The genetically diverse and "exquisitely well adapted" traits of Africa's livestock should be better harnessed to meet the continent's needs. Seventy per cent of Africa's rural poor keep livestock and 200 million people depend on the animals for their livelihoods. African livestock breeds have successfully survived, and adapted to, an extraordinary range of diseases and climate changes. But they are currently being displaced by "exotic" breeds imported from the developed world.

Twelve-year-old Rama* in Senegal’s Sédhiou region is still in school instead of wedded to a man in his 40s, after community members convinced her father to abandon the family’s plan to give her away. But in most cases family or social pressure to marry off young girls still wins out in many regions of the country, researchers and educators say.

An undersea cable that brought high-speed net access to East Africa for the first time has been hit by a fault, knocking many in the region offline. The owners of the Seacom cable said the exact cause of the fault was "still being investigated", but was thought to originate off the Kenyan coast.

The sun has almost set on the Soccer World Cup and its seeming suspension of our South African 'normalcy'. No doubt, many will try their best to continue to bask in its positively proclaimed 'developmental legacy'; but, as sure as the sun will rise on the morning after, so too will the reality of that ‘normalcy’ bite us like an unhappy dog. Nowhere will this be more apparent than in the world of South African soccer itself.

New research identifying Haiti and Mozambique as the countries most vulnerable to economic losses from natural disasters also classifies a number of industrialised economies, including Italy, Japan, China, USA, Spain and France, as "high risk" environments for investors, insurers and business.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has welcomed Namibia’s decision to remove travel restrictions for people living with the virus, a move that aligns the country’s laws with international public health standards. The new legislation lifting restrictions for people living with HIV/AIDS and other contagious diseases took effect in Namibia on 1 July. Restrictions that limit movement based on HIV-positive status only are discriminatory and violate human rights, according to UNAIDS.

Constitutional outreach teams have now been deployed to every corner of the country, three weeks after the program was launched in Harare. SW Radio Africa is reliably informed that the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (COPAC) that is leading the reforms has this week received less complaints from its teams conducting public consultative meetings.

HIV doctors and activists have slammed a male circumcision clamp that is being aggressively marketed in South Africa and the rest of the continent with a small study showing that it is much more painful that the surgical route and has more adverse events. In a joint statement the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society and the Treatment Action Campaign said although they supported the implementation of a country-wide voluntary male medical circumcision (VMMC) programme, they had concerns about the Tara Klamp.

Robust early increases in CD4 cell count reduce the risk of death for patients with HIV, even those who are severely malnourished, investigators from Zambia report in the online edition of AIDS. The large, prospective study showed that an increase in CD4 cell count of less than 100 cells/mm3 six months after starting HIV treatment was associated with an increased risk of mortality, especially for those who were malnourished.

While Rwanda prepares for the upcoming presidential elections to be held in August this year, concerns are mounting regarding the future of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people (LGBTI) as arbitrary arrests of these groups continue to swoop the country. Naome Ruzindana, Director of Horizon Community Association (HOCA) said numerous cases of arrests and abuse of the LGBTI people have gone unnoticed in Rwanda and “this is because there is no documentation of such cases and in some instances we find out at a later stage and then when we try to follow up, the people involved do not want to cooperate and some live in fear of being re-arrested, making it difficult for them to reach out to us.”

A draft Bill proposing a ban on sexual content on the internet and cellphones submitted to the South African Department of Home Affairs in May 2010 claims to have the best interests of women and children in mind but has set alarm bells ringing in the women’s movement. “The Bill equates women with children –taking a protectionist approach to the rights of women— and promotes state censorship,” says Sally-Jean Shackleton, director of Women’sNet, a feminist technology organisation based in Johannesburg.

Lay counsellors in South Africa can now legally perform HIV tests, but delays in paying them and shortages of test kits are threatening a national campaign to scale up voluntary HIV testing and counselling (VCT). Before new regulations came into effect in May 2010 only nurses were allowed to administer finger-prick HIV tests, but AIDS activists had long argued that this not only added to an already heavy work load, but could also hamstring the VCT campaign aiming to test 15 million South Africans by 2011.

Although some West African countries have made positive gains in consolidating peace and human rights, such strides are being undercut by the paucity of good governance, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in a new report. “The resurgence of coups d’état in West Africa, which I have consistently denounced, and the major role played by the armed forces in these coups, are a reflection of the difficult civil-military relationships in situations of bad governance,” he says.

Fear of sexual violence is keeping poor Kenyan women away from communal toilets, and increasing the risk of disease, Amnesty International says. In a report on Kenya's slums, the human rights group said women and girls were afraid to leave their shacks at night. As a result they were risking contracting diseases such as dysentery and cholera, the report said.

The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) in collaboration with the Women Environmental Programme (WEP) visited communities in three local government areas – Nassarawa LGA, Dareta Village in Anka LGA and Yar Garma in Bukkuyum LGA of Zamfara State on June 17 and 18, 2010 following reports of human and animal deaths from exposure to high levels of lead from mined ore in the communities.

Representatives from the United Nations and the African Union met in New York to discuss ways of boosting cooperation between the two bodies to support the efforts of post-conflict countries, particularly in Africa, to establish lasting peace. This was the first consultative meeting of the members of the UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) and the AU Peace and Security Council, and builds on the visit of the PBC to the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa in November 2009.

Ten leading aid agencies have called for a 'surge' in the humanitarian effort to help 10 million people at risk of acute hunger across the Sahel region of West and Central Africa. The centre of the crisis is Niger, where seven million people, almost half the population do not have enough food. A further two million people in Chad, and hundreds of thousands more in Mali, Mauritania, parts of Burkina Faso and the extreme north of Nigeria are also suffering as a result of the crisis.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has dismissed ongoing public hearings for a new constitution as a mockery to the people of Zimbabwe, because it had “become even clearer that political parties are in charge of the process.” In a statement signed by Secretary General Wellington Chibebe, the union said the process, dogged by chaos, was meant to be a “national affair” but was now being manipulated by the three political parties in the coalition government.

The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) and Sisonke have launched a helpline to give sex workers a voice. Micky Meji, country coordinator of the African Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA) said the line was initiated to give sex workers a platform to voice their concerns and fears they faced at work. “Not everyone knows where to get help for sex workers. It is not easy for sex workers to get adequate information because they are often scared of revealing what they do to earn a living,” said Meji.

Morocco must combat corruption by adopting an overall strategy that includes more than just punitive measures, according to the Central Authority for the Prevention of Corruption (ICPC). "Punishment alone is not enough," ICPC chief Abdesselam Aboudrar said Tuesday (July 6th) in Rabat at the presentation of his group's annual report.