A US-based organisation has called for the dissolution of the African Union and the establishment of a new continental body strictly for democratically elected governments. The Free Africa Foundation president, Mr George Ayittey, from Ghana, said the AU could not solve conflicts because its leadership comprises "mafia states" practising a politics of exclusion.

Much has been made of late of the notion of two countries in one. Yet this is one country characterised by combined and uneven development and gross unequal distribution of wealth. A country in which industry, labour and working class communities collide on a daily basis. All dependent on each other yet all treated unequally. A country in which, as in Wentworth, families live amidst unemployment of 50 per cent, the sole bread winner supports up to seven people, asthma rates are double the global average, yet living next to an industry in which it is not unusual for a CEO to earn over R 6 million a year.

After 18 months of painstaking deliberation Parliament's justice committee has approved the new anticorruption bill with a new provision which makes it an offence to offer or receive "gratification" which has not been earned.

The Nigerian government has included former government ministers in a long awaited report on a US$400 million corruption case involving Nigeria Airways, the national carrier.

While many of the constraints to development of the Tanzanian dairy sector can be tackled locally, low world market prices can largely be explained by EU subsidies, and the existence of cheap powdered milk remains an unfair competition which has effectively blocked the expansion of the dairy sector. This is according to a study by the Centre for International Development Issues that examines how Europe's common agriculture policy (CAP) is operated and influences the livelihoods of dairy farmers in Tanzania and Jamaica in order to demonstrate how European policy can hamper the development of farmers in developing countries.

The New Partnership for African Development (Nepad), which many of Africa's leaders have pinned their hopes on for economic recovery, has been blasted by civil society as another form of colonialism and imperialism. Civil society leaders, meeting under the first ever Southern Africa Social Forum (SASF) in Zambia last week, charged that Nepad was a foreign owned initiative with "African elite kinship" from the powerful G8 countries and the main institutions responsible for corporate globalisation.

The International Monetary Fund has ended its three year freeze of Kenya by approving a $252,75 million loan. President Mwai Kibaki has immediately appealed to other donors to resume financial aid to his east African nation. The IMF suspended lending to Kenya in late 2000 due to concerns over corruption under former ruler Daniel arap Moi.

The Debt Management Office (DMO) recently reported that Nigeria owed about $28 billion from 1980 to date. The entire process of debt renegotiation and rescheduling, says this editorial, may be fraught with shady dealings. Nigerians need to know exactly the status of both the domestic and external debt profile and the strategy for tackling it.

Fighting corruption is no longer just a moral issue. It has become a major tool in the fight against world poverty. Once seen as the cost of doing business in much of the globe - sometimes even regarded as useful in greasing the way for development projects - bribery increasingly is viewed as a major stumbling block to progress.

Your generosity for supporting initiatives in education, world health and population, and community has gained worldwide recognition. However, your recent announcement that you are donating $25m for research in GM food nutrition is based on some fallacious premises and will work against your stated mission and world-wide interest. Your investment ignores scientific evidence on the actual and potential risks of GMO’s and the benefit of superior alternatives (The Case for a GM Free Sustainable World, Independent Science Panel on GM). Citizens worldwide have shown preference for alternatives such as biodiversity-based organic agriculture. Your contribution is thus NOT working for a safe and healthy nutrition, but is working AGAINST science and democracy. We are strongly urging you to withdraw your $25m to support a failing genetic engineering industry that is making false claims on improving nutrition.

Well written editorial; what is the way out of this inhuman condition in Zimbabwe is to be debated. I am in India - here too there are problems. We solve it through the power of people. The people should have a complete knowledge of what is going on and they should stand against the injustice - it is certain that there would be sacrifices. The people should be educated. Let us pray for the alleviation of the poverty and injustice in that land.

Thanks for focusing the attention on this conflict (Pambazuka News 130: Northern Uganda's Brutal War). The author is really in touch with the issue and has a keen interest to find a solution. However, for us African activists for peace in our homeland Africa, we feel that our governments are less sympathetic to our peoples demands and listen and act upon the advise of the competing interests of foreigners. So the author is appealing to the same providers of lip services to our security to come to our salvation. Can’t you see that such conflicts are fuelled to the benefit of producers? This is made very easy by our very arrogant governors who fill the air with slogans until they come to power and appear as listeners for the same historical propagators of colonisation. I hope our newsletter will concentrate more on how these fuelled conflicts are created to provide markets for surplus food in the EU and US. This is not new for imperialism.

After years of being labelled as highly corrupt, Kenya has put a number of measures in place to curb graft. The government is hoping that this will attract foreign investors back to the East African country. "Kenya is now open for business," President Mwai Kibaki said this week.

"The basic fact still remains that the current debt relief initiatives such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative and the now famous Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) have failed to adequately and satisfactorily address debt issues. Instead, they have successfully managed to contribute to negative economic growth and perpetuated poverty in these countries."

On the 14th anniversary on November 20 of the international adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy called on world leaders to put children at the heart of their development agendas. "The generation of children being born today are the ones who need us to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves," Bellamy said, referring to the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the nations of the world in 2000.

Mozambique's generally peaceful and problem-free local elections have been marked by low voter turnout, observers say. In many places less than 15 percent of registered voters bothered to cast their ballots on Wednesday, mirroring the turnout in Mozambique's last local elections in 1998, which were boycotted by the main opposition party RENAMO. The link below will take you to an IRIN story on the elections and more detailed stories contained in the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin.

Polling stations in central Maputo opened on time on Wednesday for Mozambique's second municipal elections, and the build-up of queues indicated that this time there will be a reasonable turnout.The orderly and efficient scenes at the polling stations contrasted with the chaos that had marked the first local elections in 1998.

The BBC has obtained a key unpublished part of the latest United Nations report on the exploitation of Congolese resources, which had been intended for Security Council eyes only. Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch said: “It means the peace process will fail...Exploitation is one of the things driving the war. We must not ignore it.”

"The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition is outraged at the continued detention of its Chairperson, Professor Brian Raftopoulos, Vice-chairperson, Ms. Jana Ncube, Coordinator, Dr. John Makumbe, Chairperson of the NCA, Dr. Lovemore Madhuku, Chairperson of Harare Residence Association, Mr. Mike Davies, NCA activist Tabitha Khumalo, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions officials such as Wellington Chibhebhe, Lovemore Matombo, Lucia Matibenga, Raymond Majongwe and scores of others from around Zimbabwe."