The 07-07-07 Campaign, has condemned the 20th postponement of Zoliswa Nkonyana’s murder case, citing incompetence from both the presiding magistrate and the Khayelitsha Magistrate Court. Nkonyana’s case went to court again two weeks ago where it was postponed to 28 September this year. “The delays in Zoliswa’s case have reached ridiculous levels, there have been 20 postponements and 15 of these have been due to delays by defense lawyers”, says Joint Working Group coordinator, Emily Craven.

The Sigma-Tau Pharmaceutical has announced an innovative combination therapy fixed dose to fight Malaria, the disease that is responsible for 250 million cases worldwide and causes more than 880,000 deaths, especially among children under 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, malaria was endemic in 109 countries, 45 of them in Africa.

Women's groups in embattled Mogadishu are stepping into the aid vacuum to assist thousands more displaced by fighting in the capital, civil society activists said. "We have been helping in the past but now the situation is even worse so we have had to assume an even bigger role," said Asha Sha'ur, a civil society member and activist.

Reporters Without Borders is very concerned about the still fraught political situation in Madagascar and its constant impact on the media. Several journalists have been harassed in recent weeks, a website was mysteriously blocked and a radio journalist was held for two weeks after being the victim of a heavy-handed arrest.

Latest publications include , which features contributing chapters from Patrick Bond and Khadija Sharife, Demba Moussa Dembélé, Charles Mutasa and Samir Amin, and Yash Tandon's and Yash Tandon's sales@pambazukapress.org.

With women now comprising 61 percent of all people infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa, international donors, governments and advocacy organisations are looking more closely at the connections between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality. A new report released last week by two Washington-based think tanks, the Centre for Global Development (CGD) and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), more closely explores the connection between HIV/AIDS and gender inequality, and to what extent donors and countries are using this knowledge to help in the fight against AIDS.

This bulletin, published by the Population Reference Bureau, provides a sketch of urban health in developing countries, documenting the intra-urban differences in health for a number of countries and showing how the risks facing the urban poor compare with those facing rural villagers. It begins with an overview of the multiple dimensions of urban poverty and a summary of internationally comparable evidence on the urban health differentials associated with poverty.

Members of the Ghana Reparation and Repatriation Foundation (GRARF), a local NGO operating in the north, have appealed to the government to take a strong stand and asked for compensation from Britain and America for their involvement in the Trans Atlantic Chattel slavery in Ghana. The members reminded government that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has classified the Trans Atlantic Chattel Slavery as crime against humanity and that must be pursued to its logical conclusion without any favour.

Risky sexual behaviour has a language of its own on the University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) campus in the capital, Harare. When female students arrive, they join an informal sorority known as the "university spinster association", or USA, while their male counterparts are inducted into the "university bachelor association", or UBA

As an African Union summit on agricultural investments opens in Libya, donors and non-profits are calling participants' attention to the role smallholder farmers – mostly women – can have in feeding their communities. Agriculture is an overlooked “emergency” that deserves as much attention as the global financial crisis, according to Kate Norgrove with Oxfam UK’s office in Dakar, Senegal.

Journalists covering an HIV/AIDS workshop for Swazi parliamentarians were on 30 June 2009 kicked out of the workshop after MPs and senators expressed displeasure at their presence. The parliamentarians asked the organizers of the workshop to expel the journalists because they wanted to learn freely without the presence of the media.

The fourth largest river in Africa, the mighty Zambezi, is a lifeblood to 32 million people, from land-locked Zambia to Mozambique on the Indian Ocean. But its blessing is also its curse. Climate change is blamed for an increase in rainfall and flooding along the river's 2,574 kilometre course through Angola, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

Concerned about gender based violence, rapidly spiraling out of control in South Africa, a group of committed donors have established a Joint Gender Fund with the aim to provide grants to civil society organisations in support of projects that integrate fighting gender based violence and HIV and AIDS.

Mobile phones are the unlikely weapons being used to fight cassava disease in Tanzania, in a collaboration between scientists and farmers. As part of the Digital Early Warning Network (DEWN) farmers from ten districts in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania will be trained to recognise the symptoms of Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD)

A UN assessment has revealed that flooding in northern Namibia during March severely disrupted HIV and AIDS treatment, care and prevention services. The floods, caused by heavy rains, affected more than 350,000 people in six regions with some of the highest HIV-prevalence rates in the country. The north is also one of the poorest and most isolated parts of Namibia, with limited social services, employment opportunities and infrastructure.

Aid analysts applaud the “courage” of the UK government’s just-released development policy paper, which detailed plans to allocate at least half of all new bilateral funding to fragile states, but question how the government can do the job well without shrinking other aid commitments.

Nearly four months after the death of Franco-Congolese journalist Bruno Jacquet Ossébi, the Committee to Protect Journalists called today for authorities in the Republic of Congo to publicly disclose a report that was prepared weeks ago on their investigation. A magistrate appointed in February to oversee an investigation into the cause of the fire that ravaged Ossébi's residence in Brazzaville, Jean Michel Opo, told CPJ in mid-May that a police commission had given a report to his office.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has ended marathon hearings into atrocities committed during the Liberian civil war, recommending stiff penalties, in a final report, likely to affect some 150 Liberians, including President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. The report recommended that 50 Liberians, including Johnson-Sirleaf, be barred for 30 years from contesting and occupying political office in the country.

There are a few high profile labour disputes currently taking place in South Africa. The public have entered the fray, influencing the labour debates by engaging with them via newspapers and talk radio programmes. At the same time, public sentiment is being influenced by the manner in which the media is presenting the various labour disputes.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the failed attempts of the past to dismantle the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an insurgency with roots that go back to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It recommends a new approach to help end great civilian suffering and restore state authority in the eastern Congo. Clear division of labour and better coordination are needed to capitalise on recently improved Congo-Rwanda relations.