Almost a thousand Swazi and South African HIV activists marched to the United States consulate in Johannesburg on 22 March 2012 to demand that the US continue supporting the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria, and safeguard funding of its President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which US President Barack Obama's latest proposed budget will cut by 12 per cent. The march organizers - a coalition of international and regional HIV organizations, including the global medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the World AIDS Campaign, and the AIDS Rights Alliance Southern Africa - also called on the British and Australian governments to join their American counterparts in kick-starting a response to solve the Global Fund's financial crisis.

In Cameroon’s Northwest region, citizens, organizations and local officials are taking part in campaigns and speaking out to encourage women to run for office in the legislative and municipal elections anticipated for this year. Though a date has yet to be set for the elections, International Women’s Day this month stirred up excitement for women’s campaigns.

Blog Ndifuna Ukwazi reports on an article in the Mail and Guardian that further illustrates the uncertainty surrounding the actual cost of procuring nuclear power. The article highlights the lack of consensus amongst experts in the field as to what the overall cost for nuclear power can be. Focusing on South Africa, the article shows that costs could range anywhere between R322- billion to R1.4- trillion. The construction cost alone would place a considerable strain on South Africa’s resources with no return for 10 to 15 years, the expected time for constructing six reactors.

The African Union has added their backing to Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s run at becoming World Bank President. This post from blog Africa is a Country says there are those who would be pleased to see her get the job simply so that Nigeria could be rid of her. Her opponents accuse her 'of acting as an agent for global financial instutions, she was widely seen as the instigator of the removal of the fuel subsidy in January that led to the eruption of the Occupy Nigeria movement.'

A report released on Tuesday 27 March by the UN refugee agency shows that new conflicts and a rising outflow from older crisis spots such as Afghanistan together contributed to a 20 per cent rise in asylum claims in industrialized countries in 2011. UNHCR's report, 'Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries 2011', says that an estimated 441,300 asylum claims were recorded last year compared to 368,000 in 2010. The report covers 44 countries in Europe, North America, Australasia and north-east Asia.

The UN has proposed that countries set limits on the size of agriculture land sales to regulate the growing trend of so-called farmland grabs. The new voluntary guidelines won the consensus of nearly 100 countries this month after three years of negotiations and are now set to be ratified in May at a special session in Rome of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. The guidelines, which officials say are largely pro-business, nonetheless state that countries should 'provide safeguards' to protect tenure rights.

The births of tens of thousands of children during Côte d'Ivoire's eight-year rebellion were not formally recorded. While many families take a lax attitude towards registering new babies, the gaps in birth and other records are particularly serious in the central, northern and western parts of Côte d'Ivoire, where government functions were effectively suspended by the rebellion between 2002 and 2010. As children born during this period move up through the school system, they have run into problems.

Rights activists have begun a legal bid to compel South Africa to investigate and prosecute citizens of neighbouring Zimbabwe suspected of crimes against humanity. The activists argue that South Africa is failing to meet its obligations in international law. A court ruling in their favour would cause a headache for South Africa, which could see its courts clogged with prosecutions and its diplomacy with the power-sharing government in Harare hobbled.

Public hearings on the 'secrecy' bill kicked off in the National Council of Provinces on Tuesday 27 March with strenuous demands for the inclusion of a public interest defence. The absence of a public interest defence for the protection of whistle-blowers and investigative journalists has been cited as one of the most serious remaining flaws in the bill. The Open Democracy Advice Centre (Odac), the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) and Print Media South Africa (PMSA) all argued before the Ad Hoc Committee on the Protection of State Information Bill that a public interest defence should be included in the bill.

Tullow Oil, the British multinational, has struck oil in northern Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, the country’s president, announced on Tuesday 27 March at an oil, gas and energy conference in Nairobi. At the conference in the Kenyan capital, some of the world’s biggest oil companies discussed their exploration plans for East Africa, which has attracted significant interest from energy multinationals as well as national and independent oil and gas companies.

