Yes, there was a secret plot to oust President Robert Mugabe. Yes, Sir Richard Branson was one of its ringleaders. But the British billionaire has vehemently denied last week’s extraordinary claims that he once offered a £6.5 million bribe to persuade the Zimbabwean leader to stand down. The mogul told The Independent exclusively that in 2007 he orchestrated covert meetings between Jonathan Moyo, a minister in Mugabe’s government, and several respected African statesmen.

South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) gave the green light to the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup attempt, along with the intelligence agencies of America, Britain, China and Spain, mercenary Simon Mann has claimed. Mann told London’s Daily Mail on Saturday night: 'I believe Britain and America had full visibility on what we were doing. The South Africans passed on intelligence to the UK and the USA, who had vested interests.'

Zambia’s former president Rupiah Banda has spoken out for the first time since leaving office three weeks ago, denying links to a gold scam and purchase of luxury vehicles.

Rapid urbanisation is being portrayed – by the UN, the World Bank and many others – as a potential developmental 'silver bullet' for Africa. Cities, we are frequently told, will be the drivers of economic growth and poverty reduction on the continent in the years to come. But larger concentrations of people are not automatically generating benefits – quite the opposite, says this article. 'The social, economic and political consequences of policymakers continuing to ignore the best available demographic research could be grim. For example, appropriate food supply networks and health services require sound knowledge of population distribution and migration patterns.'

Mawingu internally displaced persons stormed out of the camp on Monday protesting government’s failure to purchase land for them. Led by their chairman Peter Kariuki and other officials, they regretted that the government had failed to respond to their request to have them resettled on a 6,000 acre piece of land that they had identified at Wiyumuririe in Laikipia.

The Pan-African Parliament, in a recommendation on land investments, has called for a moratorium on new large-scale land acquisitions, pending implementation of land policies and guidelines on good land governance. PAP has also called for the establishment of an African Ministerial Conference on land-based investments equivalent to the African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCE) and the African Ministerial Council on Water (AMCOW).

The Spine Africa Project focuses on three objectives: the treatment of those afflicted with spinal conditions, the education of local medical personnel, and social change. Each of these three factors contributes individually to what seems to be an exclusively medical epidemic. Visit their website for more information.

The effects of changes in technology - particularly in communications technology - on displaced people and those who work with them are unevenly understood and appreciated. The 32 articles and short pieces in the feature theme section of this FMR look at some of these changes and their implications. This issue also includes a selection of general articles on migrant deaths at sea, fleeing from Cairo, language training for refugees in the Czech Republic, refugees after the Japanese earthquake, a strategy for urban areas, partner violence, transitional justice in Kenya, and local integration.

The UN’s growing concern over Ethiopia’s construction of the controversial Gibe III dam has prompted it to demand urgent information from the African state. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has given Ethiopia until the end of January 2012 to provide reliable evidence that independent assessments have been carried out, and that tribal people in the region have been properly consulted.

Africa's debt repayments to the International Monitory Fund, World Bank and other multilateral lending institutions have choked social spending on the continent, a recent report reveals. With a combined debt standing at US$350 billion, this means whatever money comes in by way of 'aid' and 'assistance' from donor countries and institutions is meaningless and merely meant to ensure government's function sufficiently to pay off annual dues to lenders. Africa spends more than US$15b annually on servicing its debts. The report by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) is titled 'African Debt Crisis - A Humanitarian Perspective'.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 per cent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water. 'The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,' says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

The desire to have a strong economy and employment may decide who will be Kenya’s next president, according to an opinion poll by Infotrak. The poll indicated that 86 per cent of Kenyans want to participate in the 2012 polls because they yearn for change. At the same time, half of Kenyans would like the General Election in August, while 37 per cent prefer December 2012.

The chairperson of the Coalition of Ivorian female leaders (CFELCI), Mrs Mariam Dao-Gabala, has launched a sensitisation campaign for the mass participation of women in the country's parliamentary elections, scheduled for 11 December. Entitled 'Why not female MPs?' the campaign aims at mobilising women to break from the past and participate massively in the elections.

An open death threat has been made against journalist Joseph Mwale, who was fired from the Malawi Institute of Journalism (MIJ) radio over a leaked recording of a conversation where Foreign Minister Professor Peter Mutharika was captured discussing his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidature in the 2014 presidential elections. The message threatened the journalist that they will make him 'a villain because you will soon die'.

REDRESS – a London-based charity that works with victims of torture, many from Africa - has produced a short film on the trial of Joseph Mpambara, an important genocide case. In July, a Dutch court sentenced Mpambara, a businessman from Mugonero, Rwanda, to life imprisonment on war crimes. The trial took place on the basis of universal jurisdiction. The film offers a very rare opportunity to see the inside work of the appeals court in the Netherlands, as its judges try to establish if Mpambara was responsible for war crimes that took place in 1994 in Rwanda. The film is available from the REDRESS website.

Global Press Institute (GPI) has announced that Gertrude Pswarayi, a GPI reporter on their Zimbabwe News Desk, won this year’s 2011 Kurt Schork Award in the local reporter category for her piece 'Political Rape Survivors Come Forward in Advance of 2011 Election', an article published last December about women who were raped and exploited in Zimbabwe.

South Africa’s National Climate Change Response Policy, which was approved by Cabinet this week, would help the country map out a socioeconomic transition to a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy and society, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said on Friday. The policy would seek to balance the objectives of job creation, economic growth, environmental sustainability and reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Almost half a million Ivoirians remain displaced five months after the country’s post-electoral civil conflict ended, afraid of returning to their homes for fear of reprisals, while a sluggish response to funding appeals means living conditions for many are getting worse. A 12 October report by NGOs Oxfam, CARE and the Danish Refugee Council warned of a two-thirds shortfall in the UN appeal for emergency funding to deal with around 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, as living conditions for many deteriorated.

Developing countries, particularly from Africa, are concerned about attempts by industrialised nations to change the negotiating dynamic of the World Trade Organisation. They are worried that developed countries want to introduce new issues at the multilateral body’s eighth ministerial meeting later this year without first completing the unfinished Doha agreement. The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) trade negotiations, launched in 2001, were meant to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system and were designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

The Libyan authorities have put the capital, Tripoli, on maximum alert after clashes between forces loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC) and supporters of the former leader, Mouamar Kadhafi, left three dead and 30 injured. The clashes in the capital between NTC combatants and a group of Colonel Kadhafi’s supporters, estimated at between 20 and 50 armed men, were in the districts of Abu Slim and Al-Hadba. Kadhafi, who disappeared after NTC forces took Tripoli on 22 August used his latest audio message broadcast by the Syrian channel Arrai, to rally his supporters to fight the NTC.