The IMF said on Tuesday a $32 billion accounting discrepancy in Angola's state funds was linked to 'quasi-fiscal operations' by state oil firm Sonangol done on the government's behalf, but not recorded in official budget accounts. 'Preliminary data indicate that quasi-fiscal operations undertaken by the state oil company on behalf of the government, financed out of oil revenues but not recorded in the budgetary accounts, can explain a large part of the discrepancy,' the IMF said in a statement.

Fighters loyal to Libya's overthrown leader Muammar Gaddafi took control of a town south-east of the capital on Monday, flying their green flags in defiance of the country's fragile new government. The fightback by Gaddafi supporters defeated in Libya's civil war, though unlikely to spread elsewhere, added to the problems besetting a government which in the past week has been reeling from one crisis to another. Gaddafi himself was captured and killed in October after weeks on the run.

Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol EP and some of the African country's banks are interested in stakes in Portuguese companies, Angolan Economy Minister Abraao Gourgel said. Angolan companies and investors have been increasing their stakes in companies in Portugal, which last year became the third euro-region country to request a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Sonangol owned 11.6 per cent of Banco Comercial Portugues, Portugal's second-biggest publicly traded bank in terms of market value, as of last June. Isabel dos Santos, daughter of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, owned 10 per cent of Portugal's Banco BPI SA and 10 percent of Zon Multimedia SGPS SA , Portugal's biggest cable television operator. Angola is Africa's second-biggest oil producer.

A Rwandan man has been deported from Canada to Kigali where he faces charges of helping to incite the 1994 genocide. Leon Mugesera has been fighting deportation for 16 years with a series of appeals, even after the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the order in 2005. He faces charges in Rwanda of inciting genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from an incendiary anti-Tutsi speech he gave in 1992.

The International Criminal Court denied Monday that it had agreed that Seif al-Islam, slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's most prominent son, can be tried in Libya. 'The ICC has made no decision on this matter,' court spokesman Fadi el-Abdallah told AFP in response to a claim by Libya's Justice Minister Ali H'mida Ashur that Seif would be judged by a Libyan court.

Mobile phone company Orange has struck a deal with Wikipedia to make its digital encyclopaedia available free of data charges to millions of mobile phone users across the Middle East and Africa. The free service will be launched in 20 markets across 2012, with a spokesman from Orange saying that the aim is to increase the proportion of 2G and 3G phones to 50% of customers by 2015.

The imprisoned former Liberian president Charles Taylor has categorically denied working as a United States spy and vows to sue the Boston Globe newspaper that made the revelation. Reacting to the publication through his Jamaican-born lawyer Courtenay Griffiths, Taylor said he has never worked or played any role on behalf of any US government intelligence agency in his 'personal capacity'.

Ethiopia, which is deemed an 'important regional security partner' by the US government and one of the largest recipients of US aid (over $1 billion a year since 2007), is forcibly relocating 70,000 people from Gambella to make land available for investment in agriculture. In doing this they are also aggravating current hunger while laying the groundwork for future famine in Ethiopia, as people are losing their livelihoods and being moved to areas where they cannot readily feed themselves.

Parliament should prioritize abolishing repressive legislation over creating a new constitution, said Mohamed ElBaradei, former presidential hopeful. On Twitter, he said that 'the focus should be on achieving independence for the judiciary and the media, restructuring security and revitalizing the economy.' ElBaradei said dialogue among the revolutionaries, MPs, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government was key to achieving national consensus.

The IMF has issued a blunt warning that unless the European economic crisis is resolved, the global economy faces another 1930s style ‘Great Depression’ which would negatively affect frontier markets including Nigeria. This followed the failure of European finance ministers to reach a restructuring agreement with private holders of Greek debt Monday night. If Greece does not put itself in a position to receive aid funding by the end of March, it will suffer a disorderly default on its debt. A drop in global demand would affect Nigeria negatively, as the country depends almost exclusively on oil sales to fund more than 90 per cent of its budget and Foreign Exchange earnings.

