The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is currently rethinking its highly criticised decision to allow Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea since 1979, to endow the Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences. Tutu Alicante voices the international community’s concern over this decision, and calls for action to stop the proceedings.

For the next month, concerns about the World Cup – whether about the financial toll of the tournament on South Africa’s economy, the absence of concrete benefits for large swathes of the South African population, or FIFA’s stifling rules – will be put on the backburner as the world enjoys the beautiful game, writes Dibussi Tande, in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere.

The past and present exploitation of the Congo’s people and valuable natural resources is a reflection of the profit-driven destruction of the fictional planet of Pandora, screened in the recent film ‘Avatar’, writes Kambale Musavuli. Musavuli calls for a greater awareness of the on-going and far-reaching devastation endured by this war-torn ‘storehouse of strategic and precious minerals’, which tragically mirrors the ruthless pillage of Pandora.

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Laboratory monitoring to determine when to switch to second-line treatment may be cost-effective for many countries and could substantially improve life expectancy, April Kimmel and colleagues reported in a modelling study using 1999 to 2008 data from the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) published in the advance online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

For six families living in derelict changing rooms next to one of South Africa's official training venues in Cape Town, the prospect of the football World Cup has turned from a dream to a nightmare. The families who comprise 24 people, half of them children, are facing eviction to make space for the parking area next to the Athlone Stadium which has been upgraded to the tune of 406m rand ($53m, £36m) to bring it up to Fifa standards.

South Africa's 2010 World Cup 'feel good' factor is addictive. At taxi ranks, street bazaars and tea-rooms, South African citizens everywhere are filled with elation - and pride. Just sixteen years ago, within living memory, non-white South Africans were deprived of basic human rights by the brutal apartheid regime. From stadiums – completed in advance to fulfill Fifa's (International Federation of Association Football) insistence on a six month ‘buffer zone', to airports and other infrastructure, South Africa has fulfilled Fifa's requirements to the tee. But, writes Khadija Sharife, all is not well.

Countering Wole Soyinka’s fierce criticism of BBC documentary ‘Welcome to Lagos’, Imruh Bakari, offers a different reading of the three-part series about the lives of marginalised slum-dwellers: Where Soyinka sees people depicted as ‘noble savages’, Bakari is impressed by portraits of ‘self-assured and articulate’ individuals with a sense of social agency that prevents them from being cast as victims.

South Africa has invited Sudan's Omar al-Bashir to the continent's first World Cup along with the rest of Africa's leadership, but will arrest him if he takes up the invitation, President Jacob Zuma said. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes. He rejects the charges of ordering mass murder, rape and torture in the western Darfur region.

‘I’d like to draw your attention an article about “Austria deports African gay footballer” on LGBT Asylum News,’ writes Heinz Leitner, in a letter of solidarity.

South Africa’s ANC has spent hundreds of billions of rand in preparation for the World Cup, writes Nicholas Tucker, with ‘almost none of it’ improving the lives of the millions of citizens struggling with unemployment, reduced wages, poor housing, lowered education outcomes and failing health systems. Will ‘the hard-pressed working class of this country realise how they have been short-changed by the ruling party’, asks Tucker, and if so, how will they ‘express their displeasure'? It ‘may well be too late’ for the ANC ‘to do anything other than to apply force in quelling the rising dissent’, Tucker warns.

Reviewing Kopano Matlwa's 'Spilt Milk', Litheko Modisane has little time for an apparently rushed publication. In its misplaced reflections on post-apartheid South Africa, Modisane maintains, 'Spilt Milk' errs in focusing on bitterness in and of itself at the expense of an honest assessment of 'enduring racialised contradictions'.

Media organisations are furious over a US$ 3 million personal donation by Equatoguinean dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema to the UN culture agency UNESCO. The donation is to co-finance a press freedom award. Equatorial Guinea is among the worst countries in the world regarding human rights and press freedom. No independent media exist and all media outlets are controlled by the state or family members of President Obiang.

Eight of Africa’s best known musicians are calling for commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in a song, video and advocacy campaign that was launched today. It will be featured before, during and after the World Cup 2010, the first one to be hosted in Africa, the continent least likely to achieve the MDGs. 8 Goals for Africa features Yvonne Chaka Chaka from South Africa, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo from Benin, Oliver Mtukudzi from Zimbabwe, Eric Wainaina from Kenya, Baaba Maal from Senegal, and the Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa.

About two million South African train commuters were left stranded as two major transport unions widened a strike which began last week. The unions have called on their members working for the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to stop working in a dispute over pay.

Human rights groups are expressing outrage over a decision to proceed with the UNESCO-Obiang Nguema Mbasogo International Prize for Research in the Life Sciences, named after and funded by the controversial president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. Obiang first suggested the award to the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation's executive board in a speech in 2007, promising three million dollars to UNESCO over the next five years, which would come from the Obiang Nguema Foundation for the Preservation of Life. It was approved by UNESCO's executive board in 2008.

In the wake of a major two-day conference on , hosted by the World Bank to supposedly ‘improve land governance’ and ‘contribute to the well-being of the poorest’, a new report from the Oakland Institute exposes the role of the bank's private sector branch, International Finance Corporation (IFC), in fuelling land grabs, especially in Africa.

Villagers in districts of Mashonaland East provinces have been told to brace themselves for more political violence, following ‘promises’ from ZANU PF officials they would be dealt with after the 2010 World cup finals. Pressure group, Zimbabwe Democracy Now, issued a statement Thursday detailing how Mike Chiwodza, a ZANU PF district chairman, has been going around the province telling villagers ‘We will kill you after the World Cup.’

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).

An exhibition of art from the Nigerian Kingdom of Ife at the British Museum isn’t only exquisitely beautiful, it is ‘something of absolute historical importance’, writes Joy Onyejiako. But given the low-key public response to the show, how much will it actually transform the ‘deeply embedded notion of African art as essentially primitive’ and encourage ‘the notion of a truly contemporary African artist’?