In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, Tougher Chinese bank regulations weakens South african rand, Zambian miners reinstated at Chinese mine, Zain signs deal with India's Bharti, and Tanzania seeks to protect seed genetic heritage.

Almost a quarter of patients eligible for HIV treatment in South Africa’s Free State province died before getting it, a further 13% disappeared from the healthcare system and 5% were still on a waiting list, according to a review of three years of progress in the province’s public sector antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme.

Over 400 Bushmen were denied the right to vote in Botswana’s 2009 general election, with five Bushman communities inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve omitted from the electoral register.

Not long ago an editorial like the one that appeared in the independent Al- Dustour newspaper this week might never have made it into print. In his weekly column, entitled 'Fraud for the benefit of Egypt', chief editor Ibrahim Eissa accuses Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak of systematically and meticulously rigging elections and referendums to perpetuate his rule.

Despite arrests presently rocking the Kenyan gay community, human rights institutions recently held the first ever Public Lecture on Sexual Minority Rights aiming to address the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals among students and members of faculties of different academic institutions in Kenya.

The Ethiopian government and United Nations have opened a new refugee camp for thousands of Somalis fleeing violence in the Horn of Africa country. Somalia shares its northwestern border with Ethiopia, which has experienced a growing influx of Somalis over the last three months.

African ministers, health researchers and pharmaceutical industry representatives began meeting today to discuss how to boost drug innovation and production on the continent. The African Expert Meeting on Pharmaceutical Innovation in Africa — taking place in Pretoria, South Africa this week (18–20 February) — aims to encourage African policymakers to act to boost drug development and access to essential medicines.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a new online database that exposes the widespread gender gap in land rights around the world. The Gender and Land Rights database allows users to produce comparative reports on several different statistics, such as the total number of women landholders and rural households headed by women, in almost 80 countries

Economic conditions in most southern African countries declined as a result of the global recession, pushing many more people towards greater food insecurity. According to a new food security update which focused on some southern African countries, food prices have risen and are still climbing in several countries.

Many HIV-positive African patients are starting treatment too late for it to be effective, new scientific studies have shown. Studies from South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe presented at the 17th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in San Francisco (ending 19 February), all found late enrolment of patients on life-prolonging antiretroviral treatment (ART) to be a significant barrier to treatment programmes.

Bangladesh has voiced strong opposition to plans by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to provide close to US$100 million in climate change aid - because of its delivery through the World Bank.

The national health department has signed off new HIV treatment guidelines, bringing South Africa in line with international best practice and removing a drug responsible for a wide range of side effects. The new guidelines were finally signed off last week after a meeting last November with the provinces, donors, HIV clinicians and other HIV experts.

The chance of becoming pregnant not only increased over four years of antiretroviral treatment, but was almost 80% higher for HIV-infected women who began antiretroviral therapy than for HIV-infected women not on treatment enrolled in the Mother-to-Child Transmission Plus (MTCT Plus)-Initiative in seven sub-Saharan countries, report Landon Myer and colleagues in a study published in the February online edition of PLoS Medicine.

Support for regional trade is one of the cornerstones of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But the focus has been on large scale trade in goods and services, ignoring one important group trading throughout the region.

Eighteen-year-old David Kimenyi* is sure he infected his girlfriend with HIV. They had unprotected sex many times, even after he discovered he was HIV-positive. "I am afraid that I would have infected my girlfriend with HIV/AIDS," he said.

A number of South African Methodists are angry and upset about the ruling that a well-liked minister must be "defrocked" because of her gay marriage. Reverend Ecclesia de Lange of Cape Town married her life partner in December and was suspended by the church in January.

Western Kenya's Lugari district has long been a maize-growing area. But worsening drought, believed linked to climate change, has made the region's once-reliable staple an increasing risk. "When I planted maize, the rains disappeared when the maize had reached knee height. The whole farm dried up and I had nothing for food. My children could not go to school because I relied on maize as a cash crop also," said Dan Asembo Shaban, a farmer and a father of five.

Malaria researchers in Benin say they may have found a replacement for DDT in areas where mosquitoes are resistant to common insecticides. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides is a major part of malaria control. But worries over toxicity and environmental persistence have led to calls for DDT to be phased out, and mosquitoes are growing resistant to widely used pyrethroid insecticides. Alternatives are expensive and short-lived.

Teachers demanding more pay to face higher food prices entered the third day of a nationwide strike. The government has called their demands "illegal" and "unjustified", because the "high cost of living is a general problem that does not concern only [the teachers' union]", said Employment Minister Fatimé Tchombi.

By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.