While South Africa remains one of the countries with highest HIV prevalence rates, gay rights organizations are doing their bit to curb the spread of the syndrome and to ensure that people know their statuses.

Tensions following clashes in N’zérékoré, southeastern Guinea, are hampering the movement of some humanitarian workers and supplies, according to the UN.

Britain and Ethiopia will head a new United Nations panel that aims to secure $100 billion every year by 2020 to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said.

Corruption scandals are piling up in Algeria, with allegations of nepotism and kickbacks connected to lucrative contracts reaching high-ranking officials. Mammoth state-run energy company Sonatrach still has more secrets to reveal. The courts confirmed on January 28th that two senior managers are being held along with two sons of the CEO, Mohamed Meziane, who himself is being probed for alleged corruption, bribery and criminal conspiracy

On 12 February 2010, the world celebrates the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers in commemoration of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

Ethiopia is building a 240-metre high dam on the Omo River that is intended to end the country's electricity shortage and supply power to neighbouring countries. Not everyone's happy.

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the harsh, two-year jail sentence which a court passed yesterday on Hanevy Ould Dehah, the editor of the website Taqadoumy, at the end of an incomprehensible and arbitrary trial.

Kenya's failure to put in place a comprehensive disaster preparedness policy means its response to high-risk events such as droughts, floods, epidemics and major accidents tends to be slow, poorly coordinated and unnecessarily expensive, say specialists.

Although South Africa has almost a million HIV positive people on treatment, actuaries tell us that over 300,000 citizens are still being infected with the virus every year. This prompted health economist Professor Alan Whiteside to remark recently that “HIV treatment without prevention is like mopping the floor while the tap is running”.

As Tunisians prepare to abandon analog TV for digital terrestrial television by the end of March, the government mandate announced in late December continues to pose adjustment problems for providers and the public.

Hundreds of Bushmen were left angry and frustrated after the Botswana president refused to enter into discussions with them during a meeting on Thursday. President Khama, accompanied by four government ministers, met with Bushmen at the New Xade resettlement camp where they were dumped after being evicted from their lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in 2002.

One of Senegal's leading lawyers has mediated labor strikes and defused election violence. Her name is Amsatou Sow Sidibe and Malena Amusa thinks she's a major reason why Senegal is relatively peaceful compared to neighboring Guinea.

Support is growing for a bid to persuade the G8+5 nations to fund 1,000 senior research positions in African universities. The Academic Chairs for Africa initiative would require the rich G8 countries and the emerging economies that now attend the group's gatherings — Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Mexico — to commit US$100m per year over a five-year period.

Younger teachers in South Africa are taking the lead in talking to students about HIV but are not practicing what they preach, according to new research.

This edition of the methodological workshops that is on offer for 2010 is designed for doctoral and masters students as well as young, mid-career African researchers based in Nigeria and elsewhere in English speaking Central and West Africa.

Venue - Alliance Francaise, 17 Lower Park Drive/Kerry Road, Zoo Lake, Parkview
Time - 2-5pm
Date - 20 March 2010
Guest Artist - Thobile Magagula for Swaziland
The WINNER will TRAVEL to the House of Hunger Poetry Slam, Zimbabwe!
For more info call Linda: 073 081 5194

The Oxford University Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) course on statelessness and international law will take place from 16–18 April 2010 and is intended for experienced practitioners and graduate researchers. It draws on the expertise of RSC staff and associates, as well as members of external institutions, including UNHCR. Registration is now open. The for this course is available to download (PDF).

African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), a project of the CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program, is now accepting applications for its 2010 fellowships. The deadline for all applications is 22 March 2010.

Eight months after the end of joint military operations by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, many parts of Orientale Province, in northeastern DRC, are still in turmoil, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Attacks on civilians by Ugandan rebels and local militias have left 340,000 people displaced, and 30,000 refugees have fled to Sudan.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced to 15 years imprisonment Tharcisse Muvunyi, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Rwandan army, for direct and public incitement to commit genocide in 1994. Presiding Judge Dennis C.M. Byron, assisted by judges Gberdao Gustave Kam and Vagn Joensen, Thursday also ordered 57-year-old Muvunyi to remain in the custody of the Tribunal pending his transfer to a country where he will serve the sentence.