The final decision on whether Buganda should be granted a federal system of governance lies with Parliament, Information Minister Nsaba Buturo has said. Cabinet's rejection of President Yoweri Museveni's proposal to grant federo to Buganda, drew a strong reaction. The Buganda Lukiiko (Parliament) on Monday voted overwhelmingly to team up with Bunyoro Kingdom to fight for a return to federo, which was abolished in the 1960s.

A high-powered delegation of Anglican bishops from five nations completed a two-day fact finding tour of Swaziland at the weekend, after examining issues such as constitutional reform and the high HIV/AIDS rate. Commenting on his country's controversial palace-driven constitutional reform process, Swaziland's Anglican Bishop Meshack Mabuza said: "It is not the content of the constitution that bothers us, it is the process of the constitution - it will only be legitimate if the people have a hand in the process."

President Lansana Conte has suspended more than 100 elected officials in the capital Conakry after accusing them of stealing subsidised rice which was meant to be sold cheaply through local government offices to the city's poor. The move followed a spate of attacks on trucks carrying rice by gangs of angry youths. Conte said on Tuesday that the government had reached an agreement with private traders to sell the rice at a controlled price of 40,000 francs (US$14) per 50 kg bag instead. A bag of rice currently sells on the free market for $20.

The SA Council of Churches (SACC) has urged Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to join a forum for dialogue, a senior SACC official told IRIN on Wednesday. "The forum, which will be quite similar to the South African CODESA [Convention for a Democratic South Africa] talks, has been proposed by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), which has asked us for our support," SACC secretary-general Molefe Tsele said.

Some 77 children have died and 2,599 others are infected following an outbreak of gastroenteritis in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to a health ministry official. The associate director of epidemiology at the health ministry, Dr Vital Mondonge Makuma, told IRIN on Wednesday that the disease, caused by a strain of the Escherichia coli bacterium, broke out six weeks ago.

Peace in Angola has paved the way for advances in freedom of expression, association and assembly, but in the interior of the country these freedoms continue to be violated, Human Rights Watch says in a new report. On July 2, the president's advisory council recommended holding general elections in 2006, the first since 1992. The 35-page report, "Unfinished Democracy: Media and Political Freedoms in Angola," notes that the detention and harassment of journalists has become less common since the decades-long civil war ended in 2002, and that Angolan authorities have become more tolerant of opposition political activity. However, these changes have largely been confined to the Angolan capital, Luanda.

"...the tenth anniversary of South African freedom is no cause for celebration by the oppressed whether at home, elsewhere in Africa, or across the Third World. It is, rather, a moment for us to examine the contradictions associated with a decade of worsening class apartheid and to challenge victimist rhetoric about global inequality when it disguises status quo elite ambitions. Given the ability of South Africa’s progressive activists to consistently identify and protest the hypocrisy of their government talking left while walking right, it is fair to say that Pretoria’s strategy will soon be overtaken, not only by failure from above but by resistance from below." This is the conclusion of an article on the Foreign Policy in Focus website by Patrick Bond, who teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

The flow of refugees from the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into Burundi has slowed considerably and some Congolese have gone back home without official help, but the area has not calmed down sufficiently to make "facilitated repatriation" advisable, the United Nations refugee agency said. Refugees who arrived in Burundi after distributions of food and sanitary materials have cited food shortages as their reason for returning to the DRC.

The total UK official development assistance will reach 0.47 % of Gross National Income by 2007-08, the UK Chancellor, Gordon Brown announced this week. The Department for International Development will see its budget rise to £5.3 billion a year (from £3.8 billion today). Its Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, issued a statement confirming that at least £1.25 billion a year will go to Africa by 2008 with a further £1.5 billion being spent on HIV/AIDS over the next three years.

Human rights groups have welcomed Angola signing up for the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). Angola was among three South African countries to join the APRM during the closing ceremony of the African Union Summit, bringing the total number of signatories to the mechanism to 23. The APRM monitors a country's progress towards political and economic reform and its socio-economic development.

