Kenya has agreed to open a new camp near its border with Somalia to cope with the influx of refugees fleeing the region's worst drought in 60 years. The lfo II camp in Dabaab will open its doors to 80,000 refugees within 10 days, the Kenyan government said. Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed to open the new camp after visiting Dadaab's three existing camps where an estimated 380,000 refugees are now living at facilities intended to cope with a population of 90,000 people.

Zimbabwe’s immigration officials say they have instructed their officers at border posts not to accept illegal immigrants and refugees seeking to enter into the country. The ban is targeted at refugees mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia whom Zimbabwe accuses of using the country as a transit point to South Africa. The government-owned Herald newspaper reported that five border posts usually used by the Ethiopian and Somali immigrants had been instructed not to allow refugees into the country.

Gender activists have won a significant battle in their quest for more women representation in government with the final unveiling of President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet. Of the 40 ministers, 13 are women, a major milestone in the campaign for more involvement of women in governance. The number of female appointees in the cabinet represents about 31 per cent of the 42-member cabinet.

Amado Kafando's elation followed news on 7 March that the price of cotton, a crop he plants each summer in rows broken by a cow-tethered plow, hit a record $2.197 a pound, capping a two-year surge of 430 per cent. Finally, he said, cotton could fulfill the promise of its nickname in his homeland of Burkina Faso: white gold. But within weeks, Kafando was clenching his fists. The government and regional cotton monopolies, which Burkinabe farmers must sell to, announced they would charge growers 38 per cent more for fertilizer - and pay them as little as 39 per cent of the world price at the time for their crop.

The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) has revealed visual evidence of mass graves in South Kordofan, which corroborates new eyewitness reports, obtained by SSP, of systematic killings and mass burials in this conflict-torn region of Sudan. The evidence found by SSP is consistent with allegations that the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and northern militias have engaged in a campaign of killing civilians.

Domestically abused women who are financially dependent on their abusers can now report the crime with the assurance that they will be able to get financial and medical support from the state, thanks to the country’s new law on domestic violence. Women’s campaigners have welcomed the introduction of the new law, which was signed into the statue books on 8 July, and which criminalises domestic violence and offers protection to victims and their families. Until now domestic violence had not been illegal in Angola - and on the rare occasions it reached court, it was prosecuted under rape, assault and battery laws.

South Africa's fuel workers' union has rejected a minimum eight per cent wage increase and is holding out for a double-digit hike, the union's chief negotiator said on Tuesday (19 July).The strike has left petrol stations dry across South Africa for more than a week and will probably cost the continent's top economy billions of rand in lost output.

Zimbabwe is unable to fill 15,000 teaching posts in government schools because school leavers are reluctant to join the profession. The vacant posts are said to be increasing despite reports that thousands of Zimbabwean teachers, who had left the country at the height of the economic problems, were returning home. An official in the Ministry of Education told the state owned Herald newspaper that out of the 111,000 teaching posts in the country, 96,000 were filled by qualified teachers.

Hospitals in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, have been hit by a shortage of drugs following the arrival of large numbers of drought-displaced people in the past two months, with health officials reporting that up to five patients were dying daily due to disease outbreaks. 'Hospitals are experiencing shortages of medicines yet they need to distribute drugs to deal with outbreaks of measles, diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria and respiratory diseases,' Aden Ibrahim, the Health Minister in Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, told IRIN in Mogadishu.

A senior United Nations humanitarian official says the world body is 'extremely worried' about the situation in Sudan's South Kordofan region after a leaked report said war crimes may have been committed there. The leaked UN report, which emerged on Monday, documents witness accounts of suspected atrocities and called for an inquiry into the allegations. Oil-rich South Kordofan borders the newly created nation of South Sudan. It has seen intense fighting in recent months between the Sudan's army and local armed groups.

The United Nations is set to declare famine in parts of southern Somalia, signalling to donors the need for more aid and to insurgents that the population's suffering is being taken seriously. Mark Bowden, humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, was expected to make the announcement in Nairobi, based on fresh data from the food security and nutrition analysis unit for the violent Horn of Africa country, aid officials told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. 'It will declare famine in several areas of southern Somalia,' a Geneva-based aid worker said. The world body has described the Horn of Africa drought as an emergency, one level short of a famine, citing dire levels of acute malnutrition among Somali children reaching camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.

DR Congo's National Independent Electoral Commission has registered 31.4 million voters for the November elections. The announcement was made by the commission chairman, the Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunga, following the completion of the first phase of the updating of the electoral roll. DRC’s population is estimated to be 65 million people. With 48 per cent of these already enrolled to vote, this will be a big increase compared to the last election in 2006.

The blog features a selection of photographs from South African photographer Lizane Louw, who has spent three years chronicling the lives of the people of Blikkiesdorp (translation: Tin Town), a temporary relocation camp in Delft, located about 30 km from Cape Town's city centre. 'I don’t think it is ethically and morally acceptable that people that are poor must live in such challenging and substandard living conditions. Something needs to be done and we need to seriously reflect on ourselves as a society, when these things happen in your backyard without us attempting to do anything about it,' she is quoted as saying.

On his trip to South Africa, David Cameron talked of the need to go beyond debt cancellation and aid 'to make African free trade the common purpose of the continent'. But, argues this article from the UK Guardian, trade on the wrong terms has been of no benefit to Africa - rather it 'has ripped open markets, destroyed infant industries, undermined control of food production, and exploited resources. It is the opposite of what Africa needs'.

The issue includes:
- ‘This place restored my dignity’: Stories of the Solms-Delta farm workers by Crystal Orderson
- Struggle songs, heritage and reconciliation by Cecyl Esau
- Employment Equity: Ticking Boxes or True Transformation?
- Are we democratic citizens? by Ayanda Nyoka
- South Africa documents the undocumented by Caroline Ruetsch.

In a blow to those calling for a new constitution to be drawn up before elections are held, Egypt's ruling military council last week reiterated its intention to hold parliamentary polls later this year. 'The council remains committed to an interim plan to hold parliamentary elections first, after which a new constitution will be drafted,' a spokesman for Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) declared in an official statement on 12 July. 'Presidential elections will be held some time after that.' Since the February ouster of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak, the debate over whether parliamentary polls should precede the formulation of a new constitution - or vice versa - has polarised the public.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Jacob Zuma have agreed that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi must go. Cameron, who is on a working visit to South Africa, told reporters in Pretoria on Monday that he and Zuma believed Gaddafi needed to step down from power. However, Zuma said: 'What happens to Gaddafi must be decided by the Libyan people. You need to negotiate how, why and where he must go.'

The trial of six Zimbabwean activists charged with treason for attending a lecture in February about the Egyptian uprising opened in Harare on 18 July. The activists had their charges altered to a lesser charge as the magistrate who was supposed to hear the matter recused himself. The activists are now being charged with conspiracy to commit public violence.

Ethel James cannot wait for the gravity-fed water scheme in her area to be fixed so that she and the other women in her village will no longer have to wake up before dawn everyday to queue for water. She is part of the team of local villagers repairing the existing water system, which consists of a pipeline connected to a reservoir. At various points in the village are taps connected to the pipeline, but there is no running water just yet.

President Mwai Kibaki has assured that the Government is committed to undertaking far-reaching reforms in the management of public affairs and entrenchment in constitutionality. Speaking when he met and held discussions with members of the African Peer Review Mechanism, Kibaki noted that new and vibrant structures of governance were being put in place under the new constitution.