Eight hundred people displaced by excessive flooding and intense rains in Lusaka, the capital of southern African country Zambia. More than 60 families evacuated from their waterlogged shacks to a temporal resettlement campsite on higher grounds out of the Independence Stadium in Lusaka Nort

A strike by mineworkers at South Africa's Gold One stretched into a fourth day after workers and management failed to agree on a pay rise. About 1,000 mineworkers at the company's Modder East mine, some 30km east of Johannesburg, downed tools on Tuesday night in a wage protest.

Campaign against human trafficking - Africa has launched a new two-pronged campaign to address the challenges of trafficking in persons, particularly women and children, thr o ugh regional workshops and the launching of the African Union's Initiative against Trafficking (COMMIT) in the Regional Economic Communities (RECs).

The African Group at the UN has called for the immediate fulfilment of all Official Development Assistance(ODA) commitment to Africa. The group also urged the Group of Eight industrialised countrie (G-8) to redeem its pledge to double by 2010, official assistance to the continent.

Tens of thousands of refugees seeking safety in Kenya’s capital Nairobi are confronted with police harassment, exposure to criminal violence and a severe lack of livelihoods opportunities says a new report by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK).

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has joined President Robert Mugabe in dismissing calls to enshrine gay rights in the new constitution. "I totally agree with the president," he said, state media report.

Welcome to the Communauté Financière de l'Afrique ( CFA ), where this is how things have been working for over sixty years. The January 2008 edition of the pan-African magazine, New African, reports that "the tale of this currency is extraordinarily mind-numbing!" and inspires this special commentary

Rape victims will no longer need a case number before getting treatment at health institutions said Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi. Motsoaledi said when a rape victim arrives at a health institution, they won't be asked to produce a case number before being treated.

The world's most water-deprived countries are also receiving some of the least help from the World Bank to improve conditions, according to a study that the bank's independent evaluators released on Monday. The study said water shortages, being felt in more than 40 countries, are at risk of getting worse.

As voter registration kicked off all over the country in Kenya, the Internally displaced people, especially in Eldoret were considering to boycott the whole process altogether due to what they term as lack of confidence in the electoral system in kenya.

A photo exhibition organized by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association went ahead in Harare on Wednesday evening after the High Court ordered police to return the photographs they had seized the previous day. But that same evening the police returned to the art gallery to try and confiscate the pictures again.

ith a democratic touch rare in a region better known for dictators, Ghana is asking its citizens what it should do with the windfall from oil production due to start later this year. In a questionnaire entitled “The Use and Management of Oil and Gas Revenues – A Survey of Public Choices” posted on the finance ministry website this week, Ghana says oil-producer nations face major questions.

Mauritian Prime minister, Navin Ramgoolam, on Wednesday inaugurated an underwater fibre optics cable called Lower Indian Ocean Network (LION) in Terre-Rouge, 10 km north of the Mauritian capital, Port-Louis.

Burundi will receive a grant of US$ 135 million over the next five years, under the eighth round of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, official sources said in Bujumbura. The funds will be allocated to the "Intensification and Decentralization Program me for the Fight against HIV/AIDS (PRIDE)," said Burundian first Vice-President in charge of Political, Administrative and Security Affairs, Yves Sahinguvu.

The World Health Organisation said today it was investigating reports of suspected cases of the previously eradicated disease smallpox in eastern Uganda. Smallpox is an acute contagious disease and was one of the world’s most feared sicknesses until it was officially declared eradicated worldwide in 1979.

The UN World Food Programme has denied a claim that up to half the food aid to Somalia was being diverted to Islamist militants and corrupt contractors. WFP officials said there was no evidence to back up the claim made in a report by a UN monitoring group.

Mob attacks on suspected criminals in Burundi, often with official complicity, led to at least 75 killings in 2009, Human Rights Watch and the Association for the Protection of Human Rights and Detained Persons (APRODH) said in a report released today. The government of Burundi should end official involvement in "mob justice" and should hold perpetrators accountable, Human Rights Watch and APRODH said.

The only solution for the conflict over Morocco's occupation of the Western Sahara is to do what the Sahrawi people decide regarding their future, Zahra Ramdan, president of the Association of Sahrawi Women in Spain has said.

African and British human rights campaigners rallied outside the Commonwealth’s head quarters in London on Monday 22 March. They were protesting against the prosecution and imprisonment of the Malawian same-sex couple, Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, on charges of homosexuality, and against the Commonwealth’s failure to condemn their arrest and detention in Chichiri prison.

Following bloody fighting between Senegalese forces and rebels, in recent days, the rebel Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) have issued a statement, calling for negotiations with the government.