Since the early 90s, when democracy began spreading around the continent, electoral processes have been the most critical moments in African countries' political life. Although some African States or political parties have been able to manage these in a satisfying way, what we observe today in a number of democracies should make us more careful, and have us consider the means to develop a more democratic culture of electoral processes and political change on the continent. When we analyse these experiences of civil society implication in the electoral processes, we must come to the conclusion that civil society - even though its structures, options and ways of operation are very complex and sometimes ambiguous - should be able to participate more positively in each step of the electoral processes in Africa. This would help prevent populations from being torn apart and suffering the economic, political and human disasters, which seem to be a fatality during election periods in Africa.

In the years that Rwanda's ruling party, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), has been in power, it has done much to portray itself as the party for all the country's people. It is an illusion that no one believes, but that everyone - Rwandans and observing foreigners alike - seems willing to accept. The RPF's stated ideology is reconciliation between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi, whose relationship since independence 42 years ago has been punctuated by a series of state-sponsored ethnic massacres culminating in the 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathisers.

A 2003 study on commercial sex exploitation of children, carried out by Hope Case Foundation and Uganda Youth Development Link, reveals that child commercial sex is on the increase worldwide, with about 1.8 million children being exploited. In Uganda, many students and school dropouts engaged in commercial sex. A study conducted in the districts of Mbale, Busia, Kabarole and Lira shows that, of the 728 children (90.3% of these girls and 9.3% boys) interviewed, only 35% still go to school while 70% of the children don't stay with their parents. Of the 728, 95% are paid money for sex, 16% get food, while 11% get free entry to discotheques as payment for sex.

It was only a matter of time. For two years business has rallied behind Nepad, forming corporate councils and pledging to support Africa's blue-ribbon initiative for development. But progress on implementing the key components of Nepad has been slow, and patience among the private sector is wearing thin. When the continent's best thinkers gathered in the capital of Mozambique in early June for the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) annual Africa conference, the disconnect between business and political leaders was more apparent than it had ever been.

Calls for increases in aid to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) tend to assume a straightforward relationship between the volume of aid and the rate of development, says a paper from the Center for Global Development, which cites evidence which suggests that there is a weak link between the volume of aid and the rate of development, and highlights the often overlooked assumptions upon which costings of the MDGs are based. The authors warn that the MDGs may run the risk of creating an unwarranted climate of pessimism about development and aid and lead to reductions in aid.

Senior public servants are refusing to declare their assets, shares and other interests that could be in conflict with their employment contracts. Their refusal, according to Wits University academic Professor Patrick FitzGerald, makes it difficult to detect corruption among public servants. The Financial Disclosures of Heads of Departments Regulations says that 'any employee who fails to disclose an interest...is guilty of a misconduct.' Despite this, no action has been taken against the 67% of senior public servants who refused to declare their interests.

The Zambian government declared on Monday it would press ahead with the corruption trial of former president Frederick Chiluba despite the failure of police to arrest two key co-accused. State prosecutor Mutembo Nchito told Lusaka magistrate's court the government would carry on with the trial, even though former intelligence boss Xavier Chungu and ex-ambassador Atan Shansonga had skipped the country after being granted bail.

A delighted Temidayo Israel-Abdulai won the first People Earnestly working for Africa (PEWA) Young African Award last week for his contributions to improving the welfare of African children. Since setting up his own NGO aged 12, he has been at the forefront of campaigning around youth issues and has been an advisor to the Nigerian Government. The high profile awards were presented in a glitzy evening event following the recent African Diaspora and Development Day (ad3) in London. Other award winners included Umoja, the West End musical, for its success in promoting African culture.

The UN has sounded an alarm over the number of primary school teachers dying of Aids in Kenya. The country is among those likely to suffer shortages of primary school teachers because of Aids deaths, the United Nations says in a new global report. Other countries listed in the report include Uganda, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. "Without forward planning, there will be great difficulty for these countries meeting their school enrolment targets and an acceptable pupil-to-teacher ratio, says the 2004 report of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS).

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has sent a mission to northwestern Uganda to assess the situation following an influx of Congolese refugees fleeing renewed fighting in the northeastern district of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Hundreds of the refugees were reported to have crossed into the Ugandan district of Nebbi, 500 km northwest of the capital, Kampala. The Kampala office of the UNHCR said it was waiting for the mission's final report on the situation along the northwestern border with the DRC.