Namibia’s indigenous Himba and Zemba people of Kaokoland in the far north-west of the country, long thought to be voiceless, isolated and marginalized, are demanding that the Namibian government ends forced land grabbing, halts plans for the Orokawe Dam in the Kunene region, stops interfering in ancestral tribal institutions, provides culturally sensitive schools and allows them to move freely across the border with Angola.

Although Al-Shabab insurgents announced their withdrawal from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in August 2011, insecurity in the city has continued, as evidenced by the targeted killing of a journalist and a bomb blast in the past week. Abukar Hassan Kadaf, the director of the private Somaliweyn Radio station, was 'killed in front of his home at around Magrib time [sunset prayer, 3pm GMT] on 28 February', according to Ahmed Mahamud, a journalist in Mogadishu. 'Security will not be achieved in government-controlled areas until those who are responsible for attacks on media workers and activists are held to account,' said Michelle Kagari, deputy director for Amnesty International's Africa programme.

More than 200 people have been killed in a series of explosions triggered by fire at a munitions depot in the Republic of Congo's capital Brazzaville, according to a senior official in the presidency, citing hospital sources. Charles Zacharie Boawo, the defence minister, appeared on national television to urge calm in Brazzaville. 'The explosions that you have heard don't mean there is a war or a coup d'etat,' he said.

Mozambique’s Finance Minister plans this year to increase State revenues in order to overcome the growing lack of funding from abroad, Minister Manuel Chang said. 'With that increase in revenue the aim is to establish conditions needed to reduce the budget deficit, increasing the contribution of domestic resources within the State Budget,' the Finance Minister said at the 19th National Public Spending Seminar.

The ANC released its policy discussion documents in Johannesburg on Monday, saying it would take the country into its 'second transition'. Land reform and adjustments to 'elements of the Constitution' were two of the discussion points mentioned. 'The recommendation in this document expresses the view that the current willing-buyer, willing-seller model tends to distort the land market through inflating the prices of land earmarked for restitution, and this has the dual effect of making land reform expensive and delays the process of increasing access of the poor to land.'

The new Egypt seems a lot like the old Egypt, especially in terms of its continued control of Nile River water. Last year, the interim Egyptian government said it would oppose an Ethiopian plan to erect a damn along its territory’s Nile water. Egypt claims it cannot give up their share of water, as it could lead to water shortages in the future. But millions of Egyptians suffer from water shortages on a daily basis. Today. Adel Mohamed, blames shortages on new upscale developments being erected for Egypt’s wealthiest people, reports

Liberia’s former football star-turned politician, George Weah, has been reinstalled as the leader of Liberia’s main opposition party, Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) following the expulsion of presidential candidate Winston Tubman. The party has been in crisis since the ruling Unity Party of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf defeated it during the presidential elections last year, making it the second defeat in a row. A statement by the party aid Mr Tubman was relieved of the position as a result of nepotism, corruption, lack of accountability and transparency, and unethical behaviour.

The United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) must be reformed, according to an ANC discussion document on international relations. 'The current global governance regimes remain untransformed and ill-prepared to respond to the systemic challenges that are arising,' the ANC said in new policy papers.

Zambia environment authorities on Saturday closed a copper mining plant operated by the Mopani Copper Mine company after health complaints from local residents continued to drag the mine. The move was seen by locals as an attempt to crackdown on poor conditions at mines across the country and comes after environmental activists called on the government to enhance oversight on mining operations in the country. The plant, which is controlled by Swiss commodity trader Glencore AG, was placed under the spotlight for its pollution levels.

Over the last seven years Karuturi Global has acquired rights to 311,700 hectares of land in Gambela and Bako region in Ethiopia for the purpose of agricultural development. But Karuturi’s practices in Ethiopia has also attracted less welcome attention from human rights activists. Investigators from New York-based Human Rights Watch paid a visit to a Karuturi lease area in Gambela in May 2011 where they found that maize, sorghum, and groundnut crops planted by local Anuak farmers had been cleared without consent and residents moved off their land.

On the first anniversary of the dissolution of the State Security Investigation Apparatus, the April 6th Youth Movement (the Democratic Front in Alexandria), issued a statement declaring that they do not see a big difference between the state security apparatus during the regime of Mubarak and the National Security Agency, which is marred by the same shameful practices and the same violations of human rights and suppression of freedoms of activists and revolutionaries and human rights organizations and contributed to the worsening state of security chaos taking place in the country.

In this article, Leonidas Oikonomakis draws parallels between Greece's economic crisis and the statements of the late Thomas Sankara, who was president of Burkina Faso. Sankara knew all too well that he could not stand alone in his resistance to paying foreign debt and so he pleaded with the other African heads of state to follow his example. In protests against austerity measures in Greece, there are echoes of Sankara's statements.

Hundreds of families forced from their homes in the 1990s, as well as former refugees, who are living in informal settlements on the outskirts of Bujumbura, the capital, are seeking a lasting shelter alternative to cramped temporary sites. Families were supposed to have been resettled at the Maramvya area in Bujumbura Rural's Mutimbuzi commune, in 2011, where each household would have been allocated a 270 sqm plot. But there have been challenges to the resettlement, according to officials.

An al-Qaeda splinter group has said it carried out a suicide attack on a paramilitary police base in southern Algeria which left 24 people wounded. 'We inform you that we are behind the explosion that occurred this morning at Tamanrasset,' the group told the AFP news agency on Saturday. The statement, sent just hours after the attack, was signed by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA).

The Arab Spring uprisings last year brought no increase in the number of women in the region's parliaments, a UN report said Friday. At the end of 2011, women accounted for only 10.7 percent of lawmakers in Arab states, barely the same number as before the protests which brought down leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

White jelly forming on the top of boiled water, sickness due to the water, land stained black. This Mail and Guardian reports on the devastating effects of acid mine drainage on the town of Carolina and how the town's residents are suffering because of a polluted water supply.

Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute at the funeral of Odumegwu Ojukwu Thursday as Nigerian leaders paid final respects to the man whose 1967 declaration of Biafran independence sparked a civil war. Forty-five years after he tried to split Nigeria asunder by proclaiming the Republic of Biafra, Ojukwu's coffin was draped in the national colours of white and green at the funeral service in the city of Enugu, attended by thousands.

The Botswana Government has snubbed Swaziland’s People’s United Democratic (Pudemo) calls for Swazi MPs to be barred from participating in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum and Pan-African Parliament. Pudemo, Swaziland’s largest opposition, has heightened its campaign against King Mswati III’s reign. The socialist party has been pushing for political and economic reform in Africa’s last standing monarchy. But Botswana’s minister of Foreign Affairs Phandu Skelemani said the government would not interfere with Swaziland’s sovereignty.

Angola's attorney general has summoned witnesses to testify in a case that implicates some of the top figures in the country's military and security establishment in acts of torture and murder in the diamond fields of north-eastern Angola. The witnesses' hearings will start on 5 March in Luanda. Respondents in the case include General Manuel Hélder Vieira Dias "Kopelipa", Minister of State and head of the Military Bureau in the Angolan presidency, as well as a close confidante and business associate of President José Eduardo dos Santos. The case was brought before the attorney general, on 14 November 2011, by Angolan human rights activist Rafael Marques de Morais, who has been investigating rights abuses connected with the diamond industry since 2004.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has condemned an International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued for his defence minister. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Defence Minister Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein as part of an investigation into atrocities in Darfur. Hussein is the latest of several senior officials in Sudan to be indicted by the court in The Hague, which is also seeking the arrest of Bashir on charges of orchestrating genocide.