Egypt’s April 6th Youth Movement have declared they are starting a campaign under the slogan 'The eyes of Egypt 2012', to monitor the presidential elections scheduled for May 23 and 24. It said it also adopted the slogan 'participate, elect, monitor and boycott'. The Movement, which has not decided yet which candidate to support in the elections, is also willing to launch a website for the campaign bearing the same slogan 'Eyes of Egypt'.

Zambia's never ending borrowing frenzy continues under the new government without parliamentary oversight, reports the Zambian Economist. 'First we had the announcement that Government has signed a US$50 million loan agreement with the World Bank for "livestock development and animal health project". Separately, the World Bank informed us that it had approved another US$60 million credit to Zambia as part of an effort to reinforce the existing electricity transmission network...The World Bank loan was clearly not enough because Government also is borrowing US$30 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for upgrading of the same power transmission line.'

The ANC is squaring up to the Goodman gallery and newspaper in court on Tuesday (22 May) over the exhibition and publishing of Murray’s contentious artwork The Spear. The ruling party is seeking an urgent court interdict against the gallery and the newspaper, demanding the image to be removed from the exhibition and taken off the newspaper’s website, arguing that it violates President Jacob Zuma’s right to privacy and dignity. Both the gallery and the newspaper stand by their decision to exhibit the portrait, claiming they are protected by their constitutional right to freedom of expression.

The Swaziland writer at the centre of a gay hate speech storm has been suspended by his newspaper. The Times of Swaziland acted against Qalakaliboli Dlamini when an ‘unprecedented’ number of readers complained at his article last week attacking homosexuals. Times Sunday editor Innocent Maphalala told his readers, ‘As Editor, I also take full responsibility for publication of the said article and unreservedly apologise to all our readers who found it in bad taste.’

Migration, especially when it is forced, is always stressful and very often traumatic. Reaching a place of relative safety does not mean the trauma of having survived rape, torture or the loss of loved ones is over. Studies have found that migrants are far more likely to suffer from chronic anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) than non-migrants. Yet the psychosocial needs of migrants and refugees are usually overlooked as governments and NGOs focus on meeting their more obvious need for food, shelter and documentation.

The National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) should stop harassing human rights defenders and journalists in Sudan and drop the charges against Mr. Faisal Mohammed Salih, the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project and Journalists for Human Rights said. Salih, director of Teeba Press, former chief editor of Al-adwaa newspaper and a columnist, has been arbitrarily arrested and detained on three separate occasions on 8th, 9th and 15th May 2012.

Civil society grouping Section 27 has won a legal victory in the fight for basic education. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Limpopo Department of Education have so far failed to supply textbooks to learners and schools throughout Limpopo for the academic year of 2012. On 17 May 2012, following an application brought by Section 27 in the North Gauteng High Court, Judge Jody Kollapen held that this omission by the DBE and the Department constituted a violation of the constitutional right to basic education.

Fresh clashes between the DR Congo's army and a group of mutineers erupted Sunday in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, defectors said, a day after fierce battles near a gorilla park. 'We're on the ground. We've been confronting the FARDC (the Democratic Republic of Congo's military) since this morning three kilometres (two miles) from Bunagana ... where we were yesterday,' Vianney Kazarana, a spokesman for the mutineers' March 23 Movement, told AFP by telephone.

This article from looks at the changing meaning of privacy in the online world. 'None of what you transmit - however personal - through a digital wireline or wireless network is “private.” Rather, through the spectacle of post-modern capitalism, the private has become public, the property of the corporation that owns your keystrokes. The digital revolution has morphed the personal into an electronic commodity; the electronic commodity is the exchange currency of an encroaching, 21st-century digital feudalism.'

Experts predict that in the next decade there will be 4 million chronically malnourished children in Mozambique, which despite recent, rapid economic growth and the discovery of large natural gas deposits remains one of the world's poorest countries.

