Recent reports of LRA attacks in the Central African Republic and southern Sudan suggest something significant is happening. The LRA is either in complete disarray and acting out of desperation, or the rebel group has rediscovered a sense of purpose: to destabilize southern Sudan in return for military support from Khartoum. As is often the case with the LRA, the truth is hard to ascertain, says this article on Raise Hope for Congo.

Tidiane Kassé

Agnès Mussamba

Macalou Awa Dembélé

Hélène Diouf

Bangou Marimpo et Kanfando Nikiema Azarata

Christine Butegwa

We plan to provide regular information about mobilisation for the Dakar World Social Forum in February 2011. Watch out for more, and in the meantime check out the .

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and his main rivals are expected to formally declare their candidacy for January elections this week and the political temperature is already rising, reports Reuters. From alleged death threats against a presidential aspirant's adviser to calls from the opposition for the date to be postponed, the vote looks set to be just as contentious as previous elections in Africa's most populous nation.

Anthony Bulteau

Tontongi

Jill Cottrell Ghai et Yash Pal Ghai

Horace Campbell

From 14-16 February 2011 the Right to Know, Right to Education project will host a regional conference to address the issues of quality basic education for all.

The recent drop in maternal mortality rates - by about a third worldwide - seems to validate what many health experts have been saying for years: that the strategies for reducing maternal deaths are straightforward and that the missing ingredient has been commitment and resources. Nevertheless, the 2.4 annual rate of decline in maternal death is less than half of what is needed to meet the MDG 5 target.

In conversation with Zahra Moloo, Mohamed Abshir Waldo discusses

Last week, on 7 September 2010, the World Bank finally decided to publish its much anticipated report on the global farmland grab. After years of work, several months of political negotiation and who knows how much money spent, the report was casually released on the Bank’s website - in English only. The report is both a disappointment and a failure.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the unwarranted assault of New Vision Photographer, Arthur Kintu, by a businessman and prominent religious leader, Hassan Basajjabalaba which occurred on September, 6th at Namboole while he was covering the elections in Kampala, Uganda.

The campaign for Angola's 2012 elections is off to a ill-tempered start with the ruling MPLA party and the opposition UNITA party accusing each other of dirty tactics that threaten a return to violence in the oil producing nation. The polls will only be the second since the end of Angola's civil war that pitted the Russian and Cuban-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against UNITA, backed by the U.S. and apartheid South Africa.

Almost a million South Africans are already on lifelong antiretroviral treatment and this number is supposed to triple in the next decade if government keeps to its implementation plan. But the prospect of the South African government being able to meet its target of treating 80 percent of those who need it by 2011 is being threatened by a lack of funds.

Community-based care delivered to adults living with HIV by people living with HIV using mobile technologies provided care as safe and effective as clinic-based care, researchers report in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. This prospective community randomised clinical pilot study was conducted in villages surrounding a rural clinic in western Kenya from March 2006 to April 2008.

This report suggests that the racist attacks that occurred in South Africa in 2008 were rooted in the micro-politics of townships and informal settlements. The author argues that violence was used as a means to drive foreigners out of South Africa and thereby decrease competition for jobs and other scarce resources.

The potential of mobile telephony to transform Africa will only be achieved if the development of other infrastructure keeps pace, says a study. The number of mobile phone subscribers in Africa soared from 16 million in 2000 to 376 million in 2008, with 60 per cent of the population using them in 2008 compared with 10 per cent in 1999.

iCON Women and Young People’s Academy (IWYPLA) is pleased to announce its Call for Applications for the “2010 ICON WOMEN IN BUSINESS TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP FELLOWSHIP” programme.

The XXV ILGA World Conference will be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, between the 4 and 9 December 2010. The theme of the conference will be “Building the way forward in times of crisis”. In the last few years and since the last World Conference in Vienna in 2008, it has become even more evident that our movement can be very vulnerable to crises, them being political, social, or economic ones. However, unstable conditions can also represent turning points and opportunities for the movement to further the human rights agenda of LGBTI people.

African journalists have adopted a declaration calling on governments, the African Union journalists’ trade unions and the international community to join forces in promoting the safety and protection of journalists in Africa. The Addis Ababa Declaration was adopted at the conclusion of a two-day regional workshop on the “Safety and Protection of African Journalists” hosted by the African Union Commission and organized by the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) at the African Union Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

A set of U.N. goals aimed at drastically reducing poverty and hunger worldwide by 2015 are achievable, despite setbacks caused by the global financial and economic crises, a draft document said. The 27-page draft declaration on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals is expected to be formally adopted at a September 20-22 summit meeting at the United Nations which U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders are expected to attend.

Google held a very well attended G-Kenya event for developers. But this has been just one of several things that have been happening on the continent that show a renewed focus on services and apps development. There is fertile ground for African tech innovators but they need to decide what prize they will be seeking, writes Russell Southwood.