A recent edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin contain the December speech by Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, and the executive summary and key recommendations on US policy from a policy brief from the Friends Committee on National Legislation on the context for Kenya's next elections. Another AfricaFocus Bulletin contains an overview from an International Crisis Group briefing on the ICC and Kenya and the executive summary of the most recent monitoring report from the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation (KNDR) Monitoring Project.

President of the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), Maxwell Dlamini, has been nominated for the 2012 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. The award is presented by Front Line, an Irish-based human rights organisation founded by former director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International, Mary Lawlor. Maxwell Dlamini was detained, tortured and forced to sign a confession by members of Swaziland’s police and security forces during the so-called April 12 Swazi Uprising, a peaceful protest inspired by the Arab Spring that was brutally clamped down upon by Swazi police and security forces.

Even as the Occupy movement recedes in size, if not in activism, in the global North, it has, to its own surprise, opened up a new front in Africa's most populous country, Nigeria - where tens of thousands have occupied and paralysed the economy in a protest against the lifting of oil subsidies. The Arab Spring is moving south, thanks to #OccupyNigeria. If nothing else, this movement dramatises the global nature of the new wave of Occupy protests.

The African Union's new chairman faced tough challenges Sunday as UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned that a furious row between Sudan and South Sudan threatened regional security. Thomas Boni Yayi, the president of Benin, vowed to work for peace in his one-year tenure as the 54-member bloc's rotating head, as sideline talks at the two-day summit tried to tackle several hotspots across the continent.

The UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has raised concerns about Libya’s armed brigades and the treatment of more than 8,500 detainees, majority of whom are from sub-Saharan Africa. Addressing the UN Security Council on the situation in Libya, Pillay warned that, 'lack of oversight by the central authorities creates an environment conducive to torture and ill treatment'. She urged the Libyan ministry of justice and the prosecutor’s office to take over the detention centres.

Senegal's opposition has called for more resistance to the court approval of President Abdoulaye Wade's bid to seek a highly disputed third term, after a night of riots in the capital, Dakar. Opposition leaders vowed on Saturday to force the president out of office, threatening to march on the palace in a city reeling from violent riots that left at least one policeman dead, according to local media. The ruling sparked fury in the capital, where protesters clashed with police. Anti-Wade protesters threw stones at police who responded with batons and tear gas after the much-anticipated ruling.

Scores of people were bundled into police vans on Friday when police forcibly prevented organisations from setting up a planned three-day summit on Jobs, Land and Housing on Rondebosch Common as a means of highlighting inequality in South African society. Organisations included Passop, Proudly Mannenberg, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign, the South African NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches. Determination to reclaim the common as a public area nonetheless led to clashes with police who sprayed water cannons loaded with blue dye at the demonstrators, a move reminiscent of apartheid police spraying purple dye on protestors marching to Parliament on September 2, 1989. Rihanna Marthinus, 57, a participant from Mannenberg, said the city had been promising to improve services in Mannenberg for years but nothing was being done.

Advocates for Haitian peasants said a US-based company’s donation of up to 475 tons of hybrid vegetable seeds to aid Haitian farmers will harm the island-nation’s agriculture. The advocates contend the donation is being made in an effort to shift farmer dependence from local seed to more expensive hybrid varieties shipped from overseas. Haitian farmers and small growers traditionally save seed from season to season or buy the seed they desire from traditional seed markets.

OSISA, in conjucnction with the Africa Foundations of the Open Society network of Foundations (OSF) is hosting a gathering in Cape Town, 22-24 May 2012, entitled the 'OpenForum: Money, Power & Sex: The Paradox of Unequal Growth'. Under the theme, the OpenForum will provide a space to talk about the economic, social and political implications of the emerging world order. It will also provide space for a range of actors - prominent and well known, as well as younger and newer voices - to take a critical look at the factors that will influence the African democracy and governance agenda over the next decade. Bring your ideas, let’s turn them into action!
The Call for Proposals is available at the following link:

With the 18th African Union Summit taking place in Addis Ababa, civil society organizations from across Africa are concerned that the summit’s central theme, 'Boosting Intra- African Trade,' risks being overshadowed and will not get the focus needed to tackle this urgent issue. The organizations said that intra-African trade remains weak, making up only 11 per cent of total trade in Africa. Comparatively, in Asia intra-trade represents 52 per cent and in Europe 82 per cent. Failure to invest more in intra-African trade is likely to harm the continent’s development, the groups said.

