Government indifference threatens to put an end to the Uganda Millennium Science Initiative (MSI) project, says former executive director of the Africa Academy of Sciences, Tom Egwang. The US$30 million MSI programme, financed by the World Bank and launched in 2006, has made great progress in many areas including malaria vaccines, fisheries, climate change and agri-biotechnology, says Egwan.

Eight of the bottom 10-ranked countries in Save the Children’s annual Mothers Index, which ranks the best and worst places to be a mother, are in sub-Saharan Africa, says the NGO. Afghanistan, Niger, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Sudan, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea form the bottom 10; while Norway, Australia, Iceland and Sweden come top.

Samir Bergachi is unstoppable. Barely 23 years old, the young Moroccan is simply not content to live his homosexuality openly in a country where it is considered as a crime. For the past 6 years, Samir has been running the first Moroccan gay association, kif-kif. And only a month ago, he caused a real stir: the launching of Mithly, the first gay magazine in the Arab world. Some find his initiatives inadmissible. Others admire his courage.

Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria's acting president, has been sworn in as the country's new leader following the death of Umaru Yar'Adua. Jonathan took the oath of office at a ceremony in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday, just hours after officials announced the death of Yar'Adua following a long illness.

Reporters Without Borders has expressed deep shock at the death in unexplained circumstances of cameraman Jerry Usanga of Channels Television, whose body was found on the roadside by passers-by, on 4 May 2010. The spot where Usanga’s body was found, in Calabar, Cross River state in the south-east of the country, is close to the headquarters of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

The human and environmental disruption wreaked by drought in Somaliland, where more than 60 percent of people raise livestock for a living, means the self-declared, but barely recognized, independent state should draw up its own plan for climate change adaptation, according to a new report.

About half of Djibouti’s rural population will need emergency food assistance this year due to the combined effects of drought, livestock losses, unfavourable livestock-to-cereal terms of trade and high staple food prices, according to an assessment by the government and UN agencies.

Zambia is pushing forward with formulating an anti-counterfeit draft law which will include medicines, despite the controversy that has surrounded similar laws in East Africa and despite having existing legislation which has been used to successfully prosecute counterfeiters of medicines

About half of South Africa's population is living in poverty, a problem that is not going to be solved overnight, says the Deputy Director-General of Social Development, Selwyn Jehoma. He said the poverty situation in the country was "very significant" and most people believed it would take about a generation to solve.

Sudan's largest rebel group says it will suspend peace talks with the Sudanese government because of alleged violence in the west of the country. The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) accuses the Sudanese government of bombing its positions in West Darfur state, near the Chadian border.

The Merowe Dam on the Nile in Northern Sudan is one of the largest and most destructive hydropower projects in Africa. Commissioned in 2009, the project affects up to 70,000 people, many of whom were displaced from the fertile Nile Valley to arid desert locations. Thousands of people were flushed out of their houses by raising waters before they were properly resettled.

A public disagreement between Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and Finance Minister Tendai Biti over pay increases in public servants' salaries is being seen as evidence of greater divisions between two of the most senior leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

A decade after the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), a preferential US trade agreement, became law on 18 May 2000, there are questions over the benefits, if any, derived from the initiative. AGOA was touted by the US government as offering "tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets"; in return, selected countries could access US markets without restrictive quotas or import taxes.

A four-member delegation of ECOWAS Chiefs of Defence Staff arrived in Guinea Bissau on Monday, on a fact-finding mission in connection with the 1 April incident by a section of the country's armed forces that resulted in the brief detention of the Prime Minister and the Chief of Defence Staff.

Congolese authorities have been urged to ensure two soldiers and a civilian sentenced to death for murdering a reporter face some form of punishment. A right groups says it fears as there is a moratorium on death penalties in the Democratic Republic of Congo those found guilty this week may be freed.

The issue of corruption resonates in developing countries, writes Walden Bello. In the Philippines, for instance, the slogan of the coalition that is likely to win the 2010 presidential elections is "Without corrupt officials, there are no poor people."

Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people living in eastern Chad, including more than 450,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur and internally displaced Chadians, are at risk if the UN mission in Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) leaves or no longer has a mandate to protect civilians.

Andrew Cranswick, the CEO of African Consolidated Resources (ACR), the company at the centre of a legal battle over the Chiadzwa diamonds claim, says one of their officials was abducted from the ACR offices in Harare on Thursday. He told SW Radio Africa that ACR Financial Officer Ian Harris was abducted at 4pm by members of Mines Minister Obert Mpofu's private police, the CID Mineral Squad. Cranswick said the police are refusing to tell lawyers where Harris has been taken.

Adult male circumcision appears to have some protective effect against high-risk strains of human papilloma virus, according to two studies published in the May 15th edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. In HIV-positive men, circumcision reduced the prevalence and incidence of multiple high-risk penile human papilloma virus infections. Circumcision also had these benefits for HIV-negative men, and was also associated with clearance of infections.

UNHCR has completed and inaugurated a multi-million dollar water and electrification project that will benefit tens of thousands of people, including Somali refugees and members of the local community, in a semi-arid region of eastern Ethiopia. The US$5 million Jarrar Valley Water Supply scheme in the country's Somali region is using electricity to pump 1.3 million litres of fresh water a day to 51,000 people, including 16,000 refugees.