More than 50,000 women have been treated for complications from unsafe abortions in Zambia during the past decade, compared to just 600 women who have received legal abortions in the same period. International organizations and local activists cite barriers to safe and legal abortion, despite a law regarded liberal regionally. Others say abortion should not be legal under any circumstances in a Christian nation such as Zambia.

On 14 February, police pre-emptively dispersed a planned demonstration in central Maputo by the Forum of Mozambican Demobilised Soldiers. The police response and lack of progress in negotiations between the demobilised fighters and the government is likely to drive further protests in Maputo in the next weeks, says Think Africa Press. There are over 13,000 demobilised fighters in Mozambique. While former combatants of the anti-colonial struggle have received pensions, demobilised fighters from the 1975-1992 civil war have not received the same benefits. The civil war soldiers demand equality of status and a monthly pension of $460.

Out of a population of 49-million, 7.5-million South Africans are out of work. Young people are worst affected, with over half of 18- to 25-year-olds unemployed. According to the labour federation, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), there's no other middle income country in the world with such a high rate of unemployment. 'This is a crisis. We call it a ticking bomb,' said Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu's general secretary.

While there is a strong relationship between increasing urbanisation and increasing prosperity, it cannot be assumed that gender inequalities are reduced at the same time. In several spheres of urban life such as labour, education and transport, urbanisation may have contradictory effects for women and girls.

By systematically refusing to answer questions about abuses and dispossession in Sudan and Ethiopia the oil giant Lundin Petroleum and Sweden's minister for foreign affairs Carl Bildt have found a winning strategy, writes Kerstin Lundell, author of the award winning 'Business in Blood and Oil: Lundin Petroleum in Africa'. 'Based on earlier experiences, we find it's not of a constructive nature to comment on unsubstantiated claims about Lundin Petroleum and the corporation's business.' That's all the answer I've received for all the questions I've asked for the past four years about the company's knowledge of or involvement with all the events - the murders, the burning of entire villages - in Sudan and Ethiopia that I've encountered as I collected material for my book 'Business in Blood and Oil' and for articles in Process Nordic magazine.

In this KPFA special broadcast, Africa Today and Transitions on Traditions present a three-hour program on artist, musician, and poet Gil Scott Heron and a tribute to the Peoples Free Medical Clinic survival program of the Black Panther Party. The program features the music of Gil Scott, interviews on his life and work, and discussions on the Survival Programs of the Black Panther Party.

Sudanese police have raided student dormitories at the main university in the capital Khartoum, arresting and beating hundreds of students, activists say. The youth activist group Change Now said Friday's raid took place before dawn, adding that more than 350 students had been arrested at the University of Khartoum. The university has been the scene of student protests since late December. The students have previously staged a sit-in to demand the right to form a student union and to protest against police violence in earlier raids there.

The Conservative government's new plan to reform the refugee system will prevent legitimate claimants from telling their stories and will damage the Immigration and Refugee Board's ability to review those claims, says one immigration expert. The reforms were announced by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who said Canada is being preyed upon by 'bogus' refugees from democratic countries with strong human rights records.

The detention without charge of Dr. Wenceslao Mansogo Alo, a medical doctor who is also a prominent human rights defender and opposition member in Equatorial Guinea, for more than five days following the death of a patient during surgery is a source of serious concern, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. Both organizations are calling for his immediate release. Mansogo is a member of the leadership of the opposition Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) party and serves as its secretary for international relations and human rights. He is a medical doctor and owns and runs a private clinic in the city of Bata. He is also a member of the local city council.

Halliburton Co. said it’s responding to a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a probe into its operations in Angola over possible violations of US foreign bribery law, the Wall Street Journal reports. It isn’t the first time Halliburton has faced problems with the FCPA. The company and its former subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., agreed in February 2009 to pay the US $579 million to resolve violations of the FCPA in connection with a four-company joint-venture project, dubbed TSKJ, to get $6 billion in contracts for liquefied natural gas facilities at Bonny Island, Nigeria.

A Save the Children report has cited Zambia as one of the ten countries with the slowest annual reduction of stunting between 1990 and 2010. Rising food prices and malnutrition are putting future global progress on child mortality at risk. According to a press release by Save the Children Zambia director Marc Nosbach, 45 per cent of children in Zambia were chronically malnourished and there has been no significant improvement in reducing the rate in the last few years.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has said that he reserves the right to disregard efforts by South African President Jacob Zuma to mediate disputes in the nation’s troubled coalition government. Mugabe also repeated his pledge to hold elections this year, even if it means defying Zuma and other regional leaders who say new polls should be held only after a new democratic constitution is in place. 'This year we must have elections, they must take place with or without a new constitution,' Mugabe said in interviews aired by the state broadcaster on the eve of his 88th birthday.

This BBC page examines why the UK government, at a time when it has made drastic cuts in domestic expenditure, is maintaining it's foreign aid budget and taking a greater interest in Somalia. It has useful infographics on areas of political control, piracy, refugees and food aid.

It is a financial controversy that has already led to the sacking of an attorney general; the resignation of a former attorney general; the arrest and appearance before court of two top civil servants and a businessman. In 2009, the businessman managed to convince the then attorney general that the government of Ghana owed him money. According to him, a contract he had to build football grounds was cancelled illegally by the previous government of then-President John Kufuor. The businessman then went to court to seek compensation - by which time the sum of money he was claiming had undergone many inexplicable upward changes. The attorney general decided not to contest the claims, and the businessman emerged from court a much richer man.

An American reconnaissance plane crashed six miles (10 kilometers) from the only US base in Africa, killing four service members on board, after returning from a mission in support of the war in Afghanistan, the military said Monday 20 February. The statement said that the crash occurred at about 8pm Saturday in Djibouti.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

At least five people have been wounded in a bomb explosion near a church in the Nigerian town of Suleja, on the edge of the capital Abuja, authorities and witnesses said. The blast went off near Christ Embassy Church on Sunday and shattered glass of five vehicles, nearly destroying them, according to the Reuters news agency. Grey ash was cast across the ground.

A record 1,500 migrants, mainly from Somalia and other parts of Africa, died trying to reach European shores in 2011 and the deadly odyssey continues from Libya, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said recently. It said popular uprisings in Tunisia and Libya prompted more people to flee last year, including sub-Saharan migrants working in North Africa, after tighter border measures sharply reduced arrivals in Europe in 2009 and 2010.

An outspoken opponent of Malawi's president who once served as his attorney general says the administration sent thugs to petrol bomb his law office - and the government critic ended up in jail. Ralph Kasambara was arrested last week, accused of kidnapping and torturing three men he told reporters confessed to his bodyguards that they had been sent after him by the government.

A faction of Angola's ruling party said recently its leader was detained, a claim the police denied. Though the MPLA is expected to win legislative elections due later this year, it has faced unprecedented challenges from youths inspired by the Arab Spring. Claims of arrest of an MPLA leader suggests he is also facing problems within his own party's ranks, suggests the Wall Street Journal.