At least one person has been killed in Uganda as government troops evict an estimated 6,000 squatters from a nature reserve where authorities say the people are living illegally. The local people claim the property in question as their ancestral land and have accused the government of attempting to sell it to foreign developers.

The Kenyan government has denied it is planning to close the world's largest refugee camp, playing down suggestions that President Mwai Kibaki might do so during his visit to London. Kibaki is currently in the UK for a three-day conference with David Cameron. Almost half a million Somalis live in the Dadaab camp, 60 miles from the Somalian border. Numbers in the camp grew steadily last year as famine gripped the region.

Liberia's Independent National Human Rights Commission has said it would from next month begin implementing the recommendations of the defunct Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which included prosecuting key warlords. The Truth Commission had also recommended that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf be barred from holding public office for a period of 30 years, which analysts say would be near-impossible to implement. The sanctions carry financial, political and legal ramifications, sources said.

An interesting survey from Greek survey organisation Public Issue shows that in 2011 one third of the population agreed that 'Our society must change radically through revolution'. Only one per cent surveyed agreed that 'our society is fine the way it is.

Africa's 54 nations have decided to establish a continental free trade area by 2017, speed up infrastructure development and put related policies and laws in place to boost the integration process. 'The Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) should be operationalized by the indicative date of 2017, and enhanced intra-African trade and deepened market integration can contribute significantly to sustainable economic growth, employment generation, poverty reduction, inflow of foreign direct investment, industrial development and better integration of the continent into the global economy,' according to the Declaration on the Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa. The document was endorsed at the 18th African Union (AU) summit 23-31 January in the Ethiopian capital.

Madagascar is aiming to plug its energy gap and reduce its carbon emissions by encouraging a major investment in large-scale wind-turbines, the country’s interim president, Andry Rajoelina, has announced. Unofficial figures put the cost of the initiative at US$80 million. But experts say that instead of importing costly infrastructure, the country should make micro-wind power stations from locally available materials.

Victims of environmental disasters or other abuses inflicted by corporations in Nigeria are being denied justice as they are too poor or do not know how to seek legal recourse, jurists say. 'Poor rural victims of corporate human rights abuse are usually unaware of their legal rights and don't have the financial resources to file court process, gather information and evidence, and afford legal services,' said Carlos Lopez, the International Commission of Jurists' senior legal advisor in a report.

The final version of the 'Climate Change Adaptation in SADC: A Strategy for the Water Sector' report is available. The main goal of the Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) Strategy in SADC is to improve climate resilience in Southern Africa through integrated and adapted water resources management at regional, river basin and local levels. The objective is to promote further the application of integrated water resources management as a priority tool to reduce climate vulnerability and to ensure that water management systems are well adapted to cope with increased climate variability.

A cholera epidemic has spread to nine out of 11 provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations has said. The UN said the spread was 'worrisome' as the epidemic had so far killed 644 people and infected 26,000 since January 2011.

Government has moved one step further towards the establishment of the massive National Health Insurance scheme for South Africa, with Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan today announcing an allocation of R1 billion to the scheme's pilot projects. The money comes from the R121 billion health budget which aims to improve hospital infrastructure and strengthen the public health system ahead of the introduction of the NHI, which will be phased in over a period of 14 years, starting this year.

Angola is currently the third main source of remittances from Portuguese emigrants and accounted for 147 million euros entering the Portuguese economy in 2011, according to figure published this week by the Bank of Portugal (BdP). In a year in which total remittances from Portuguese emigrants remained almost the same as in 2010, the amount sent by Portuguese people residing in Angola rose by almost 10 per cent.

Following a nine-hour court session, presiding judge Ahmed Refaat announced that the final verdict in Hosni Mubarak’s trial will be pronounced on 2 June, adding that the session will be aired live on national television. In what is known as the trial of the century, Egypt’s ousted president Mubarak, his ex-interior minister and six of his aides face charges of complicity in killing protesters during the popular uprising that toppled the regime in January 2011. Mubarak also faces corruption charges along with his two sons Alaa and Gamal and businessman Hussein Salem in the same case.

A leading gay activist in Libya has responded to his country's delegate who told a planning meeting of the UN Human Rights Council that gays threatened the continuation of the human race. Libya's representative told the gathering of ambassadors that LGBT topics 'affect religion and the continuation and reproduction of the human race.' But a gay activist from Tripoli responded: 'Human rights are universal and include LGBT rights. Therefore how can a human right be a threat to humanity?'

On 14 February, French authorities searched the upscale Paris residence associated with President Obiang’s son, Teodoro 'Teodorín' Nguema Obiang, as part of a probe into the 'ill-gotten gains' of President Obiang and two other African Heads-of-State. Teodorín is the target of ongoing government corruption investigations in the United States and France, report EG Justice.

Two strong explosions rocked the strategic Somali city of Baidoa hours after Ethiopian and pro-government forces wrested it from Al-Qaeda-backed insurgents, officials and witnesses said Thursday 23 February. Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdulaziz Abu Musab claimed responsibility for the blasts, saying they had inflicted 'heavy losses' on pro-government forces. News of the blasts came as world powers met with the fragile Somali Government at a conference in London Thursday, designed to build on progress in the years-long struggle against the Islamist militants who have allied themselves to Al-Qaeda.

This edition deals with the housing crisis and includes the following articles:
- The Neoliberal Project, Privatisation and the Housing Crisis
- Housing Associations: Privatisation Via Not-For-Profits
- Housing Profiteers and their Facilitators & Company Profile: Grainger
- Homelessness: Who profits from destitution?
- The Return of Class War Conservatism: the Realities of Housing in the ‘Big Society'
- Housing Benefit Cuts: Educate, Agitate, Organise!
- Anti-Squat Security Companies: Protection by Occupation?
- The Criminalisation of Squatting
- Alternatives: Housing Co-ops & Case Study: Phoenix Co-op
- Campaign Spotlight: SQUASH

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Across the Darfur region of western Sudan, female workers weighed down by heavy buckets are a common sight on building sites. The work is arduous and the pay pitiful, but many women in Darfur have no other way of earning a living. 'This work is very hard,' said Aisha (not her real name), who works on a construction site in Nyala. 'Most days, we stay on the site from six in the morning to six at night without eating anything. We drink water perhaps once or twice a day. Anything we do eat is taken out of what we are paid.'

The UN says the number of Malian refugees fleeing to neighbouring countries to escape fighting between Tuareg rebels and the military has doubled over the past 10 days. More than 44,000 people have crossed into Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Human rights group Ditshwanelo has urged the Botswana government to suspend the execution of murderers. This follows the hanging of Zibani Thamo on 31 January for the murder of his girlfriend in 2007. In Southern Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe are some of the countries that institute the death penalty. South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1995, a year after the demise of apartheid, while Namibia had already done so when it gained independence in 1990.

'We all know that the provision of housing in Durban has been taken over by corrupt politicians and their friends to make them rich while hundreds of thousands of people in this city continue to live in shacks facing fires, floods, rats and evictions. In Shallcross there are shack dwellers who occupied neglected RDP houses which were built over 2 years ago and then left uncompleted. The residents who have been waiting for more than 17 years for the houses promised to them decided to occupy these houses, including an old granny in her 80 years who lives with her grand children, after a heavy wind had destroyed their shacks last year. Another reason for these occupations has been that the housing officials have allegedly sold some of these houses to people from outside the area including those who do not qualify for the RDP houses such as teachers, nurses and police officers.'