A lecture by an Israeli diplomat at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) was cancelled on Monday, less than 24-hours before he was to speak. The university said: 'The university is committed to a non-racial and democratic society where debate, dialogue and divergent viewpoints are encouraged.'

The attack on Mali's president Diancounda Traore by angry protesters puts the post-coup transition in the West African country in danger, the UN says. The diplomatic efforts by the west African bloc Ecowas to convince the leaders of the March coup to accept Traore’s 12-month transition have been 'put seriously in danger by these latest developments [and] maybe other options will now have to be considered,' France’s UN ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters in Abidjan.

A government minister has warned workers in the kingdom that they cannot invite trade unionists from overseas to Swaziland without permission. Lufto Dlamini, Minister of Labour and Social Security, said Swazi unions could not have any meetings with organisations which had not informed government of their mission. He was reacting to a meeting that took place 21 May between Swazi unionists and a delegation of workers from the UK and the Netherlands.

Madagascar has a low level of HIV prevalence, and managing its AIDS programme should present no major difficulties. But the apparent advantage of a low infection rate, combined with the ongoing political crisis, has brought its own challenges. Madagascar, and the neighbouring islands states of Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles, are anomalies in the context of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Prevalence is very low - around 0.37 per cent, or 24,000 confirmed cases - and restricted to a few sections of the population. Recent research has revealed that the groups most infected are men having sex with men (14 per cent), intravenous drug users (7 per cent) and prison populations. HIV prevalence among female commercial sex workers is relatively low.

A farmer who says that Heritage Oil dumped dozens of truckloads of waste in a pit dug on his land, a few kilometres north of Murchison Falls National Park, is still waiting for the National Environmental Monitoring Agency (NEMA) to give him the results of tests they conducted in 2009, and for the waste to be removed for permanent disposal elsewhere. Douglas Oluoch, 43, relates that he first came into contact with Heritage in his capacity as a local councillor (LC II) in Purongo sub-county of what is now Nwoya District. In 2008, he says, a Heritage official, who he can identify only as 'Albert', offered to pay him for accepting waste from exploration wells dug within the National Park.

Globally activists are celebrating the decision by the Quakers to divest nearly $1 million of shares from Caterpillar because they sell bulldozers and other equipment to destroy Palestinian lives, homes, trees and land. This courage decision is the beginning of serious disinvestment from Caterpillar. The image below demonstrates how Israel uses Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy Palestinian homes. Similarly, from Australia and the US to Europe, activists globally are celebrating the South African government’s first step in the direction of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign demands, reports the blog,

The International Trade Union Confederation is demanding that the Algerian authorities stop repression of the country’s emerging independent trade union movement. A wave of harassment of members of the National Independent Union of Public Administration Personnel (SNAPAP) has led to seven members of the union’s board, including four women, starting a hunger strike on 6 May. One of them, Fayza Abrakan, has been admitted to hospital in a serious condition.

The daughter of the late ANC veteran Oliver Tambo showed little sympathy for President Jacob Zuma's complaint about a portrait of himself exposing his genitals, The Star reported on Monday. Tselane Tambo posted the following message on a social networking site: 'So the Pres JZ has had his portrait painted and he doesn't like it...He should inspire the reverence he craves...' The 1.85m-high painting titled The Spear is part of Brett Murray's Hail to the Thief II exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The portrait has sparked debate about freedom of expression and the right to dignity and privacy.

The Mozambique government estimates that 80 per cent of its citizens use charcoal to cook. Almost everyone buys it on the informal market (here's an in-depth look at how that works), where it's the cheapest and most readily available cooking fuel. And it's that demand for charcoal that's feeding the plague of deforestation in Mozambique, where thick forests are razed at an increasingly alarming rate.

Vigilantism has resulted in another necklacing in Khayelitsha. Following a spate of robberies in Khayelitsha B Section, a mob of residents stoned and necklaced suspect Andile Mtsholo, 32, after he was accused of stealing cell phones. A bag full of cell phones was found next to his body. This brings to five the number of people killed by necklacing in Khayelitsha over the past few months.