The activities of Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI), a civil society organization (CSO) based in Mombasa, Kenya, demonstrate the significant role budget transparency plays in improving accountability. MUHURI’s work also shows how public engagement in the budget process can strengthen oversight and lead to improved public service delivery. At the same time, MUHURI’s impact has been restricted by the lack of a Freedom of Information (FOI) law in Kenya, along with other broad transparency challenges in the country.

At a recent prayer breakfast in Kenya, religious matters were pushed aside and instead gluttony was the order of the day. President Mwai Kibaki struggled to eat a whole chapatti in one go, Prime Minister Raila Odinga spilt tea down his suit and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka struggled after getting a sausage stuck in his mouth. Luckily, these were just puppets being filmed in the cramped dining room of a Nairobi home for the latest of 13 episodes of the XYZ show.

Karim borrowed money to expand his bakery. When the money ran out, and facing the prospect of imprisonment if unable to repay his debts, the 36-year- old Egyptian baker sold his kidney. His case, among hundreds documented by the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS), a Washington-based NGO working to end organ trafficking, reveals an alarming trend: poverty is driving Egyptians to sell their organs.

Any other group of activists might be in a mood to celebrate. The HIV-AIDS lobby has been among the most successful in the world, winning an impressive $10-billion in new annual funds and tripling the level of global support for AIDS programs since 2003. But instead, the AIDS advocacy groups are in a state of anxiety. Their future is looking increasingly difficult, despite all their recent gains.

Four candidates of the Front of Congolese Opposition Parties (FPOC) and an independent candidate, who ran for the 12 July polls in Congo, have appealed for the annulment of the election results.

Angola will invest an estimated $1.2 billion in agricultural development over the next four years as part of a food security initiative, according to a government statement. The investment will be financed by a line of credit from the China Development Bank, private investment and other loans, said the statement in the state-owned newspaper Jornal de Angola.

China has seen its fair share of anti-foreigner protests, from the Boxer Rebellion to the May Fourth movement, and, in more recent decades, more generically termed demonstrations against Americans, Africans, Japanese and the French. Yet for all the expat grumbling about living in China, public protests by foreign residents are virtually unknown, perhaps tempered by the awareness that we are here by choice, live in relative comfort, and would likely achieve little more than a swift deportation.

In response to the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Africa, the African Professional Sex Work Union® APSWU has initiated a permanent project called “Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy in Africa, CATPA” and calls on all those who care about the well being of the African Child to support this campaign with at least one dollar. The caption "one dollar" is borrowed from the famous “less-than-a-dollar-a-day” classification of vulnerable members of society.

Nearly ten years ago, the government of Uganda established the Universal Primary Education Program, designed to boost classroom attendance and increase literacy and education rates throughout the country. In less than a decade, the policy generated dramatic results, more than doubling the number of students enrolled in primary schools from 2.9 million to 6.3 million children.

The handover of the names of the suspects behind Kenya’s post-elections violence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) opens an uncertain chapter in the country’s history of political violence. This development has generated a vibrant debate among Kenyans: What should accountable politics look like? Oxford Transitional Justice Research is working in partnership with Moi University and Pambazuka News to offer a space in which concerned Kenyans can come together with a range of experts, scholars, practitioners, and commentators to discuss fundamental questions about how we got here, and the strategies necessary to move the country forward.

The Partnership for Change is of the considered view that over the last 17 months the citizens of Kenya have exhausted the mechanisms available to us under the national Accord Agreement to cause the Grand Coalition Government to implement the National Accord. This government acting together with Parliament has no vision, no morals and no desire or intent to uphold the constitution of the Republic of Kenya.

The Senegalese Prime minister, Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, said on Thursday that he would soon hold nationwide talks with the local media, urging actors in the sector to have a daily dialogue with the government. Speaking in Dakar he expressed regret about recent misunderstandings in the relations between the government and some privately-owned media.

The World Bank has given Congo a US$20-million loan to finance two projects in the health and education sectors. The Minister of Economy, Finance and Budget, Pacifique Issoibeka, and the World Bank operations director Marie Françoise Marie-Nelly signed two agreements - US$15 million to support basic education (PRAE BASE) and US$5 million for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Fewer Zimbabweans are getting infected with AIDS, and researchers speculate it's due in part to a battered economy that's leaving men short of money to be sugar daddies and keep mistresses. Presenting a study of the infection rate among pregnant women at a major international AIDS conference in South Africa this week, Dr. Michael Silverman said the prevalence of the virus that causes AIDS fell from 23 percent in 2001 to 11 percent at the end of 2008.

Police in Khartoum began a crackdown on Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees in the past few days. The Amharic service's Tizita Belachew interviewed leaders of the refugee community in Khartoum on Thursday and Friday who said the raids began on July 5 and each day since then truckloads of police and other Sudanese government security have raided the homes and business of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees, confiscating the contents of their restaurants and homes and beating and raping women and children.

Only 20 percent of the world’s governments are providing adequate information for their citizens to begin to hold them accountable for managing the public’s money. This finding comes from the Open Budget Survey 2008, an extensive new survey of government budget transparency in 85 countries issued on February 1, 2009, by the International Budget Partnership (IBP). The Survey also found that nearly 50 percent of the 85 countries evaluated provide such minimal information that they are able to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending.

Burkina Faso was one of several countries that where a rapid rise in food prices led to rioting in the streets in 2008. Policy-makers had sensed a crisis developing, but the country was not able to build up sufficient reserves of imported commodities such as rice, wheat and oil to avoid it. There is now an emphasis on achieving food security. Bonou tells IPS that Burkina Faso is one of the handful of countries respecting the Maputo commitment to spending at least ten percent of its budget on agriculture.

President Mamadou Tandja of Niger, operating under his emergency powers on July 8, 2009 gave sweeping powers to Daouda Diallo, chairman of the Conseil Supérieur de la Communication (CSC), the media regulatory body, to unilaterally deal decisively with the country's media.

Coup leader-turned-politician General Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz has been declared winner of Saturday's presidential elections by Mauritania’s Interior Ministry. His main rivals, former parliamentary speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir and veteran opposition figure Ahmed Ould Daddah have rejected the results as "prefabricated, meant to legitimise the coup that brought General Aziz to power."

The president of Mauritania's Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC), Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Dey, has resigned his position. Dey is a member of the opposition Rally of Democratic Forces (RFD). No reason has been given for the resignation which comes 5 days after the holding of the presidential poll won in the first round by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of the Union for the Republic (UPR), Several opposition figures have criticised the result saying there was "fraud a nd manipulation" of the voters' register.