The small 10m by 15m garden behind Agnes Oroma's house in northern Uganda's Gulu district is much more than a hobby garden; according to HIV-positive Oroma, it is one of the main reasons she is in good health. She grows indigenous vegetables and tomatoes to supplement her daily diet of beans, maize meal and silver fish; Oroma also proudly shows off a sisal sack in which she grows onions. 'Do not ignore that little space behind your house, it can do a lot to feed you cheaply and lessen your financial burden that would enable you to spend on other essentials to keep you healthy on your daily ARV treatment,' 31-year-old Oroma told IRIN/PlusNews.

This post contains two short articles by Peter Kenworthy from African Contact. One is on the charging of two Swazi youth leaders for allegedly possessing explosives that Swazi police claim were to be used for acts of terrorism during the recent mass demonstrations for democracy, rule of law and socio-economic justice in Swaziland. The other article is about the general environment of insecurity for pro-democracy activists protesting against the government.

Mugabe has vowed that he would force elections to be held by June, without the consent of his partners in the country's shaky coalition government, stirring widespread fears that the vote would bring another wave of violent mayhem against his pro-democracy opponents. However, the latest development shows that Mugabe has been pushed further into a corner, Western diplomats say, after his Southern African neighbours, led by South Africa's president Jacob Zuma, last month ordered Mugabe to end the repeated cycles of violence and to carry out the democratic reforms he agreed to at the inception of the coalition government in February 2009.

Police have closed ranks about the investigation into the sex slave syndicate operating in northern KwaZulu-Natal. This after it was revealed that the police missed an opportunity to rescue the girls on Good Friday. The girls were believed to be held by a Nigerian and South African-run syndicate operating a brothel on a farm outside Paulpietersburg in KwaZulu-Natal. The girls are allegedly being trafficked from Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe to South Africa to work as sex slaves.

Their government has urged them to come home. But despite dire living conditions on the other side of the Ubangui River, 114,000 people who have fled fighting in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur province since October 2009 have no plans to return soon. The UN Refugee Agency agrees it is unsafe to do so now. The wider humanitarian community reckons they will stay in Republic of Congo for the rest of this year at least and has appealed for US$60m to meet their most rudimentary needs. These are legion. Likouala province, where the refugees live in about 100 settlements dotted along the river, lacks basic services to provide even for its own residents, let alone for an influx that has more than doubled the local population.

'We no longer need to go to Hanène, three kilometres away, for vaccinations or for a check-up for our children,' said Maguette Niang, a 40-year-old mother from Keur Madaro, a village in the west of Senegal. Keur Madaro is one of many Senegalese communities that now has staff watching over the health of the village from a community health post – a simple two-roomed building right in the heart of the village. This is thanks to a five-year project launched in 2006 under the title Wër (meaning 'good health' in Wolof) being carried out jointly by the Senegalese Ministry of Health, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the non-governmental organisations Plan International, Child Fund, World Vision and Africare.

Tunisian activists were unanimous in calling for the abolition of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD). However, last week's decision to bar representatives of the former ruling party from political life altogether is raising doubts among some activists and politicians. The High Commission for the Realisation of Revolutionary Goals on 11 April prohibited senior RCD members from participating in July's constituent assembly elections.

Early April saw the launch of the new World Bank Group strategy for engagement in the palm oil sector, which failed to resolve civil society concerns over several issues, including the rights of indigenous peoples and how performance standards will be applied across supply chains. The strategy outlines the conditions and standards under which the Bank will invest in the controversial palm oil sector, and brings to an end the moratorium on investments in palm oil announced by Bank president Robert Zoellick in September 2009. The original suspension followed years of pressure from civil society and indigenous peoples groups over the negative social and environmental impacts of palm oil plantations.

Volunteer Interns are needed to work for the Fahamu Refugee Programme (FRP), hosted by Fahamu Trust (www.fahamu.org), to undertake extremely varied work associated with completing the website, contributing to the FRP's monthly legal aid eNewletter and assisting in responding to requests from our listserv. The FRP is directed by Dr. Harrell-Bond, the founder/director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford (1982/96).

