The UN’s top humanitarian official Jan Egeland is in war-torn Cote d’Ivoire seeking assurances from authorities that January’s anti-UN violence will not be repeated and that ringleaders of the attacks will be punished. “To those who have carried out criminal behaviour - attacking humanitarians or civilians - we are coming with a message that stimulating violence or attacking has to be punished,” the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs said in the main city Abidjan on Wednesday.

Colin Bruce, the World Bank country director for Eritrea, told Reuters that the decision to pursue the border issue meant that the Horn of Africa country was spending a lot on defence at the expense of other areas. The unresolved border issue with Ethiopia is weighing on Eritrea's economy and casting doubt on its ability to pay its debts, a senior World bank official said on Wednesday. Eritrea blames the international community, and the United Nations, in particular, for not forcing Ethiopia to demarcate the Ethiopian-Eritrean border under the terms of a peace deal to end their 1998-2000 border war which killed 70,000 people.

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), already wracked by internal division, is finding itself more isolated in the region and at home. "I think opposition politics is going into a hiatus now, it will be a very dark and slow period in terms of opposition politics. I think civic movements are also in the process of reorganising right now, they are very much pushed on the defensive. On the whole, even though Mugabe has problems internationally, at home the opposition presents him with few difficulties," analyst Brian Raftopoulos concluded.

Nigeria, one of the poorest countries in the world, is in the process of giving a huge sum of money to the richest countries. UK organisations which are members of the Jubilee Debt Campaign are urging the UK government to return its share of this money to Nigeria to fight poverty. "80 to 90 million Nigerians live in poverty; only India and China have more poor. Whether Africa attains the Millennium Development Goals depends on Nigeria… Donor and creditor support is critical to maintain the momentum of reform."

A UN donors' conference in Brussels will call for international donors to provide $681m (£400m) for an "action plan" for the DRC, three times the size of the UN appeal for the DRC in preceding years. More than 1,000 people a day die from violence in the country and since 1998 four million people have fallen victim to conflict, hunger and disease. Last year about 40,000 people a month were forced to flee their homes, most of them women and children. The UN also wants the European Union to provide troops to reinforce the embattled UN peacekeeping force of 16,000 men based in eastern Congo.

Two weeks ago at the Joe Slovo informal settlement, bulldozers came in and destroyed the house of an outspoken member of the community. He had invited a journalist to the settlement to talk about corruption in the housing allocation process at Joe Slovo, accusing the local community leader of giving preferential treatment to family members, and of excluding Xhosa residents from new housing.

Nigeria's anti-corruption commission announced a crackdown Monday on conmen who have scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars by impersonating the agency's own officials. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said alleged fraudsters are already on trial in four cities for pretending to be anti-graft investigators and soliciting bribes to kill nonexistent cases.

Thabo Mbeki's neo-liberal state of the nation address, while re-committing South Africa to market-friendly economic policies, failed to outline specific programmes to meaningfully deal with the country's worsening poverty and underdevelopment. The 'have-nots', who have suffered severely in the last ten years as a result of conservative economic policies, should therefore brace themselves for more hardship.

It is very hypocritical for parliament to have chosen the theme "All shall have equal rights"- derived from the Freedom Charter - given the sad reality that the annual opening of parliament and parliament itself are a very good reflection of growing inequalities between the rich and the poor.

The annual event has become a Hollywood-style fashion extravaganza. The SABC's fashion commentator skilfully scrutinized numerous trendy outfits worn by the elite.

Despite SA's worsening levels of poverty and inequalities, Mbeki, as a result of recent surveys, is very optimistic and hopeful that the economic policies are taking the country in the right direction. Unfortunately, reality on the ground paints a very gloomy picture.

As widely expected, economic growth and government's 'Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative' (ASGISA), featured prominently. This, and other government's neo-liberal initiatives, have seen South Africa's ruling politicians, 'prostituting' themselves to the financially well endowed corporations and the markets that they control in an attempt to attract the much craved foreign investment, with dire consequences for the masses.

ASGISA sees increased exports as fundamental for economic growth and the projected six percent annual growth rate in the next few years. However, in recent years, the country has managed to drastically increase its exports, but this has come at a heavy price for the working class. While output growth has increased, employment growth has declined in major sectors, such as manufacturing, business services, agriculture and mining.

As the Cape Town based Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC) points out, export oriented growth also means increased competition which, in many instances, has meant cost reduction which leads to unsafe working conditions, retrenchments and cutting of working hours and wages.

At the expense of the poor, the ANC government has put too much reliance on the private sector. The problem with this however, is that the private sector's primary aim is to increase profitability. Private companies are not accountable to anyone but shareholders. South Africa, with its heavy apartheid induced services backlog, cannot afford this situation.

Upcoming celebrations on June 16 and August 09 marking the 30th anniversary of the Soweto youth uprising and the 50th anniversary of the women's march to the Union buildings, respectively, mean very little for the majority of women and youth who, as a result of government's policies, are confronted with extreme poverty on a daily basis.

It is estimated that 70% of the unemployed are young people. Most have never worked in their life. Only about 14% of those graduating from tertiary institutions, each year find secure employment in the formal economy. Yet, none of our so-called 'experts' see the connection between this hopeless situation and youth involvement in crime, survival sex, substance abuse, etc.

