'He pulled me by my hair and dragged me to the entrance of the house. I knew he was taking me to the bedroom, and I knew what that would mean. His one hand pulled at my long hair, braided to my scalp while his other hand wrapped itself around my face, choking me, his fingers digging into my eyes...I held on to the gate and refused to let him take me in - that was when he bit off half my ear.' Three weeks earlier, 46-year-old Gugu Mofokeng had left the shelter where she had been living for a year. Mofokeng's story may sound shocking, but it is not unusual in South Africa. Gender activists have long argued that violence against women in the country is at 'epidemic' proportions.

Gender Links (GL) has called on the government to declare a state of emergency in the fight to end gender violence. In a press release to mark the close of the Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, GL said that countless research studies now show that the problem is overwhelming and the response is insufficient, especially when measured against the target of halving gender violence by 2015 in the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.

The latest edition of the Global Information Society Watch questions the assumption that information and communications technologies (ICTs) will automatically be a panacea for climate change while also looking at the potential of ICTs to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as are the roles of international institutions, the global research agenda on ICTs and climate change and 'sustainability' as an evolving concept.

Minni Minnawi, the only Darfur faction leader to have signed the Darfur Peace Agreement [DPA] with the Sudanese government, has declared the failure of the 2006 deal. The announcement deals another blow to Khartoum, which faces the possibility of the southern portion of the country seceding in an upcoming poll. On Sunday, Minnawi accused the government of failing to implement the Darfur agreement, saying that he is ready to do battle. Minnawi, the Sudan Liberation Army [SLA] faction leader, secured several official titles after he signed the peace accord with Khartoum.

The School of Public Policy and Management (SPPM) at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China is excited to announce that our Master of Public Administration in International Development (MID) Program is now accepting applications for Fall 2011 enrollment.

It should be no surprise to anyone that South African diplomats been been frustrated both with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, or that Kenya and the United States have enjoyed close military to military ties despite vocal US criticism of the Kenyan government. Wikileaks cables released to date, such as the ones included in this AfricaFocus Bulletin, provide some nuances and may be embarrassing, but provide no 'smoking guns' or startling revelations. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the text of two cables from late 2009, one reporting on conversations between Kenyan and US officials on disagreements about shipment of tanks to Southern Sudan, and the other a conversation between the US Ambassador to South Africa and the South African Foreign Minister, including remarks about the sitution in Zimbabwe.

After the separation barrier against Palestinian territories, Israel has begun to build a new wall, this one to keep migrants from Africa out. The new wall is coming up on the Egyptian border, and with Egyptian support. The Israeli government approved plans late last month to build a detention camp near its border with Egypt to house illegal African immigrants. Local activists decried the move, which they say flies in the face of internationally accepted human rights norms.

Development in Africa could falter as climate change grips the continent, increasing the length and severity of droughts and floods by altering precipitation patterns, among other impacts. The region needs a major shift in its economic development policies and thinking towards decentralised, green economic development, experts now say. 'The world’s big economies are largely living off financial transactions which are unconnected to development,' warns Supachai Panitchpakdi, secretary-general of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

More South African farmers expect to receive land offers in Mozambique as they seek to expand across Africa amid uncertainty over land reform at home, an official from a mostly white farmers group said on Monday. South Africa - Africa's biggest economy - has one of the most developed agricultural sectors on the continent and its farmers are looking to expand into other countries. Some 800 South African farmers are already farming in Mozambique.

SADC states and the European Union have missed the year-end deadline for the completion and signing of a full Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), a target set in June and designed to bring finality to the complex process. Following the expiry of the Cotonou Agreement, the seven SADC states, Botswana among them, began lengthy negotiations for a new trade agreement, but the process eventually failed to meet the original December 2007 deadline enforceable by the World Trade Organisation.

The government of Mali is seen as the largest obstacle to conduct an effective fight against Al Qaeda groups in the Sahara desert. Distrust between Algeria and Mali further hinder cooperation. Diplomatic cables from several US embassies, published by Wikileaks, reveal that the announced concerted fight against Al Qaeda in the Sahara and Sahel region is moving ahead slowly. Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger had announced a joint effort to hit back at the terrorists.