Tanzanian police have freed a Burundian opposition leader, Alexis Sinduhije, who was arrested two weeks ago in Dar es Salaam at Burundi’s request, a senior Burundian security official said. 'We have just learned that Tanzanian authorities did not want to follow up on our extradition request for Alexis Sinduhije to Burundi and preferred to expel him to Uganda this morning,' the official said.

There is strong evidence that NATO carried out war crimes in its eight-month war for regime-change in Libya, according to a report released Thursday by Middle East human rights groups. The report is based upon a fact-finding mission to Libya conducted by the Arab Organization for Human Rights, together with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium. The investigators conducted extensive interviews with victims of war crimes as well as witnesses and Libyan officials. The mission carried out on-site field investigations in and around Tripoli, Zawiya, Sibrata, Khoms, Zliten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte.

The death toll from co-ordinated bombings and gunfire in the northern Nigerian city of Kano has risen to at least 178, medical sources said, making this the deadliest attack claimed by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram. Gunfire continued to echo through some areas of Kano on Saturday, despite a strict curfew imposed on Friday night which will remain in place until further notice, local officials said.

The UN refugee agency is concerned about fresh violence in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has forced more than 100,000 civilians to flee their homes since November. In North Kivu province, an estimated 35,000 people have been displaced as a result of attacks and clashes between rival militia groups in Walikale and Masisi territories. At least 22 people were reported killed and an unknown number of women raped during the fighting, UNHCR said in a statement from Kinshasa, DRC, Friday.

The Muslim Brotherhood's party has won 47.18 per cent of seats in the Egyptian parliament, the electoral commission announced on Saturday as it gave the final results from marathon polls. The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 235 seats in the new People's Assembly, or 47.18 per cent, committee head Abdel Moez Ibrahim said. The ultra-conservative Salafist Al Nur party is in second place with 121 seats or nearly 25 per cent, while the liberal Wafd Party follows with nearly nine percent.

The African Activist Archive Project is preserving records and memories of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s. The project is reaching out to the hundreds of organisations and individuals that supported African liberation struggles and is urging them to preserve their vital records and to make selected materials available to the public on this website. The project also assists groups and individuals to deposit their archives in public repositories, including the African Activist Archive in Special Collections at Michigan State University Libraries.

Two journalists and a US-based blogger who was tried in absentia were convicted on charges of terrorism in Ethiopia recently and could be sentenced to the death penalty, according to news reports. Reeyot Alemu, a columnist with the independent weekly Feteh, Deputy Editor Woubshet Taye of the now-defunct weekly Awramba Times, and Elias Kifle, exiled editor of the Washington-based opposition website Ethiopian Review, were convicted in Federal High Court in the capital, Addis Ababa, according to news reports. The journalists were charged in September with lending support to an underground network of banned opposition groups, including Ginbot 7, that the government had designated terrorists, according to CPJ research.

Tanzania Ecumenical Dialogue Group (TEDG) has presented to the government a statement calling for Tanzania not to sign the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with Europe until contentious issues in its framework are sorted out. Addressing a press conference in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, the TEDG Coordinator, Ms Jesca Mkuchu, said the statement had called for Tanzania to strictly consider the interests of its citizens including making sure the contents in the agreement are clearly known to the majority Tanzanians first.

Helen Zille’s suggestion that men who have unprotected sex with younger girls should be charged with culpable homicide was rightfully condemned as nonsensical, populist and just bad public health, says this article from Sonke Gender Justice. 'Her remarks at the responsibility awards were deeply problematic: they stigmatized girls and women who have had children during their school going years, ignored the social factors shaping the reproductive health choices and intentions of many young women, and they completely neglected to mention the roles and responsibilities of the girls’ male sexual partners.'

South Sudan has said it ordered the halt of oil production that provides some 98 per cent of its revenue, amid a deepening dispute with the Sudanese government over pipeline fees. Sudan admits to taking some South Sudanese oil destined for export as compensation until an agreement, but the South has said this is theft. 'The government has instructed the minister of petroleum and mining to proceed with arrangements for a complete shutdown of oil production,' Barnaba Marial Benjamin, South Sudan's minister of information, told the AFP news agency on Friday.