Three staff of the privately-owed Radio SIDO FM station are being detained at the Ségou prison, 200 km south-west of Bamako, capital of Mali. The Ségou court charged Mamoutou Traoré, senior administrator of Radio SIDO, his deputy Gatta Bah and Amadou Chérif Haïdara, a presenter, with the offence of "slander and incitement to violence."

Several hundred Malians and Burkinabe have been forced to flee their homes in Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa-growing region of Gagnoa, 300 km west of the commercial capital, Abidjan, after a wave of arson attacks and looting. According to humanitarian sources, the attacks by groups of young men have been going on for three weeks. Witnesses say that as well as Burkinabe and Malians, Ivorian northerners and other Ivorians who had moved to Gagnoa from central Cote d’Ivoire, have also been targeted, losing crops and other property.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to authorities in Mali, saying it is disturbed by the continued imprisonment of three journalists working for privately owned Sido radio station. According to local sources, police in Ségou, a city in southern Mali, arrested program host Chériff Haïdara; radio director Mamoutou Traoré; and reporter and program host Gata Ba on October 20, 24, and 26, respectively.

Mali has rejected a demand by France that it crack down on people trafficking organisations that help illegal immigrants to reach Europe and North America, arguing that such immigrants send home 40 billion CFA (US $65 million) a year in remittances.

Tuberculosis is making a comeback in Mali, partly as a result of HIV/AIDS patients falling prey to the disease, but also because the respiratory disease is considered shameful and patients are reluctant to seek treatment, government officials said.

The postholder will be based at Amoud community-based University in Borama, which is the first institute of higher education to evolve since the end of Somaliland's period of conflict. The post offers an exciting opportunity to a resourceful and dedicated individual to assist in the development and management of information systems for the university, and offer necessary support and training to users.

International pressure is mounting on Ethiopia and Eritrea to normalise ties, three years after the end of a bloody war, following the UN Security Council's renewal of the six-month mandate of its peacekeeping mission in both countries. The Security Council resolution, passed late last week, that renewed the mandate of UNMEE - the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea - called on the two warring Horn of Africa nations to settle their differences through dialogue.

Former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konare spoke of the enormous task ahead on Tuesday as he took over the reins of power at the African Union (AU) for the next four years. The 57-year-old professor of history and archaeology admitted that financial backing and international support for the year-old AU were vital for its success.

At the outset of the twenty-first century, Afropessimism permeates both the scholarly and popular literatures on Africa. In the dominant discourses, Africa is constructed as "hopeless," "hemmed in," on the periphery, and even as "left out" of the global economy and community of nations. This interdisciplinary volume interrogates these interpretations and offers a probing critique of neoliberal globalization and its uneven impact on Africa. The essays debate the constraints and opportunities for Africa’s political economy, civil societies, and cultural production in the current era of intensifying globalization.

Each acre of US cotton farmland attracts a subsidy of US $230 – equivalent to the average annual income in Burkina Faso. In 2001-2002, America’s 25 000 cotton farmers reaped a bumper subsidy harvest of US $3.9bn – a sum larger than Burkina Faso’s GDP and three times the total USAID budget for Africa. The largest 10 per cent of producers receive three-quarters of total payments. Oxfam estimates that the income lost to African producers is equivalent to the value of a third of total US aid to Africa. Mali received US $37m in US aid in 2001 but lost US $43m as a result of lower cotton export earnings. US subsidies cost Mali 1.7 per cent of GDP and 8 per cent of export earnings.

Extinction of the unique Gourma elephants "is a real possibility if conditions don't change soon," Vicki Huddleston, U.S. Ambassador to Mali, warned in a June 18 interview with the U.S. State Department International Information Program. If the international community does not join with the Malian government now to prevent their ranges from being taken over by human settlements, these beautiful creatures will die, she said.

U.S. and European subsidies and tariffs "support injustice," Mali President Amadou Toumani Toure told the House International Relations Subcommitteee on Africa, Tuesday, summarizing written testimony that he presented for the record. Toure said he was representing all African nations and the devastating effect of subsidies on Malian cotton illustrates the harm that agriculural subsidies - now totaling more that US$300bn in the United States and Europe - are causing to agriculture across the continent.

Cyber cafés catering mainly to students and young people are proliferating around Bamako, Mali's capital, showing the growing importance of information and communications technology (ICT) in the landlocked West African country. However, most Malians have yet to join the digital age. To make the Internet and other digital tools available to all sectors of society, the Government is formulating and implementing a national ICT strategy.

Somaliland's 2003 elections mark another historic step after the Local Elections held in December 2002, in the process of democratisation of a country still fighting for international recognition, says a new report from a team of South African Observers who monitored Somaliland's first democratic presidential elections, held on the 14th April 2003. "The National Electoral Commission of Somaliland is commended for its role in the conduct of the elections despite the challenging socio-economic conditions under which they took place."

The Northern Mali Peace and Reconciliation Project, supported by a small grant, has helped to promote peace through radio programming in Northern Mali and is positive proof that small projects can bring large results. The six-month activity has contributed to the significant conflict reduction in the Timbuktu Region of Mali and left participating stations with mechanisms and a mission to promote peace and reconciliation.

Since the presidential elections on 14 April there has been an increased risk of violence and a significant rise in human rights violations, leaving Somaliland more vulnerable than it has been for many years, says the organisation African Rights in a recent briefing paper. The paper brings to light a series of human rights abuses, including beatings and illegal detentions, a ban on protests, unfair dismissals and a curb on freedom of movement.

The Organisation for Educational Resources and Technological Training (ORT) is seeking candidates for two potential long-term positions with expertise in anti-trafficking issues, child labour, education, and project management.

Thousands of Somali refugees at Dadaab in northeastern Kenya have been left homeless after heavy rains destroyed hundreds of shelters last week, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported.

The tranquil and festive atmosphere in which Somaliland held presidential elections on 14 April has been shattered. On the afternoon of 19 April, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) announced that the Udub candidate, the incumbent president Dahir Kahin Rayaale, had won. His margin of victory was said to be a mere 80 votes and the result was immediately called into question, triggering disturbances in two of the towns where the main opposition party, Kulmiye, had done particularly well—Burao and Gebiley.

People in the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland have voted in their first multi-party presidential election. Almost one million voters were thought to have cast their ballots, hoping the election could boost its attempts to secure international recognition.