Earlier this year, 25-year-old Adam Osman Abdile received an ultimatum from Somalia's Al Shabaab: join the militia or die. He decided to flee to Kenya. The journey nearly killed him, but it is one that many young men are willing to risk in Somalia and other countries in eastern Africa to escape persecution or violence.

Network (FEMNET) is extremely concerned with the unfolding pre-election violence in the Republic of Guinea and is calling on political leaders in Guinea to ensure that the elections to be held on 19th September 2010 are conducted in a peaceful atmosphere which secures people's free participation. Guinea has twice postponed its elections since last year. Media reports reaching FEMNET indicate that confrontations between supporters of the two main political parties turned violent on September 11th 2010.

The SAMOSA Festival is the premier biennial festival for cross cultural interaction in Kenya. The festival showcases the best in African, Eastern and Western cultures in the region, and is a celebration of race, cultural and ethnic differences. This year's theme is different is exciting. Art, music, dance and poetry are some of the best ways for humanity to embrace diversity.

This 88-page report documents abuses against the displaced by all warring parties in all phases of displacement – during the attacks that uproot them; after they have been displaced and are living in the forests, with host families, or in camps; and after they or the authorities decide it is time for them to return home. The report is based on interviews with 146 people displaced from their homes in eastern Congo, as well as government officials, humanitarian workers, and journalists.

Former Nigerian anti-corruption Czar Nuhu Ribadu has joined the country's presidential race, widening the field ahead of the Jan. 2011 presidential election. 'I'll contest for President to remake Nigeria,' the local press Friday quoted Ribadu as saying during a breakfast session with journalists in the capital city of Abuja.

The resident representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cameroon, Charlotte Faty Ndiaye, has called for a 'cross-border intervention' involving Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to tackle the cholera epidemic that is ravaging the three countries. Cameroon has recorded 417 cases from 6,239 cases, Chad has recorded 65 deaths from 10,040 cases while 614 have died from 11,359 cases in Nigeria, according to Ms Ndiaye.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are failing the world's poorest people because governments are ignoring and abusing their human rights, Amnesty International said as heads of states prepare to meet to review progress on the MDGs at a United Nations (UN) summit in New York on 20-22 September. More than a billion people living in slums are not even included in MDG efforts because the MDG target on slums only commits to improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers.

Home-based voluntary HIV counselling and testing (HCT) provided an opportunity to identify 60 new paediatric HIV cases among 1300 high-risk children between the ages of 18 months and 13 years of age in a single community in rural western Kenya between June 2008 and June 2009, researchers reported in a retrospective analysis published in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

The Commission for Africa has criticised the “glacial” progress of talks aimed at eliminating the regime in which rich countries stack the odds in favour of their traders and farmers at the expense of those in developing countries. An excerpt from the commission’s new report, dealing with talks being conducted through the World Trade Organisation, the current round of which began in Doha, Qatar, in 2001

Civil society is calling for an end to impunity for the harassment of human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The renewed call comes as an activist kidnapped at the end of August have described their detention and torture by uniformed captors. Bwira Kyahi, president of civil society in Masisi, a town in the province of North Kivu, and another human rights advocate, Balisi Kapumba, who works as an organizer with the NGO Solidarity Action for Peace and Development, were kidnapped during the last week of August in Goma. Kyahi was found Aug. 30, 2010.

The Eritrean authorities continue to gag all forms of free expression and recently arrested another journalist as he was trying to flee the country, Reporters Without Borders said, on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the start of a brutal political purge in Asmara on 18 September 2001. The organisation wrote to the British authorities yesterday urging them to prosecute one of the purge’s organisers, who now lives in Britain.

Nigeria's science and technology policy, widely seen as inadequate, will be rewritten to serve the wider goals of the country, its science and technology minister said at a stakeholders' meeting in Abuja. Mohammed Ka'oje Abubakar told representatives from government ministries, international agencies and professional bodies that a review of the policy is necessary to harmonise it with socio-economic policies in the country.

Transparency International (TI) has warned that the failure by governments to address corruption is threatening the fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In a news release, TI called on governments, donors and non-governmental organizations to adopt anti-corruption measures in all their MDG action plans.

Zimbabwe held a secret auction of diamonds from its Marange fields, where the army has been accused of forced labour and torture, an official said on Tuesday. 'Yes, the sales were carried out this weekend,' said Secretary for Mines Thankful Musukutwa, as reported in the Mail & Guardian.

The recent Mozambican food and fuel riots raise the spectre of food insecurity and social unrest in the future, writes Saliem Fakir. 'We certainly have the capability to feed all of the world’s population, but the political economy of agriculture, food production and distribution somewhat has a greater influence as to whether people can feed themselves or not.'

Campaigners for increased health financing have welcomed the commitment by African Union member states to direct more resources to health. But the needs of the continent seem to dwarf available budgets. Africa, is home to 12 per cent of the world’s population, yet accounts for 22 per cent of the total global disease burden.

Contrary to the claim by Times magazine that the war on drugs, the longest war that has cost American taxpayers $2.5 trillion over 40 years, has ‘no clear enemy’,[1] the NAACP in 2010 rightly condemned the war on drugs as a racist war against African Americans and against the poor generally.[2] Californian voters have also proposed the legalization of marijuana to avoid the unnecessary criminalization of otherwise law-abiding responsible adults, aid the sick who need the drug and create fair employment opportunities and wealth for the people and tax revenues for the state.[3]

Reporters Without Borders has expressed shock at the death of Alberto Chakusanga, the host of a programme on a radio station critical of the government. The first journalist to be murdered in Angola since 2001, he was found dead in the kitchen of his home in the Luanda district of Viana at dawn on 5 September.

Record sums were invested last year in coal power - the most carbon intensive form of energy on the planet - by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

Only 46,722 people, approximately a third of the number of the disabled in Angola, receive assistance from the National Association of the Disabled (ANDA), according to the Angolan News Agency (ANGOP). More than 150,000 disabled persons are registered in Angola, but this figure is unreliable as the national census had overlooked areas in the country with large numbers of disabled people.