Heavy fighting and gun battles have broken out in areas of Tripoli after opposition fighters gained control overnight of much of the Libyan capital in their battle to end Muammar Gaddafi's decades-long rule. Clashes erupted on Monday after tanks left Bab Aziziya, Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli, to confront the rebel assault. Many of the streets in the centre of the city, where anti-government supporters had celebrated hours earlier, were abandoned as pockets of pro-Gaddafi resistance and the presence of snipers and artillery fire made the area dangerous.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde has pardoned 17 opposition activists jailed for taking part in an illegal rally in April. The amnesty was aimed at promoting reconciliation after divisive elections last year, the BBC's Alhassan Sillah in the capital, Conakry, says. Mr Conde had also appointed Guinea's top Muslim and Christian clerics to head a reconciliation commission.

An aid convoy which departed South Africa in July is soon to arrive in Gaza after traveling the length of Africa. South African Relief Agency Chief Coordinator Aneesa Brits answers questions from Pambazuka News about the reasons for the epic journey.

A group of asylum- seekers has applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an order directing the Home Affairs ministry to provide adequate refugee reception offices in South Africa, including in Johannesburg. The order - which, if granted, could force an overhaul of a refugee management system that at times borders on dysfunctional - seeks to compel the ministry to address a host of problems, including rampant corruption and overcrowding at reception offices that have made applying for asylum a nightmare in South Africa.

With power in Côte d’Ivoire having changed hands from Laurent Gbagbo to Alassane Ouattara, the social dynamic has shifted in Moyen-Cavally, creating new challenges for stability in the cocoa- and coffee-rich region where political partisanship runs largely along ethnic lines. But observers say community structures and local will to overcome divisions remain and can be built upon to move past unprecedented turmoil. 'People here have no choice but to coexist,' said Benjamin Effoli, prefect in the western town of Duékoué in Moyen-Cavally. 'Social cohesion is a non-stop job and every single person has his or her role.' He said in the wake of the latest crisis, long-standing community groups are monitoring the situation and discussing how to rein in strife.

Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and his wife Simone, detained since he was ousted
from power in April, have been charged with 'economic crimes, armed robbery, looting and embezzlement', the public prosecutor has said. Simplice Kouadio Koffi said Gbagbo was charged on Thursday and his wife on Tuesday. Both have been moved from house arrest in the north of the country to jail.

Euphoric Libyan rebels have moved into the centre of the capital, Tripoli, as Muammar Gaddafi's defenders melted away and thousands of jubilant civilians rushed out of their homes to cheer the long convoys of pickup trucks packed with fighters shooting in the air. The rebels' surprising and speedy leap forward, after six months of largely deadlocked civil war, was packed into just a few dramatic hours. By nightfall on Sunday, they had advanced more than 32km to Tripoli. Pockets of fighters who are still loyal to Gaddafi still control parts of the city - including the areas around Gaddafi's Bab al-Azizia compound in the south of the city.

At least 125 people were confirmed dead on Sunday as sectional fighting continued between two feuding tribes in Jonglei state in South Sudan, officials said. Sixty others perished in fighting between the army and a militia group in Upper Nile state on Saturday, according to the army spokesman. The caretaker Justice Minister, John Luk Jok, said 125 bodies were found dead on the ground in Uror County in Jonglei state since the fighting broke out on Thursday.

The British government is facing unprecedented court claims from its former African colonies for various atrocities committed by its officers. The once mighty Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom in western Uganda now joins the Mau Mau of Kenya in lodging court proceedings in which they are demanding £1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) as general damages and reparations. In a case that also raises questions about what should constitute the scope of a colonial power, lawyers representing Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom have served the British government with a statutory notice of intention to sue for invasion, atrocious human-rights abuses and grabbing of their land in the colonial era.

John Wiyual returned from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, to South Sudan in December 2010, hoping the move would not disrupt his five children's education too much. Wiyual's family was among the first groups of Southern Sudanese to go home, pending the South's secession, which became reality on 9 July. For Wiyual and thousands of other returnees in the Greater Upper Nile region - comprising the states of Upper Nile, Unity and Jonglei - basic services, land and employment opportunities are the key considerations influencing the pace of their reintegration.

South Africa’s progressive constitution and laws extend the same protections to unaccompanied minors (the term given to children who cross border without parents or adult care-givers) as to local children, but in practice they face immense bureaucratic hurdles and are often left to fend for themselves. Although no figures are available, Mmone Moletsale of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that based on reports from their partners, South Africa was receiving an increasing number of such children, but still lacked an efficient system for dealing with them.

The idea that the Dodd-Frank Act in the US will stop mineral exploitation by armed groups is flawed, argues this article. 'Mineral exploitation, the object of activism and legislation, is but one source of revenue for these armed groups. They literally rule over the territories they control, taxing every economic activity and terrorizing the civilians into submission. Losing access to the mines will marginally affect their capacity to generate funds, considering that weapons and ammunitions are relatively inexpensive. In other words, if there were no minerals, the conflict would still rage on as armed groups would find other sources of revenue.'

The US government’s counterterrorism activities and ‘humanitarian’ assistance in Somalia and the Horn of Africa go a long way towards explaining the region’s entrenched problems, writes Horace Campbell.

Tax avoidance, not developing country corruption, is the biggest source of illicit capital flight, writes Charles Abugre in Part 2 of a four-part series of articles on the flow of ‘dirty money’.

The Telegraphs reports that Libya's rebel leader has promised to hand over power to an elected assembly within eight months of the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi's regime. sketching out the country's path to democracy, after the end of Gaddafi's 42-year reign, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chair of the National Transitional Council, sought to draw a line under questions about the intent and the legitimacy of his un-elected council, which has become the de-facto government in the rebel-held east of Libya.

A coalition of 18 trade Unions, 11 national Christian councils, 15 umbrella NGO Bodies as well as civil society groups, think tanks and human rights organisations from Malawi and across southern Africa have called on the Malawian President, Bingu wa Mutharika, to put an immediate stop to the ongoing harassment and intimidation being meted out to Malawian citizens - and take action to ensure that those responsible for the deaths of 19 people during anti-government protests are held to account.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe outlines the origins of what he terms the genocide-state in Africa, going back to the Igbo genocide of 1966 to describe the character of modern-day states. There should be a total arms ban on these states to advance the quest of people across Africa to construct democratic states.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said all the parties in Somalia's conflict have violated the rules of war and are guilty of causing civilian casualties in the fight for territorial control that is contributing to the humanitarian catastrophe there. The New York-based group said al-Shabab, the rebel Isamist group that controls large parts of the country, was guilty of unrelenting brutality, while government troops carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions.

Atrocities committed in June in Sudan's Southern Kordofan state by armies of the north and south 'could amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes', according to a report by the UN human rights agency. The 12-page report covers the period from 5-30 June and describes a wide range of alleged violations of international law in the town of Kadugli. The violations are also said to have occurred in the surrounding Nuba mountains, after fighting broke out in Kadugli on 5 June between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People's Liberation Army North (SPLA-N).

The former Gambian minister of Information who went missing in June has been found in one of the country’s jails after the police had denied knowledge of his whereabouts. A French news agency quoted Gambia’s police spokesperson Yerro Mballow of not being aware of the minister’s arrest and 'no idea where former he could be'. However, Justice Ministry officials confirmed that Mr Amadou Scattred Jannenh was being held in jail awaiting trial for treason and sedition.