Nigeria's president has announced that the government will subsidise fuel prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.75 a gallon, amid a crippling nationwide strike over fuel prices in Africa's most populous country. Protests have seen tens of thousands march in cities across the nation. Soldiers barricaded the country's commercial capital of Lagos and the entrances to protest venues in the second-largest city of Kano. Jonathan's speech comes after his attempt to negotiate with labour unions failed late on Sunday night to avert the strike entering a sixth day.

The African Union (AU) has unveiled an ambitious wish-list of priorities for Africa that would give the continent a stronger global voice, boost democracy and encourage peace and security. AU Ambassador to the United States, Amina Ali of Tanzania, presented the list of top priorities at a conference on 11 January held at Washington think-tank, the Brookings Institution. Among them were the regulars - peace and security, enhanced democracy and good governance – as well as improved regional trade and greater involvement of the continent’s large diaspora in African affairs.

A number of South African social movements issued statements following the arrest of Ayanda Kota from the Unemployed People's Movement (UPM) and reports that he had been assaulted while in police custody. Kota has now been released, but statements about his arrest made by the UPM, the Democratic Left Front and the Mandela Park Backyarder's can be read from the Abahlali baseMjondolo website.

Some 17 erstwhile public firms that were privatised under a plan initiated in 1993 in a bid to revamp production have so far been shut down after failing to deliver, a report released recently by a technical committee has revealed. The government had at that time decided to sell the wobbling public companies to private investors who, it was presumed, could revive them following the State’s lack of capacity to run them. According to the report which has been submitted to the Parliamentary Public Organisations Accounts Committee (POAC), 17 firms out of 74 which were privatised have since stopped operations altogether.

Masses of Angolan nationals that daily trek to Namibia for health and education services want their government to construct hospitals and schools in Angola to reduce their reliance on Namibian schools and hospitals. During a meeting recently by two Angolan governors, Eusebio de Brito Teixera, of Kuando Kubango and Antonio Didalelwa of Cunene Pro­vince and Ohangwena Governor Usko Nghaamwa at Olupale village of Kuando Kubango Province in Angola, Angolan citizens said it was time that their government constructed schools and hospitals for them.

Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life. Drawn by the economic boom in Brazil, now the world's sixth largest economy, and the major infrastructure works in preparation for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games to be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 Haitians have flocked to this country since the earthquake, according to the Institute of Migration and Human Rights.

A group of young scientists meeting on the sidelines of COP17, held in Durban, South Africa last year, has resolved to mobilise African young scientists and youth within and outside Africa to promote the role of African indigenous knowledge systems in climate change adaptation and mitigation through
research and community engagement.

This report from the Hunger Safety Net Programme Secretariat (HNSP) defines the behavior of HNSP beneficiaries receiving cash transfers in coping with and overcoming the challenges of extreme poverty magnified by shocks of environmental extremities of drought, famine, floods and socio-economic marginalisation. Further, it documents how some beneficiaries have been able to build some form of stable livelihoods (a desired knock on effect) using the cash transfers and in the context of the three year prolonged drought.

In January 2011, Abyei’s residents were supposed to vote in a referendum to determine whether they wanted Abyei to remain in Sudan, or join what is now the independent nation of South Sudan. The Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) failed to organise the referendum due to a dispute over who was eligible to vote. The past year has seen the worst violence in Abyei since the second civil war, with a series of attacks by militias, backed by the Government of Sudan, culminating in a full-scale invasion of the territory by Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) in May 2011. Around 110, 000 Ngok Dinka residents fled the area, and have yet to return. It is now just over a year since Abyei’s aborted referendum, and there is little prospect of a resolution in the near future, says a report from the Small Arms Survey.

Kenya's High Court has ruled that the country's next presidential and parliamentary elections should be held in March 2013 and not in August, unless the ruling coalition collapses. The east African country's next election will come under intense scrutiny because it will be the first under a new constitution, and the first since the 2007 poll that gave rise to fighting in which more than 1,220 people were killed. The government had proposed amending the constitution to delay the vote to December because of logistical problems, prompting petitioners to ask the High Court for a ruling.

As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria last week, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place. 'We know that because of the corruption and irrelevant people placed in certain key positions in the sector, a lot of crude oil is being lost,' Garba Ibrahim Sheka, a senior lecturer in economics at Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, told IPS.

A Ugandan advocate for sex workers and homosexual rights, Busingye Kabumba has said prostitution and anti-abortion laws should be repealed to encourage the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young women. Kabumba, a lecturer at Makerere University’s Faculty of Law in Kampala also said there was a 'need to streamline the Ugandan legal framework in light of the international legal structure on the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) for young women in the country.'

Former president Thabo Mbeki has said he was sceptical about Twitter being a great conveyor of reliable knowledge. 'If you want to discuss knowledge which has got to do with the betterment of society I don't think it is appropriate ... Even the internet in general, blogging and so on, is not the place where you can … put all these things under theories.' In his speech Mbeki questioned whether knowledge had become 'less democratised and more compromised' as an instrument for the improvement of society. He said traditional media institutions were unable to control which political rhetoric 'caught fire' with the public.

Long-serving Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is keeping his country and the world guessing about whether he will bid for re-election in 2012 in Africa's No. 2 oil producer. Speculation over Dos Santos' intentions - under the country's new 2010 constitution he could remain in power until 2022 - has reached fever pitch among analysts, investors and oil companies watching one of Africa's fastest-growing economies.

The death of the president of Guinea-Bissau, Malam Bacai Sanhá, could usher in a replay of the military uprisings that have set an unmistakable seal of instability on the political life of this small West African country. Sanhá, who died Monday 9 January in Paris, was one of the few surviving heroes of the liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonial army. That enabled him to play a mediating role in the frequent disputes for power in Guinea-Bissau, which gained independence in 1974.

Al-liquindoi is partnering with Contemporary Image Collective and NOOR to produce this long-term training opportunity for Egyptian documentary photographers and photojournalists. This program is supported by a grant from Open Society Foundations. The program provides fully funded training and support to Egyptian 15 photographers who are using the medium to critically explore current social,economic and political issues in Egypt and the region.

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Center for New Community, and Indiana University Press have announced the publication of 'Food Justice', a new issue of the journal Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts that explores the intersection of race and food in the national and global food systems. With a wide range of academic- and activist-authored papers, the issue takes readers through the entire food chain from - 'field to fork' - in an examination of the challenging intersections between race, sustainability, food safety, access to healthy food, land ethics, food worker justice, and food sovereignty.

A revised media law promised by the Rwandan government prior to and during its Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council in 2011 fails to safeguard the right to freedom of expression and a free media, says Article 19. The State retains its control over the media in the draft Law by determining rules for its operation and defining journalists’ professional standards. Media freedoms and the right to freedom of expression are not safeguarded and can be restricted in violation of international law due to overbroad definitions and the creation of vaguely defined prohibitions.

Somalia's Islamist al-Shabab group have killed at least six Kenyans in a cross-border raid, claiming revenge for Nairobi's troop deployment against the al-Qaeda-linked group, police and fighters said. Four police officers, a local government official and a civilian were killed in the attack by assailants, using firearms and an explosive device, said regional police chief Leo Nyongesa.

Two of the seven men arrested last Thursday, following skirmishes between police and vendors in central Harare the day before, were allegedly tortured to confess their roles in attacking a police officer. Barnabas Mwanaka and Kudakwashe Usavi were among the first group of three to be picked up by the police in a morning raid at Harvest House on Thursday. The MDC-T said Mwanaka is their Youth Assembly secretary for Mbare district.