Potential interns must have knowledge of, or a very strong interest in learning about refugee issues, refugee law and statelessness, developing research or fundraising skills; live in or be able to work in
Oxford; and have good English writing and computing skills. Individual projects within this work include family reunion, deportation, and providing instruction for writing shadow reports. Send cover letter and curriculum vitae to (barbara@fahamu.org).

A clinical trial aimed at investigating whether an antiretroviral pill a day could prevent women from getting HIV was abandoned on 18 April. There were high hopes for the trial. But after the women had been on the pill for a year, there were no differences in HIV infection between women getting it and those getting a placebo, so the trial’s review panel recommended that it be abandoned.

The International Federation of Journalists says it is mourning the tragic death of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, killed by a mortar attack in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata, on Wednesday 20 April. Two other photojournalists, Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown, were both seriously injured by the same mortar fire along Tripoli Street at the heart of the fight between pro-Gaddafi forces and the rebels for control of Misrata.

The re-establishment of local councils in Sierra Leone in 2004 was intended to give people a greater voice in their government, reversing long years of marginalisation for rural districts in particular. But nearly seven years later, it has still not been fully implemented. A local NGO, Campaign for the Voiceless, is working to strengthen the performance of this most accessible tier of government. The campaign is working on a project intended to improve social accountability in local government.

Joaquim Miranda Maloa

Negotiations for a new economic partnership agreement (EPA) between SADC members and the European Union appear to have been shelved with no fixed date for resumption of the protracted trade negotiations. The SADC and EU negotiating teams last met in November 2010 in Mozambique. Instead, the Southern Africa bloc seems more concerned with talks on coalescing SADC, the East African Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa into what has become known as the trilateral free trade area (T-FTA).

Some people arrive with only a pair of worn out flip flops on their feet, because they couldn’t get anything better. Some drag suitcases and bundles filled with the little they were able to take away with them. All the languages of the world are spoken at Ras Ajdir, the frontier, on the border between Tunisia and Libya. Since the beginning of the Libyan crisis, more than 230,000 people fleeing war have crossed this checkpoint in an endless flow, 85,000 at the start of the conflict alone.

Canada’s first citizen-driven food policy was unveiled today (18 April) and calls on the next federal government to address crucial gaps in the nation’s food system. The People’s Food Policy (PFP) is a comprehensive plan to address some of the most pressing health, hunger, climate and agricultural-related issues facing the country.

Some people in rural Zambia are more interested in the education of their children than talk about the failed constitution-making process. 56-year-old John Siamwinde, from Chakanda Village, east of the capital Lusaka, says he has heard almost nothing about the constitution. 'I have heard about the elections coming up later in the year, but I don't know anything about the failed constitution. What we need here are schools and health facilities for our children and ourselves. Look at this school, surely our children deserve better!' he says as he points at a grass thatched shelter which is used as a school for children.

A two day ministerial meeting of the 5th session of the AU Conference of Ministers of Health (CAMH5) started in Windhoek Namibia on 21 April under the theme 'The impact of climate change on health and development in Africa', with the expectation that they will formulate a clear response to climate change in order to protect human health and ensure that it is placed at the centre of the climate debate. The meeting is concerned that Africa is already experiencing the effects of climate change, which are likely to be more severe than originally anticipated. The Ministers are also concerned that the rising frequency of extreme climate events renders African countries vulnerable to increasing prevalence of and mortality from infectious diseases that have several negative consequences such as decreasing economic productivity, increasing medical costs, and further pressurizing already tenuous health care systems.

The Malawian government is working on assisting women enter the trading system: at the end of March 2011, the country hosted a regional consultative meeting aimed at integrating women into trade activities in the agriculture sector as a way of improving production and enhancing food security within the region. The Federation of National Associations of Women in Business in Eastern and Southern Africa (FEMCOM), an umbrella body of businesswomen, and the Alliance for Commodity Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa (ACTESA) organised the meeting.

As Libya's leader struggles to keep his grip on power, one of his pet projects appears to be moving ahead at the African Union, which took initial steps Tuesday toward creating his grand plan: the United States of Africa. AU officials met Monday and Tuesday at the organisation's Ethiopia headquarters to discuss the formation of the African Union Authority, an institution that would replace the existing AU Commission with the aim of eventually bringing Africa's countries under a single unity government.