Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya has confirmed plans to go ahead with presidential elections in November after narrowly surviving a coup attempt that led to two days of heavy fighting in the capital Nouakchott.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repatriated 1,108 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the neighbouring Republic of the Congo since Monday, an official of the Central African Republic told IRIN on Wednesday.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has cast doubt on Guinea-Bissau's ability to hold credible parliamentary elections next month, remarking that the small West African country "has embarked on a downward course" following its return to democracy three years ago.

A declaration handed to the World Economic Forum (WEF) regional meeting held in Durban last week declared the WEF "an anti-democratic institution", saying that any decisions taken by the WEF "cannot be considered to be binding on the people of Africa and the world". The declaration said: "We are committed to an autonomous, unified Africa and demand that we the people of Africa, and not the corporate and political elites, shape our own destiny. We reject neo-liberal economic policies, as embodied in NEPAD and GEAR, including privatisation and unregulated "free trade" instead of fair trade."

A year into its mandate to replace the old Organisation of African Unity, the African Union is seeking substantive acts to counter criticism that it is a mere “talk shop” for travel-loving ministers. Also on the African Union's “to do” list is reforming its finances, particularly the need to get member states to pay subscription fees that will make programmes, and thus the African Union's prestige, a reality.

Bad news comes in bunches, says this commentary in Nigeria's The Vanguard newspaper, and what the nation has been told recently about happenings in the oil and gas sector has been mostly bad news - underlining the reasons why Nigeria ranks as the second most corrupt nation on earth.

I feel sick to the core each time I see child soldiers brandishing guns.

The long-running series of corruption trials against leading international construction companies in the southern African state of Lesotho has reached another milestone with a guilty plea from one of the main intermediaries for the bribes. Jacobus Michiel du Plooy, a South African consultant, has pleaded guilty to paying $375,000 (£225,000) to Masupha Sole, the former chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project who is serving 15 years in prison for accepting more than $2m in bribes from a dozen western companies. The cash was paid on behalf of Impregilo SpA, Italy's largest construction company, according to the indictment.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Durban City Hall for a march to protest against the World Economic Forum's Africa Summit last week. The protests were organised by the Ethekwini Social Forum in conjunction with the Treatment Action Campaign, other NGO's and various community organisations.

That the human rights of migrants are not a priority for most governments is nothing new. Abuse and discrimination are experienced by migrants themselves on a daily basis around the world. The entry into force of the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families scheduled on July 1, 2003 won't change this situation overnight. But it is an additional tool in the hands of non-governmental organisations, one that is needed for our fight for more justice and respect. You can join a call for universal ratification of the UN Migrants Rights Convention by clicking on the URL provided.

We are writing to implore you to seek a peaceful and just solution to your country's escalating national crisis. Those signed below are Americans of Africa descent - many of them representing major organisations of civil society in the United States - who have worked for decades to support the liberation movements of Africa and the governments that followed independence which promoted and protected the interests of all of their nation's people. We form part of an honorable tradition of progressive solidarity with the struggles for decolonization, and against apartheid and imperialism in Africa.

The main opposition party in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, says it now recognises the legitimacy of disputed April elections. The Kulmiye party's presidential candidate, Ahmad Muhammad Silanyo, told IRIN on Wednesday that "after the intervention of elders and others, we have decided as a party to accept the results".

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday called on African leaders attending an economic summit in South Africa to embrace "child-centred standards as the primary measure for gauging progress" across their continent.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation made a global call last week for nations to safeguard water, calling it the source of food security. Jacques Diouf, the general director of the UN body, singled out the Horn of Africa and parts of north Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia as particular trouble spots. The call was made to mark World Environment Day 2003, which was celebrated under the theme ‘Water - Two Billion People Are Dying For It!’

Since 1990, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has compiled an annual report to show the level of development in various countries of the world, across all social strata. A new Regional Human Development Report has emerged to analyse the global report from the African perspective. Africa currently contains 34 of the 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the world, with 300 million persons, or over 45 percent of the continent's population living below the poverty line. And according to the last Global Human Development Report (2002), 29 countries out of the 36 with a low Human Development Index (HDI) in the world are in Africa.

Levels of corruption and poor accountability in the country may deteriorate further between now and the general elections next year, the British Department of International Development (DFID) said on Monday. Launching the Country Assistance Plan (CAP) for Malawi in which DFID will provide K22 billion to Malawi for the next three years, head of DFID Malawi Mike Wood said: "There is a risk that government may divert development resources for purely political purposes," reads the CAP document released on Monday.

The government has lost 120bn shillings [about 1.6bn dollars] in the last five years through illegal use of Telkom facilities for private business. Those involved in the scam install communication dishes to make international calls.

The rampant presence of corruption in a country seriously undermines its management and economic development, the executive director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Prof. Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, has said.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) Ghana, Professor E. Gyimah-Boadi, has said that the government's commitment to the policy of zero tolerance for corruption is gradually waning in the light of its failure to significantly empower and resource official anti-corruption and countervailing agencies.

Governments in rich countries demand that regimes in poor countries clean up their acts and eradicate corruption if they are to be given aid, and yet the governments of rich countries turn a blind eye when western multinational companies bribe on a huge scale to win contracts in poor countries, with the financial backing of those same governments. The Corner House, a think tank campaigning for environmental and social justice, has examined nine projects which Britain's export credits guarantee department (ECGD) has backed in the past two decades and concludes that there has been "a series of institutional practices within the ECGD that have permitted corrupt practice to go unpunished". For instance, Corner House believes little has been done to investigate the case of the Lesotho Highlands Water project. The ECGD's support to four British companies amounted to £215m. But, according to Corner House, it continued to give this support even after warning signs of possible corruption first surfaced in 1994.