Sudanese activists said the security forces have dealt with protesters over the last three days with unprecedented violence, saying that Sunday was the bloodiest day in Sudanese street history. Sudan’s capital Khartoum has seen mass protests, which started on Friday, when hundreds of students took to the streets in protest of high costs of living and plans to cancel fuel subsidies.

Everybody’s trying to rebrand Africa, and it isn’t going so well, reports this piece on the blog Africa is a Country. 'Vogue Italia’s latest issue - boosted by great billowing gusts of editorial hot air from both the New York Times and the Guardian - is called 'Rebranding Africa', and as you’d expect the whole thing is an embarrassing and insulting shambles...First: you’re re-branding the continent of Africa - as one does - so who do you pick as your cover star? Well, it was the obvious choice. What self-inflating fashion magazine wouldn’t lead their Africa edition with a picture of a South Korean diplomat sitting behind a desk in Manhattan?'

Senegalese security agents have arrested over a hundred illegal immigrants in the capital Dakar and its suburbs in a major operation at the weekend. The round up was sparked by the killing of a Nigerian national allegedly by three Senegalese over fake currency notes.

As leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) countries head into a second day of talks at the grouping's seventh summit this week in Los Cabos, Mexico, calls are strengthening for a new debate around the group's lack of accountability. 'The G20 has liberally imposed itself over other institutions to mandate those other institutions to take on its agenda,' Gawain Kripke, a researcher with Oxfam America, said in Washington. 'That's potentially a problem, when you have this fundamentally unauthorised organisation setting the agenda and work plans for other institutions that do at least have bylaws and so forth.'

“Finally, if you do not abide, then know your legal permission to operate will be terminated.”

At least 80 people have been killed since Monday 18 June in clashes in northern Nigeria triggered by Islamists waging an insurgency against the government, figures from police and the Red Cross showed on Wednesday. The violence - some of which was sparked by church bombings over the last three Sundays - has heightened sectarian tensions in Africa's most populous country, which is evenly split between Christians and Muslims.

Seven members of the pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were arrested and then briefly detained on Tuesday, after a ‘die-in’ protest in Bulawayo. The ‘die-in’, which saw three different groups of WOZA members lying down at main traffic intersections in the city, form part of a WOZA led campaign to pressure for a devolved system of government to be included in the draft constitution.

Thousands of Ivorians are are fleeing into neighbouring Liberia following claims of a failed coup attempt announced by the Ivorian authorities. The Ivorian government said it had foiled a plot to overthrow President Alassane Ouattara by a group of exiled army officers loyal to his ousted predecessor Laurent Gbagbo. In an interview on public television station RTI, Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko accused pro-Gbagbo officers and former members of his administration of plotting to install a transitional military council.

The Ethiopian government is forcibly displacing tens of thousands from their land to make way for state-run sugar plantations, a campaign group has said. The displacements are happening in the country's Omo Valley, according to a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). The valley, a World Heritage site, is also the site of a controversial dam.

Anger and rejection in Egypt followed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) new constitutional declaration. The declaration grants back power to head of SCAF Hussein Tantawi, who is also the Minister of Defense. Egyptian activists are calling the moves a 'military coup' and the deceleration 'another step in cementing a lingering presence [of the military] and a hold over public life by the military'.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi has claimed victory in the country’s first post-uprising presidential election. Morsi’s victory will see Egypt have its first civilian president in more than 60 years, since a 1952 military coup ousted the King. Official results are to be announced later this week.

Abubakar Mohamed Mahamud has worked with Somali refugees in northeastern Kenya since the war in Somalia began more than 20 years ago. Originally a nurse specializing in nutrition, he is now Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s deputy field coordinator. 'MSF has continued to work in the camps with Kenyan and refugee staff, providing both primary and secondary health care to the new refugees. However, should there be an emergency situation like the 2011 malnutrition crisis, it will be very difficult to cope. The international community needs to find a solution for this desperate situation. They need to understand the complexity of the situation and the desperation in which people are living.'

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Transparency International, the anti-corruption organisation, calls for the government of Gabon to uphold civil society’s right to peaceful activism following the detention last week of more than 40 people, including Grégory Ngbwa Mintsa, the 2010 recipient of the Transparency International Integrity Award. The civil society activists, who were taken into custody on 8 June and later released, were planning an alternative forum to a government-sponsored New York Forum Africa, a regional event to promote Gabon. The activists wanted to highlight the challenges ordinary citizens face in Gabon. Freedom of expression and the space for a vibrant civil society are essential in any country to ensure a government is accountable to its people.

An al-Shabab suicide bomber has rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into the gate of a Somali government base in Afgoye, west of Mogadishu, the capital, causing casualties. Al-Shabab said its suicide bomber had 'killed dozens' in Saturday's attack, while the police said the blast had only wounded three soldiers. The figures could not be independently verified. Many parties in the Somalia conflict tend to exaggerate enemy losses and minimise their own.

The European Parliament sent a bold message to the world last week with its comprehensive and ambitious resolution to put an end to the illicit global arms trade. But analysts regret the new resolution ignores several key factors, such as the impact of the arms trade on the socio-economic development of recipient countries, and the involvement of civil society in future negotiations. Next month member states will gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York to negotiate the first binding Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a potentially ground-breaking humanitarian treaty regulating international trade in conventional weapons. Currently, there is no universal set of rules controlling the global arms trade.

Amid continuing instability and bursts of fighting in eastern Congo, civilians keep crossing into Rwanda - where the number of arrivals since late April has passed 10,000 - and south-west Uganda. The 10,000 figure was reached last weekend and the number of Congolese refugees registered at the crowded Nkamira Transit Camp had risen to 11,339. In recent days a daily average of about 230 arrivals have been recorded at Nkamira, which lies some 20 kilometres from the Goma-Gisenyi crossing with Democratic Republic of the Congo's North Kivu province.

There was a dramatic turn this week in the ongoing row between Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who revealed that the Public Service Commission had illegally recruited 10,000 new staff members and among them were 4,600 soldiers. The revelation was surprising because the defence ministry had recently demanded $2.5 million from the treasury, insisting the funds were needed to feed soldiers who are going hungry in the barracks and to pay for an additional 5,000 new recruits. Mnangagwa went as far as threatening violence, vowing to send army generals to Biti’s offices.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing for the year 2012. The grants serve as part of the Council’s contribution to the development of the social sciences in Africa, and the continuous renewal and strengthening of research capacities in African universities, through the funding of primary research conducted by postgraduate students and professionals.

Thirty per cent of threatened species are at risk because of consumption in developed world according to research made by University of Sydney. The study mapped the world economy to trace the global trade of goods implicated in biodiversity loss such as coffee, cocoa, and lumber. Years of data collection and thousands of hours on a supercomputer to process, lead to these global supply chains in amazing detail for the first time. The study evaluated over five billion supply chains connecting consumers to over 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries. This was cross-referenced with a global register of 25,000 endangered and vulnerable species.