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.

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.

War on Want has a range of material available for download on their website. Reports include: Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming the global food system; A Bitter Cup: Exploitation in the tea industy; Sour Grapes: Wine workers come from the poorest sections of society; Anglo American - The Alternative Report.

The Kenyan security forces are beating and arbitrarily detaining citizens and Somali refugees in Kenya’s North Eastern province, which borders on Somalia, despite repeated pledges to stop such abuses, Human Rights Watch said. On 11 January 2012, in the latest of a series of incidents documented by Human Rights Watch since October 2011, security forces rounded up and beat residents of Garissa, the provincial capital, in an open field within the enclosure of the local military camp. A Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed the incident.

The World Bank has identified South Africa and Tanzania as having some of the highest costs for remittance payments in the world, with some charges as high as 25 per cent of the money being transferred. Remittance payment is the transfer of money across borders, often used by immigrant workers to send money home to family members. In 2010, the African diaspora sent home $40-billion in remittance payments to the continent, with these money transfers representing close to 10 per cent of some African countries' gross domestic products

Lethal arms flows to sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, accounted for 3.4 percent of the global volume of imports of major weapons between 2006 and 2010. Excluding South Africa, the region's share shrinks to 1.5 per cent, a new report by the prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says. The report points out that in sub-Saharan Africa, which has virtually no arms industry of their own, states have received major arms through legal transfers from a wide variety of countries worldwide. During 2006-2010 China accounted for 25 per cent, Ukraine for 20 per cent and Russia for 11 per cent of the volume of major arms supplied to the region.

Tens of thousands of people are gathering in South Africa to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the African National Congress - the continent's oldest liberation movement. The party has been in power since 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected the country's first black president. The ANC played a pivotal role in the struggle to end apartheid, and it still holds a strong majority of public support. But with in-fighting, allegations of corruption, and criticism from many sectors, there are concerns that the current party leadership is failing to live up to the titans of old.

For the last seven years, the women of Fitampito have been defying tradition by helping their husbands to farm. Local traditions did not permit women to work the land. But that era is over, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Since women started farming in a few isolated villages in the High Matsiatra region, yields have improved significantly. In three years, rice yields have increased from two tonnes per hectare to five tonnes.

The political unrest that rocked Egypt last year seems to have shaken the country's law enforcement apparatus, creating loopholes for organ traffickers. During that period, cases of organ trafficking of Sudanese refugees and other political asylum seekers in Egypt have gone up. A report by the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions (COFS), a non-profit international health and human rights organisation, indicates that human traffickers in the North African country are increasingly targeting Africans, especially refugees and other immigrants.

The Angolan government has warned Namibians living illegally in that country to get their papers in order. Namibians living or grazing their cattle in the Cunene and Quando Cubango provinces bordering Namibia have been urged to apply for residence permits to have legal status in Angola. This was done at a meeting held at Olupale in Quando Cubango Province which was attended by Namibians and Angolans and was addressed by the Cunene Province governor, Antonio Ndidalelwa.

When South Sudan became an independent state in July 2011, northern Sudan lost most of its oil fields to its new neighbouring country. In an effort to revive the country's struggling economy, the Sudanese government has been selling or leasing vast swaths of fertile land to foreign investors. But in areas where agricultural land is the basic source of living for people, there is much anger over what farmers say is a government policy that promotes foreign land grabs, favouritism, and exploitation, reports Al Jazeera.

The Tunisian revolution was, famously, initiated by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man in a provincial town who set himself alight in front of the town hall in protest at petty corruption and his inability to make a living. In the six months immediately after Bouazizi's death (he took two weeks to die from his injuries) at least 107 fellow Tunisians tried to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire, according to statistics reported by the BBC.

Vigilante gangs of ultra-conservative Salafi men have been harassing shop owners and female customers in rural towns around Egypt for 'indecent behavior', according to reports in the Egyptian news media. But when they burst into a beauty salon in the Nile delta town of Benha this week and ordered the women inside to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment, the women struck back, whipping them with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers.

'I believe that African movements are in a process of emerging from the control of the big NGOs that have historically managed their struggle. La Via Campesina in Africa shows that this process will be as powerful as it has been in Latin America, or even more powerful, because this is an awakening that allows them to say, maybe for the first time, "we can speak for ourselves, nobody can speak for us".' In this interview with Alberto Gomez, the national director of UNORCA (Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas) in Mexico, he discusses the UN climate summit concluded in Durban in December and what it means for agriculture.