday. The reports quoted President Goodluck Jonathan as making the revelation during a tour of the camps for those displaced by the flood in his home state of Bayelsa.

A documentary on Zambian copper mining and its negative impact on society has emerged on YouTube and has so far attracted over 6,000 hits. The clip 'Zambia: Good Copper, Bad Copper' was first reported in the blogosphere by the Zambian Economist. Global Voices reports on the reactions.

The town of An Nahud in southwestern Kordofan yesterday mass demonstrations organized by students of the University of Western Kordofan because of power outages in the city, the deterioration of basic services and the high cost of living. Multiple sources in the area reported that the demonstrations in An Nahud kicked off Monday morning with crowds of students denouncing the regime. The demonstration came after power outages in the town for nine days in a row everywhere except at the homes of the commissioner, emir and head of the security service.

After 20 long years of negotiations on a proposed expansion of the Security Council, African countries continue to be left out in the cold – even as African leaders complain that the international community has failed to respond to their demands for two permanent seats in the most powerful body at the United Nations.

World grain reserves are so dangerously low that severe weather in the US or other food-exporting countries could trigger a hunger crisis next year. Failing harvests in the US, Ukraine and other countries this year have eroded reserves to their lowest level since 1974. The US, which has experienced record heatwaves and droughts in 2012, now holds in reserve a historically low 6.5% of the maize that it expects to consume in the next year, says the United Nations.

Hundreds of Kenyan girls, including some as young as three years old, filed a petition in the High Court to try to force the police to investigate and prosecute rape cases they say have been ignored. The group of more than 240 girls accuse police of demanding bribes to investigate rape, refusing to record rapes unless the victims produced witnesses, and claiming victims had consented.

Tanzania will have no sympathy for illegal immigrants from the Horn of Africa, even if caught using the country only as a transit route, a minister said. The minister for East African Cooperation, Mr Samuel Sitta, said during a visit to the Holili border post in the north that Tanzania was bound by international obligations not to offer passage for illegal migrants. He said there was a danger of the country being caught up in conflicts with other states if it allowed illegal immigrants to pass through its territory on the so-called humanitarian grounds.

Questions are being raised about how Tanzania’s plentiful mining sector will be affected by a potential gold rush from Canadian extractive companies, after the two countries concluded a foreign investment agreement. Jamie Kneen, a spokesperson for Mining Watch Canada who deals with Canadian companies operating in Africa, said the agreement is mostly just 'a political gesture'. Some of the explorations are happening in fragile ecosystems, including a wetland area and a game reserve, he argued, and local community groups are already beginning to voice concerns.

Somali refugees across the world have passed the one million person mark, said the United Nations refugee agency, highlighting the growing need for an end to conflict in the Horn of Africa. The vast majority of those refugees are living in regional neighbours, such as Kenya, Yemen, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Tanzania and Uganda, the UNHCR said.

Some 154 million people were reportedly driven further into poverty in Southern countries as a result of speculation-induced food price hikes in 2007-08. What are the best strategies for bringing about the structural change needed that progressive activists can lend their support to? asks this Corner House report. The workshop presentation, while endorsing regulatory measures including banning certain investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and vetting of derivative-based financial instruments, cautions against becoming focussed on regulation alone as an answer. Also crucial is the promotion of non-derivative, socially-based mechanisms to protect farmers and consumers from volatile food prices, as well as price interventions that do not pit Northern farmers against their Southern counterparts.

Offering free education, making it compulsory and supporting it politically has been the winning strategy behind Burundi's successful bid to ensure that virtually all children get a primary school education. In this interview from the Africa Report website, UNICEF's representative in Burundi, Johannes Wedenig, expatiates on government's positive role in this development. There have been some major drawbacks to such an avalanche of new students, Wedenig admits. Not enough of qualified teachers, classrooms, desks and books has created real bottlenecks. So one of the 'side effects' to the surge in school attendance, notes Wedenig, has been overcrowding and an increase in the pupil-to-teacher ratio.

Francophone Africa is not as involved in the fight against AIDS as the rest of the continent, according to a report presented in Kinshasa, on the sidelines of the 14th Summit of the International Organization of la Francophonie (OIF) holding in the Congolese capital. The report notes that 43 per cent of people with AIDS have access to treatment in francophone countries, against 59 per cent in the English-speaking countries. Nearly 50,000 children are born each year with HIV in francophone Africa, the report said, noting that 60 percent of them are in DR Congo alone.

Earlier this year it was reported that the Zambian government had released K5 billion or US$1 million to send police and security staff abroad to learn to hack websites. In April, Zambian Watchdog listed several measures taken by the government to crackdown on Internet users in Zambia. Global Voices Online reports on the story.

Sudanese security forces burned and looted a village in the Nuba mountains of South Kordofan state in May and filmed the attack, a monitoring group said on Tuesday, providing satellite images, cell phone video and witness accounts to back its claims. The Satellite Sentinel Project, whose founders include Hollywood actor George Clooney and the Enough Project, said a joint unit of Sudanese police known as Abu Tira, the Sudan Armed Forces and the Popular Defense Forces militia attacked Gardud al Badry on May 18 and then bombarded it with artillery on July 29.

When the various media watchdogs sit down to collate their annual lists of the travails that African journalists on the continent continue to confront, there will be a feeling that this year has been a particularly tough one. Since the year began a total of 15 journalists have been killed in Somalia, mainly in attacks attributed to the Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab. Others have got off more lightly. In August, Malian radio reporter Malik Maiga Aliou was kidnapped during a live broadcast and beaten and left for dead at a cemetery in the rebel-head northern city of Gao.

Adolescent girls are not getting enough legal support to stop them falling prey to rights abuses, particularly sexual violence, according to legal advocacy group Equality Now. 'Legal systems around the world just don’t work for girls,' Yasmeen Hassan, global director of the New York-based organisation, told TrustLaw in an interview. Key legal obstacles include: girls’ ignorance of their rights or how to exercise them; the fear of stigma, not being believed or being blamed for abuse; further victimisation of girls by the justice system; and lack of tailored support services, says 'Learning from Cases of Girls’ Rights', a recent report from the Adolescent Girls’ Legal Defense Fund (AGLDF).

A landmark ruling on 12 October by Gaborone’s High Court found that gender discrimination based on Botswana’s customary law is unconstitutional. The court ruled on a case brought by three sisters, all over 65 years old, challenging a Ngwaketse customary law that holds the right of inheritance to the family home belongs to the youngest son. 'Critically, the judge made it clear that discrimination cannot be justified on cultural grounds before rejecting out of hand the argument put forward by the Attorney General that Botswana society was not ready for [gender] equality,' Priti Patel, deputy director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), said in a statement. SALC supported the sisters’ case.

Tunisia's ruling coalition, led by the Islamist Ennahdha movement, has said it had agreed to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on June 23 with the president being chosen directly by voters. The coalition's agreement early on Sunday on a date for elections and the establishment of an amended parliamentary system come after widespread criticism from the opposition that Ennahdha wants to control the government and avoid elections.