They may have been routed from their stronghold of Kismayo, but the Al Shabaab militants could be re-grouping for a major assault on Kenyan and the African Union forces. Security analysts at the South African-based think tank – the Institute of Security Studies – are warning that the war against the terror group may be far from over. In a report on conflict prevention and risk analysis in Africa released last week, the Pretoria-based group says the celebration over the fall of Kismayo may have been premature.

'Ocean grabbing' or aggressive industrial fishing by foreign fleets is a threat to food security in developing nations where governments should do more to promote local, small-scale fisheries, a study by a UN expert said. The report said emerging nations should tighten rules for access to their waters by an industrial fleet that is rapidly growing and includes vessels from China, Russia, the European Union, the United States and Japan.

The Kimberley Certification Process (KP) was ostensibly designed to keep 'blood diamonds' off global markets. Not only has it failed to do so, but it is actively promoting the human rights atrocities it pledged to wipe out. At least that's the view of Khadife Sharife and Nick Meynen expressed in a strident denunciation of the KP published on 15th October 2012. Sharife and Meynen also claim that the world's largest purveyor of diamonds, De Beers, actively corrupted the application of the Kimberley Process to Angola, at a time when De Beers was majority-owned by Anglo American.

One of the only chances small-scale food producers have to gain competitive access to local and global markets is by banding together in cooperatives, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told a meeting of the World Cooperatives Congress in Manchester. The International Year of Cooperatives is being observed in 2012. 'Cooperatives follow core values and principles that are critical to doing business in an equitable manner, that seeks to empower and benefits its members and the community it is inserted in,' Graziano da Silva said in a keynote speech. 'This is especially relevant in poor rural communities, where joining forces is central to promoting sustainable local development.'

Nigeria may shut down oil fields as it tries to clamp down on gas flaring, even if it means a loss of revenue, the petroleum industry's chief regulator said. Africa's top oil producer and holder of the world's seventh largest natural gas reserves is considered to be among the top two gas flarers in the world, burning off unwanted gas, after Russia.

All AU member states (with the exception of newcomer South Sudan) have become state party to the African Charter, and 26 of them have accepted the Women’s Protocol. The question should be posed as to what extent the promises of the Charter and Women’s Protocol have been realised. What has the impact of these instruments been on the practice of state parties? This publication, 'The impact of the African Charter and Women’s Protocol in selected African states', aims to start addressing this question.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the highest rate of malnutrition in central and west Africa, affecting 43 percent of children under five, UNICEF said. In central Africa, 'some countries have a rate of chronic malnutrition which is still alarming,' Marianne Flach, the representative of the UN children's agency in Congo, said at the opening of a regional workshop on reducing malnutrition. At least 75 experts from different countries in central Africa came to take part in the workshop, which will continue until Thursday in a northern suburb of Brazzaville.

The number of refugee families staying in the Netherlands after their asylum requests have been rejected is increasing. Last summer, they were being housed in two special centres. Since then five new centres have been opened, providing shelter to over 1700 people. A lawyer, who visited one of the centres, said conditions were so deplorable that he is taking the government to court to have it closed.

Uganda's house speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, has promised to expedite the debate on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill days after she was engaged in a war of words with Canadian Foreign Minister, John Baird over Uganda's anti-homosexuality record. Speaking after arriving from the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Quebec, Canada, Kadanga said she will allow debate and voting on th famous anti-homosexuality bill in the East African country. 'They said I should stop the debate on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill but I assured them there is no way I can block a private members Bill,' she said, while addressing religious leaders and journalists at Entebbe International Airport.

South Africa hosts the third annual Tech4Africa conference, in Johannesburg, attracting innovators and entrepreneurs from a dozen countries. Among the speakers are Sim Shagaya, a Nigerian-born Harvard graduate planning to create the 'Amazon of Africa', selling Lagos's increasingly affluent consumer class everything from refrigerators to perfume to cupcakes. His previous venture, DealDey, which offers Groupon-style deals, is now the top-grossing ecommerce site in Nigeria with 350,000 subscribers.

Sudan dismissed as 'misleading' Israeli allegations it supplies arms to foes of the Jewish state and said there was no foreign involvement in a munitions factory Khartoum says was bombed by Israel. The poor Muslim East African country has long been seen by Israel as a conduit for weapons smuggled to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, via the Egyptian Sinai desert. Four people were killed after fire broke out a week ago at the Yarmouk arms factory in the south of Khartoum, and the following day Sudan said an Israeli air strike was responsible.

Uganda’s practice of pardoning and then integrating into its military captured or surrendered members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), getting them to hunt down their former comrades-in-arms, has come in for criticism by civilians affected by the rebel group in the Central African Republic (CAR). 'This strategy is a real insult to the victims,' said Gaétan Zangagoumé, chairman of a victims’ association in Obo, capital of Haut-Mbomou Prefecture. The area, in the extreme southeast of CAR, has been heavily affected by LRA activities. Victims there include hundreds of civilians forcibly conscripted into the LRA as well as people from villages repeatedly attacked, torched and now deserted. Fear of further attacks greatly restricts freedom of movement.

Hotter than normal temperatures raise the risk of violent conflict in East Africa, while increased rainfall makes such disturbances less likely, according to a new study conducted by the US National Academy of Sciences. For both climate variables, there is about a 30 per cent change in the likelihood of violence occurring in an affected area, the study finds. The results appear to reinforce warnings of climate change leading to more conflict in Africa, which is regarded as particularly vulnerable to the effects of sharp shifts in temperature and precipitation.

An Egyptian movement started to thwart sexual harassment during Eid Al-Adha has recorded 300 attempted attacks during the first two days of the holiday. A 2008 survey by the Egyptian Centre for Women Rights found that 83 per cent of local women and 98 per cent of foreign women had been subjected to harassment at least once.

Israel has turned back dozens of African asylum-seekers, mostly Eritreans, trying enter the country from Egypt, Human Rights Watch and two other NGOs said. 'Since June, Israeli forces patrolling Israel's newly constructed ... border fence with Egypt's Sinai region have denied entry to dozens of Africans, mostly Eritreans,' HRW and Israeli NGOs the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Physicians for Human Rights said in a joint statement.

Since the 2010 boycotted elections, Burundi is steadily drifting away from what was initially regarded as a peacemaking model, and violence from both the ruling party and the opposition is threatening stability. 'Burundi: Bye-bye Arusha?', the latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses how the control of the institutions by the ruling party and the boycott of the 2010 elections by the main opposition parties made the power-sharing system defined by the 2000 Arusha agreement irrelevant.

The country’s environmental watchdog has raised the red flag over the manner in which medical and electronic waste in the country is disposed. The National Environmental Management Authority in a report says poor disposal of used needles, syringes and other toxic waste on uncontrolled dumping sites have become a major threat to the public health.

South Africa has given the green light to an initial $5.4 billion worth of clean energy projects that will allow it to procure 1,400 MW of electricity and help reduce reliance on coal-fired plants, the energy minister said.

Three European jurists referred the case of the imprisoned Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaac to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on 27 October, his 48th birthday and the 12th in succession that he has spent in an Eritrean jail. In an earlier case before the African Commission the Eritrean Government has stated that its own court system is independent and could handle the case of Dawit Isaac and others.

Rebels in Sudan's Darfur region said on Sunday they had shelled a state capital, in a rare attack on the government stronghold where international peacekeepers are also based. The government did not immediately comment on the report and the claim could not be immediately independently verified. War has ravaged Darfur since rebels took up arms in 2003, complaining the central government had neglected the region. The United States and the International Criminal Court accuse Sudan's government of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.