The transitional government of Burundi should ensure that the country has a new constitution as well as an electoral law to enable it to move to democracy within the time stipulated in the 2000 Arusha peace accord, the president of the accord's Implementation Monitoring Committee, Berhanu Dinka, said on Monday. Dinka, who is also the UN Secretary-General's Representative to Burundi, made the remarks when he opened the 17th session of the committee in the capital, Bujumbura. This session is expected to last five days.

It is a few minutes before lunchtime and a disorderly queue of dishevelled youths in ragged clothes has already formed outside the doors of Thuthuka, a drop-in centre for street children in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. Thuthuka has led Bulawayo's initiative to help its homeless children by also providing life skills education and counselling at the drop-in centre, as part of a city-wide taskforce trying to address the growing phenomenon.

South Africa's Minister of Minerals and Energy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, on Monday raised concerns that the World Bank was considering a limit on financing coal and oil projects in developing countries. Mlambo-Ngucka's concerns were prompted by the recommendations in an Extractive Industries Review (EIR), launched by the World Bank two years ago to evaluate the impact of its involvement in the oil, mining and gas sectors.

The leader of Ivory Coast's former rebels has said he will not stand in presidential elections next year. Guillaume Soro's announcement comes amid reports of a split in the New Forces movement and follows the fatal shooting of another senior official.

The announcement, Monday, that South Africa will go to the polls on April 14 for its third democratic election has opened the way for political parties to start campaigning in earnest. But, analysts are already predicting that the ruling African National Congress will be returned to power with a sweeping majority. "Voter support for the African National Congress (ANC) is stable, as evidenced in the 1994 and 1999 general elections, as well as from recent opinion polls,” said Tom Lodge, a political science lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Kenya has been reduced to a walking nation, with hundreds of thousands of people covering long distances on foot to work and home everyday. Some walk over 20 kilometres a day. The sight of winding streams of people, from as early as 4.30 a.m., heading to work have become the order of the day. The crisis heightened on Feb. 1 after Kenya’s minibus taxis, known as matatus, refused to adhere to new rules meant to restore sanity on the road. Last year, the government launched a massive campaign to restore discipline and safety in the public transport sector, which had been characterised by disorder.

The media’s lack of professional resilience when covering elections was illustrated again by the way in which they handled the Gutu North by-election, says the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) in its latest bulletin. "The media generally gave scant attention to the election and, as a result, omitted pertinent information on the electoral process, which the ruling party has manipulated in the past to tilt the outcome in its favour." None of the Press investigated the state of the voters’ roll, said MMPZ, or why the opposition had been refused access to the consolidated roll.

This report, criticising the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers from a civil society perspective, is produced by the Swedish People Participating in Poverty Reduction (PPPR) programme. The report outlines the perspectives, positions and recommendations of PPPR partners in relation to PRSP process, PRSP policy contents, and implementation and monitoring of PRSPs. The detailed and wide-ranging critique given and the recommendations made are directed towards national governments, donors and civil society itself. The document is introduced with a 6 pages long executive summary that outlines the main findings and recommendations within the three main areas of PRSP processes that provides the structure of the report. The report is the result of a desk research study involving partner NGOs linked to the PPPR project in the following countries: Burkina Faso, Zambia, Mozambique, Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Honduras, Bolivia and Nicaragua as well as AFRODAD, an organisation working at the continental level.

The third UPEACE Curriculum Development Workshop for the Western African region will be held in Abuja, Nigeria from the 8th to 12th of March, 2004, co-hosted with and coordinated by the National Universities Commission of Nigeria (NUC) and the University of Jos, Nigeria. This workshop is the third in a set of three sub-regional workshops being organized in 2003 and early 2004 by the UPEACE Africa Programme, bringing together academicians, researchers, and educators to consolidate knowledge and build the basis for mastering the skills needed for the management, resolution, and transformation of conflict. The strategy of curriculum development workshops will allow individual professors, lecturers, and NGO leaders, to come together and rapidly develop from their cumulative experience what amount to immediately applicable teaching strategies.

