Carrying placards that read, "Huwezi Die Uki Abstain", Swahili slang for "You won't die if you abstain [from sex]", more than 3,000 young people recently marched through Nairobi in an effort to re-energize the campaign to keep teens from having sex too early. But beyond the placard-waving and slogan-chanting, march organizers were also trying to give young people the skills to avoid being pushed into sex before they are ready.

Participants attending a regional conference, entitled 'Regional Conference on Protection Challenges to Climate Change in West Africa', have ended their two-day conference in Lome, the Togolese capital, with a call for the use of a human rights-based approach to address climate change challenges in the region.

Rich countries must repay their climate debt by making big cuts to emissions and providing developing countries with the finance and technology needed, global anti-poverty agency ActionAid said in a release on the World Bank's annual World Development Report."A broad coalition from Bolivian President Evo Morales to the World Bank is united in saying that past emissions matter and that rich countries have to confront this rather than avoid it," Tom Sharman, ActionAid's head of climate change, said in a statement.

A multi-country campaign in Africa is using cell phone technology to expose stock-outs of essential medicines at public health facilities and put pressure on governments to address the issue. "Stop the Stock-outs" was launched earlier this year in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia by Health Action International (HAI) Africa, a regional network of NGOs, healthcare providers and civil society organizations, in partnership with Oxfam, the UK-based aid and developmental charity, and civil society organizations in several countries.

The Ugandan government should immediately allow radio stations and programming that it closed down after protests in Kampala last week to return to the air and should investigate the arrest and abuse of a prominent journalist, Robert Kalundi Sserumaga, Human Rights Watch has said.

This week’s emerging powers news casts a spotlight on domestic developments in China; such as privatization of state-owned enterprises, the governance system, law and order. Elsewhere, China, India and Brazil continue to expand their investment footprint and hunt for resources in Africa and beyond.

Evidence indicates that the dumping of toxic wastes caused over one dozen deaths and dozens of illnesses in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, an independent United Nations human rights expert have said.In August of that year, the cargo ship “Probo Koala” dumped 500 tonnes of toxic wastes, belonging to the Dutch commodity trading company Trafigura, at sites around the city of Abidjan, the West African nation’s largest city.

Media watchdog, the Media Institute for Southern Africa – Zimbabwe, has expressed grave concern over the upsurge of hate speech against the private media and perceived opponents, by members of ZANU PF and the state controlled media. Earlier this week army commander, Lieutenant-General Phillip Valerio Sibanda, berated foreign based Zimbabwean radio stations, accusing them of being at war with Zimbabwe and urged the military to ‘guard against them’. This has been widely seen as meaning that journalists broadcasting into Zimbabwe are legitimate military targets because they threaten the state.

Preparations for elections in Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique are now at an advanced stage with the respective electoral commissions announcing polling dates. Botswana and Mozambique will go to the polls on 16 and 28 October respectively, while Namibia will hold its elections on 27 and 28 November. Botswana is holding general elections to choose new parliamentarians. The Parliament will then act as an electoral college to choose the President.

Researchers have been keen to assess the impact of emerging donors on the development paradigm. The particular aid policies of China, India, South Africa et al have been carefully considered to garner how emerging donor approaches differ from the ‘traditional’ OECD-DAC (Development Assistance Committee) funders. Yet little consideration has been given to the implications of the new aid actors’ activities for future OECD-DAC donor policy as a whole. This paper seeks to detail implications for donor policy.

Nigeria's armed group fighting for a greater share of oil wealth has decided to extend a two-month-old ceasefire in the Niger Delta by 30 days but warned a government amnesty programme had not yet addressed key issues. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend), with an estimated 10,000-strong force, has been behind deadly attacks on oil installations in Nigeria that have disrupted production.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has signed a five-year poverty reduction compact granting $540 million to the Republic of Senegal for road rehabilitation and food security initiatives in some of the poorest regions of Senegal. The grant was signed by the Acting Chief Executive Officer Darius Mans and Senegalese Minister of Finance and Economy Abdoulaye Diop, with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal presiding at the signing held at the US State Department in Washington, D.C.

Average life expectancy in Swaziland has plummeted from around 60 years in the 1990s to just over 30 years today. Few would deny that HIV/AIDS is largely to blame, but the reasons why the epidemic has devastated this tiny, southern African country more than any other are less clear. "Foreign observers look at Swaziland and can't figure out why the numbers [of HIV infections] remain so high," said Harriet Kunene, of The AIDS Support Centre in the central commercial town, Manzini.

Land grabbing of small farmers’ land by large national and foreign companies is becoming an increasingly concerning issue in Mali. After investing in various sectors of the economy in Mali and in Africa, these national or multinational corporations are looking for new avenues of opportunity, namely land.

Africa registered 8,000 cases of the H1N1 A flu, called swine flu, 46 of which resulted in deaths, out of the the 164,152 cases reported throughout the world, a researcher with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Sénégal, Dr. Mang Coly, has disclosed. Coly said South Africa was one of the most affected countries in the continent with 5,877 cases of contamination, followed by Tanzania, with 96 cases, Mauritius , 69 cases, and Kenya, 85 cases.

Sixteen people died and 49 others are missing and presumed dead in three separate incidents involving smuggling boats in the Gulf of Aden over the last 48 hours, the UN refugee agency has said. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement that the first incident took place early Sunday morning off the coast of Radfan, some 150 kilometres east of the Mayfa'a reception centre.

Two weeks ago, Global Voices Online reported the story of Januário Alves de Santana, a black man who had been beaten and punched by security guards of one of the largest international retailers in Brazil. He was waiting for his family in the car park of a supermarket when he was accused of trying to steal his own car, under the argument that, being black, he would not be able to afford a luxury car.

South Africa's Sumbandila Satellite blasted off into space on Thursday evening. The blast-off was accompanied by rousing applause and delight by keen South Africans who had traveled to Baikonur, Kazakhstan to witness the event. Among the guests were Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor. She said the launch of Sumbandila which is Venda for "lead the way" has paved the way for bigger and better things.

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Tendai Biti said on Wednesday he had blocked possible "unprocedural use" of IMF aid allocated to the country under a global assistance agreement for member states hit by a global crisis. Biti dismissed as "rubbish" reports in state media that he had written to the International Monetary Fund effectively rejecting over $500 million in IMF special drawing rights extended to Zimbabwe because Harare has external debts of about $5.7 billion.

The number of incidents against humanitarian workers operating in the volatile North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has surged by 26 per cent in the first six months this year, and the attacks are becoming increasingly violent, according to a United Nations report.