Zimbabwean police banned journalists from holding peaceful street marches on Thursday to commemorate World Press Freedom Day, while there were renewed calls to repeal harsh media laws and improve working conditions for journalists.

The 150 member organisations of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee’s (IPACC) express their profound disappointment that African states were unable to support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The African diplomatic group at the UN has placed the new Human Rights Council at grave risk of politicisation and domination by a few powerful states.

Ethiopian rebels have freed seven Chinese workers who were seized in a deadly oilfield raid that was one of the worst attacks to date on Beijing's growing interests in Africa. Officials said separatist gunmen killed 65 Ethiopians and nine other Chinese in last Tuesday's pre-dawn assault on the exploration field in the barren eastern Ogaden region.

Brushing aside concerns from environmentalists and rights groups, the World Bank has said it will support the controversial Bujagali dam in Uganda with US$360,000,000 in loans and guarantees. The decision was quickly denounced by activists, who say the dam poses grave environmental risks and that Bank ignored recent studies in justifying the measure.

1,000 Burundians, including 800 refugee returnees, have moved into new housing built for them with funding from the UN refugee agency in the village of Gatere near the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This is the first time that the World Environmental Education Congress comes to Africa. As researchers, practitioners and policy makers we need to ensure that we contribute to the values and goals of sustainability as found in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, the UN Development Millennium Goals; Education for All and many other international directives. Standard registration booking deadline: 15 May 2007. Standard registration payment deadline: 2 June 2007.

In February, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) issued its fourth assessment report on the state of emissions and climate change. According to the world’s leading scientists, there is a 90% likelihood that the global warming we are experiencing is linked to human-induced causes. In essence, it stems from burning fossil fuels. South African industry must become much more serious about its emissions, writes Karen Alsfine for Business Day.

Small-scale farmers in Malawi are becoming aware that they are bearing the brunt of climate change, which has been adversely affecting productivity, according to a new study by an international aid agency. "Changing rainfall patterns and higher temperatures have forced farmers to shorten the growing season and switch to more expensive hybrid crops," said a report based on the study, 'Climate change and smallholder farmers in Malawi', by Action Aid International.

Kenya Forestry Service plans to rehabilitate an approximate 2,700 hectares of indigenous forests through an ambitious afforestation programme.The campaign targets water catchment areas within Mount Kenya region, Aberdares, Mau Forest, Cherang’any Hills, Mt Elgon and Western Kenya region, which have in the past been destroyed by illegal loggers.

While South Africa's "homelands" -- areas formerly set aside for blacks -- have been relegated to the dustbin of history for more than a decade, their legacy lives on in the form of land degradation, and even desertification in northern and eastern parts of the country.

British aid agency Oxfam says urgent funding is needed to address water shortages being experienced by some 140,000 Chadian internally displaced persons. "We need more funding to enable us to adequately intervene in the provision of water and sanitation facilities in the IDP camps which are inadequate." Michel Anglade, campaign and policy advisor at Oxfam's West Africa regional office in Dakar told IRIN.

The Kenya government has with immediate effect suspended the controversial land allocations at the troubled Chepyuk settlement scheme in Mt Elgon district, in an effort to end land clashes. At the same time, a committee of 60 elders drawn from the two warring clans of the Soy and the Dorobo (Mosop) was appointed to help vet all squatters before new allocation exercise was put in place.

There is growing frustration among people who applied for Government resettlement farms in Namibia about the lack of transparency and generally vague criteria used in the selection of candidates for resettlement. Explanations given by Government and Regional Settlement officials often result in more questions than answers, complicating efforts to seek clarity on the issue.

Zimbabwe is reeling under a legacy of a racially skewed pattern of land ownership and access. The injustice harks back to Cecil John Rhodes, whose British South African Company "successfully" shut blacks in "native reserves" and placed three-quarters of the land in the hands of white farmers. At independence in 1980, 42% of the territory was owned by 6 000 white commercial farmers -- less than 1% of the population. As Mugabe later remarked: "The land question was at the centre of the factors that propelled us to launch our war of national liberation."

As reports warning of the scope of illegal logging in Mozambique grow more serious, local environmental groups are attempting to raise public consciousness of the issue and pressure the government to act, but this will be no easy task in a country where poverty reduction and HIV/AIDS usually take centre stage.

