At least 20,000 Somalis displaced by fighting from the border town of Bulo Hawo are facing an uncertain future in camps in the Kenyan town of Mandera, locals told IRIN on 27 October. 'The entire town [Bulo Hawo] has almost been emptied by the fighting; most have fled to the interior, but at least 3,500 families [21,000 people] have crossed into Kenya,' said Ahmed Mohamed Yusuf, an elder.

Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) heavyweight Zwelinzima Vavi has denied suggestions that a civil society conference under way in Boksburg was testing waters for a new political party. 'Let us right from onset state that we are not an anti-ANC and anti-government coalition,' the Cosatu general secretary told delegates on Wednesday. 'We are not here to begin a process to form any political party, nor to advance the interest of any individual.'

Research on HIV/AIDS is on the rise in South Africa, a country with the largest number of HIV infections in the world, while Western research efforts have levelled out, a study has found. Only around two per cent of all research articles produced by the United States, the biggest producer of HIV/AIDS studies, are about HIV/AIDS, according to the study in Scientometrics. By contrast, 5.5 per cent of South Africa's research effort goes towards HIV/AIDS - mainly clinical medicine and social studies.

Over the past 30 years, discrimination has driven the AIDS epidemic - making marginalized groups more vulnerable to infection and making those living with HIV unable to access care. South Africa has a heroic history of overcoming apartheid, but xenophobic violence and discrimination continues to be a scourge on the country, undermining the health of migrant populations and impeding AIDS efforts.

Investment houses across the globe have been considering acquisition of farmland as an increasingly attractive investment opportunity. Studies indicate that investments of over $60 billion have been committed for farmland deals by the financial investment firms alone. India’s private sector has been participating in this global phenomenon in a big way. In Africa alone for instance, it has been estimated that more than 80 companies, mainly processing and trading houses, have invested about $2.4 billion in acquiring farmlands to secure raw material supplies, scale and global presence.

In making his second submission to a parliamentary committee on the Protection of Information Bill, Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele defended the proposed legislation as being in line with the South African Constitution, International Human Right’s Charters and Conventions and international best practice. Regrettably Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) remains unconvinced.

This conference will explore themes surrounding judicial roles and responses to war crimes and also responses to such initiatives from victims/victors, interested agencies and commentators, including the UN, NATO and various local, regional and international NGOs.

The Child Protection and Trafficking site is intended to help unpack some of the myths around human trafficking and child safety in South Africa. Media Monitoring Africa is working with children, journalists and non-governmental organisations to try and create a better understanding of the issues involved, and what we can do to tackle modern slavery.

The Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK) is a non governmental organisation set up in 1998 in response to the increasing complex and deteriorating refugee situation in Kenya. RCK has a regular newsletter which can be read by visiting their website.

Kenya's foreign minister has stepped aside amid a growing scandal involving the alleged misuse of his ministry's funds for several land deals abroad. Moses Wetangula, who maintains his innocence, made his announcement as MPs were set to vote on his suspension. A parliamentary report recommended his removal until claims over deals for new embassies were fully investigated.

Efforts by the political left to shape the debate on a new growth path were dealt a heavy blow when cabinet’s big guns stopped far short this week of backing radical interventions in the economy. Just more than a month after Cosatu called for radical interventions – including having 'ownership' over the
balance sheets of the central bank by a new state bank, tightened exchange controls and redistribution of income in key employment sectors – the government has turned a deaf ear.

Since the inception of the Internet Governance Forum, the Council of Europe (CoE), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have been working on a joint initiative on public participation in internet governance. The aim of the CoE/UNECE/APC project is to consider whether there is scope for developing a code of good practice on information, participation and transparency in Internet governance. A code of good practice is now available.

Gus Pickard, a rural development consultant operating in the Western Cape, has a strange problem, writes Karin Kleinbooi on the blog Another Countryside. He has been contacted by a farming family living on land near Elim: they desperately need help because they may lose their land - to the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform. 'The family has been farming on the land for many years. Despite setbacks they have survived; but they have also accumulated significant debt — not enough to render them insolvent, but enough to put them under pressure. Seeking a way out of their conundrum, they applied for land reform funds. Their application was successful — but nothing happened, until after a long silence, the Department contacted them and told that instead of getting money, the Department would buy the farm back from them for the amount of money needed to settle the debt. '

While people die of cholera in Haiti, the poverty industry is profiting from the hardship, says this letter and commentary.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni was nominated today to run for presidential elections that may extend his rule for over 30 years. Mr Museveni is a flag bearer of the National Resistance Movement, the ruling party. Museveni, in power since 1986, is being challenged by Forum for Democratic Change’s Dr Kizza Besigye, his former physician and long time rival.

For over 24 hours on October 15, bloggers blogged about water in a global Blog Action Day. The final count for Blog Action Day stands at over 5,600 bloggers from 143 countries, reaching more than 40 million readers, according to the organisers. 'It was a remarkable display of support for an issue that gets woefully little coverage in the mainstream media.'

The Republic of Congo has launched a 'farming village' project to boost food self-sufficiency, with the first one inaugurated in Nkouo, about 80km north of Brazzaville, the capital, on 8 October. It houses 40 families from different regions of the country. 'Forty hen-houses, a warehouse, a sorting centre and refrigerated storage space have been made available. Each family received 792 laying hens and 2ha for cultivation,' said project director Jean-Jacques Bouya.

Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel will help President Jacob Zuma with his work in a New Partnership for African Development (Nepad) sub-committee on infrastructure, the presidency said on Monday. In a statement, the presidency said Manuel - who is responsible for the National Planning Commission - would assist Zuma in his role as the African Union champion of the north-south infrastructure development corridor.

Mozambique has scored poorly in this year's edition of the Open Budget Index (OBI) - but when the report was presented at a Maputo seminar on Thursday, dissenting voices wondered whether the scores mean anything, since the questionnaires used seemed to be tailored round American experience. The scores range from zero to 100. The US-based International Budget Partnership (IBP) assessed 94 countries - and found that 74 of them did not meet what it considered 'the minimum standards of transparency and responsibility in public budgets'.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Tuesday urged the political stakeholders in Guinea to act expeditiously to agree on a new date for the country's presidential re-run, after another postponement was announced Friday. A spokesman for the 15-member regional bloc, Sunny Ugoh, told PANA here that agreeing on a new date would make it possible for the long-delayed election to hold and for the West African nation of Guinea to return to constitutional rule.