African leaders should take note of the lessons learned from the Arab Spring and realise that ensuring good governance and food security will avoid crises on the continent, says Kofi Annan, chairman of the Africa Green Revolution Alliance. The former United Nations Secretary General said that food shortage was one of the triggers of the protests in North African and Middle-Eastern countries that lead to the ousting of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in February that same year.

The European Women's Lobby with the European Network of Migrant Women have launched a documentary aimed at breaking stereotypes of migrant women. The film follows the stories of three women of migrant background living in the Europe. While struggling for their equal rights, these women, like so many others, enrich their host communities in myriad ways.

While change has swept other parts of the world over the past couple of years, Togo, an impoverished and largely agricultural nation under French rule before independence in 1960, can sometimes feel like a throwback to another era. Lingering suspicions over an alleged coup bid in 2009 have added to tensions, with the president's half-brother sentenced to 20 years in prison and 32 others to a range of jail terms over the incident last year. Opposition and civil society groups have been organising protests that the government seeks to prevent, usually with police firing tear gas.

This manual from the Association for Progressive Communications is based on success stories and challenges in communicating research for influence. APC translated their knowledge and expertise into tips that other organisations or campaigners may find useful.

For Zimbabwe’s gay community, voting season is a time of dread. As political temperatures rise ahead of expected elections next year, gays and lesbians are being targeted by police in an apparent strategy to win over voters. On 11 August 2012, police raided a book launch at the headquarters of the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ), an NGO based in Harare that promotes the rights of sexual minorities. The police arrested 44 people, and although none were formally charged, the incident followed a familiar pattern of harassment, beatings and threats against people who openly identify as gay.

Brutal attacks against bloggers, politically motivated surveillance, proactive manipulation of web content, and restrictive laws regulating speech online are among the diverse threats to internet freedom emerging over the past two years, according to a new study released by Freedom House. Despite these threats, 'Freedom on the Net 2012: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media' found that increased pushback by civil society, technology companies, and independent courts resulted in several notable victories.

Kenyan fighter jets have bombarded an airport in southern Somalia, where they are fighting al-Qaeda linked al-Shabab fighters, officials have said. The strikes took place in the port city of Kismayo on Tuesday 25 September. 'Our forces have reached Kismayo with jets and they have destroyed the armoury and a warehouse used by al-Shabab at the airport,' Cyrus Oguna, a Kenyan army spokesperson, said. He could not provide figures on the number of casualties incurred.

The Millennium Development Goals may not be perfect but they are simple and straightforward - qualities diplomats and others fear could be lost in the process of crafting new targets to replace the MDGs, which expire in 2015. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon underscored this in remarks to members of a high-level panel charged with working out what comes next. 'We need a clear post-2015 development agenda - an agenda with shared responsibilities for all countries, with the fight against poverty at the fore and sustainable development at the core,' he said.

In this Peace and Conflict Monitor article, a researcher back from a trip to the Congo, shares her observations about the darker side of the peace industry in Kivu province. In a region where sexual violence is a prominent and ongoing issue, she provides a glimpse of how the UN Peacekeeping forces fuel a thriving underground sex industry.

A group of Tunisian civil society organisations last week warned that the draft law on a new electoral body might put the country's democracy on a dangerous path. 'The government's project is awash with shortcomings and gaps; something which would lead to an election that is neither democratic nor transparent,' Kamel Gharbi, representative of Ofiya coalition, said at the September 19th conference in Tunis. The Ennahda-dominated government in July proposed a set of regulations to establish a new commission to supervise next elections. According to the proposal, members of the Independent High Electoral Commission (ISIE) will be selected by the two-thirds majority of the Constituent Assembly, while its head will be named by the governing troika.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has joined the Central African Press Union (USYPAC in French) to call on DRC President Joseph Kabila to grant presidential pardon for three journalists in prison. 'We call on authorities in DRC to release our three colleagues arrested after being accused of collaboration with the armed guerillas movements. Their place is not definitely in prisons. Their release would be a great act of press freedom promotion,' said Gabriel Baglo, IFJ Africa Director.

Pan Africa ILGA, a federation of 67 LGBTI organisations in Africa, has expressed deep concern over the continued human rights violations in Cameroon, particularly towards the LGBT persons. The appeal of a Cameroonian man who was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2011 after sending a text message, has been delayed for a further two months.

Jalila Khamis, a Nuba woman activist, faces charges under articles 50 and 51 of the Sudanese Criminal Act of 1991. Both articles are crimes against the state and punished by death.

It is a long-standing tradition in many African countries to frown upon the selling of land. When land is snapped up by large agribusiness interests in these countries, it is experienced as a brutal violation of this tradition, one that compromises the lives and livelihoods of entire generations to come. This phenomenon of large-scale land appropriation really took off with the food crisis of 2008. As the many cases of land grabbing identified in West and Central Africa have demonstrated, profit seems to be the only motive pursued. The whole model is inimical to - really a frontal attack on - the goals of food sovereignty, which is fundamentally about human survival, especially in African countries that are still largely rural. Read the rest of this GRAIN article by clicking on the link provided.

Campaigners have called for a UK criminal investigation to be brought against Trafigura for the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast in 2006. The Dutch-based company with London offices paid an Ivorian company to dump the waste in Abidjan. Thousands of people sought hospital treatment. Amnesty and Greenpeace say a three-year investigation shows the UK and Dutch authorities failed to stop the dumping or hold Trafigura to account.

Proscovia Alengot Oromait has become Africa's youngest Member of Paliament (MP) at the age of 19, after she won the Usuk county election with 11,059 votes. The outspoken youngster replaces her father who died earlier this year, reports Global Voices Online. Alengot is a member of National Resistance Movement, headed by President Yoweri Museveni. Other people who stood for the post included, Charles Ojok Oleny with 5,329 votes, Charles Okure from FDC with 2,725 votes and Cecilia Anyakoit of UPC with 554 votes.

On the evening of 12 September, a dispute between Eritrean and Nigerian detainees at the Khoms detention centre for 'irregular migrants' had escalated into violence, reports this Amnesty International blog post. During the chaos a group of Somalis chose their moment to escape. A 29-year-old man from the Eritrean capital Asmara, who has spent six months in various detention centres across Libya, told Amnesty International that one man in military uniform hit him on the head with a metal bar and deliberately stepped on his hand with his military boots.

Nearly 25,000 people have signed an AllOut.org petition asking the Cameroon President and Minister of Justice to reverse the decision to jail Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé for three years and to put a moratorium on the laws that sent him to jail in the first place. Roger was arrested last year for sending another man a text message that said, 'I'm very much in love w/u.' He was charged and convicted under Cameroon's law that criminalizes 'homosexual behavior' and sentenced to three years in prison.

Proposed changes to the Employment Equity Act will severely penalise companies that lag behind on transformation if they come into effect, including hefty fines for noncompliance. But companies still have a long way to go to achieve greater representation of black people, women and people with disabilities in the workplace. The Commission for Employment Equity released its 12th annual report this week, which shows that white men remain dominant in almost all top management levels in the workplace. They make up 65.4% of top management positions, six times the part of the economically active population they represent.

South Africa truck drivers and other transport workers launched a strike for higher wages Tuesday, a union spokesman said, amid concerns that the standstill could cause fuel shortages. Truckers were seeking a 12-percent increase for 2013 and 2014, but would not settle for less than nine.