After the sound of gunfire fell silent in Southern Sudan, marking the end of one of Africa's longest running civil wars, Pio Kowr Ding decided he would return home to the autonomous region to take up an agricultural research job with the government. With a masters degree in soil and land evaluation, and experience working for the Agricultural Research Corporation's Land and Water Research Center (LWRC) in Khartoum, Ding was keen to help the region rebuild its agricultural research. But when he arrived in 2008 he realised that the task was actually to start from scratch and the living conditions were tough.

The Africa Portal is an online knowledge resource for policy-related issues on Africa. An undertaking by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Makerere University (MAK), and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), the Africa Portal offers open access to a suite of features including an online library collection; a resource for opinion and analysis; an experts directory; an international events calendar; and a mobile technology component -all aimed to equip users with research and information on Africa’s current policy issues.

US drugmaker Pfizer hired investigators to find evidence of corruption against the then Nigerian attorney-general to convince him to drop legal action against the company over a drug trial, the UK's Guardian newspaper has reported, citing leaked US diplomatic cables. Nigeria's Kano state sued the world's largest drugmaker in May 2007 for $2bn in damages over testing of the meningitis drug, Trovan, which state authorities said killed 11 children and left dozens disabled.

The CODESRIA Lecture Series is a major outlet for disseminating special lectures and keynote addresses emanating from various scientific fora provided by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). This series projects CODESRIA’s main thematic areas, covering Africa’s social, economic, political and intellectual development. The neoliberal domination and the prioritisation of the private ruled by the market have deeply affected the educational models, and produced significant alterations on the social role of higher education institutions in Africa.

Concentration in the agrifood sector has been increasing over the past few years, with sometimes tragic consequences for small-scale farmers and agricultural workers. In this new briefing note, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food explores how the creation and abuse of dominant buyer power by global agribusiness firms can be addressed in competition law, and how developed and developing States can work together in this way. The note shows that global food supply chains will contribute significantly to the reduction of rural poverty only to the extent that such abuses are effectively combated through competition law regimes that are designed to be consistent with the obligation of States to protect the right to adequate food.

Until 2007, when international medical NGO Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) came to Swaziland to help the Ministry of Health in the response on HIV/AIDS and TB in the Shiselweni region, HIV/AIDS and TB treatment was not available at any of the region’s 21 clinics. Patients had to either travel to the Hlathikhulu Government Hospital or Matsanjeni and Nhlangano health centres. These centres were located in each of the towns of the different regions in the country. A health centre is a facility that is smaller than a hospital with a few beds and does not have a theatre to do operations. MSF worked with government to bring services to the clinics, but this was not enough because some patients were either too weak or too poor to reach even the clinics.

Bacharou Gorel had 300 head of cattle before the food security crisis began in Niger. Today he has only 53 left. From Tilabéri in the west, through the central region of Maradi, and into Diffa in the far east of the country, no region has been spared this massive loss of livestock, according to Harouna Abarchi, from AREN (the Association for the Revival of Livestock in Niger), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

Security of two suspected gay persons arrested and released from Makerere and Wandegeya police posts in Uganda is a major concern since Mitchell Hall Gradens’ residents, where they were arrested, believe lynching would be the perfect solution to stop their alleged homosexuality. Eye witnesses claim that the two were found engaging in ‘homosexual activities’ at around 10pm on Wednesday 8 December. 'The person who found them, known only as Tamale, called other hall residents and they arrested the two. The mob wanted to lynch them but the Hall security intervened and the two were taken to police,' Adrian Jjuuko of Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum Uganda (HRAPF) stated.

African nations can break dependence on food imports and produce enough to feed a growing population within a generation despite extra strains from climate change, a study said last Thursday. About 70 per cent of Africans are involved in agriculture but almost 250 million people, or a quarter of the population of the poorest continent, are undernourished. The number has risen by 100 million since 1990.