The detained Campaign Manager of Gambia's main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), Femi Peters, appeared before Banjul Magistrates' Court charged with "organising an unlawful assembly". According to sources, Mr. Peters refused to enter into a plea when the charges were read out to him in court on Monday in the absence of a lawyer.

The Constitutional Court in Tunisia has validated the results of Sunday's presidential election, won by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali with more than 86.62% of the votes, official sources said. The 73-year-old Ben Ali, who was the candidate of the ruling party in power for 22 years, beat three opposition candidates to win his fifth, consecutive five-year term, which should be his last, since the constitution prescribes 75 years as the maximum age for presidential candidates.

Diplomats from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are mediating in the talks, the latest in a series the regional group has brokered to find a durable solution to Zimbabwe's long-running political instability. Tsvangirai, accusing Mugabe of violating a power-sharing agreement they signed last year, partially pulled out from government some two weeks ago, sparking the latest political crisis.

Finding 'an African solution to an African problem', the African Union (AU) has endorsed the establishment of a hybrid court to try all crimes committed in the Darfur crisis. The decision was reached by the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC), which met at the level of heads of state and government in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja Thursday to consider the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki Panel on the Darfur crisis.

The Secretary-General has issued a widely awaited Guidance Note on Democracy to all parts of the United Nations Secretariat, setting out the UN framework and committing the Organization to action in support of democracy. The Note, which followed the Secretary-General’s call in 2007 for an organization-wide strategy for democracy support, was the product of many months’ collaboration by several entities of the UN, including UNDEF

Raúl Chambote

Joseph Hanlon

With a government that makes it illegal to leave the country and military service compulsory for all men and women aged 18 to 40 in the name of a festering border conflict with the more powerful Ethiopia, it’s no wonder Eritreans undertake perilous journeys in search of a better life. But getting out of Eritrea itself is no guarantee of change for the better, thanks to flawed international responses that fail to see the humans behind ‘the refugee problem’, Yohannes Woldemariam writes in Pambazuka News.

Corruption in South Africa is becoming so widespread now, that unless it is decisively tackled in this presidential term, it will become entrenched as a ‘normal’ aspect of life in our country, William Gumede writes in Pambazuka News. And once it becomes part of the ‘culture’ of South African society, it will be impossible to uproot.

Capitalism is in crisis, Samir Amin writes in Pambazuka News, creating new opportunities to challenge its imperialist dimensions. While the first wave of struggles for the emancipation of workers and people simply wore itself out, Amin asks whether this time round bridges can be built that ‘associate the anti-imperialist and popular struggles in the South with the progress of a socialist conscience in the North’, converging struggles from the North and South in ways that previous movements of the 1950s failed to.

Ethiopia’s aspirations for a fair and free election in 2010 depend on whether the country’s government agrees to and abides by an election code based on respect for the rule of law and human rights, Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in Pambazuka News. An election code of conduct forged through ‘a consensus of all the political parties and administered by an independent and impartial electoral commission could go a long way to ensure a peaceful, fair and free election in 2010,’ writes Mariam, or it could simply ‘end up being the old zero-sum game the regime has played for the past two decades’ in a different guise.

This week, Dibussi Tande reviews blogs on , a relatively new blogging and communication platform specifically designed for the sub-Saharan blogger and writer. According to its founders, Maneno 'allows those with limited or narrow-bandwidth internet to use a system that is lightweight and straightforward in functionality'.

Following the release of the latest IMF 'regional economic outlook' report for sub-Saharan Africa, Stephen Marks argues that predictions around Africa's ability to bounce back from the global economic crisis rest on a number of 'good-news' assumptions.

She is her, like-in-her
poetic rituals
mystical diamond
that speaks
multi-fold'd miracles
on earth,
she
wearing moonstone for slippers
gleams
like meteoric splendor,
affectionate for stars
blossoms early
in seasons of
darkness,

Enough-in-herself
graced with all inside
she
always river-like,
harbors black water
emerging from
hollow mountains
varied terrains
swelling to gush
divine truth
into seas
infinitely vast
in breadth and depth,

She makes, petals of jasmine
fall open
she-as-in-her
roses that leave shadows on ground
bless gardens scented
Afrika, born of night musk
our garden queen
paradise to us
thousands over,
she
open to us, as-in-blossomed flower
silently residing in us,
as-in the secret word
of Divine's love,

She,
firstborn as-in-known-in legends
royally sits
above honored
Kings and Queens,
throne
bent across high heavens
she, a sight of elegance unseen,
birth-er
of many-colored rainbow
gifted butterflies
float on diverse seas,
she
ancestor of seasons
goddess of wealth
brings all around
belonging to all, but yours only.

Gifted bee of the heart
that resides deep
inside
she-is-her
who makes me
feel safe
to be a rose,
she-is-her
who lies abed with me
enraptured in her embrace
she
helps me rise to live
destiny's fiery life-giver
heartbeat of bodily soul to me,

Aye Afrika, yene fikeregna.

(to be continued)

Amadou Diouf et Ambroise Gomis

Samir Amin

Renaud Vivien, Damien Millet, Eric Toussaint

On 22 October 2009, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) expressed its growing concern over the organized campaign against journalists and activists in Tunisia.

Algeria is acting to reduce the high unemployment rate that afflicts young people, with steps that include new social benefits and government funding for public sector job creation. One key step involves a monthly government payment of 6,000 dinars to unemployed people, especially youth, as part of wider efforts to tackle an unemployment rate officially estimated at 11%.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has urged Robert Mugabe to ‘relinquish power’ saying the ZANU PF leader alone was ‘responsible for the political stalemate’ in Zimbabwe. Speaking in France during a joint press conference with the French Foreign Affairs Minister, Odinga did not mince his words, bluntly saying; ‘In Zimbabwe Mr. Mugabe is not part of the solution to the political problem; he himself, is the problem.’

Boosting energy efficiency in South African industry in the face of economy-threatening energy shortages and promoting environmentally-friendly production in Tunisia are the focus of two new United Nations projects. The Swiss Government will help fund the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) projects under the accord signed in Bern, the Swiss capital.

A new United Nations report calls for the lifting of restrictions and costly fees imposed on the $40 billion that migrant workers send home to Africa each year, the world body’s agency tasked with eradicating rural poverty has said. “Supporting this people-to-people money flow to rural areas of Africa is especially vital now because of the recession,” said International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Assistant President, Kevin Cleaver.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has pledged full United Nations support to help Africa address the needs of some 14 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) driven from their homes by fighting and prevent the conflicts that caused their plight.