Angola, which recently shared the stage with the world's most powerful oil-producing nations at its first OPEC meeting, is an unlikely candidate to be the darling of the global oil industry. Angola, underdeveloped, war-scarred and foundering for decades under corrupt leadership, is one of the poorest nations on earth.

A welter of multi-billion dollar projects to rebuild Angola's devastated roads, airports and administrative buildings are part of a post-war reconstruction boom that is changing the face of the country. Much of the development has been dependent on oil-backed commercial credit agreements from countries such as China.

Stepping into a contentious election-year issue, a Nigerian Senate panel said on Wednesday that President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy-turned-political-foe both illegally used funds from the country's massive oil industry. Both officials are currently immune from prosecution. The full Senate must approve the findings for them to have effect, but no debate is scheduled till after April 21 presidential elections meant to secure civilian rule in coup-prone Nigeria.

Uganda's prime minister has approved a plan for thousands of hectares of a rain-forest to be replaced by a sugarcane plantation, a state-owned news agency told Al-Jazeera on Wednesday. Government officials said they were not aware of Apolo Nsibambi's decision to give part of Mabira Forest to a local sugar company.

The Botswana government has banned the Kalahari Bushmen from using their own water , even as the world commemorates UN World Water Day. A Bushman leader is travelling to London this week to protest against the ban.

The frequency and intensity of dry spells and flooding in southern Africa is expected to increase as weather experts warn of a surge in world temperatures. A report recently released by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that drying of the land has been observed in southern Africa, the Sahel, the Mediterranean and parts of southern Asia over the last century.

Leakages of highly toxic sewerage water from the Rundu Sewerage Ponds may in the near future cause the contamination of the Kavango River. Black sewerage water gushing out from these ponds and flowing downstream into the river may pose a serious health hazard for the people in the Kavango as well as the neighbouring countries of Angola and Botswana.

The subject of women who have children out of wedlock remains taboo in Moroccan society. These single women are often forced to flee from their families and abandon their children. Organizations such INSAF and the Women's Solidarity Association of Casablanca are some of the few places these women can go for support.

Any person who wants to sell land may in future have to give the state first option to buy their property, as part of the government's plans for land reform. That could be the effect of new legislation aimed at speeding up land reform in South Africa, according to Glenn Thomas, head of the department of land affairs, quoted in a report carried by the Beeld newspaper.

According to a World Bank press report, the Democratic Republic of Congo's Environment Minister Didace Pembe Bokiaga has committed the newly-elected government to a revolutionary package of reforms to boost the country’s nascent conservation efforts, and focus attention on Africa’s imperiled forests.

Abundant rain, a seemingly endless canopy of dense vegetation and full rivers give the impression that there is no threat of deforestation in the Central African Republic (CAR). Yet the country loses up to one million hectares of forest a year to loggers and firewood collectors

A recent meeting of global parliamentarians has been hailed by some as making a breakthrough “deal” on climate change, by including “appropriate targets for developing countries”. If developing countries were to agree on caps on their emissions, this would indeed be a major departure. Whether it would be enough to persuade the Americans to pull their heads out of the sand is less certain.

Algeria's irrigation system in the Saharan regions of Touat and Gourara has stood firm for centuries and bears witness to the numerous civilisations which have inhabited the region's oases. However, the effects of modernisation have compounded the problems of desertification in the "triangle of fire" and this regional heritage is now threatened with extinction.

It is the season for bush fires in Senegal, and there are once again concerns that vast tracts of fertile land could be set alight, and ravaged. Over 2005 and 2006 more than 400,000 hectares were affected in the course of an unusually severe series of fires. Almost a tenth of the southern Linguère region was burnt, and more than nine percent of the Bakel area. Several smaller outbreaks were also documented.

Delegates from 10 countries in the East Africa region gathered in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, last week to mark the first River Nile Day, with most discussions focussing on the need to share water resources equitably in order to avoid conflict. The Nile Basin Initiative is supposed to benefit equally all of the countries in the Nile Basin. “Positive development in one country can have similar effects for the rest of the countries,” said Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.

Widely reported as "the first farm expropriation", the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights recently announced that it had expropriated a 25 200ha farm near Barkley West in the Northern Cape to settle a restitution claim by 471 families.

For the first time in decades, the deserted Western Sahara village of Tifariti is reawakening to life. Located in the strip of land close to the Mauritanian desert border that is under the control of the Sahrawi pro-independence movement Polisario, Tifariti today is hosting "more than 800 delegates" participating in an international solidarity conference.

The global livestock sector is socially and politically very significant, creating livelihoods for one billion of the world’s poor and accounting for 40% of agricultural gross domestic product (GDP). A report by Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative (LEAD) finds that the value of the sector is countered by an often extremely high environmental impact.

South Africa's environment minister on Wednesday proposed contraception and some culling -- but no mass slaughter -- as part of a package of measures to slow rampant elephant population growth.

It remains difficult, if not impossible, to pin particular disasters such as floods and storms to the phenomenon of climate change. For all the advances of scientists, such precise causality cannot be established. Michael Renner posits that climate change or not, “natural” disasters are of course a frequent occurrence. But it is clear that a destabilized climate system, together with other forms of environmental damage, will cause havoc more frequently.