Instead, in true South African-style, the government plans to deal with the symptoms and not the causes. Mbeki mentioned a plan to improve resource allocation within the justice systerm to ensure that "crime does not pay". The fact that a large majority of those overcrowding our prisons are arrested for what most sociologists view as "poverty related" crimes is immaterial.

Because of government's strict fiscal discipline, and Mbeki and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's AIDS denial, the life saving anti retroviral drugs are only available to a fraction of infected persons - mostly women and youth - at government hospitals. Only about a hundred thousand of about six million HIV/AIDS patients are on anti retroviral medicine at public institutions.

Is it therefore not an insult and insensitive for Mbeki to suggest that we should be proud of this horrific situation?

Opposition parties, who have, in the backdrop of electioneering for the March 01 local government elections, portrayed themselves as an 'alternative' to the ANC, whilst having raised a few minor misgivings about Mbeki's speech, are in full agreement with the overall anti-poor capitalist agenda.

The failure to acknowledge that it is the top down capitalist policies of the ruling party that breed corruption and poverty, give the lie to their claims.

Certainly, there is an urgent need to conduct an intensive nationwide debate of government's economic policies that have rendered freedom and democracy enigmatic for many South Africans.

Is it not the right time then to demand an end to privatisation and outsourcing? Was the struggle against apartheid also not about decent and secure jobs? With more than eight million of the economically active population unemployed, should we not be demanding urgent steps to curb the unemployment virus?

In his meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday (February 13), President George W. Bush should pledge that the United States will provide necessary support so that the proposed UN mission in Darfur has both the mandate and capacity needed to protect the civilian population, Human Rights Watch said today (February 10). Human Rights Watch also called on the United States to back full financial, material and logistical support for the current African Union Mission in Sudan forces through the UN transition period, which could last nine months.

The current African Union (AU) chairman, President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, revealed here Saturday (February 11) that the continental body will soon initiate fresh moves to find a solution to the Ivorian crisis. Sassou Nguesso made the announcement in Brazzaville three days after the AU brokered a peace agreement between Chad and Sudan. N`djamena had accused Khartoum of assisting armed dissidents who have attacked several government targets in eastern Chad.

Swaziland's long-awaited new constitution came into effect on Wednesday (February 8), but analysts and political parties said it remained vague on the key issue of legalising political parties. "The constitution seems deliberately ambiguous on the issue - it could be read as an attempt to undermine any move to allow democracy to take root in the absolute monarchy," said Thabele Matlosa, director of research at the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.

Cape Verde’s incumbent President Pedro Pires on Monday (February 13) claimed victory in his campaign to win re-election as head of state of the cluster of 10 islands and five islets off the West African coast that are home to less than half a million people. Voting took place in the former Portuguese colony on Sunday and preliminary results on Monday gave the incumbent president a narrow lead of 51.1 percent of the vote. In a victory speech, Pires promised to fulfil campaign commitments, including a pledge to tackle poverty and unemployment.

Somalia’s top leaders have confirmed that the country’s transitional parliament will hold its first joint meeting on Somali soil in the south-central town of Baidoa, 240 km southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, on 26 February. Interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed told reporters on Monday (February 13) that he had agreed with Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi and parliamentary speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden that the parliament would meet as planned.

Uganda's first multiparty elections in two decades, scheduled for 23 February, are unlikely to be free and fair due to state intimidation of the opposition and voters, according to a leading human rights group. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report entitled "In Hope and Fear: Uganda’s Presidential and Parliamentary Polls", said the run-up to the polls had "been marred by intimidation of the opposition, military interference in the courts and bias in campaign funding and media coverage."

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) has released the "Vaughn Report," commissioned by the World Bank as a blueprint to modernize its inadequate whistleblower protection policies. The recommendations of noted whistleblower law scholar Robert Vaughn of American University Law School incorporate "best practices" that were already adopted by the United Nations, approved by the Organization of American States to implement its Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, and enacted last fall as U.S. policy to strengthen anti-corruption efforts at all multilateral development banks (MDBs).

Bottled water consumption, which has more than doubled globally in the last six years, is a natural resource that is heavily taxing the world's ecosystem, according to a new US study. "Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing, producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy," according to Emily Arnold, author of the study published by the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group.

The planned street demonstrations by the civil society to force President Kibaki to act on grand corruption kick off this week. The Name and Shame Corruption Network (Nascon), the umbrella organisation of the 76 groups, announced on Sunday that it had completed plans for the mass action.

The Centre and the Network for Zimbabwe Positive Women (NZPW+) are two important AIDS Service Organisations run by people living with HIV and AIDS and providing practical support to people living with HIV and AIDS. The development worker will work with both organisations, which share the same building, to develop their organisational capacity. S/he will focus upon building skills in strategic planning, management, organisational systems and policies, fundraising, monitoring and evaluation and assist to develop individual staff competencies to meet organisational aims.

"The AU can and should speak out. Not to utter even a whisper is indeed a tragedy for Africa as Africa cannot afford to wait another half century to bring democracy because of a number of its brutish and self-serving rulers that are not willing to hold Africa’s interest at heart. Have not the AU heard that the EU Parliament has voted denouncing the atrocities committed by the Meles regime?"

The Small Grants Program is calling for proposals from civil society organisations. The theme of the program is the empowerment of marginalised vulnerable groups. The activity should be completed within one year of the date the grant is awarded. Civil Society organisations working on issues of development may apply.