The process of formulating Kenya's national land policy got underway last week, with the government assuring Kenyans that although donors are financing the process, they would not influence its outcome. The move follows concerns raised by the DFID's appointment of an expatriate, Martins Adams, as a technical advisor for the process. $1.8m has been provided by DfID, USAID and SIDA to fund the land reform process.

Environmental degradation resulting from a prolonged drought in northern and northeastern Somalia is threatening to destroy the livelihoods of an estimated 120,000 livestock rearers, a United Nations official said on Monday. "The livelihoods of 120,000 people are threatened and they have to find other means of livelihood," Robert Hauser, World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director for Somalia, told IRIN.

The arrival in Malawi of a team of US climate researchers has raised hopes among officials in the country that oil reserves will one day be found under Lake Malawi. The researchers will soon begin drilling the bottom of the lake as part of a study on tropical climate shifts in sub-Saharan Africa. The team will extract mud samples from Lake Malawi for studies of tropical climate, human evolution and the formation of the Great Rift Valley.

Bonte Gold Mines Limited, a Canadian owned company, has closed its Ghana alluvial operations along the river Bonte at Bonteso in the Ashanti Region. It took just about one week for the company to complete its liquidation process without following the due processes for mine decommissioning. The workers have accused the company of keeping them in the dark about the liquidation and owing them unpaid wages. Farmers whose lands were affected by the operations of the mine also received no compensation. Perhaps worst of all, the company closed without reclaiming or repairing the land destroyed by the operations of the mine.

For those who are looking for an easy life in Gabon, small-scale fishing holds little appeal. As a young fisherman, Mathieu Koffi, told IPS, it is "difficult to get credit to buy new equipment, and it's not easy for fishermen to band together in order to limit expenses." The difficulties of working with outdated equipment combined with a depletion of fish stocks in certain areas have posed challenges to the small-scale fishing industry in recent years.

The Government has distanced itself from a proposal to place Kenya's wildlife under a commercial company as details emerged of the controversial Sh7 billion plan to reshape game management. Tourism minister Karisa Maitha said the Kenya Wildlife Service was 'not for sale' and dismissed a controversial project proposal drawn up by a British businessman working with local conservation interests.

Whilst Angola has seen a 27% rise in cereal production to 713,000 mt, the country is still unable to realise its full agricultural potential according to a United Nations report. A recent joint assessment by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme shows that less than 5% of arable land is cultivated because of landmines and a lack of seeds, fertilisers and draught animals. As a result an estimated 1.12 million Angolans per month need to receive food assistance.

An article on the BBC's website presents the contrasting emotions in the land reform process in Namibia. Whilst the land minister, Nifikepunye Pohanma, stresses the importance of pushing ahead with the compulsory purchase of white farms to acquire 9m hectares, some of the farmers are concerned at the way the government is going about it and for what lies ahead for them once they leave their farms.

An article published by Panos has shown the widespread concern amongst civil society, farmers and the rural poor in Senegal towards the government's policy to privatise the groundnut sector. Whilst the government faces pressure from the IMF and the World Bank to speed the process up, Senegal's farmers are still struggling after the government's attempt in 2002 to privatise part of the sector. This move left thousands of rural families on the brink of starvation and the government having to respond with a $23 million bailout package. The groundnut is Senegal's second-largest export earner and contributes 31% of the national GDP.

The government of Mali has imposed a six-month ban on tree felling to try and slow the rate at which the country's savannah woodland is being steadily decimated for firewood and charcoal. However, housewives in the capital Bamako are grumbling that this has pushed up the price of cooking fuel. The Ministry of the Environment estimates that Mali is loosing 400,000 hectares of tree cover a year to meet the rising demand for construction timber and fuel wood.

Sudanese Arab horsemen, whose kin are being recruited by the Janjaweed militias in Darfur, are poaching elephants and endangered white rhinos in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, conservationists say. The poaching raids have halved the world's remaining wild northern white rhino population, threatening it with extinction, said Fraser Smith, head of the Garamba National Park Project, in northeastern Congo.

The plague of locusts sweeping south across the Sahara desert is now causing serious crop damage in Mauritania, Mali and Niger and has spread for the first time to Chad, agricultural experts and government officials said on Monday. Over the weekend, swarms of locusts invaded eastern Mali and started devouring crops, an agricultural official in the central town of Mopti said.

The Institute for Policy Studies released a report that shows that most oil projects supported by the World Bank supply industrialized country consumption - not developing countries' energy needs - and almost all benefit large corporations based in those countries. Halliburton leads the pack of companies benefiting from World Bank energy lending. "The Energy Tug-of-War: Winners and Losers in World Bank Fossil Fuel Finance" exposes the leading beneficiaries of 133 financial packages, worth over $10.7 billion, approved by the World Bank Group since 1992.

Some 15,000 people from the southern Nigerian town of Ughelli have been driven out of their homes by flooding, following three days of heavy rain, the Delta State information commissioner said Tuesday.

In unrest comparable in scale to Chechnya and Colombia, a year of bloodletting has killed more than 1,000 in the oil-rich Niger Delta, leaving the world's No. 7 oil exporter, and people here, concerned for the future. Royal Dutch/Shell, Nigeria's largest oil operation, which produces half the 2.5 million barrels Nigeria exports daily, also is reeling. A confidential 93-page security report commissioned by Shell in December 2003 warns that mounting attacks by criminals and ethnic militants could force the oil giant to abandon its onshore operations in the delta by 2008.

For at least 18 months now, Western governments have quietly stood by as the non-Arabic-speaking black farmers of the Darfur region in western Sudan have borne the brunt of a vicious ethnic-cleansing campaign carried out by state-sponsored bandits known as the janjaweed. Why then have the governments of the United States and the European Union (EU) only now begun to express concern over the fate of the people of western Sudan and demand that the Islamist military regime in Khartoum bring the janjaweed under control? The answer - as it most often is when rich countries threaten to intervene in the Middle East and Africa - is access to invest in and extract profits from Sudan's burgeoning oil export industry.

More than five hundred Phiri residents were joined in the Phiri Hall in Soweto to support the launch of a research report - The Struggle Against Silent Disconnections - produced by the Coalition Against Water Privatisation. Police kept their weary eye on the convergence of residents who were outraged by how their 'free' monthly supply of 6kl of water runs out after 11 days.

The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights in Gauteng and North West has approved 485 land restitution claims in respect of 1 254 properties in the towns of Mafikeng, Vryburg, Ventersdorp, Lichtenburg, Schweizer-Reneke and Klerksdorp. More than 94% of the Gauteng restitution claims have been finalised, with over 13 000 people in the North West benefiting from the process.

The leader of Namibia's largest opposition party on Friday criticised the government's plan to expropriate white farmers, saying that it would destroy agriculture and harm black farm labourers. Speaking at the opening of a party conference, Ben Ulenga of the Congress of Democrats also called on former colonial ruler Germany to help with land reform through more financial aid.

Following one of the largest migrations seen in the region in recent times, much of the livestock in northern Kenya is at risk from perishing following overcrowding and a shortage of water. The Isiolo District is hosting an additional 100,000 livestock, and 50,000 are reliant on a single water pan at Fororsa. Shared by both animals and humans, the water has become contaminated from overuse and poor maintenance. It is estimated that it will run out in a month's time