Qaddafi’s shadow will continue to be felt in Libya and neighbouring countries, especially Chad, says this briefing from the International Crisis Group. 'The upheavals that preceded and followed his fall have created new and potential problems, including massive displacement of populations; tribal tensions within Libya and racist attacks against nationals of sub-Saharan countries; a possible resurgence of Islamism; and the proliferation of fighters and weapons. It is too early to say whether the changes will evolve into medium- and long-term factors of instability in the region, notably in the Sahel and Darfur.'

The Zimbabwean government through its Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Hon. Patrick Chinamasa has only accepted 81 recommendations to improve the country’s precarious human rights situation and to improve compliance with international human rights instruments and obligations out of 177 recommendations which were tabled following Zimbabwe’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held on 10 October 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland.

In this brief, researcher William Odendaal of the Land, Environment and Development Project at the Namibian Legal Assistance Centre, examines some emerging trends and dynamics in changing power relations in rural Namibian communities due to emerging new elites and the threats to subsistence farmers’ access to communal land and natural resources. 'Land enclosures mean that powerful individuals have appropriated communal land for personal use at the expense of many communal farmers who do not have sufficient access to grazing land.'

Europe's largest and most influential biotech industry group, whose members include Monsanto, Bayer and other GM companies, is recruiting high-profile 'ambassadors' to lobby European leaders on GM policy. Green MP Caroline Lucas said: 'This brazen attempt by EuropaBio to recruit covert "ambassadors" to "change the debate" on GM is yet further proof that the powerful GM lobby will stop at nothing to push its hugely unpopular and unnecessary products onto European citizens. We need far stronger regulation on corporate lobbyists across the EU to prevent this kind of insidious behind-the-scenes manoeuvring from seriously undermining our democratic system.'

On 19 October, Chimurenga - a pan African literary & political magazine - released 'The Chronic', a once-off edition of an imaginary newspaper for the week of 18-24 May 2008, a time when xenophobic violence tore through South Africa. According to Chimurenga founding editor Ntone Edjabe, the newspaper issue seeks to 'travel back in time to stage an intervention in the past so as to reimagine the present'.

The briefing from the Arid Lands Information Network discusses how climate change is complicating the energy situation in many parts of Africa. For example, changing rainfall patterns have led to droughts, affecting hydropower generation in many countries. Countries need energy to increase economic production, which improves livelihood options for women and men. Energy is also needed to increase agricultural productivity, provide clean water and improve human health, and energy enables girls and boys to go to school.

Child rights activists have expressed concern over the stagnation of a juvenile justice law in Somalia's self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland, where officials say an average of 200 children are detained every month by police. According to Khadar Nour, a child protection activist in the capital, Hargeisa, children are regularly detained for minor offences and 'end up being detained with adults because there are no rehabilitation centres for children or prisons for children'.

Cameroon's President Paul Biya promised more jobs for young people and said he would set Cameroon on the path to being an emerging nation in a speech after he was declared winner of this month's presidential election. Cameroon's supreme court said 78-year-old Biya was re-elected by a widely expected landslide in a vote that US and French authorities have said was marred by irregularities.

The Botswana government gave the United States the green light to explore the possibility of establishing an Africa Command (Africom) base in the country when the issue was raised four years ago, American diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show. The revelations could provide ammunition for the ANC Youth League in the disciplinary hearing by the ANC of league leader Julius Malema and other league officials. Malema has been charged in connection with his call for regime change in Botswana. He also described President Ian Khama as an imperialist puppet, in part in connection with claims that Botswana was talking to the US about an Africom base.

The Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs Patrick Chinamasa on 12 October 2011 said the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act will not be amended. In his concluding remarks in Geneva, Switzerland, on the occasion of the adoption of Zimbabwe's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report by the working group of the Human Rights Council (HRC), Chinamasa defended the two laws saying they were there to stay.

