A few weeks ago, a new piece of legislation was introduced in the US Congress, calling for development and justice in northern Uganda. While the bill boasts many excellent provisions, it also includes a statement of policy that would allow AFRICOM to pursue the Lord's Resistance Army in DR Congo. This asks members of Congress to be more attentive to the need for peace in this troubled region

With the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro providing a backdrop under simmering tropical sunshine, a group of women in Mijongweni village break into song. The song, in Swahili, praises the benefits of protecting the environment and living in harmony with nature for the survival of generations; values vital to the survival of one of the rarest hardwood trees in the world, the African blackwood. Known to locals as mpingo, the African blackwood (dalbergia melanoxylon) is a tree that has been exploited to extinction in southern Ethiopia and Kenya and is currently only found in Tanzania and northern Mozambique. Tanzania boasts large tracts of natural forest and woodlands

It is prayer time at the Nur madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado Province, on the northern coast of Mozambique. At this school, education does not stop at religious studies; on Saturdays, the malimo (teacher), Mitilage Rashid, talks to the 120 students about HIV and AIDS. In 2008 Rashid attended a course on HIV run by the Islamic Council of Mozambique, in partnership with other organizations, where he and 30 other teachers learned about the epidemic and how to conduct education campaigns at their schools.

Caroline Mbewe, 14, would prefer to be in school, but instead is a domestic worker for an affluent family in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe. "My bosses treat me well but I don't want to continue working. I want to be like their daughters; I want to go to school," she told IRIN. As in the rest of the developing world, poor families in Malawi are often forced to send their children out to earn a wage rather than complete their education.

In a letter to president Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Congolese government to lift its ban of RFI in the eastern cities of Bunia and Bukavu.

As Omar Bongo Ondimba, the Gabonese president who died at age 73 in Barcelona on Jun. 8, is buried in Franceville in the south-west of Gabon on Thursday, his 41-year-reign as absolute ruler of this oil-producing country of 1.5 million has received mixed reviews. In neighbouring Congo, a seven-day period of national mourning has been declared. Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso was closely aligned with Bongo; his daughter, Edith Lucie, was married to the Gabonese president at the time of her own death in March.

South Africa's biggest farmers' union on Friday criticised the government's plans to scrap a voluntary system of buying land from white farmers to give to poor blacks. Johannes Moller, president of farmers union AgriSA said the move to scrap the willing-buyer, willing-seller model, under which the government negotiates with owners to buy land, would be unconstitutional unless the system were replaced with a similar one.

"My worry is that my children are going to be slaves because they won't have anything. These foreign people come to South Africa with nothing, but tomorrow he has cash, third day he owns a shop and fourth day he has a car. Where do these foreign people get this money?" Small business owners are venting their frustrations on 'foreign nationals' - among them many Somalis - who own shops in the country's townships, causing experts to warn that xenophobic violence could increase.

The gays and lesbians debate threatened to split the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance into two at the just ended Constitutional Indaba held in Bulawayo as the men of cloth exchanged harsh words in defence and against the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution, Zimbabwe Telegraph reports. A larger fraction of the pastors who attended the Indaba felt it was the role of the church to push for the accommodation of homosexuals in the new constitution as it was left upon the church to fight for the rights of the gays and lesbians so as to win them to Christ.

The Bliss Women and Children Project is a Christian, non-profit organization. Our aim is to provide opportunities for women and children who are living in extreme poverty, are abandoned, orphaned, internally displaced, widowed or living with HIV/AIDS. More than 100 women and 80 children benefit from our programs every day.

Abdul Hamid Adiamoh, managing editor of Today, a privately-owned newspaper who has been in detention since his arrest on June 10, 2009 was on June 12 charged with “ publishing and broadcasting false information”, contrary to Section 181 (A) of the Criminal Code of the Gambia. Speaking with the pro-government Banjul-based Daily Observer newspaper, ASP Sulayman Secka, Public Relations Officer of the Gambia Police Force could not tell whether the journalist was still in police detention or not.

Submit your essay on democracy, and get your free ticket to the world’s largest gathering of democracy and human rights activists in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2010! The World Youth Movement for Democracy (www.wymd.org), a youth network of the World Movement for Democracy (www.wmd.org), is pleased to announce the launch of its Global Essay Contest. Fifteen winners (3 in each region: Asia, Central/Eastern Europe & Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa) will be invited to participate in the upcoming 6th Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in April 2010.

History and current experience shows that so deep are the pains of most of the conflicts experienced in Africa that the popular individualized and rationalistic approaches to healing and transformation simply lack the language and resources to solidly address the challenge of holistic peaceful transformation. “Arts approaches” provide an accessible language, compelling processes that affirm everyone’s creativity and, above all, an inclusive space that enables healing, genuine dialogue and transformation to happen particularly where the violent conflicts and pains are experienced by masses of people. African countries that are victims of conflicts, can use dance and drama to subtly address the issues among community members.

Two hours later, there was no sign of what had taken place. The park in the Shapira neighborhood of southern Tel Aviv was again teeming with life. Foreign workers gradually arrived, filling the place up, children came to play and only a green garbage bin located at the foot of a tree in a corner of the park remained as evidence that a short while earlier, at 3:30 P.M., someone's life had come to an end. Abrehale Misghina, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, dragged the bin to the tree, climbed on top of it, placed a noose around his neck, threw the other end of the rope over one of the branches, and committed suicide.

Sanusha Naidu does a roundup of the week's Sino-African news

Niger's former Prime Minister, Hama Amadou, has urged the country's political class to exhibit more responsibility in a bid to avoid some "useless rifts" about the debate on President Mamadou Tandja's bid to change the constitution through a referendum to have a third five-year term. “It is important that our political class shows a keen sense of responsibility in a bid to avoid in our dear country some useless rifts, by respecting constitutional legality,” he said.

The report of the government-constituted Technical Committee on the Niger Delta, submitted to Nigeria’s President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua on 1 December 2008, offers an opportunity to reduce violent conflict significantly and begin longer-term regional development in the oil-rich region. The government needs to respond urgently and positively, in particular by accepting a third-party mediator to facilitate discussions of amnesty and demobilisation of militants, in order to dispel growing misgivings in the Delta, save the region from further violence and organised criminality, and ensure Nigeria’s continued reliability as a leading source of energy for the world.

Members of armed paramilitary groups are a serious threat to civilians who fled violence and insecurity and are now returning to their villages, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. People who have returned to their home regions have been killed, forcibly recruited into paramilitary groups, and threatened with death by armed men who in many cases have seized their land.

An international coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), mostly comprised of women’s groups, is calling for a "gender equitable" response to the global financial crisis, which is to be debated at a UN summit of world leaders next week. "The United Nations, not the international financial institutions (IFIs), must lead this process," Gigi Francisco, general coordinator of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), told IPS.

Egypt has asked the African Development Bank (AfDB) for a budgetary support loan to offset the impact of the global economic crisis, a senior bank official said on Friday."We are in discussions over a budget support loan with the Government of Egypt to address the impact of the financial crisis and to support the reforms that are under way," Gabriel Negatu, the AfDB's financial reforms director, said.