Supporters of genetically modified (GM) crop technology fear that their four-year effort to get a biosafety bill enacted in Nigeria may have been in vain if the country's upper house fails to pass it before its tenure ends at the end of May. The 2007 bill, passed by the country's lower chamber last July, is with the Senate. It is one of more than 400 bills introduced to the National Assembly between 2007 and 2010 that were highlighted by the Nigerian Bar Association last December as needing passage before 29 May. But Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy group, said the urgency to pass the bill may stem from other motives. 'Nigerians are yet to understand and adequately contribute to the bill,' an ERA spokesperson said. 'We suggest it is stopped in its tracks.'

Tax authorities in five African countries are to investigate giant brewer SAB Miller following an ActionAid report which found that the multinational avoided millions of pounds of taxes in Africa every year. The African Tax Administration Forum will coordinate the groundbreaking investigation of the company's transfer pricing strategies in South Africa, Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and Mauritius. Martin Hearson, one of the report's authors, said: 'This unprecedented initiative marks a new era in which rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in developing countries will come under much closer scrutiny, both from tax authorities and from campaigners. Tax avoidance by multinationals costs billions in lost revenues, which could transform healthcare and education services for millions of people.'

More than 80 rebels and civilians were killed when insurgents attacked a camp in south Sudan, the army said on Tuesday (10 May), in the latest violence to mar preparations for the region's independence. In a separate incident, unknown attackers shot and wounded four Zambian UN peacekeepers in the contested Abyei region on Tuesday, another north/south flashpoint, the United Nations said. People from Sudan's oil-producing south overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January, promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.

In a move that casts doubts over the legitimacy of Morocco's national press dialogue, the government put prominent opposition journalist Rachid Nini on trial. Nini, whose trial began on Monday (2 May) in Casablanca, was indicted in late April for Al Massae articles 'in which he criticised the administration of law enforcement institutions and accused some public figures of breaking the law', lead prosecutor Abdellah Belghiti said.

Ayanda Kota of UPM defends the Cutting Edge television programme's portrayal of terrible sanitation conditions in Grahamstown, South Africa.

The extent of tuberculosis and HIV co-infection rates in South Africa has firmly placed tuberculosis on the agenda of the South African National AIDS Council. This, after studies have shown that in some parts of the country, like in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape for example, about 73 per cent of HIV-infected people also have TB. The South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) took a decision to include tuberculosis as part of its mandate after a World Health Organisation (WHO) review in 2009 of South Africa’s national TB Control programme. The review found that the levels of TB and HIV co-infection in South Africa were enormously high.

Egypt's former Tourism Minister Zuhair Garranah has been jailed for five years on charges of corruption, an Egyptian judicial source has said. Garranah had handed out tourism licences illegally, the source said. Last week, ex-Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was jailed for 12 years for money-laundering and profiteering.

Senegalese opposition leaders are protesting a delay in issuing identification cards to youth, a move they say was calculated to deny them votes in the forthcoming elections. In the election to be held in February next year, President Abdoulaye Wade will face three former prime ministers and other veteran politicians in what promises to be the hottest political contest in Senegal since independence. On Tuesday, the opposition accused the ruling party of instituting technical delays in issuing the new identification cards, saying it was intended to sideline thousands of youths from registering.

An indefinite strike by public-sector workers in diamond-rich Botswana is threatening the ruling party’s 45-year grip on power and denting its image as the steward of one of Africa’s success stories. The main public employees’ union said more than 90,000 workers have joined the strike, which has ground public services to a near halt and forced schools, clinics and government offices to operate on skeleton staff. The country’s three largest opposition parties have moved to capitalise on the unrest.
Duma Boko, head of the opposition Botswana National Front, called on Botswana to replicate the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Reporters Without Borders says it is appalled by the Rwandan government’s determination to keep hounding one of its media bugbears, Jean Bosco Gasasira, editor of the bimonthly newspaper Umuvugizi and one of the country’s most outspoken journalists. Prosecutors have asked Rwanda’s supreme court to sentence him to ten years in prison on charges on which the Kigali high court acquitted him last September. Gasasira is charged with spreading rumours that incited civil disobedience, insulting the president and deliberately violating Rwanda’s media law. The supreme court, whose decisions cannot be appealed, is due to announce its verdict on 27 May.