Burundi has retained the top position as the most bribery prone country in East Africa, according to the East African Bribery Index 2011. Burundi has a bribery prevalence level of 37.9 per cent up from 36.7 per cent in 2010, while Uganda and Tanzania have been ranked second and third at 33.9 per cent and 31.6 per cent respectively, both up from 33 per cent and 28.6 per cent in 2010.

This debt map from The Economist shows the global level of public debt, broken down by country, percentage of GDP, public debt per person and annual debt percentage change. With public debt being at the centre of the financial crisis in Europe, the map offers a fascinating insight into the levels of public debt in some countries.

The idea that the few dominate the many will not come as news to those gathered either to occupy Wall Street or to occupy everywhere. But up until now it has been just an intuition that a few corporations control the world. Not any more. A team of Swiss mathematicians just proved that out of over 43,000 transnational corporations (TNCs), relatively few control almost 80 per cent of the global economy. Find out who has the power by clicking on the link to this article.

A third of humanity, mostly in Africa and South Asia, face the biggest risks from climate change but rich nations in northern Europe will be least exposed, according to a new report. Bangladesh, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are among 30 countries with 'extreme' exposure to climate shift, according to a ranking of 193 nations by Maplecroft, a British firm specialising in risk analysis. Of 30 nations identified in the new report as at 'extreme' risk from climate change, two-thirds are in Africa and all are developing countries.

This publication is the result of a collective process of reflection on the meaning and implications of
community protests for local governance by the Good Governance Learning Network (GGLN). The contributions 'seek to critically enhance government and civil society’s understanding of the importance of recognising community voice and dissatisfaction as a legitimate alternative to pre-defined and state-sanctioned modalities of public participation. The underlying concern is with the technicist, procedural and instrumentalist approach that has (by and large) come to underpin public participation in South Africa. The plea, therefore, is for more dynamic, more meaningful and more varied modes of participation to be nurtured.'

Liberia's main opposition party says it is boycotting the November presidential election run-off unless a set of demands are addressed. George Solo, deputy campaign manager for the Congress for Democratic Change, said that the party is demanding that the head of the electoral body be changed. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the incumbent president, will face Winston Tubman in the 8 November run-off.

This report by Balancing Act analyses the nascent apps ecosystem in Africa while providing an analytical framework allowing African mobile operators or other stakeholders to decide on what strategy to adopt regarding mobile apps.

Malawi's fertiliser subsidy scheme, credited for transforming famine-prone Malawi into an exporter of maize, is in danger. The executive director of the Malawi Economic Justice Network, Dalitso Kubalasa, explained the government's woes in précis.'Fuel and fertiliser are scarce because the suppliers can't get the forex needed to pay for the stuff. There's no forex in Malawi's banks because Malawi has allowed itself to become dependent on a single forex earner, tobacco, and the tobacco price slumped last year. The freeze in Western aid tied Malawi's other hand, as it were,' he said.

This year, 44 journalists have already been murdered, says the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), which launched a review of press freedom around the world during World Newspaper Week, held from 10 to 15 October in Vienna, Austria. During the events, which included its Congress and World Editors Forum, WAN-IFRA presented the Golden PEN of Freedom to Dawit Isaak, jailed in Eritrea since 2001. The Golden Pen of Press Freedom 2011 was accepted by Esayas Isaak on behalf of his brother, who has not been heard from since 2005. The Golden Pen of Press Freedom 2011 was accepted by Esayas Isaak on behalf of his brother.

Cutting off peoples’ limbs - in most cases their hands - was one of the brutal strategies used by members of the Revolutionary United Front to terrify people to support them. Some 27,000 Sierra Leoneans are estimated to have been disabled or have had one or more of their limbs amputated during the 1991-2002 civil war. In 2004 the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), set up to try to deliver accountability for human rights abuses, issued a report recommending that amputees, war widows, children, victims of sexual violence and the seriously war-wounded, should receive reparations in the form of free education for children, free health care and skills training to be managed by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA). But many have received nothing.