Food shortage has hit Cameroon, prompting agricultural experts to devise a plan to overhaul the country's farming system. This is not the first time that Cameroon, which enjoys abundant rainfall, is facing food shortages. In August 1991, the country received its first donation of 2,600 metric tonnes of food from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

More than 1500 farm workers and their families have been evicted by the Zimbabwe government from an export-processing farm in eastern Zimbabwe. The farm workers were thrown off Kondozi farm over the Easter weekend by police, who claimed that the property belonged to a state-owned land agency. The raid came a day after Information Minister Jonathan Moyo threatened that the farm would be taken from the private owner, despite a high court ruling in the farmer's favour.

A radical redistribution of land in Namibia could lead to disinvestment and undermine economic growth, a new study has warned. Land reform in the southwest African country has re-emerged as a political hot potato since last year. Frustrated by the slow pace of transferring commercial farmland from white to black Namibians, the government announced that it would accelerate the land reform process by expropriating property.

Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU) plans to intensify livestock and game ranching programmes in Matabeleland South and North to promote agricultural production on land unsuited to crop farming. ZCFU president Davison Mugabe told journalists in Bulawayo that the union had tasked its regional offices in Matabeleland to consult local farmers in designing proposals for both game and cattle ranching projects.

A decade ago, conservationists set an ambitious goal of protecting 10 percent of Earth's land in nature reserves within 10 years. To nearly everyone's surprise that goal has been more than met, with 11.5 percent of the world's land now in protected areas. But some conservationists fear that the millions of acres protected are not the right ones. Despite the vast expansion of reserves, 20 percent of threatened animal species worldwide and about 12 percent of all animals have no part of their territory protected, according to a new analysis.

NGOs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have allied to challenge industrial logging in their country's rainforests. In February they appealed to the World Bank and other agencies to halt a plan which would make up to 60 million hectares of rainforest available to logging companies in the coming years. The dispute is instructive about the Bank's approach to human rights and international law. Roger Muchuba of the human rights group Héritiers de la Justice, said: "Civil society is taking the initiative of informing the population about the new laws, as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation have so far failed to."

More than a decade after ExxonMobil - then Exxon - decided to develop the oil fields under this landlocked country of Sahara Desert and grassland, Chad's 9 million people wait expectantly. In Chad, the oil receipts that have begun to flow to the government in recent months are to be managed publicly, with 80 percent of them dedicated to pay for schools, clinics, roads and other basic human needs. Years of campaigning by Western and Chadian human rights and environmental groups forced the World Bank, oil companies and Chad's government to set up the plan, which includes a measure of oversight from nongovernmental civic organisations. But it remains to be seen if Chad will escape the curse of natural resources.

Contents include:
* The Twentieth Century - Massacres and Genocides;
* The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda;
* The International Criminal Court.

The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) has criticised government plans to acquire all privately-owned game parks and conservancies, saying the move is tantamount to punishing farmers who provide sanctuary for animals. WWF has since made an appeal to the Presidential Land Resettlement Committee, saying land acquisition should be based on sound ecological and business principles.

The Lesotho appeal court has not only upheld the bribery and corruption conviction of a third multinational contracting firm involved in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), but has increased its fine. Lahmeyer International, the biggest engineering consulting group in Germany, was convicted of bribing Masupha Sole, the chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, the agency that was responsible for the construction of the Katse and Mohale dams.

Kenya received crucial international support for its opposition to uncontrolled trade in ivory when the Standing Committee for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) recently shot down proposals by South Africa, Namibia and Botswana to sell off 60 tonnes of stockpiled elephant ivory. The three countries had hoped they would be given permission to sell the ivory legally by CITES 50th Standing Committee that concluded a weeklong session in Geneva recently. But the sale was held up until a list of conditions is met.

The Tanzania government is drafting a policy on genetically modified (GM) crops in readiness for adopting the controversial technology, which some advocates consider a necessity for the future of food production. The EastAfrican has learnt that a multi-sectoral selection of Tanzanian experts will be drafting the policy guidelines and regulations in order to safeguard and equip the nation with the necessary precautions. Tanzania’s Minister for Agriculture and Food Security, Charles Keenja, said in Dar es Salaam last week that the country had taken no clear position on GM products to date.

A bold agrarian reform pledged 10 years ago by the new dispensation in South Africa to rectify the injustices of colonialism and apartheid has progressed slowly with 80% of the land still held by the white minority, fuelling rising impatience among landless blacks. A decade after the formal end of apartheid, the land reform objectives are a long way off. Only 3% of the land has been acquired by the government under the "willing-buyer, willing-seller" scheme and given out to some 700,000 blacks, according to official estimates.

The Landless People's Movement (LPM) - a national movement of poor and landless people struggling for land and agrarian reform - has called on the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to retract its so-called hate-speech "finding" against LPM National Organiser Mangaliso Kubheka, and to provide protection to Kubheka, his family and other LPM members whose lives have been placed in jeopardy by the SAHRC pronouncements.

The expected outcome of the AIDS epidemic is that attitudes in matters concerning the environment and natural resources are affected, probably in the direction of greater tolerance for short-term exploitation at the expense of long-term economical use of natural resources and protection of the environment, according to a report from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). This short report looks at impacts of HIV/AIDS on agriculture and the environment, with a focus on rural areas in Africa. It looks at the effects of the epidemic on local use of the environment and natural resources, and asks why rural areas are particularly vulnerable.

South African environmental authorities sent DNA samples from thousands of shark fins confiscated at Cape Town harbour this week for testing as part of an illegal hauling probe. Marcel Kroese, head of law enforcement at the country's Marine and Coastal Management agency, said that officials wanted to establish whether threatened species of fish were involved.

The Caprivi Regional Emergency Management Unit (REMU) is preparing to evacuate villagers from areas surrounded by floodwaters in the eastern Caprivi as the Zambezi River rises. It reached 6,42 metres, as measured at Katima Mulilo, yesterday. EMU Deputy Director Gabriel Kangowa said that three boats had been obtained from the military base at Katima Mulilo to move people to safety as well as for the delivery of food aid.

Nigeria's president has warned that Lake Chad will soon disappear unless immediate action is taken. Olusegun Obasanjo said the shrinking water levels were threatening the livelihood of more than 20 million people in the region.

Equatorial Guinea has suddenly been brought into the world's spotlight as a result of a supposed coup attempt there by a group of former members of the South African special forces. The picture that is emerging is not a pretty sight. This country is a caricature of Africa, a microcosm of all that is bad about the continent. Because of the discoveries of bigger and bigger oil reserves every year in its waters, Equatorial Guinea has one of the highest economic growth rates in the world - nearly 17% in 2002 and over 14% in 2003. Yet 65% of the people still live in extreme poverty and the oil wealth is concentrated in the hands of no more than 5% of the population.

Every time Stephen Yibo goes fishing around the U.S.-operated oil platform near his village in Nigeria's southern delta, soldiers come out on boats and shoot into the air to scare him away. Yibo, 25, says oil could be used to bring health and education to Fishtown, a poverty-stricken village of wood and thatch huts which has been abandoned by the government. Instead, he reels off a list of what he believes are unfulfilled promises of the oil company ChevronTexaco.