The Angolan government announced on Friday in Luanda that it concluded fully the withdrawal of Missang forces in the territory of Guinea Bissau. According to a press note from the Angolan government, which reached Angop, the process included a complete withdrawal by sea and air of all military personnel, as well as all military equipment and techniques of Missang.

Bestowing an honour on America's first black president might seem an uncontroversial choice for post-apartheid South Africa. But what was good enough for the Nobel peace prize committee is just the latest trigger for acrimony in the polarised city of Cape Town. Its decision to grant president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, the freedom of the city has provoked a growing backlash from rival parties, churches, Muslim groups and trade unions, who branded it a 'political gimmick'. They warn that if the couple ever set foot in Cape Town to accept the award, they will be greeted by mass protests drawing attention to America's human rights record.

Kenya has been plunged into mourning after Internal Security minister George Saitoti and his assistant Joshua Orwa Ojodeh were killed in a helicopter crash in Ngong Forest. The accident occurred on Sunday minutes after they had taken off from Wilson Airport in a new police helicopter, heading for a fundraiser in Mr Ojodeh’s Ndiwa constituency. The cause of the crash was yet to be established.

A brigade will deploy to Africa next year in a pilot program that assigns brigades on a rotational basis to regions around the globe, the US Army announced in May. Roughly 3,000 soldiers - and likely more - are expected to serve tours across the continent in 2013, training foreign militaries and aiding locals.

Representatives of the International Criminal Court arrived in Tripoli on Sunday to try to secure the release of a detained delegation visiting Muammar Gaddafi's captured son, a Libyan official said. The four-member delegation was being held in the western mountain town of Zintan after one of its lawyers, Australian Melinda Taylor, was found carrying documents regarded as suspicious for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a Libyan lawyer and a militia member said.

Sudan and South Sudan have broken off security talks after failing to agree on a demilitarised zone along their disputed border. After 10 days of talks, the two sides were unable to agree on Friday where to draw a demilitarised buffer zone along the 1,800km-long border. Khartoum's delegation accused South Sudan of making new land claims, most importantly to the Heglig oilfield whose output is vital to Sudan's battered economy. The southern army had temporarily occupied Heglig during the recent fighting.

Recently, Egypt's 30-year-old emergency law expired and former President Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of protesters during Egypt's uprising. Yet the future for free expression in Egypt remains in doubt, say the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and other IFEX members.

Fighting between government forces and tribal fighters in the southern Libyan town of Kufra has continued for a second day, officials said. At least 16 people have died since the clashes began on Saturday, with women and children among the dead. Libya's government has been struggling to maintain security since the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi last year.

Two rebel groups that seized northern Mali two months ago have clashed following protests in the town of Kidal, witnesses say. A source told the BBC that fighting broke out between Tuareg MNLA rebels and the Ansar Dine Islamist group on the third day of protests in the town. Last month, the two groups agreed to merge and turn their vast northern territory into an Islamist state.

Under mounting pressure, Liberia on Saturday announced it was closing its border with neighbouring Ivory Coast following a fatal attack on UN peacekeepers. Seven Nigerien UN peacekeepers died in the attack on Friday which also claimed the lives of eight civilians and an Ivorian soldier. Both the UN and the Ivorian government believe the attackers came from Liberia.

A senior official of the radical Islamist Al-Shabaab group has announced that his movement was ready to reward anybody bringing in information leading to the killing or capture of top American leaders. Sheikh Fu’ad Mohamed Khalaf alias Shongole specifically mentioned US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Sheikh Shongole was reacting to a statement from the US State Department putting a bounty of $33 million for the capture of top Al-Shabaab leaders. 'We are offering 10 camels for any information concerning (Barack) Obama,' said Shongole.

The United States said last week it is 'concerned' about a troop mutiny in the Democratic Republic of Congo and by 'recent reports of outside support' for mutineers operating under the name M23. But the US statement refrained from identifying Rwanda as the reported outside supporter of the M23 rebellion led by Gen Bosco Ntaganda. While expressing support for the DRC’s recent move to arrest Ntaganda, the US did not explicitly call on Rwanda to aid those efforts, even though Rwandan military officials are said to be supplying the M23 leader with weapons and recruits.

Israeli authorities have began a roundup of South Sudanese migrants ahead of their deportation, three days after a court ruled that their lives were no longer threatened in their homeland. 'The deportation operation is getting under way. We are starting the job,' Interior minister Eli Yishai told independent television station Channel Two. 'We told the infiltrators from South Sudan to come voluntarily; whoever doesn't, with the Lord's help we shall get them all...they'll be put on a plane,' he said.

The continued arrival of refugees fleeing post-election violence and militia activities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in western Uganda, and the government’s efforts to resettle them, have created a land row that has already cost the life of a government official. Alphonse Nteziryayo, commander of Rwamwanja settlement, in Kamwenge district, had accompanied humanitarian aid workers to assess the land the government had set aside for the settlement of Congolese refugees in Uganda when he was attacked and killed by squatters, who had settled there.

A near decade-long insurgency which stoked insecurity in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) northern regions has eased after the disbandment in May of two main rebel groups there, bringing hopes for stability. The Popular Army for the Restoration of Democracy (APRD) and the Republican Forces Union (UFR) dissolved and their fighters begun to disarm under peace agreements with the government.

An 'exceptional' airlift of almost 12,000 South Sudanese ended with a final flight from Khartoum on Wednesday but thousands more continue to live in makeshift conditions while they, too, await transport to the South, officials said. One hundred Southerners took the last chartered plane from Khartoum to South Sudan's capital Juba, Jill Helke, chief of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Sudan, said.

If you want a vision of Africa under AFRICOM tutelage, look no further than Libya, NATO’s model of an African state: condemned to decades of violence and trauma through military colonialism.

Somali militants Al-Shabaab are amassing troops in lower Juba region, reports indicate. Consequently, tension was mounting among the civilians over an imminent major military operation. 'Militants loyal to Al-Shabaab (the radical Islamist group) were Wednesday seen positioning ‘technicals’ (battle wagons mounted with machine guns, in and around the town,' a resident in Kismayu, who did not disclose his identity for security reasons, told the local media.

Guinea President Alpha Conde has ignited anger among a section of Sierra Leone’s opposition for a statement seen as interference in the latter’s politics. President Conde Saturday openly declared support for his Sierra Leonean counterpart in the forthcoming elections. The Guinean leader made the pronouncement as the two leaders inaugurated a new highway linking Conakry and Freetown, the respective capitals of the two states.

This post from the blog Africa is a Country reflects on the film Safe House, starring Denzil Washington, which was filmed in Cape Town. Washington had previously been quoted as saying he felt more comfortable making the film in a 'black' country, but as Loren A Lynch points out, the film perpetuates Hollywood stereotypes. 'The majority of audiences rarely see past guise of set dressing into the political and racial implications of not only the film but also of the film industry itself. Western audiences remain content with Hollywood’s constructed perceptions of both countries and cultures outside of their own, when in reality the differences stick out almost as much as Denzel Washington in a “brown” country.'