A survey by an anti-graft watchdog has found Kenya east Africa's most graft-prone nation with a bribe expected or solicited in nearly half of all transactions, followed by Uganda and Tanzania. The inaugural East Africa Bribery Index, according to Reuters yesterday, showed Kenya's police force was the most corrupt public institution with 66.5 per cent bribery rate.

In 2005, the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) project, which is run by the International Livestock Research Institute, set up a series of information centres throughout Ethiopia. The centres, equipped with a variety of information and communication technologies, provide farmers with information they need to develop new products and increase the yields of existing crops. The project is also attempting to improve the links between farmers and traders, creating opportunities for small-scale producers to sell to new markets, thereby increasing their incomes and helping to reduce poverty in the area.

The European Commission and UNIFEM are embarking on a programme that will be implemented in Rwanda, Kenya, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and Cambodia. With a total budget of €2,450,353 for three years, the programme will focus on promoting the leadership of HIV-positive women’s groups and gender equality advocates, to ensure that gender equality priorities are identified, realized and budgeted in national HIV and AIDS responses.

Over 1.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes so far this year as a result of significant increasing violence in DR Congo, Sudan and Somalia, international agency Oxfam has said, as heads of state gather at the AU Summit in Libya to discuss peace and security across the continent.

Former Guinea Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Tidiane Soumare was released on Wednesday morning after being detained for a few hours at Peleton Mobile 3 (PM3), a garrison of the gendarmerie in Conakry, according to his immediate family. The former head of the “broad-based” government under the late President Lansana Conte had been arraigned on Tuesday evening and taken to PM3 as he failed to keep his commitments of making a monthly payment for US$200,000 as promised when he was first arraigned last March.

The International Monetary Fund said Zimbabwe’s economy may be recovering after a decade of recession. “A nascent economic recovery appears to be underway,” Vitaliy Kramarenko, the IMF Mission Chief for Zimbabwe, said today in a statement. “To sustain positive economic trends and improve living standards, reform and stabilization efforts need to be stepped up.”

United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch has said. The attacks on civilians from all sides have resulted in a significant increase in human rights violations over the past six months.

Collecting detailed information, and making sure it is accurate, can cost a lot of time and money. It is expensive for fieldworkers to travel regularly to every project site, and the technology involved in gathering the data – often small handheld computers – can take a lot out of a limited budget. One solution is Mobile Researcher, a tiny application that can be installed on the mobile phones.

Around the world, a woman dies every minute from pregnancy-related causes. Globally, there are more than 500,000 maternal deaths per year, the majority of which are in Africa where in many places the maternal mortality rate (MMR) is as high as 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births. And these death threats are only increasing: one in every 16 African women faces the lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy and delivery-related complications, particularly those from marginalized communities and those living in poverty.

The 4th edition of the annual Lola Kenya Screen audiovisual media festival for children and youth in eastern Africa will be held at Goethe-Institut, Nairobi, Kenya, August 10-15, 2009. The only festival in Africa exclusively designed for children and youth, Lola Kenya Screen was established in October 2005 to explore, identify and nurture creative talents among children and youth in areas of filmmaking, cultural journalism, events planning and presentation and critical appreciation of creativity.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced concern over the political and constitutional crisis in Niger, calling for restraint and political dialogue to resolve the issue. In a statement issued at the UN headquarters in New York, Ban said he was “deeply concerned” about the ongoing political and constitutional crisis in Niger.

Wael Abbas, a leading Egyptian blogger and activist who has documented police abuse in the country in recent years, staged a sit-in for 10 hours after security confiscated his computer upon arrival from attending the Talberg Forum in Sweden.

Elections in Guinea-Bissau to replace assassinated President Joao Bernardo Vieira are to go to a second round, the electoral commissioner says. Mr Vieira was killed in March in apparent revenge for the death of the head of the army in a bomb blast. The two frontrunners from Sunday's vote are the ruling party's Malam Bacai Sanha with 39.6% of the vote and former President Kumba Yala with 29.4%.

Kenyan security forces beat and tortured hundreds of civilians in several communities during an October 2008 disarmament operation in Kenya's northeastern Mandera districts, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Human Rights Watch called on the Kenyan government to establish an independent inquiry without further delay to investigate and then prosecute those responsible.

Radio is often considered to be a one-way medium, but the African Farm Radio Research Initiative is investigating ways of combining radio and ICTs to gather content and to share information among farming communities throughout rural Africa.

Daouda Diallo, President of Conseil Supérieur de la Communication (CSC), Niger’s media regulatory body, on June 29, 2009 banned Niamey-based independent Dounia TV and Radio station for broadcasting a statement calling on Mamadou Tandja to resign as President of the country.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the fragile 2007 Ouagadougou Peace Agreement, which ended five years of fighting and territorial partition between the government and the rebel “Forces Nouvelles”. National and local authorities need to dramatically increase the tempo of electoral preparations, administrative reunification and disarmament of armed groups or the country could slide back into open conflict.

The ECOWAS Community Court hearing the case of torture brought by Musa Saidykhan, a Gambian journalist against the operatives of the Gambia’s notorious National Intelligence Agency (NIA), on June 30, 2009 dismissed the preliminary objections raised by the Gambian government, the defendant in the case. According to the Community court, Saidykhan is a citizen of West Africa and that the court is mandated by the ECOWAS protocol to hear human rights violation cases brought before it.

The trial of seven Gambian journalists accused of publishing with “seditious intention” will now continue at a High Court in Banjul instead of the Kanifing court where the trial began. On July 1, 2009, the accused, four newspaper journalists and three executives of the Gambian Press Union (GPU) were summoned to appear on July 3, instead of the original adjourned date of July 7.

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