There is a ray of hope for millions of poor Zambians - thanks to the unwavering anti-corruption efforts of many organisations like Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) and the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA). Supported by the UK’s development agency DFiD, since 2008, the international initiatives have been spearheading a project aimed at helping to increase access to essential medicines by low income and disadvantaged people in Zambia. MeTA and TIZ want to improve transparency and accountability in the selection, procurement, sale and distribution of essential medicines in Zambia. And it involves the key sectors in government, the pharmaceutical industry, civil society and the donor community.

A new programme, funded largely by the United States President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), will provide $130-million in grants to African institutions, with the aim of strengthening medical education and research training. Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), said the goals of the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (Mepi) are ambitious. 'The intention here is, over five years, to train no less than 140 000 healthcare workers and to provide a real platform for a wide variety of research activities going forward. This is not something that has been attempted before,' he said.

To mark the centenary year of International Women's Day on 8 March, Panos London has produced a case study media pack profiling extraordinary women from around the world who have taken on roles previously deemed just for men. 'Breaking Barriers: Women in a Man's World' is a showcase of exceptional women who are breaking stereotypes to change their own lives and inspire other women and girls around them.

Tunisia's interim authorities have disbanded the country's feared state security apparatus, notorious for human rights abuses under the ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Seeking to assert their authority and gain legitimacy in the eyes of protesters who forced Ben Ali to flee in January, the authorities appear to be attacking the remaining vestiges of his 23-year rule, one-by-one.

The independent news magazine Kontext TV, supported by Noam Chomsky and others, was at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal in February and has produced a series of broadcasts on the occasion of the Forum's 10th anniversary. The first programme is now online in English and German versions under The programme reports about some of the key issues at the Forum such as the impacts of the revolutions in North Africa and the formation of a worldwide movement for climate justice and land grabbing. Another broadcast focussing on Africa is going to follow.

On the centenary of International Women’s Day 2011, FIAN calls for equal land rights for women worldwide. Access to and control over land is one of the most important means for men and women in rural areas to realise their right to food. Discriminatory practices, however, have driven women into increased marginalisation, especially when it comes to access to resources such as land, water or seeds. As a consequence, women are disproportionately affected by hunger and malnutrition.

Few people are aware that a group of women - calling themselves the Peace Women - were instrumental in bringing peace to Liberia. Their story, which begins with the simple act of sitting along the streets for months under the hot sun or torrential rains of Liberia, led to the exile of alleged warlord Charles Taylor in 2003, now awaiting his verdict in The Hague. In 1998, women united in their common goal for an end to violence, and played an essential role in the decommissioning of young rebels to install peace and democracy in a war-torn country. The movement took place under the auspices of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). Today the work of these Peace Women continues.

For Moroccan women, the International Women's Day on 8 March provided an opportunity to evaluate the status of their rights. Women still suffer from discrimination and have yet to achieve much-desired equality in the workplace, officials and experts say. According to the economy and finance ministry, the level of women's employment in the civil service is 36 per cent. Women account for 14 per cent of senior employees, constituting 10 per cent of division heads and 16 per cent of department heads.

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki did not take strong action against Uganda for ‘grabbing’ Migingo Island to politically undermine Prime Minister Raila Odinga. That was the thinking by US embassy officials in Nairobi, as revealed by secret diplomatic cables made public by whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The cable analyses the background to the tiny disputed island on Lake Victoria, the way it has impacted on Kenya-Uganda relations and also become a political dispute in Kenya.

Sex workers and civil society groups across Africa took to the streets on Thursday (03 March) to demand access to health care services and an end to the violation of their human rights. Several African countries held marches including Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to mark International Sex Workers' Rights Day. In South Africa, people marched in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Mussina. The march was led by the Sex Workers' Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat) and Sisonke Sex Workers Movement, which are organisations that seek to ensure human rights for sex workers.

Thousands of Zimbabweans attended a rally organised by President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party on 3 March in the capital, Harare, to mark the launch of an anti-sanctions campaign. The aim is to collect at least two million signatures on a petition against the sanctions, which Mugabe has blamed for the country's dire economic situation and prolonged food insecurity.

Lead poisoning linked with illegal gold mining has killed a further 400 children in northern Nigeria since November, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said. Reuters reports that the latest figures suggest the death toll from the crisis in the northern state of Zamfara is rising after the United Nations said lead poisoning in the region had killed at least 400 children between March and October last year.

South Africa's genetically modified crop area for the 2010/11 season rose 6 per cent but perceptions make it hard for other African countries to adopt the practice, the deputy agriculture minister said on Thursday (03 March). South Africa, the world's seventh-largest producer of GM crops but Africa's biggest, has seen a rapid increase in gene-altered crop output since it started growing GM farm produce in 1998.

Women and girls returning to northern Uganda from forced conscription into the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) struggle to resettle in their home communities because of stigma and a severe shortage of reintegration facilities tailored to their needs, say analysts and returnees. After leaving the LRA, former female combatants return to their villages with children forcibly fathered by LRA commanders and delivered in the bush. They are often shunned by their families and stigmatised as 'bush women' by their communities.

Oil and gas companies have improved the transparency of how they report revenues and information about anti-corruption programmes but should take bolder actions to stop corruption, according to a new report by Transparency International (TI) and Revenue Watch Institute (RWI). The 2011 'Report on Oil and Gas Companies', which is based on research conducted in 2010 and is an expanded version of a report published in 2008, rates 44 companies on the public availability of information on their anti-corruption programmes and how they report their financial results in all the countries where they operate. By disclosing anti-corruption measures and key organisational and financial data, especially on a country-by-country level, companies demonstrate their commitment to stop the misappropriation of revenues. In particular, detailed publication of fiscal payments allows citizens to hold governments to account.

The World Bank's new Africa strategy, which was unveiled on Thursday (03 March), carries three main risks, including a volatile global economy, political violence and conflict, and inadequate resources. The new strategy will focus on the three main pillars of competitiveness and employment; vulnerability and resilience; and governance and public sector capacity.

After months of lobbying and campaigning by Zambian activists, the government has announced that it will provide free third-line antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to people living with HIV. This week the government invited bids for supplying the drugs, which they at first had said were too expensive, and the number of people needing them still too small. It is expected that the drugs will be available by mid-2011. More than 300,000 people receive ARV treatment at over 1,400 counselling and testing sites across Zambia.

Benin last month saw mass protests, demanding a delay of the elections planned for 27 February as 1.4 million voters were missing in the electoral roll. The Constitutional Court of Benin ruled in the favour of the country's opposition - backed by crowds of protesters - and delayed the presidential elections for another week, to 13 March, in order to expand the electoral roll further.

A Zimbabwean magistrate's court has freed 38 activists charged with treason for discussing the mass protests in Egypt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, a lawyer said. 'Of the 46 who were in custody, 38 have been released completely after the state agreed with us that they had no case to answer,' their attorney Alec Muchadehama told Agence France-Presse. But eight others, including Munyaradzi Gwisai, a university lecturer and former lawmaker from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, remained in custody after the court denied them bail.

ECOWAS member states should announce that members of the unrecognised Gbagbo government and his entourage are 'persona non grata' in their territory and break all economic and financial ties with public or semi-public companies, particularly in the oil and energy sectors, controlled by that regime. This is according to a report from the International Crisis Group. Côte d’Ivoire is in crisis after Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after he lost the November 2010 presidential election.