The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the death threats issued against Kadi Adzuba and Delphine Namuto of Radio Okapi and Jolly Kamuntu of the privately-owned radio station, Radio Maendeleo, who were all threatened through an unknown SMS in Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province in the east of DRC.

The Liberian leader president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has filed a lawsuit against the New Broom newspaper for libel, amounting to $5 million in damages. The paper recently accused president Sirleaf of receiving US$2 million as kickback to favor a company for control of the Cavalla Robber Plantation in the south eastern region of Liberia.

The deaths of 73 African migrants who drifted for three weeks in the Mediterranean without rescue have heightened concern about Italy's crackdown on immigration, opening cracks in its ruling coalition and a rift with Brussels. Five survivors, picked up off the Italian island of Lampedusa, said their grey dinghy left Libya carrying 78 people. A day later, the motor died: two pregnant girls, raped by traffickers, were among the first to die of thirst and exposure.

Women need to get involved more actively and more equally in the reform of the security sector in post-conflict states, says Ecoma Alaga, a Gender and Security Sector Reform (SSR) expert of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa. Alaga presented a policy paper in a seminar on SSR and the Protection of Women in Africa on Tuesday, which was attended by leading experts in the field of gender, peacekeeping and SSR.

Zimbabwe's prime minister has accused the country's president, Robert Mugabe, of violating terms of their power-sharing agreement. Morgan Tsvangirai told thousands of supporters marking his Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) 10th anniversary on Sunday that despite guarantees of political freedoms in the unity deal, Mugabe's Zanu-PF party continued to persecute MDC supporters.

The health systems of Sub-Saharan Africa are being undermined by an exodus of medical staff. A new study from Zambia, led by an international team of doctors and researchers, reveals that staff burnout is fuelling the crisis. It shows that even though access to HIV treatment has rapidly expanded, the number of trained staff has not kept pace, meaning that delivering effective HIV care is proving difficult.

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.

International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) has received disturbing news of the arrest of journalist, filmmaker and talk show host, Kalundi Serumaga, on 11 September 2009. It is reported that he has suffered severe beatings, requiring hospital treatment. PEN urgently calls for the release of Kalundi Serumaga, who appears to be detained solely for having spoken on recent clashes in Kampala and nearby Kayunga.