This article takes economist Jeffrey Sachs to task for an op-ed article in the New York Times in which he argued that despite continuing demonstrations against the government’s surprise decision on New Year’s Day to halt state subsidies of oil for millions of Nigerians, things aren’t as bad as they seem. 'Sachs had no idea what he was talking about, his knee-jerk response to the crisis celebrated policies of austerity and economic shock, and the Grey Lady gave none of it a second thought. Neoliberalism, it would seem, is alive and well.'

The latest edition of TradeMark Southern Africa is dominated by news reports, speeches and commentaries from the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. It includes the full text of two speeches by Jacob Zuma (at a NEPAD meeting and at an ANC centenary function) and a Goodluck Jonathan speech to the AU plenary where he cautioned against moving too quickly on a continental free trade area. Visit to subscribe to their newsletter.

The White House has chosen to honour Akili Dada founder and executive director, Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg, as one of fourteen Champions of Change who are leaders in American Diaspora communities with roots in the Horn of Africa. These leaders are helping to build stronger neighborhoods in communities across the country, and are working to mobilize networks across borders to address global challenges. Akili Dada works to empower a new generation of African women leaders.

A dozen traditional gold mining sites have appeared in recent years in the province of Ganzourgou. Gold panners from all over flock there to work the sites, most often living in the greatest promiscuity, without any infrastructure for sanitation and with no access to public basic services. The miners migrate according to the discovery of new veins of gold, usually moving there from the rural areas of Burkina Faso as well as from neighbouring countries (Togo, Benin, Ghana). Between one quarter and one third of them are under 18.

Visit the website to read about the People's Land! Housing! and Jobs! Summit that was due to take place 27 - 29 January, but instead led to a number of arrests. The summit was to discuss and develop 'a more radical people driven program for the proper integration of our cities and establishing the right of families to a basic income, jobs, economic opportunities, social mobility, housing, land and the right to the city.'

Visit the 'Recent Activity' section of Fahamu's Youtube page to view a series of videos showing protesters near place de l'obelisque on January 27 in Dakar, Senegal awaiting the constitutional court's decision on Wade's candidature in February elections.

Dear Sisters,

Please join us in condemning the stripping of women in Malawi by endorsing the Strip-Me-Not Campaign.

The Strip-Me-Not Campaign is an initiative of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights [1](SOAWR) Coalition after learning that street venders in Malawi are stripping women and girls wearing trousers and short skirts. The campaign aims at standing in solidarity as African women to offer support to women and girls in Malawi by way of mobilizing many other women from across the African continent to denounce this barbaric act that violates women’s rights.

SOWAR is calling on all women and men of goodwill to endorse the Strip-Me-Not Campaign Statement.

The Statement with all signatories will be delivered to Embassies of Malawi across Africa, Office of the President of Malawi, Ministry of Gender and media houses in Malawi and Africa on 3rd February, 2012.

Your endorsements (name, organization, country and signature) should be sent to [email][email protected] before the end of day on 30th January, 2012.

Kindly circulate this call for action to your various constituencies in your country.

NOTES:

[1] The Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) Coalition is a Pan-African regional network comprised of 39 national, regional and international civil society organisations based in 18 countries, working towards the promotion and protection of women’s human rights in Africa. Since its inauguration in 2004 SOAWR’s main area of focus has been to compel African states to urgently ratify, domesticate and implement the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) continues to be alarmed at the growing number of violent attacks on foreign nationals, of which recent events in Thokozo in Ekurhuleni is an example. The burning down of small businesses in our townships, and the physical and verbal attacks visited upon their proprietors is a shocking indictment of the state of our poorer communities, and the actions of a minority of clearly desperate but misguided people.

Côte d'Ivoire is abandoning free health care for all after a brief experiment because of skyrocketing costs. 'In nine months the government had to pay 30 billion CFA francs [about US$60 million] under difficult circumstances,' Ivoirian Health Minister Yoman N'dri said in Abidjan on 24 January. As of February, the free service would only be available to mothers and their children.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...