The lives of 30 million people living and dependent on Lake Victoria are in danger as a result of uncontrolled municipal and industrial waste, urbanisation and slum overpopulation, a senior United Nations official has said.

Water Experts have been urged to adopt a different approach in water resources development and management if they are to increase effective stakeholder participation at community level. They need to discuss benefits with the stakeholders, be this for agriculture, mining or any field of the environment.

The rising death toll from on-going land clashes in Kenya and the apparent inability of the government to protect the lives of its citizens attests to the complex nature of the underlying problem. To date, 147 people have been killed and an estimated 60,000 have been left homeless, by the violence that has gripped the slopes of mount Elgon in Western Kenya.

To be sure, the government does indeed have the wherewithal to quell the conflict and disarm all parties involved, as evidenced by the swift and effective, if not brutal, suppression of political dissent in recent times.

The issue of land is a contentious one right across the continent. In Zimbabwe, the government’s land redistribution programme has triggered violence and adversely affected food production. In post-apartheid South Africa land redistribution has been ongoing. Although some land-claims have been settled, there is still a significant lobby by those who remain landless. In other instances, land clashes have been a result of population growth, environmental degradation and an increased need to rationalize land tenure regimes. Pastoralist and agricultural land-use practices vie for increasingly scarce land.

In Kenya, the government’s centralised control of land distribution and registration has been highly politicized, leading to frequent conflagrations, such as the current one. At independence, the government assumed control of large tracts of arable land. Some of these were distributed through settlement schemes which sought to distribute parcels fro subsistence farming to those without land. Others were retained by the government through the parastatal Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC) whose purpose was to support the country’s agricultural production and through large scale farming.

The economic declines of the recent years and the subsequent state divestment gave way to selling off of these lands that were previously controlled by government. In the process, land became an instrument of political patronage, much like the case of Zimbabwe.

With increasing political dissent, the Moi regime began to trade land for political support, allocating it to influential individuals and to groups whose support the government needed. Whilst in some instances, the land redistribution exercise targeted deserving groups; in other cases it alienated groups who felt they had been denied land to which they had historical claim. In the 90’s clashes broke out in the Rift Valley between the maasai and other groups whom they perceived as interlopers who had settled on land that was historically theirs.

The common thread linking past land conflicts in Kenya is that they tend to flare up at times of intense political activity such as elections. Given the strong influence of ethnicity and clannism in Kenyan politics, it has been convenient for politicians to use land distribution as a bargaining tool or a rallying point.

The self-styled Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) purports to fight for the land rights of the Sabaot community who inhabit the Mount Elgon region in western Kenya. Their campaign of violence has left hundreds dead and thousands more evicted from land that had been allocated by the government for settlement. This is no departure from the form-book of previous clashes that have been witnessed in Kenya in the last 30 years.

The government is complicit in the violence and terror against its own citizens. There have been accusations of direct or indirect government involvement in the violence that has plagued the area. This is not the first time that aspersions of this nature have been cast, especially given the well-orchestrated way in which the present and past attacks have been carried out.

At a more significant level, until such time as government reviews land policy, the system will remain open to manipulation and exploitation for political gain. A clearly defined land policy will go a long way in poverty eradication by ensuring a means of subsistence. Furthermore, land ownership provides access to credit for the poor.

As long as the current inequalities exist and the economic vulnerability of populations provides a means of control, not only in Kenya, but across the continent, governments’ commitment to human development will be schizophrenic at best.

Further Reading: Land Tenure and Administration in Africa: Lessons of Experience and Emerging Issues. International Institute for Environment and Development & Food and Agricultural Organization. 2006.

Land tenure and conflict in Africa: Prevention, mitigation and reconstruction. African Center for Technologies. 2004. http://www.acts.or.ke/pubs/reports/Land%20Tenure.pdf

Land clashes in western Kenya have killed 147 people in the past six months, uprooted more than 60,000 and left already basic health services in disarray, aid workers have reported. Violent disputes over land are common in the east African country, but these are the worst for a decade and residents fear they could escalate ahead of elections expected in December.

Ousmane Sawadogo carefully tends a little plot of earth at a centre for displaced people in western Côte d’Ivoire, waiting for seasonal rains to begin and for the day he can return to his cocoa and coffee plantation northeast of here.