Aid workers have begun evacuating thousands of Sudanese refugees from the embattled Chadian border town of Tine despite blinding sandstorms and strong winds. The first convoy of 147 refugees in 33 families left Tine on Saturday for the transit centre of Touloum, 80 km inland. On Sunday, 225 refugees in 64 families joined the convoy to the facility, where the arrivals received a 15-day food ration from the World Food Programme and mats, blankets, jerry cans and soap from the UN refugee agency. "The first movement took place in very difficult weather," reported Yvan Sturm, head of UNHCR’s emergency team in the region. Visibility was zero in the midst of sandstorms and strong winds, Sturm said, upsetting plans to transport a larger number of refugees.

The ongoing sexual abuse of girls in some schools in Malawi and Zimbabwe remains largely unpunished, forcing many young women to abandon their education, a recent report has revealed. A joint study by the University of Sussex and African educators noted that despite the international drive to get more girls into schools, very little attention has been paid to the hurdles young girls face in the education system.

Doudou Diene, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, is on a 12-day visit to Côte d'Ivoire to examine the role of ethnicity in the context of the country's conflict. He will visit Abidjan, the country's political centre, and its capital, Yamoussoukro, as well as other towns to gather information on the socio-political dynamics in Côte d'Ivoire.

The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice George Kingsley Acquah, says he is determined to fight against any form of corruption and indiscipline within the Judicial Service. "I cannot eliminate completely allegations of corruption within the judiciary on the eve of my assumption of office but I will ensure that corruption is controlled", he said last week.

Nigerian authorities have failed to secure a court order stopping unions from holding a strike in protest over a new fuel tax. Nigeria's trade unions postponed a general strike over the tax last month following a court order. The trade union leader Adams Oshiomhole has said they will now meet to decide whether they will resume the strike.

The first Kenyan judge to appear before a disciplinary tribunal is set to defend himself in the capital, Nairobi. Justice Phillip Waki will go before a tribunal set up after a recent purge on corruption in the judiciary.

A member of the national anti-corruption observatory at the prime minister's office has recommended the creation of a ministry of governance as the only way to arrest corruption which has eaten deep into the fabric of Cameron's society. Ngalah Edward who made the recommendation in a memo dated 23 January to the head of state, Paul Biya, a copy of which The Herald procured, noted that his observation was based on the fact that "the fight against corruption had failed as anti-corruption structures seem to be beating around the bush."

A solicitor in a small north London firm has been named in connection with a $180m (pounds 100m) French and American corruption investigation which could lead to the indictment of Dick Cheney, the US vice-president. The solicitor has been identified in the French press as a financial intermediary in the deal being investigated. The Paris inquiry, led by Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke, concerns allegations of bribery against an international consortium building a $4bn liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Nigeria during the regime of the late dictator Sani Abacha.

Two Swedish businessmen have been convicted on bribery charges related to a roads project in Kenya funded by the World Bank. Claes Fjellner and Ejie Karlsson were jailed by a court in Huddinge, Sweden, for their role in a corruption syndicate which grounded a $115 million plan to improve 26 urban roads. The two were involved in the bribery of World Bank officials overseeing the Kenya Urban Transportation Improvement Project (Kutip).

While African culture may venerate the aged, the continent's pensioners don't always find themselves living out a peaceful retirement. This is nowhere more true than in Nigeria, where the collapse of pension schemes has pushed many former civil servants into poverty. A number of retired government workers have been awaiting pension payouts for periods of between 10 months and two years. Perhaps the worst part of their plight is that many are people who resisted benefiting from the rampant corruption that has characterised Nigeria's government for most of its recent history.

Game parks often have an aura of elitism. Those who frequent them generally need money to buy the equipment that allows the wilderness to be enjoyed in comfort - and a stable job so that they can take the time off to do so. This is particularly true of St Lucia in South Africa, long a playground for those with four-wheel-drive vehicles, fishing boats and diving gear. But ever since the area was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999 - and 260,000 hectares of forest, military land and scattered game farms joined to create the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park - playtime in the area has been severely curtailed.