Last month, as Jews around the world prepared for Passover, Egyptian border guards were killing migrants trying to cross into Israel. How many of us, as we sat at our Seder tables, were even aware of the dramatic parallel to the Passover story taking place on the present-day Egyptian-Israeli border?

Les rédacteurs en chef

Tidiane Kassé

Souleymane Bassoum

Amady Aly Dieng

Roland Lumumba

Since its first edition in 2008, Bayimba Cultural Foundation has organised a number of workshops prior to the annual Bayimba International Festival of Music and Arts with a view to stimulate artistic creativity and to ensure that all disciplines of arts find their way to the Festival. For 2010, Bayimba Cultural Foundation decided to include a Photography Workshop prior to the 3rd edition of the Festival (scheduled for 17-19 September, 2010). The results of the workshop will be exhibited during the Festival and in other locations after the Festival.

On the International Day of Peasants' Struggle, April 17, FIAN International together with many other civil society actors calls for an immediate stop of land grabbing. A new report published today by FIAN International documents the findings of two research missions on land grabbing to Kenya and Mozambique, and concludes that land grabbing violates human rights.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) would not allow for the privatisation of State-owned power utility Eskom, deputy general secretary Oupa Komane has said. He was speaking at the NUM's energy mix workshop in Johannesburg. However, deputy Public Enterprises Minister Enoch Godongwana, speaking on behalf of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), said that government's plans did not involve the privatisation of the power company.

On April 14, 2010 during the ongoing Parliament meeting in Dodoma, Hon. Damas P. Nakei, MP for Babati Rural asked a question in the House wanting to know the limitations on an MP to access public information held by Government and what type of information an MP might be denied. A Coalition comprising eleven Civil Society organisations (two from outside Tanzania) organized and held meetings and public hearings countrywide to collect people’s views. All along, it emerged that the public was not only interested in the freedom to access information but wanted this to be pronounced as a basic right – hence the notion of Right to Information in the discourse of the Coalition’s work.

In his Independence Day address, President Robert Mugabe spoke of the need for Zimbabweans to “foster an environment of tolerance and treating each other with dignity and respect irrespective of age, gender, race, ethnicity, tribe, political or religious affiliation." At the same time, four WOZA activists, Jenni Williams, Magodonga Mahlangu, Clara Manjengwa and Celina Madukani were spending their fourth day in the cold, dark, filthy cells of Harare Central Police Station.

The Katiba Sasa! Campaign is a civil society initiative aimed at ensuring that Kenya gets a new constitution. The National Civil Society Congress (NCSC) declares 2010 the Year of Transformation. The campaign was launched to ensure that Kenyans enact a new constitution to begin the process of transformation.

Application is open to all professional visual artists from all over the world who have been professionally active for at least the past 3 years (your resume/CV should reflect professional activities since 2007 or earlier).

The first-ever African Grandmothers' Gathering takes place on Mother's Day weekend in Manzini, Swaziland - and forty-three Canadian grandmothers will be there, representing thousands of women who form the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Since 2006, the campaign has raised more than seven million dollars to support African grandmothers who are parenting their orphaned grandchildren in the most challenging of circumstances.

As the case of Millicent Gaika (30), a Cape Town lesbian who was beaten up and raped by a man known to her, is presently being heard at Wynberg Court, government has condemned the ongoing acts of “corrective rape” in the country and has vowed to put an end to them. After the man was arrested, the case was first heard at the Wynberg Court on Tuesday, 6 April but was postponed to today, Tuesday 13 April. Speaking outside the court where people are marching in support of Gaika, Ndumi Funda of Lulek’isisizwe LBT Women’s Project said, “We are strongly opposing bail for the perpetrator and we want to see justice being done for Gaika."

The effects of climate change - such as drought, livestock deaths and resource conflict - may be all too apparent for the pastoralists of northern Kenya, but there is much to be done to explain the true causes. "We were warned about the current situation by our elders and spiritual leaders when I was very young. This was about 50 years ago when the Ngishili age groups were born,” Lemeteki Lerinagato, 70, told IRIN in the Samburu district.

Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.

A shadow has fallen over Zambia's long history of generously hosting refugees from troubled countries since 36 foreigners were deported to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the government says it is only trying to ensure security and order in camps that still shelter some 57,000 people. "We are hoping that [deportations] will stop," said James Lynch, country representative for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Zambia. The organization communicated its alarm at the expulsions to the Zambian authorities on 13 April.

A new piece of kit in the form of a backpack could help small farmers in Kenya increase yields, profits and agricultural know-how in a sustainable way. The backpacks, weighing 15-42 kg, contain things which help farmers bring a crop to harvest, including tools, a training manual and, in some versions, a collapsible water tank. They are designed for small plots of land and are currently being used in the Mau Forest region.

A so-called Vulture Funds bill - to stop finance companies using British courts to extort excessive debt repayments from some of the world's poorest countries - was passed in the frantic scramble to finish outstanding parliamentary business before Britain's general election in May.

A gay rights activist in Kenya is receiving death threats and has been attacked on several occasions by random people who have seen and read about him in an anti-gay website that publishes and puts up posters of suspected homosexuals in different cities of Kenya, as ‘NOT WANTEDs’. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) revealed this week, as it denounced the website , stating that it is a violation of rights and that it victimises people, in the name of religion.

On 4 April 2010 Egyptian State security arrested Karar from the street while he was returning from a bank to his home. Karar is a secondary school student and was in the midst of preparations for the final secondary completion exams.

A year after the purchases of vast swathes of farm land in Africa first drew public attention, transactions remain as opaque as ever. Private companies are resisting a global code of conduct that would ensure transparency and local elites continue to benefit from deals that encourage corruption and increase food insecurity.

As the indefinite strike called by Gabon's oil workers entered day two Thursday, the government has said it is willing to resume dialogue to end the strike. "The government solemnly reaffirms its preparedness to resume the dialogue," said a statement by Labour Minister Maxime Ngozo Issondou.