Poor food security in Akobo, the main town in Southern Sudan's Jonglei state, is being exacerbated by a huge influx of displaced people, including 19,000 who fled attacks by cattle rustlers. “The gap analysis that we have done shows that the needs are greatest among the recent IDPs,” David Tolu Lemiso, health project manager at the NGO Nile Hope Development Foundation (NHDF), said. “Out of 3,442 households from Nyandit, 2,050 are still badly in need of help, and that is minus those from Wanding, Kuechar and Ogal payams [sub-divisions].”

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the root cause of the country’s many crises, namely the reluctance of the long-ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to enact policies that would bring justice to the victims of its many conflicts. To end Sudan’s centralised, exploitive and unaccountable governance, the NCP must accept judicial reforms and transitional justice mechanisms as key elements of a Darfur settlement and at the same time fulfil its side of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which halted decades of civil war.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has reiterated its request for an emergency international action to put an end to the assassinations of journalists in Somalia, after the murder of Mohamud Mohamed Yusuf of the Radio Holy Quran (IQK), who was killed on Saturday July 4 in central Mogadishu.

Aid agencies in Somalia are appealing for $11 million to provide the hundreds of people displaced by fighting in the capital with emergency water and sanitation programmes, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. Over 200,000 people have fled Mogadishu since fighting broke out between the Government and the opposition Al-Shabab and Hisb-ul-Islam groups in early May, in what the UN refugee agency has described as the biggest exodus from the capital since Ethiopian forces intervened in Somalia in 2007.

Ghana will receive around $1.1 billion in resources from the International Monetary Fund, as the country tries to reduce its widening budget deficit, a senior IMF official has said. The IMF resources include a $600 million loan over three years approved on Wednesday and another $452 million in IMF special drawing rights, IMF mission chief to Ghana, Peter Allum, told reporters on a conference call.

A recent evaluation of the World Bank’s health work is damning in its criticism of the lender’s approach, particularly in Africa. Meanwhile, the Bank is continuing to push privatisation in public services such as health, education and water, despite fierce criticism

Rwanda's post-conflict recovery has a number of impressive signposts. One is the economy, which grew at an annual rate of about 11 percent last year, according to the country's national bank. Another is the political empowerment of its women. In 2008, Rwanda elected the world's first majority-female parliament and today a woman leads the country's Supreme Court. One third of the cabinet of President Paul Kagame is female.

President Barack Obama's trip to Ghana will be rich in symbolism. But those hoping for a new direction in U.S. Africa policy are tempering their hopes with skepticism. The issue posed, parallel to that in other policy spheres, is to what extent change will remain symbolic or reflect substantive shifts, even if small, away from U.S. policies based on unilateral geostrategic goals or unexamined economic policy assumptions.

Women who sleep with women (WSW) are not at risk of HIV transmission – or are they? AIDS advocates warn that it is time for a wake-up call about who is and is not at risk. HIV prevention among WSW and lesbian women remains off the prevention agenda, said Beverley Palesa Ditsie, a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned in a report that despite a drop in international food prices and good cereal harvests overall, prices in developing countries remain high, and continue to hurt millions of poor people in both rural and urban areas. In several countries, current prices exceed last year’s highs or stand at record levels, according to the “Crop Prospects and Food Situation” report.

New research has again confirmed the importance of viral load testing, which measures the amount of HI virus in the blood, to determine whether someone on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment is experiencing treatment failure and needs to be switched to a second-line drug regimen. Regular viral load testing is standard practice in developed countries (an increased viral load indicates that a patient has developed resistance to one or more ARV drugs) but such tests are often unavailable in resource-limited settings because of their cost and a lack of laboratory capacity.

United Nations humanitarian agencies have stepped up their relief efforts in the West African country of Benin, where more than 20,000 people have been displaced or affected and numerous farms destroyed by floods. Mosquito nets, water purification tablets, blankets, tents and mats are being distributed and assistance is being provided with water and sanitation and with maternal health care in the wake of the floods.

Angola's move to hold its elections this year are doubtful following the absence of a Constitution. Media reports in the rich oil nation said the country's body in charge of drafting a new constitution said preparations of the document would take longer than expected.

Further evidence has emerged that a substantial proportion of switches to second-line treatment in a resource-limited setting, triggered in the absence of viral load testing, are unnecessary and result in an avoidable inflation in drug costs as people switch to more expensive regimens. The findings, published in the August 1st edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases, are likely to lend further support to calls for viral load testing to be made more accessible in resource-limited settings to confirm cases of suspected treatment failure.

Nigeria's gas flare-out date has once again been extended - this time to 2011. The decision follows 25 years of political procrastination by the federal government and illegal behaviour on the part of major oil multinationals engaged in flaring associated gas (AG), the byproduct of oil production in the Niger Delta.

This report seeks to provide an overview of existing social protection policy and programming initiatives in the West and Central Africa and to assess the extent to which these address the particular manifestations of childhood poverty and vulnerability that characterise different countries in the region. It highlights challenges in the design and implementation of child-sensitive social protection and offers a number of policy recommendations based on the analysis and lessons learned.

As commercial sex workers in South Africa are fighting for the legalization of sex working, a report by Open Society Institute has revealed harrowing human rights violations inflicted to this minority group by society. Compiled by Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project together with Open Society’s Initiative for Southern Africa this report states that trans women sex workers faced not only physical and sexual violence from police but also public taunting and humiliation for their sexual orientation, gender identity and the kind of work they do.

eBrain, the national ICT4D network in Zambia and IICD partner since 2002, will play a key role in organising the 2010 eLearning Africa Conference in Lusaka, Zambia. This annual international conference is the biggest event in digital learning in Africa.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is continuing to kill and kidnap civilians in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the UN. In the first fortnight of July alone, the Ugandan rebel group carried out 33 attacks in the districts of Upper and Lower Uele, killing 26 civilians and abducting 144, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced plans to invest up to US$97 million over 10 years in improving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa. The world's second largest drug manufacturer has pledged $16 million in seed funding to a public-private partnership that will develop new paediatric formulations of ARV drugs, GSK said in a statement this week.