A vast majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people seeking asylum in the European Union on the basis of their sexual orientation, have been met by a severe blow as most of their applications have been rejected due to failure of giving accurate account or valid proof of persecutions they claim to have experienced or might incur if they were sent back to their country of origin. This has prompted the call from ARDHIS (Association pour la Reconnaissance des Droits des Personnes Homosexuelles et Transsexuelles à l’Immigration et au Séjour), a French based organisation that advocates for the rights for LGBTI people to be granted asylum in France, urging African based LGBTI organisations to document homophobic persecutions occurring in their respective countries.

World Trade Organisation (WTO) director-general Pascal Lamy has once again urged WTO members not to weaken the organisation, as members continue to stall on the final hurdles challenging the Doha development round of negotiations. South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has continually stated that South Africa would not make agreements under the round, which does not have a developmental agenda at the forefront. Other developing country member States have agreed that the Doha round has lost much of its developmental focus, with industrialised countries not willing to concede much to developing nations.

A report released by the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has revealed that several countries hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic are improving HIV treatment to reduce deaths and illness – but a lack of support from donors prevents many from making vital changes. This fragile progress needs sustained support, but the two biggest AIDS donors, the US and UK, are opposing a critical HIV treatment target ahead of next month’s AIDS Summit in New York at a time when mounting evidence shows that HIV treatment can also prevent HIV infections.

Baton-wielding riot police waged a brutal crackdown recently on peaceful Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) demonstrators in Bulawayo, with witnesses saying dozens of people were injured. WOZA said thousands of protesters gathered in central Bulawayo to express their frustration at the persistent daily ‘18 hour power cuts,’ when riot police arrived and began to indiscriminately beat the peaceful activists. The protest was aimed at the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) for what WOZA termed was daylight robbery by the utility company.

Niger's appeals court has dropped all corruption charges against ousted President Mamadou Tandja and ordered his release from jail. It said that under the country's law it was not possible to try a head of state after he had left office. Soldiers led the coup in February 2010 - angered that after 10 years in power, he was seeking a third term in office. Tandja was accused of embezzling state funds worth $1m (£670,000). He was also linked to a corrupt fertilizer deal worth between $9m and $10m.

A new, post-Mubarak Egypt has given both Egyptians and other Arabs alike, hope that Egypt can once again reclaim its role as the focal point from which Arab culture and politics emanate, says this article on Jadaliyya, an independent ezine. 'The opening up of the Rafah border crossing into Gaza and the active promotion of a unity government in the Palestinian Territories are both indications that this is slowly happening. However, Egypt’s regional affiliation is not only with the Middle East, but extends towards its riparian partners along the Nile as well. And on that front, events in the immediate months after the fall of Mubarak indicated that an Egypt in transition, unable to take firm political positions, could be taken advantage of by upstream Nile riparian countries that have for years tried to gain the rights to greater use of the Nile’s water flows.'

'Sudan is among the global ‘hotspots’ for large-scale land acquisitions. Although most of this investment activity was thought to be focused in the Northern part of the country, recent research indicates that a surprising number of large-scale land acquisitions have taken place in the South as well in recent years. Now that Southern Sudanese have opted for independence in the 2011 referendum on self-determination, investment activity will likely increase further. This paper presents preliminary data concerning large-scale land acquisitions in two of the Green Belt states of Southern Sudan: Central Equatoria and Western Equatoria. It explores the concept land belongs to the community, a statement that has been taken up by communities in their demand for greater involvement in decision-making regarding community lands.'

Nigeria should tear up World Trade Organisation free trade agreements and protect its domestic industries from foreign competition, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria has said. 'We have to tear up WTO agreements and ask ourselves whether we were right to sign up to everything that's there,' Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi told an audience at Chatham House in London.

Escalating fuel prices, climate change and the impact of the global financial crisis are the challenges currently compromising development in Malawi. The Southern African country wants to see a bold plan of action addressing these problems agreed upon at the Fourth U.N. Conference on Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) currently taking place in Istanbul, Turkey. In recent months, Malawi has been experiencing a fuel crisis so severe fuel has been rationed at the pump. People have taken to parking their vehicles at service stations overnight to get a place near the head of the queue. The country is facing severe shortages of foreign exchange, leading to strict controls on the export of hard currency and causing problems for businesses that need forex to pay for imports.

Almost everyone on an overcrowded ship carrying about 600 African migrants to Europe is believed to have died when the vessel broke apart within sight of the Libyan capital, the United Nations said. The UN accused the Libyan government of complicity in a rising number of deadly smuggling incidents, many involving workers from sub-Saharan Africa who had moved to Libya to find work before war broke out there in March.