A new wave of HIV activism is rising in Swaziland as people living with HIV take to the streets in protest, many for the first time in their lives, over continued shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. Swaziland's deepening financial crisis is taking a toll on service delivery, and the country is experiencing an unprecedented number of protests over issues such as school closures and a lack of HIV treatment. While Africa's last absolute monarchy does not allow formal political opposition to operate, a new brand of HIV activism may be taking hold as anger mounts over a lack of ARVs.

Protesters from the DRC have accused President Zuma of complicity in what they allege is electoral fraud in the recent election in the restive country. Supporters of opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi believe South Africa acted at the behest of western interests who seek to keep incumbent President Joseph Kabila in power to protect international investments in the mineral-rich country, reports the Daily Maverick.

'Kill me, kill me, you people should just kill me,' an unidentified woman begged as she was being gang raped by five men while her ordeal was filmed with one of their mobile phones. The crime is believed to have taken place at a private off-campus hostel near Abia State University, Nigeria, in August 2011. The video of the rape, on the Internet, caught the attention of blogger Linda Ikeji. Her subsequent blogpost of the crime sparked widespread anger and debate in Nigeria and beyond, especially among bloggers, Twitter users and organisations such as the youth group EnoughisEnough Nigeria.

As Libya’s liberators come to terms with how to rebuild the country, three paths are emerging for the riches held in its sovereign wealth fund, according to a new report from international political consulting firm GeoEconomica GmbH. The question becomes what’s next for the nearly $56 billion that was invested under the Gadhafi regime. In the report GeoEconomica analysts Sven Behrendt and Deen Sharp predicts that the fund will either: evolve into a strategic investment vehicle, carry on with its traditional mandate as a savings fund for future generations, or (perhaps most likely) be liquidated as competing interest groups battle over Libya’s political and economic future.

Five separate retrospective mortality surveys, carried out by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other researchers in prefectures accounting for the majority of the population, show excess mortality above what is considered to be the 'emergency threshold', says Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a new report. 'And yet the commitment of the country’s government and of the international community is going in the wrong direction. The government has been decreasing its investments in health, as have international donors, while humanitarian assistance has failed to reduce the widespread medical crisis.'

Mozambique's dependence on foreign aid is declining, Finance Minister Manuel Chang told the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Introducing the state budget for 2012, Chang said that only 39.6 per cent of public expenditure will be covered by foreign grants and loans, with 60.4 per cent of the budget met by domestic resources. In the 2011 budget, 44.6 per cent of expenditure was to be covered by foreign aid, and in the 2010 budget the figure was 51.4 per cent.

A spokesman for Ghana’s Education Ministry has told the Accra Mail he is confident a programme in which teachers warn students of the 'adverse consequences' of being gay will make it 'a thing of the past'. LGBT Asylum News points out that the deputy director general of the country’s education service said in an interview this year that homosexuality 'started with single-sex schools'.

A powerful bomb blast targeting soldiers followed by gunfire rocked the troubled Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Tuesday 13 December, with at least 10 people killed, an official and a hospital source said. Residents claimed soldiers reacted to the bombing by shooting indiscriminately and burning homes, with troops having been accused of such abuses following previous attacks after alleging residents were complicit.

Malawi will review a series of controversial laws, including a ban on homosexual acts, Justice Minister Ephraim Chiume has said. Chiume said the review was in response to 'public opinion'. Western governments criticised Malawi last year for jailing a gay couple on sodomy charges.
On Tuesday last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would use foreign aid to encourage countries to decriminalise homosexuality.

The dramatic changes to weather patterns as a result of climate change will have dire consequences for agriculture, the major source of food and income for Africa’s small-scale farmers, most of them women. Millions of people will be forced to migrate, seeking better environments to sustain themselves and their families as the land becomes unproductive. Not enough is being done in national adaptation strategies to acknowledge the different gender dimensions of climate change and migration.

