The Tanzania government has failed to comply with requirements that would have made her a compliant member of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, EITI. For a country to qualify for EITI compliant membership, it must exercise transparency and accountability in revenues that accrue from its resources such as oil, gas and minerals.

The ReVoDa mobile application seeks to potentially turn the 87,297,789 Nigerians with mobile phones, 43,982,200 with Internet access and 2,985,680 on Facebook into informal election observers. ReVoDa allows voters to report as independent citizen observers from their respective polling units across Nigeria. Click on the link provided to find out more.

Zambia's opposition alliance split Friday (18 March) after the minority United Party for National Development (UPND) pulled out due to leadership squabbles with country's main opposition Patriotic Front. The two parties have feuded over whether PF leader Michael Sata or UPND chief Hakainde Hichilema should challenge President Rupiah Banda in elections due later this year.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Saturday (19 MArch) vowed to intensify its role in labour protests in Swaziland calling for an end to the reign of King Mswati III. Cosatu also commended the Swazi people who held protest marches on Friday. Public service workers marched through the streets of the capital, Mbabane, protesting plans by the country's government to cut salaries and jobs in an attempt to get its finances in order.

Amy Niang

Claude Ribbe

Michel Hunault

Jean-Marc Ayrault

Jean-Paul Lecoq

Jacques Remiller

Axel Poniatowski

President Kibaki told the United States Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Fraser at the height of post election violence that he won the disputed 2007 elections squarely. Kibaki maintained he had won the December 2007 elections fairly and since the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya had declared him winner of the presidential elections, only the courts could make him relinquish power in case they ruled otherwise. According to a diplomatic cable dated 29 January 2008 and now released by Wikileaks, Kibaki said this during two meetings he held with former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Jendayi Frazer and US ambassador to Michael Ranneberger.

Governments in Africa have a prime objective - to reduce poverty. This costs money. Raising tax revenues is a necessary element for governments to spend on providing more of these essential services and, in turn, reduce poverty. But while African countries have made important strides in boosting revenue collection in recent years they continue to lag behind most other regions.

Africa has sustained a relatively high growth rate since the turn of the century, averaging more than five per cent per year. This performance improvement, widely shared across countries, raised hopes of a possible turnaround, compared to the stagnation of the previous two decades. Yet this growth did not result in significant creation of employment or wealth or improved welfare for ordinary Africans, says this UNECA issues paper. One of the key explanations for this non-inclusive growth pattern is Africa’s heavy dependence on primary commodity production and exports and limited economic transformation.

The African Development Bank is reviewing its funding to North African countries to focus on projects that boost jobs and reduce poverty after popular revolts in Egypt and Tunisia forced the collapse of governments. 'Like all development partners in Tunisia, we were caught by surprise,' Donald Kaberuka, president of the bank, said. 'We are having now to recalibrate our policies for North Africa, to try and address the issues of poverty and social exclusion.'

Police fired gunshots and tear gas on 21 March to disperse a tense crowd that gathered near the site of a leading opposition candidate’s election rally in the volatile Nigerian city of Jos. A number of what appeared to be wounded people were also being taken in the direction of a hospital by police in the city in central Nigeria.

The African Union's panel on Libya Sunday called for an 'immediate stop' to all attacks after the United States, France and Britain launched military action against Muammar Gaddafi's forces. The situation in Libya 'demands urgent action so that an African solution can be found to the very serious crisis which this sister nation is going through', said Mauritanian President Ould Abdel Aziz, who is one of the AU panel members.

Reducing farmers' dependence on oil will be key to feeding the world's rapidly expanding population in the face of climate change and rising fuel prices, the United Nations' special rapporteur has said. In an interview to coincide with the release of his report on feeding the world in the 21st century, Olivier De Schutter said promoting natural production techniques is the only sustainable way to guard against future crises and stop food prices increasing in-line with oil.

‘We want our Country, Egypt, to be the best country it can be. One where we all can live and co-exist; one where the state is healthy and functions and all are represented and have rights. That’s what we always wanted and called for,’ writes Sandmonkey in a letter to Egyptians fearful about the impacts of continued protests. ‘If you don’t like something, change it. That was the lesson of the Jan25 revolution after all, you know?’

In the wake of President Mwai Kibaki’s sustained, gross abuses of power while in office, Yash Pal Ghai calls for the Kenyan premier to be impeached.

CISLAC of Lagos ‘note with great concern the tendency of some political parties and politicians to flagrantly disregard the provisions of the Electoral Act in the run-off to the April 2011 elections’ in Nigeria.

In this week’s round-up of social media activity around Africa, Sokari Ekine highlights reasons to oppose military intervention in Libya, the politics of a ‘no-fly zone’ and reports of torture of Egyptian activists at the hands of a military previously heralded as a champion of the people’s cause. She also focuses on the Cameroonian government’s Twitter crackdown, planned protests against Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and Côte d’Ivoire’s ongoing post-election crisis.

Following protests by thousands of Wisconsin workers and their supporters in response to new legislation that bans collective bargaining by public sector workers, Horace Campbell places the struggles in the state in the wider social and political struggles in the US. As in Tunisia and Egypt, workers faced austerity measures, decline in income, dispossession, and states that were more accountable to the corporates than citizenry, Campbell notes.

As donors retreat from funding HIV prevention and treatment, the vulnerability of national programmes reliant on external funding has become apparent. Without long-term sustainability, the lives of millions could be at risk. In the run-up to this year’s UN High-Level meeting on HIV/AIDS, activists from East and Southern Africa are calling on governments to take increased ownership of these programmes to ensure treatment continues after donor funds have gone.

According to Patrick Rakotomalala, historians and political analysts will probably look at Madagascar’s two-year crisis from the standpoint of internal factors: a cyclical crisis characterised by power struggles between various political and economic interest groups obsessed with the conquest of power and its privileges. On top of this, there is the incapacity of successive governments to define and build a model of sustainable development that would free people from poverty and chronic under-development.

Patrick Rakotomalala

Patrick Rakotomalala