This BBC Africa page examines the controversy surrounding the perceived bias of the ICC in focusing only on cases involving Africans. It has the views of two experts, one who argues that the ICC is not biased and the other who argues that it is. 'Ordinary Africans are not complaining. Many have suffered at the hands of the perpetrators of mass crimes - and know that there is little chance that they will see justice done without international tribunals like the ICC,' argues Abdul Tejan-Cole, a former prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. 'The International Criminal Court is in fact a pathetic continuation of an imperial tradition, a way for western powers to pretend they are protecting human rights in Africa, that they are teaching Africans right from wrong,' argues Zaya Yeebo, a writer and commentator on Africa.

Two French judges sought an international arrest warrant for the son of Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on money laundering charges, a judicial source said on Tuesday 27 March. The two judges, Roger Le Loire and Rene Grouman, consider there are grounds to suspect that Teodorin Obiang, who is agriculture minister in the small, oil-rich central African country, acquired real estate in France by fraudulent means.

The Times of Swaziland censored itself when it reported Wikileaks was asking people in the kingdom to leak documents to its website. The Times, the only independent daily newspaper in Swaziland, reported 26 March that Wikileaks asked people to send it documents relating to the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), a banned organisation in Swaziland where King Mwsati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. But, what it did not report was that Wikileaks had a higher priority from Swaziland than PUDEMO on its wanted-information list: ‘Expense accounts of King Mswati, the Queen Mother and the King's wives.’

This month the UN Commission on the Status of Women failed to adopt agreed conclusions at its 56th session on the basis of safeguarding 'traditional values' at the expense of human rights and fundamental freedoms of women. 'Together with our partner feminist and women's rights organisations, we say NO to any re-opening of negotiations on the already established international agreements on women’s human rights and call on all governments to demonstrate their commitments to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms of women.'

Egypt’s military courts have investigated or tried at least 43 children over the past year, Human Rights Watch says, including the pending trial of 13-year-old Ahmed Hamdy Abdel Aziz in connection with the Port Said football riots. Children prosecuted in military courts have not had access to lawyers, and often to their families, until after military authorities have investigated and sentenced them. Since coming to power in February 2011, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has referred over 12,000 civilians for prosecution by military courts before military judges, though these courts fail to meet minimum due process standards.

Jerry Cole, a senior television cameraman of the state-owned Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), was on 12 March attacked by some supporters of the main opposition Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) in Freetown, the capital. Cole and his colleague reporter, Unisa Deen Kargbo, had gone to record an interview with the SLPP officials at the party’s headquarters on the ongoing voter registration exercise for the 17 November general election.

The South African agriculture economy has little or no room for emerging farmers; with no strong support system, being an emerging farmer in South Africa can be a hopeless adventure, writes Davison Chikazunga on the blog Another Countryside. 'Introducing market liberalisation in 1992 has aggravated the difficulties; it was naïve for the country to introduce such measures at the dawn of democracy when the state presence needed to do much to establish new black farmers. South Africa’s agriculture economy under apartheid blossomed because of state subsidies, and similar support programs in America and Europe helped their agricultural economies to thrive.'

The government has denied reports that public hospitals are experiencing drug shortages. On Tuesday 27 March, doctors took to the streets to demonstrate against drug shortage and lack of adequate medical personnel in public hospitals. The doctors marched from the University of Nairobi to Treasury to demand that the government clearly states when it intends to post medical personnel to public health institutions.

Residents in Khayelitsha came to the defence of Somali traders when local business owners threatened to burn down the Somali-owned shops. In an attempt to enforce a 2008 agreement between Zanokhanyo Retailers Association and Somalian shopkeepers following that year’s xenophobic attacks that no new Somali-owned shops would open, local business owners in Harare threatened to burn down Somali shops to force their closure. But local residents stood in front of the nine shops under threat, preventing the local business owners from taking action.

German Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul apologised in August 2004 at a big rally in Okakarara for the genocide committed 100 years ago by the German imperial army. Almost eight years later the German parliament (Bundestag) rejected two motions by three opposition parties for a formal apology of the German parliament and so refused to acknowledge the genocide in contradiction to the assessment of historians.