Western nations, employing the best equipped armies in the world, are increasingly dropping their support for UN peacekeeping missions in Africa, rather focusing their efforts on Afghanistan. Even the Darfur and Congo crises are neglected.

Diarrhoea- inducing waterborne microbes often go undetected in parts of the world with the highest rate of under-five deaths from gastrointestinal infection. According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), lack of water safety regulations, inter-ministerial coordination and surveillance can paint a deceptively benign portrait of water quality.

Mauritian Prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, on Wednesday inaugurated an underwater fibre optics cable called Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION) in Terre-Rouge, 10 km north of the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis.

Burundi will receive a grant of US$ 135 million over the next five years, under the eighth round of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, official sources said in Bujumbura. The funds will be allocated to the "Intensification and Decentralization Program me for the Fight against HIV/AIDS (PRIDE)," said Burundian first Vice-President in charge of Political, Administrative and Security Affairs, Yves Sahinguvu.

The World Health Organisation said today it was investigating reports of suspected cases of the previously eradicated disease smallpox in eastern Uganda. Smallpox is an acute contagious disease and was one of the world’s most feared sicknesses until it was officially declared eradicated worldwide in 1979.

The UN World Food Programme has denied a claim that up to half the food aid to Somalia was being diverted to Islamist militants and corrupt contractors. WFP officials said there was no evidence to back up the claim made in a report by a UN monitoring group.

Mob attacks on suspected criminals in Burundi, often with official complicity, led to at least 75 killings in 2009, Human Rights Watch and the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons (APRODH) said in a report released today. The government of Burundi should end official involvement in "mob justice" and should hold perpetrators accountable, Human Rights Watch and APRODH said.

The only solution for the conflict over Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara is to do what the Sahrawi people decide regarding their future, Zahra Ramdan, president of the Association of Sahrawi Women in Spain has said.

African and British human rights campaigners rallied outside the Commonwealth’s head quarters in London on Monday 22 March. They were protesting against the prosecution and imprisonment of the Malawian same-sex couple, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, on charges of homosexuality, and against the Commonwealth’s failure to condemn their arrest and detention in Chichiri prison.

Following bloody fighting between Senegalese forces and rebels, in recent days, the rebel Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) have issued a statement, calling for negotiations with the government.

Togo's government has outlawed further demonstrations against the results of a March 4 presidential election, which opposition leaders say was rigged to favour the incumbent. The decree came a day ahead of a scheduled opposition rally in the seaside capital of Lome, escalating tensions in the West African state whose election had been widely seen as a test for regional democracy.

South Africa's antiretroviral treatment guidelines have been updated. The guidelines offer a range of improvements over the 2004 guidelines including new, more tolerable antiretrovirals, immediate ARV treatment for drug-resistant TB patients and improved prevention of mother to child transmission procedures.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday in Nairobi met and held talks with Kofi Annan, a member of the Panel of Eminent African Personalities and Chief mediator at the 2008 peace talks which ended the post-election violence in Kenya. Annan, former United Nations secretary-general, also met Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

An evening of prayers and chants held in the Togolese capital, Lome, by supporters of the umbrella opposition group, Republican Front for Revival and Change (FRAC), was violently dispersed by the security forces using tear gas.

Malawi has said Africa needs to focus on regional infrastructural development, in energy and water resources management if the continent is to realise its true growth potential, PANA reported from here Wednesday.

South African President Jacob Zuma urged Western nations to lift targeted sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his allies, saying they were undermining the nation’s coalition government. “We don’t need these sanctions now,” Zuma told lawmakers in Parliament in Cape Town.

An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment. The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system.

The Ethiopian government is waging a coordinated and sustained attack on political opponents, journalists, and rights activists ahead of the May 2010 elections, Human Rights Watch said in a report. On May 23, 2010, Ethiopians will vote in the first parliamentary elections in Ethiopia since 2005, when the post-election period was marred by controversy and bloodshed.

They endure stigma, discrimination, violence and extreme poverty, but Ugandan women living with disabilities say the greatest challenge facing them centres on their reproductive health. "In addition to the impacts of physical, mental, intellectual and sensor impairments, we are double discriminated (against), first as women, and then as disabled," said Beatrice Guzu, executive secretary of the National Organisation of Women with Disabilities in Uganda.

The efforts of Central African nations to consolidate peace and further development are being thwarted by weapons trafficking, top United Nations officials warned today, calling on Member States to do all they can to eradicate this scourge. “Central Africa is awash with illicit weapons – exacerbating inter-communal violence, increasing cross-border crime and threatening ongoing peace and national reconciliation processes,” Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said in her remarks to a debate in the Security Council.