Food prices, which increased by just 1 per cent last year, have increased by a whopping 10.6 per cent so far this year. Lower-income South Africans, who spend much more of their total earnings on food, are the biggest victims of this sharp increase in food-price inflation. According to the South African quarterly 'Food Price Monitor' report, produced by the National Agricultural Marketing Council, the cost of the standard Statistics South Africa food basket, expressed as a share of the average monthly income of the wealthiest 30 per cent of the population, is only 2.9 per cent. By contrast, this cost for the poorest 30 per cent of the population was a heavy 36.4 per cent in October.

US 'occupy' protesters claimed victory Monday 12 December in blockading ports along the West Coast and shutting down a major trade cargo hub in a new front on the anti-capitalist campaign. At least one port was fully closed down, while freight traffic was disrupted at several others including in Oakland, where thousands of demonstrators rallied after a day of action from California to Alaska.

Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Refugee Rights Centre at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, on behalf of the Somali Association of South Africa (SASA) and the Project for Conflict Resolution and Development (PCRD) was granted an order 13 December 2011 in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth regarding the closure of the Port Elizabeth Refugee Reception Office. In terms of the order, an interim office at the regional immigration office must continue to provide asylum services to all holders of asylum seeker and refugee permits issued under the Refugees Act. The order also stipulates that no one whose permit expired between the period of 30 November 2011 and 14 December 2011 when the refugee office was non-functional will be subjected to a fine or any criminal sanction for the expiry of that permit.

There are currently 52 journalists imprisoned in Africa, in nine countries. More than half the jailed journalists are held in that scourge of media freedom - Eritrea. The most disturbing news to come out of Committee to Protect Journalist's recent report on journalists behind bars, is that the trend of imprisoning journalists - often on trumped-up charges – has seen a sharp increase over the last decade.

Two weeks of discussions at the 17th annual Conference of the Parties (COP17), which ran through Friday and Saturday nights, resulted in sleep-deprived negotiators attending numerous closed meetings and missing flights. These groups have been disappointed by the outcomes, and the consequences that will be shouldered by developing nations, especially those in Africa.
'Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global pro-portions,' said Nnimmo Bassey, chairman of Friends of the Earth International. 'An increase in global temperatures of 4ºC, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, small island states, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apart-heid, whereby the richest 1 percent of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99 percent.'

The world court has said it was referring Malawi to the UN Security Council over its refusal to arrest Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the court for genocide. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir and as a signatory to the Rome statute that created The Hague-based world court, Malawi was obligated to detain the Sudanese leader on its soil. But on 15 October al-Bashir was among six heads of state attending a meeting of the 19-member Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) in the tiny landlocked nation and returned home later in the weekend unhindered.

Waterborne diseases, such as typhoid, dysentery and watery diarrhoea - all approaching epidemic levels - are creating concerns that conditions exist for a reprise of the 2008/09 cholera epidemic, which killed more than 4,000 people and infected nearly 100,000 others. The Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) for Zimbabwe, launched on 9 December, is asking for US$268 million for humanitarian assistance in 2012. The CAP highlights a decade of 'neglect' of the country’s water sanitation and hygiene sector (WASH), which has left 8 million people, or about two-thirds of the population, 'with limited access to WASH and health services'.

Charles Ingabire, an online Rwandan journalist and genocide survivor, is the latest victim in a series of bloody attacks targeting Rwandan journalists. Ingabire was killed in apparent execution style outside a Kampala bar on Sunday, 30 November 2011. Another journalist, Charles Rugambgage, was murdered in June 2010 in Rwanda.

Gun battles broke out near the international airport in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, army officials said. An army spokesman told Libyan TV two gunmen opened fire on Saturday on a convoy accompanying army chief Maj-Gen Khalifa Haftar but called it an 'isolated incident'. It was reportedly followed by hours of clashes along the coastal road. The violence adds to concerns over stability in Libya after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi earlier this year.

The promise of job creation has been put forward by investors, governments, and international institutions to convince local communities of the benefits of foreign investment in agriculture. For instance, the Sierra Leonean president, claimed in March 2011, 'Huge investments in the [agricultural] sector will definitely translate into hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities for our youths.' Several countries studied by the Oakland Institute reveal that many locals thus welcome land investment with the hope that such projects will bring jobs and wages.