Cameroon is one of many African countries being targeted by foreign investors for agricultural lands. As of late, a French investor has taken a huge swath of land for sugar cane and the Malaysian company Sime Darby is in the process of negotiating for 300,000 ha in the southern part of the country for palm oil plantations. Chinese investors are also keen on acquiring farmland in Cameroon. In September 2010, GRAIN visited the Upper Sanaga region, in the centre of the country, to take a closer look at the project of one such Chinese company.

Uganda is the leading country in gender equality in East Africa, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report 2010. The report released this week ranked Uganda at 33rd position out of 134 countries surveyed worldwide. Tanzania was the second in the EA region at number 66, while Kenya was the least performer at number 96. The report showed that Tanzania has been recording a steep drop since 2006 when the country ranked 24th out of 115 countries.

The official death toll from the cholera epidemic that has hit Cameroon since April is now 559 deaths out of 8,528 cases, according to the Minister of Health, Andre Mama Fouda. The region of the Far North has the highest toll of 542 deaths from 8,227 cases.

Government has released a list of 149 convicted criminals who have been recommended for political pardons – including perpetrators of some of the most heinous apartheid crimes committed in South Africa. Earlier this year, a coalition of NGOs that included the IJR, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Khulumani Support Group, International Centre for Transitional Justice, South African History Archives Trust, Human Rights Media Centre, and the Freedom of Expression Institute launched a successful constitutional court case challenging the lack of victim participation in the special dispensation allowing for political pardons, says this article on the SA Reconciliation Barometer Blog.

As the floodwaters begin to recede in parts of Benin, the new threat is an outbreak of infectious diseases, particularly cholera and malaria. The worst flooding in nearly half a century in the country of some nine million people has cut many communities off from health centres, 'paralysing access to health care in a situation that lends itself to a potential outbreak of waterborne disease,' the NGO CARE in Benin said in a communiqué.

After spending ten days in detention the two prominent Women’s Human Rights Defenders were granted bail on Wednesday 20 October 2010 after a hearing in a crowded courtroom at the Banjul Magistrates Court. The bail was over US$50,000 each, and a surety with a landed property. Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang-Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) were arrested on 11 October 2010 by Gambian security personnel.

Ethiopians from various cities in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia held a conference on Saturday to discuss and coordinate plans for the upcoming 5th anniversary of the Ethiopian election massacre. The participants discussed and updated each other about the various events that are being organised throughout the month of November in remembrance of the those fellow Ethiopians who were gunned down by the Meles regime while peacefully protesting the election fraud and demanding respect of their vote.

Cheche, a radical, socialist student magazine at the University of Dar es Salaam, first came out in 1969. The former editors and associates of Cheche revive that salutory episode of student activism in this book with fast-flowing, humor-spiced stories, and astute socio-economic analyses.

Seven football fans died at the Nyayo National Stadium Saturday when a stampede broke out during an entertaining Kenyan Premier League soccer match between popular clubs, AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia. Among those who died during the tragedy after heavy rains pounded Nairobi and its environs, was a young woman. At least 66 others were treated and discharged at the Kenyatta National Hospital. Most of the victims broke or dislocated their limbs, ribs, legs and hands.

Opposition politician Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza, who was banned to contest in the recent presidential elections in Rwanda, has urged the country’s development partners to build institutional capacity, not President Kagame’s political capacity for continued stay in power. In a wide-ranging policy paper titled: 'Development partners need to support lasting solution', dated 20 September 2010 and accessed by the Newsline, the fiery politician notes that whereas aid and political conditions attached to it had obliged some dictatorships to open up the political space and level the playing field, in the case of Rwanda, it has allowed the regime in power to put in place a controlled ‘democratisation’ process with no opposition or elections with no competitors.

Civil society and local officials in Somalia's Afgoye Corridor - home to an estimated 400,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) - are worried about the deteriorating situation, especially for women and children. 'The situation...is worse today than a year ago; there are more of them [IDPs], the needs are greater and there is no help in terms of aid agencies,' said Amina Aden Mahamed, a doctor and director of Hawo Abdi Foundation, one of the most active groups helping IDPs in the camps outside the capital, Mogadishu.

Africa is hungry - 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Instead of new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, family farmers in West Africa said they want to use local seeds, avoid spending precious cash on chemicals and most importantly to direct public agricultural research to meet their needs, according to a multi-media publication released on World Food Day.

A number of human rights organisations and Nubian activists have joined lawyer Shehata Mohamed in the lawsuit he filed through the Administrative Court questioning the legality of Saudi mogul Al-Walid Bin Talal’s ownership contract of 100,000 feddans in Toshka, Upper Egypt. They say the contract stipulates that Talal can obtain seeds without the supervision of Egyptian authorities; can hire foreign labour force that would be immediately granted work permits; can cultivate whatever crops he chooses; isn’t bound to a deadline to start cultivating the land; and can export any or all produce to anywhere outside of Egypt.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay has spoken out about intolerance towards sexual minorities in Africa and elsewhere. 'Everyday, in every country, individuals are persecuted, vilified or violently assaulted, and even killed, because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Covert or overt, homophobic violence causes enormous suffering which is often shrouded in a veil of silence and endured in isolation.'

A regional meeting slated for Nairobi this weekend will now be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after the International Criminal Court asked Kenya to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. On Tuesday evening, sources said Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (Igad) summit organisers transferred the meeting to Ethiopia to shield al-Bashir who has an arrest warrant against him from the International Criminal Court.

On October 22, 2010 Zimbabwean blogger Hope noticed a series of fast twitter updates coming from Professor Welshman Ncube, the Zimbabwe Minister of Commerce and Industry and the MDC Secretary General. In a blog post appearing in Sokwanele: This is Zimbabwe titled, 'Professor Welshman Ncube uses Twitter to air his frustrations,' Hope wrote: 'The snippets I saw were intriguing enough to prompt me to visit his twitter feed page to read more. I saw then that he’d been posting for two hours, all his tweets amounting to an online statement.' Read more at Global Voices.

A water well, serving two different ethnic groups in Kenya's Rift Valley province, has done more to bring them together than government and civil society efforts, say locals. 'This well is an interaction point for the two communities, we always have a chance to meet as we fetch water for our households,' Ishmael Langat, a resident of Kirima village in Mau Narok, told IRIN. Langat is a member of the Kalenjin community, which, in early 2008, was involved in violent clashes with members of other ethnic communities following disputed presidential elections.

Joyce Phiri* is only one of many women admitted daily to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), in Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre, for complications of unsafe abortions. Winasi Boma, a supervising nurse at QECH, says the gynaecology ward admits about 20 women each day. Roughly half of these, he says, are there for post-abortion care. Like most of its neighbours in the region, abortion is illegal in Malawi (except to save the life of the mother). Phiri, a 21-year-old mother of two, sought to terminate her pregnancy only after a contraceptive implant failed.

Cultural Diplomacy in Africa: A Forum for Young Leaders (CDA) is a network of young, dynamic individuals from across the world, who share an interest in the African continent. The program is based on the recognition that cultural diplomacy represents an important tool in helping Africa to address the challenges it currently faces. The network conducts ongoing activity aimed at supporting development and strengthening relations between different countries and cultural groups within Africa, and between African and external partners.

An international Monetary Fund team arrives in Zimbabwe today to assess the state of the economy under its Article IV consultation mission, ahead of the country's national budget next month. The IMF's visit is, however, likely to cause serious political tensions in the divided inclusive government as Mugabe and his ministers remain at least sceptical, and at most hostile, and opposed to the international fund's involvement in the Zimbabwean economy.