The top United Nations envoy to the Côte d’Ivoire today called on the West African nation to build on momentum towards holding its much-delayed presidential elections, slated for the end of next month.

The Poverty Related Diseases College coordinated by the University of Yaounde I is pleased to announce its first call for the International advanced Training Programme in Biomedicine and Development. The programme bridges the gap between the biological sciences, health and development in Africa by training scientists to perform research on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and applying it to sustainable development. The deadline for applications is November 15th, 2009.

Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party keeps a tight grip on power by ensuring that its political opponents stay weak but recently opposition forces have shown fresh signs of life.

The rift between Zimbabwe’s coalition parties has spilled into the country’s polarised parliament after legislators from President Robert Mugabe’s party walked out protesting against critics of the veteran leader. Zimbabwe was plunged into a fresh crisis last week after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change started boycotting cabinet and council of ministers meetings.

Tumaini Andrew writes to Pambazuka News on the plight of Burundian refugees in Tanzania.

Uganda has lots of pending legislations shelved for so many years. is intended to hoodwink many Ugandans and put unrelated items before the house. There is a pressing item like ELECTORAL REFORMS which are very crucial before the general elections of 2011. Please help us as legislators to put the REAL issues on the table.

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Uganda’s Anti Homosexuality Bill – and how you can help stop this legislation from being passed, national elections in Niger, violence in Guinea and the impact of rising sea levels on African cities are among the topics in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere.

South Africans must be vigilant that elements of their democratic state – especially the state security apparatus – do not return to the ‘strong-arm tactics, dirty-tricks and law-unto-themselves behaviour’ of the apartheid-era, William Gumede writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. ‘Our democratic state is supposed to be a caring one; not one that terrorises ordinary citizens, or uses the state for personal and factional gain,’ Gumede says.

Two Somali 'pirates' captured after they attacked a Spanish fishing boat are likely to spend a long time behind bars, Agustín Velloso Santisteban writes in this week’s Pambazuka News, given that they are also poor, black and Muslim. Highlighting the struggle for survival and hardships so many Somalis face, Santisteban suggests that there are other more dangerous ‘pirates’ out there that ought to be pursued and brought to book for far worse crimes.

Tradition is not an adequate justification for maintaining the practice of female circumcision in Sierra Leone – or anywhere in Africa, Joseph Kaifala writes in Pambazuka News. Both ‘obsolete’ and ‘unnecessary’, the practice runs counter to progress and the upholding of human rights, says Kaifala.

In this week’s Pambazuka News, E.J. Minja looks at the implications of the global financial crisis for Tanzania, what could be done to minimise its negative effects and capitalise on any positive effects, and how the country needs to deal with the crisis.

Activist Sipho Maseko’s total commitment to the total liberation of South Africa and the continent as a whole was driven by the values of freedom, equality, solidarity and democracy, Neville Alexander writes in this week’s Pambazuka News. Reflecting on the path South Africa has travelled post-apartheid at a memorial event for the late Maseko, Alexander exhorts the country’s citizens to put these values back at the centre of its vision, plans and behaviour as the basis of a non-racial, democratic republic.

The Guebuza campaign is making intensive use of four helicopters, and the Bulletin estimates that the cost will be nearly $1 million. This means that Frelimo is spending more just on helicopters than the total amount ($750,000) being given to it this year as state funding. (Total funding to all parties is $1.85 million). This shows that Frelimo has much more money to spend on this election than any other party.

Drawing on fascinating personal correspondence with a variety of individuals, Barbara Harlow looks back on the experiences of Ruth First during her short time as an economics lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam. First spent an autumn semester at the university in 1975, a time which coincided with the visits and debates of such prominent intellectuals as Walter Rodney, Mahmood Mamdani, Terence Ranger and Issa G. Shivji.

Governor Timipre Sylva of Nigeria's Bayelsa state is notable solely for his 'profligacy, perfidiousness, aloofness and incompetence', writes Sabella Ogbobode Abidde in this week's Pambazuka News. With Sylva content to pursue an apparently never-ending programme of foolish and money-gulping schemes, Abidde stresses that Bayelsans and the Ijaw group as a whole need to demonstrate the same willingness to challenge their own elites as they do the federal government and exploitative oil companies.

Taking issue with suggestions that Uganda's 2009 riots can be compared with the country's 1966 constitutional crisis, Kintu Nyago argues that the two scenarios are like 'chalk and cheese'.

Adeyemi Demola stresses the importance of freedom of the press as a democratic right in Nigeria.

Henry Kyambalesa suggests potential initiatives for Zambia's President Rupiah Banda.

With Nigeria's ruling elites seemingly intent on continuing to rob their country blind, Kola Ibrahim stresses the need for a nationalised economy rooted in a genuine workers' democracy.