South African recipients of money from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) have pleaded with the health minister to intervene as they continue to wait for overdue funds. Failure to do so will see several programmes closing and people losing their jobs. The groups, including Soul City and the Treatment Action Campaign, were due to receive payments from the Global Fund in July 2011 and January 2012 as part of Round 6. None have materialised.

It is time that the society at large recognised sex work as legitimate work: 'his body, his choice.'

Competing mobile operators MTN and Turkcell were silent this week on the latter's claims that MTN bribed its way into Iran six years ago. But circumstances surrounding MTN's audacious entry into Iran, and the South African government's concurrent diplomatic efforts there, provide a compelling context for the claims. MTN could also face increasing international pressure because the Iranian military owns one of MTN's two state-linked partners there, Iran Electronics Industries (IEI).

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has deployed its workers to assist some 20,000 people forced to flee fighting between government troops and rebel Tuareg groups in Mali. In a statement, made available to PANA in New York, it said that, 'most of those uprooted by the violence in the Azawad region of northern Mali that began in mid-January have fled to Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania'.

Solange Lusiku Nsimire is editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent newspaper Le Souverain in her hometown Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in eastern Congo, one of the most troubled regions of the DRC. It is a small and crusading newspaper devoted to promotion of democracy and women in a country where abuses against democracy and against women are too often the norm. On 2 February Lusiku had been awarded a prestigious honorary doctorate degree at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), a tribute to her courage as a journalist and women's rights defender.

Côte d’Ivoire’s leprosy programme was consistently under-funded during the civil war (2002-2007) and last year’s political turmoil, say health practitioners, leading to a loss of expertise in terms of detecting or treating the disease. Not considered a public health priority, the government and donors de-prioritized the leprosy fight over the past decade, with funding dropping to 30 per cent of the original total, according to Alain de Kersabiec, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin representative for French NGO the Follereau Foundation (FRF), which helps treat existing and new leprosy patients around the country.

The 2012 World Development Report (WDR) is a watershed moment: it is the first time that the World Bank, the world’s largest and most influential development institution, has devoted its flagship publication to gender. Kate Bedford of the University of Kent argues that the report leaves the Bank failing to face up to its role in perpetuating policies that harm women, and is seriously limited in its approach to women’s movements, markets, and households.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) says it’s ready to litigate against the Gauteng Health Department should it not clear its outstanding debt to suppliers. The TAC adds that the closure of health laboratories in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal has severely impacted on people who are HIV-positive and those with TB. Chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign, Nonkosi Khumalo says the closure of health laboratory services impacts on patients on Anti-retroviral treatment (ARVs) and those who need to be tested for TB. Blood tests are not being done due to the closures. Khumalo says some health care facilities are unable to initiate new patients on ARV treatment because they can’t get their blood tests to laboratories.

Recurrent street battles between police and protesters have led the interior ministry to literally wall itself in; website Ahram Online maps the growth of these concrete curtains and the transformation of Cairo into a city of walls.

A National Security Council (NSC) meeting slated for recently was cancelled after a fierce clash between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai over the composition of the attendees following the expiry of the term of office of one of the service chiefs, authoritative sources confided to The Standard last week. Sources said the meeting was potentially explosive as there was mistrust between the service chiefs and Tsvangirai.

Some 11 universities and other political groups are promoting calls for civil disobedience starting 11 February until the military rulers step down and hand power over to an elected civilian authority. 'We called for a gradual strike and if the demands aren’t met we will escalate to civil disobedience as we had depleted all other peaceful means of protesting,' Mahmoud Afify, spokesman of the April 6 Youth Movement, said. A variety of sectors, mainly students and labor unions, welcomed the idea.

Some young citizens in Ghana have never witnessed water flowing from the taps in their homes, reports Global Press Institute. As the water shortage here persists, families bemoan expensive and time-consuming alternatives. Meanwhile, public officials say they are doing their best with the current supply and implore residents to do their part to help them.

Top African copper producer Zambia plans to audit all its mining houses in a bid to dig for back taxes of up to $1 billion it estimates it is owed, its mines minister said. Such a policy by the government of populist president Michael Sata would widen an initiative launched by the previous administration and comes against the backdrop of a surge of resource nationalism across Africa and Zambia's own doubling of copper royalties to six per cent.

Uganda’s Parliament has re-introduced a proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill which Amnesty International considers a 'grave assault on human rights' that must be rejected. Under the bill, gay and lesbian people in Uganda could face the death penalty for so-called 'aggravated homosexuality' – a definition which includes consensual sexual conduct.

Anxiety has gripped Mali in the face of contrasting positions by the government and rebels in the north following clashes that have left scores dead in what is shaping up as a secessionist battle. Rebel leaders of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) said they were ready for a major offensive inland following a series of attacks that have targeted mainly small towns in northern Mali.

A suicide bomber killed at least 11 people Wednesday in the war-torn Somali capital Mogadishu when he detonated an explosive-laden vehicle near the presidential palace, officials said. The blast occurred outside the Mona hotel, where 32 people including six members of parliament were killed in an August 2010 attack by two Islamist suicide gunmen wearing government security uniforms.

Access to accurate information about the extent and nature of large-scale foreign investment in Ethiopian, Sudanese and South Sudanese land is extremely limited. So broader narratives of 'land-grabbing' - seeing governments as unwitting victims or as predatory regimes – are a potentially misleading oversimplification in the Horn of Africa, where local populations do not lack agency in this process, says this briefing.

Police in Malawi say they have fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing vendors resisting orders they move off the streets to designated flea markets. Lilongwe police spokesperson Kingsley Dandaula described running battles 6 February, the deadline city officials had given vendors to move their tiny businesses to flea markets. Dandaula says protesting vendors also blocked streets with large rocks and burning tires, and damaged some shops and cars before police got the situation under control. He says 42 people had been arrested by late afternoon and that he expected more arrests.

Australian and Brazilian mining giants are moving villagers to land insufficient for farming and far from jobs to make way for coal projects in central Mozambique, and then sidelining local entrepreneurs as they exploit the region's natural resources, according to a new report. The independent Southern Africa Resource Watch, which monitors the impact of mining across the region, sent researchers to study resettlement efforts by Rio Tinto of Australia and Vale of Brazil, which recently began mining in Mozambique's Tete province. Southern Africa Resource Watch said 'the impact of both companies' investment on local communities remains problematic and there is no guarantee that these massive coal extraction projects are going to genuinely benefit the people of Mozambique.'

In protest of the ongoing clashes between security forces and protesters, which have intensified demands for an immediate end to military rule, Egyptian activists have called for a national boycott of army-produced goods and services. The online movement called Kate3ohom (Boycott Them), which is urging a national boycott of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), gained the attention of social media users. The idea also signaled bloggers to help by compiling lists of the military institution’s products and services, which range from producing pasta and fruit jam to the construction of roads and bridges.