The IICD-supported Global Teenager Project (GTP) has launched a new virtual learning environment to support online classroom discussion on social issues with peers from all over the world. Founded in 1998, GTP offers collaborative global learning to over 10,000 students in 34 countries based on themes, or Learning Circles.

Reporters Without Borders has noted the release from prison of Abdoulaye Tiémogo, editor of the independent weekly Le Canard déchaîné, after his sentence was reduced on appeal. The journalist, who is in poor health, had been held in custody since 1st August. He had been found guilty of “discrediting a judicial decision”.

Fifty-seven IFEX members and other rights organisations joined the Arab Network for Human Rights (ANHRI) to condemn the recent targeting of Moroccan journalists who have been hit with lawsuits, high fines and jail sentences, threatening media diversity. Orchestrated by the monarchy, newspapers have been shut down as the government ramps up its repression of independent journalism, report IFEX members.

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza appeared headed for a resounding victory in an election on Thursday that would also see his ruling Frelimo party winning parliamentary and provincial polls. Partial results showed Guebuza, seen as welcoming of greater foreign investment, taking a commanding lead over his rivals, longtime opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama, and the head of a new party, Daviz Simango.

A new report on Eritrea has been commissioned by the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights. Contributions were also made by other NGOs, including Human Rights House Foundation. “The HR violations are extensive and systematic, and the oppression by the authorities is total”, says the president of the Oslo Center, Kjell Magne Bondevik.

The appointment of Margaret Nasha as the first woman to occupy the post of Speaker of the National Assembly in Botswana signals another step towards gender equality in southern Africa. However, the low number of women who made it into Parliament in the recent elections is a setback in a region committed to reach 50 percent parity in decision-making by 2015, in six years time, following just one more election.

To maintain sustained economic growth and meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Sub-Saharan African countries have to invest up to US$ 50 billion annually in infrastructure, said Zemedeneh Negatu, the Managing Partner of Ernst & Young, LLP in Ethiopia. He made the comments at the Africa Investor “CEO Forum on Infrastructure, Energy and Clean Tech”, held at the Cape Town International Convention Center.

The Ggaba landing site on Lake Victoria is the nearest wholesale fish market to the Ugandan capital, Kampala. More than 6,000 people live and work in this fishing community. The water looks green and dirty from the quay. It smells like - well, like fish, or an abandoned, stagnant water pond.

The last 400 of more than 200,000 Burundians who fled to Tanzania 37 years ago travelled home on Friday, ending one of the longest-running refugee sagas in the world, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday. The Burundians arrived in 1972, fleeing ethnic conflict at home. While many have returned under a U.N.-backed voluntary repatriation programme, some 29,000 were naturalised in Tanzania and 133,000 citizenship applications are still pending there.

Start local, then Africa, then the world. That’s the mantra app developers in Africa should be repeating to themselves as they build their game changing tools. That’s what Agosta Liko and his team at Verviant are doing with their new web and mobile payment platform: PesaPal.

Gibril Gottor, a reporter for Radio Kolenten, based in the Kambia district of northwestern Sierra Leone, was violently assaulted by a group of men on 10 October 2009 for allegedly "sabotaging" the government. The men are believed to be supporters of the ruling All People's Congress Party (APC).

In what has been described as the final death of state sponsored AIDS denialism, President Jacob Zuma has delivered a historic speech in the National Council of Provinces acknowledging that the country was not winning the war against the disease and that extraordinary measures were needed.

Measures to reduce loss to follow-up in antiretroviral treatment programmes such as abolishing user fees, paying transportation costs, providing meals and improving staff training would be cost-effective even if they prevented less than half of patients from failing to return to the clinic, according to projections based on data from Côte d’Ivoire.

A recent round of talks has failed to achieve agreement between Morocco's unions and the government on several of organised labour's key demands. Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi began his annual "Social Dialogue" with leading Moroccan unions on Monday (October 26th) in Rabat.

"Keep Your Chats Exactly That!" is a campaign by Women'sNet and Girls'Net that aims to empower young people in the use of the internet and cell phones. It looks at both strategies of prevention from harassment, bullying and violence, as well as strategies for using ICTs in affirmative ways to advocate for change on issues that concern them.

In recent weeks, the U.N. has bolstered a groundbreaking, but largely symbolic, resolution passed in 2000 that identified women's rights and roles during war. Recent public rapes in Guinea now pose a crucial test of their strength

Armed villagers have killed at least 47 policemen who were trying to intervene in ethnic clashes in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, reports say. A number of civilians were also killed in the violence which erupted in the village of Dongo in Equateur province early on Thursday, the UN-sponsored Radio Okapi said, citing local officials.

Whatever else it is, information and communications technologies (ICTs) policy-making can often be symbolic, especially in poor countries. The vision is one of social upliftment, and a new golden age of possibilities brought on by technological roll-out. Sometimes these promises can feel like fantasy in contrast to the real spadework of laying cables, orbiting satellites, and securing billion-dollar investment deals that don’t exploit the poor.

The International Budget Partnership has released “It's Our Money. Where's It Gone?”—a new documentary film on the work one of its partners, MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights), is doing to involve communities directly in monitoring the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya. The CDF allocates approximately one million dollars annually to each member of parliament to spend on development projects in his or her constituency but provides for no meaningful independent oversight. This is the story of ordinary Kenyans stepping in to do something about it.

Tanzania Telecommunication Company Ltd customers will from this month enjoy a 50 per cent cut in Internet charges, making Tanzania the first East African country to lower Internet charges. TTCL chief executive officer Said Amour Said, told The EastAfrican that the lowering of charges follows the firm's connecting to the Seacom submarine fibre optic cable.