On World Day Against Child Labour 2010 on Saturday 12th June, leading NGO Plan International is concerned the problem is on the increase in Niger where children are being forced to work because of the food crisis. Children are being pulled out of school and sent to work for money or food to supplement their family's income.

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) celebrated 10 years of empowering women and women organizations through the use of ICTs on 1st and 2nd June 2010 at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Uganda. Among the activities to mark the celebrations, was a one week SMS awareness campaign which took place from 24th to 29th May 2010, a two day exhibition and a one day symposium.

Alpha Condé, the "eternal opposition leader" of Guinea who is widely believed to have won the 1993 presidential election, is gathering the largest crowds as Guinea's first truly democratic poll has kicked off.

BET, the acronym for the three northern regions of Chad – Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti – comes up regularly in meetings of international aid agencies frustrated by the lack of information and difficulty of access to the remote territory. Drought in 2009 triggered the government’s call for international assistance, but no one really knows the full extent of the problem, according to a local NGO.

South Africa sees growing opportunities for trade with other developing countries as new economic powerhouses emerge and Europe is engulfed by economic and currency weakness, its trade chief said on Wednesday. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said the changing world economy meant South Africa could intensify trade ties with countries such as Brazil, India and China at the expense of links with traditional partners such as the European Union.

This year’s edition of the AEO finds Africa’s economies weakened by the global recession and at the same time under pressure to make additional efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The world economic crisis brought a period of high growth in Africa to a sudden end. Average economic growth was slashed from about 6% in 2006-2008 to 2.5% in 2009 with per capita GDP growth coming to a near standstill. The global crisis of 2009 had its strongest effect on southern Africa, where growth was slashed (from the average over the preceding three years) by almost 8 percentage points to negative growth of around 1%.

Last month, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a division of the State Department, recommended that the US deter foreign mining in Eritrea following allegations of religious oppression taking place in the small African nation. "The U.S. government should...prohibit any foreign company's raising capital or listing its securities in the United States while engaged in developing Eritrea's mineral resources," the report read.

A High Court judge has reserved judgement on the Kalahari Bushmen’s bid to gain access to a borehole which they rely on for water. The Bushmen were at the Botswana High Court to hear their application for permission to use their borehole which the Botswana government has banned them from using.

The estimates are at best approximate on both sides on the equation, but six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the cumulative oil spill has now reached a bit more than 3 times that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez. It is still dwarfed, however, by the estimated equivalent of 30 Exxon Valdez spills discharged into Ecuador's Amazon by Chevron/Texaco over 3 decades, or more than 50 Exxon Valdez spills into the Niger Delta by Shell, Chevron, and other companies over 5 decades.

Several rebel groups and bandits are spreading fear and chaos in many parts of the Central African Republic. Regular attacks on civilians are resulting in killings, abductions, rapes and looting. They are forcing people to flee their homes to find a safe haven. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, putting pressure on already impoverished host communities.

Desertification is the persistent degradation of dryland ecosystems by human activities and climatic variations. Because of its toll on human well-being and on the environment, it ranks among the greatest development challenges of our times. The World Day to Combat Desertification focuses international attention on this growing problem. It has been observed each 17 June since 1995, the same year the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was iimplemented

The corruption case against South Africa's President Jacob Zuma, which was dropped by the prosecution before he became President, still haunts national politics. The opposition fights for documents in the Zuma prosecution case.

Civil society activists are protesting the closure of a factory that produces the only UN World Health Organization-pre-qualified version of a life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drug for infants. Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), which owns the French factory that produces didanosine, a second-line ARV for babies weighing less than 10kg, will shut down the plant in June 2010, stopping production of the drug until at least February 2011, when regulatory approval of a new United States-based manufacturing site is expected.

MTN Group Ltd. ended talks with Weather Investments S.p.A to acquire $10 billion of assets of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE, abandoning a potential deal for the fourth time in two years. The discussions “have been terminated,” Johannesburg- based MTN said in a statement, without giving a reason. The talks failed after Algeria’s government blocked a possible sale to MTN of Orascom’s largest and most profitable unit, Djezzy.

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Aid to poor countries should be tailored more towards benefiting European firms, a top-level Brussels official has recommended. Andris Piebalgs, the European Union's commissioner for development, is seeking a new aid strategy that has "value for money" as an overriding priority.

A recent march by over a thousand Ghanian Muslims against “the growing activities of gays and lesbians” in this West-African country, could hamper initiatives that target Men having sex with Men (MSM), such as HIV and Aids interventions, activists have warned. Mac-Darling Cobbinahof the Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights Ghana, an organisation that also caters for the MSM community said, following a march that went through principal streets of the Metropolis against homosexuality, after an alleged report that close to 60 gays and lesbians from eastern

“I would like to thank everybody for the support that I have been given since Friday and before that,” The Post editor Fred M’membe told Reporters Without Borders as he was released this afternoon from Lusaka prison, where he had just spent three days. “I am very grateful to my fellow journalists,” said M’membe, who was sentenced to four months in prison with hard labour on 4 June on a contempt of court charge. “I have received more than the support I thought I would get and I deserve.”

An experimental treatment for Ebola that could potentially save human lives has been shown to be completely effective in monkeys. If approved for human use it would be the first treatment for the deadly disease, according to Thomas Geisbert, a microbiologist at the US-based National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Institute.

Allegations of massive fraud during May’s local elections in Burundi have cast a shadow over the country's democratic transition, prompting international calls for compromise rather than confrontation. Attributing the ruling CNDD-FDD’s landslide victory to ballot-box stuffing, vote-buying with state resources, the illegal use of proxies and a lack of secrecy in some polling stations, 13 opposition parties have announced a boycott of the 28 June presidential race, leaving President Pierre Nkurunziza as the only runner.