Madagascar’s opposition has accused the country’s leader Andry Rajoelina of stalling negotiations on forming a consensus government. One of the Indian Ocean island’s two co-presidents accused Rajoelina, who took power in a military-backed coup in March, of denting hopes of restoring constitutional order and winning back frozen donor funds.

Harry Mkandawire, Malawi president Binguwa Mutharika most senior northern region political ally-turned-bitter critic, has accused the president of political intolerance. The Mzuzu Magistrates Court late Monday granted Mkandawire a 300, 000 Malawi kwacha (about US$2,000) bail following his arrest last Friday on allegations that he was inciting violence and using insulting language against the president.

One of the key settings that is often a point of contact for women, including survivors of violence and HIV positive women, is health systems. It is for this reason that it is critical that an essential package of services delivered should be part of a comprehensive response to the two interlinked crises of HIV and violence against women and girls. What does this entail?

The Story of Cap and Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled, entertaining look at the leading climate mitigation strategy being imposed by elites at the Copenhagen summit and in Washington and most other capitals and financial centers. Host Annie Leonard introduces the people at the heart of this scheme - energy traders and Wall Street financiers.

The Copenhagen summit is set to begin, and all the preparations should have been completed - most of all, a draft of the final outcome. Instead, it seems the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are further apart than they had been, two years ago when the Bali Action Plan, was launched.

With the worsening of the global food crisis, general international agreement has emerged regarding the importance of smallholder agriculture in the battle against hunger and poverty. However, public debate has been highly restricted and increasingly dominated by conventional, market-led, and corporate approaches to aid and agricultural development.

As Angola celebrates 34 years of independence on 11 November, Khadija Sharife looks at the legacy of war, oil and geopolitics in a country where the future of its chief export, oil, has already been mortgaged.

It appears that former president Moi’s tenure at Kiptagich 900 hectares in the Mau may be ending soon. Writing in the Standard on Sunday newspaper, Juma Kwayera claims that the Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s communications office issued a despatch as follows: “On Monday we are sending emissaries to Moi to surrender the Kiptagich Tea Plantation or we take it by force.”

Zimbabwe's battered economy is on track to expand for the first time in a decade this year and to grow by 7 percent in 2010 as key sectors such as agriculture and mining start to recover, the finance minister said on Wednesday.

Education ministers from member states of the African Union (AU) have converged in Mombasa, Kenya, for two-day meeting on the continent's progress and prospect in education, the AU has said.

Kenya could once again find itself in a United Nations agency’s bad books for failing to submit a crucial report on torture. The UN Convention Against Torture and other cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment or punishment (UNCAT) last November gave the government a year to put in place measures to guard against state-sanctioned torture as well as opening avenues for justice to victims.

A court in Namibia has ruled that the National Society for Human Rights must have its status as an election observer reinstated, hours after polls opened. The electoral commission withdrew the group's status days before the vote, saying it was not impartial.

The Nigerian government has not brought a single prosecution or even begun investigations a year after Nigerian policemen and soldiers killed more than 130 civilians in responding to deadly sectarian clashes in the central Nigerian city of Jos, Human Rights Watch has said.

Internal displacement caused by both communal violence and internal armed conflict is a recurrent phenomenon in most states in Nigeria. The parties to the fighting have sought political, economic and social advantages in a country with endemic poverty, low levels of education and a huge and alienated youth population.

Some 100 children under five years of age will die today in Zimbabwe, a bleak statistic that is part of new social development data released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Government, revealing that the situation there for women and children has deteriorated in the past five years.

Islamist hardliners in Somalia have taken over the control of strategic town, Dobley, a southern border between Somalia and Kenya, after clashes with a rival group, reports say on Thursday. Al-shabaab fighters attacked and took over the town in the early hours of Wednesday from rival group Hizbul Islam.

Angola is considering setting up a Norwegian-style sovereign wealth fund to manage its oil revenues. Angola has said it plans to have the new sovereign wealth fund ready to invest its oil money abroad this year but has yet to announce a date for its launch.

Countries across Eastern and Southern Africa have stepped up plans for the establishment of Africa’s largest economic bloc with the opening of negotiations that may culminate in a Free Trade Area (FTA) spanning Cape to Cairo by May 2010.

This year the fourth internet governance forum was playing it safe – perhaps because next year could be its last – but we still saw real progress. Privacy no longer plays second fiddle to security, people’s rights online are recognised as central by all sides. Social networking was the new star centre stage.

Health authorities in Zimbabwe announced that the country would get US$180 million from the Global Fund to fight HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.