'The car is ready,' exclaimed Mr Paul Isaac Musasizi, the project manager of the Vehicle Design Mission at Makerere University, which has produced Uganda’s first electric car. The Kiira EV was tested for road and drive performance, ability to climb steep areas and ability to pick up speed, among other parameters. The making of Kiira EV started in August 2009 with a handful of students at the College of Engineering Art and Design, formerly the Faculty of Technology.

Bribing public officials when doing business abroad is a regular occurrence, and companies from Russia and China, which invested US$120 billion overseas in 2010, are seen as most likely to pay bribes abroad, according to Transparency International’s 2011 Bribe Payers Index. The index, which involves a survey of 3,000 business executives from developed and developing countries, also shows that companies from the Netherlands and Switzerland are seen as least likely to bribe.

Mountains of hazardous waste grow by about 40 million tons every year. This waste, mostly from Europe and North America, is burned in developing countries like Ghana in a hazardous effort to recover valuable metals. A children's school in Accra, Ghana's capital, was recently found to be contaminated by lead, cadmium and other health-threatening pollutants at levels over 50 times higher than risk-free levels. The school is located directly beside an informal electronic waste salvage site.

The United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries has warned of an alarming resurgence of the use of mercenaries in armed conflict –'often in new and novel ways'. The expert panel also noted in a report to the UN General Assembly that the growing activities of private military and security companies raise numerous human rights challenges, and called for international regulation. 'Recent events in Africa clearly demonstrate that the problems posed by mercenaries are still a live issue,' said Ms. Faiza Patel, who currently heads the Working Group. 'Mercenaries pose a threat not only to security, but also to human rights and potentially to the right of peoples to self determination. It is crucial that States cooperate to eliminate this phenomenon.'

Zambia's newly elected President Michael Sata has outlined plans to review the higher education sector as well as establish three new universities, to fulfil his election manifesto. Job creation for higher education graduates would also be prioritised. Sata, who came to power last month after defeating former president Rupiah Banda, said he also had plans for the establishment of universities and technical colleges in each of the country's nine provinces and intended rehabilitating existing institutions. Staff recruitment would be scaled up to meet demand in these institutions.

A few thousand Egyptians marched through the streets of downtown Cairo in a protest against military tribunals and solidarity for a jailed blogger on 31 October. The march started at Talaat Harb Square and went through busy streets all the way to the prison where prominent activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah is being held for 15 days under investigation.

Three members of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change who were last week charged with treason in connection with walk to work have been further remanded to Luzira Maximum Security Prison. The FDC women leader Ms Ingrid Kamateneti Turinawe along with Sam Mugumya, the political assistant to Dr Kizza Besigye and Mr Francis Mwijukye who heads the FDC youth wing appeared Monday 31 October at Nakawa Chief Magistrates Court before Mr Charles Sserubuga. The trio were produced in court for mention of their case but court remanded them until 14 November.

At least five people, including three children, have died after a refugee camp in southern Somalia was bombed, the MSF charity says. Kenya's army denied bombing the camp, saying it had been attacked by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab. A Kenya fighter jet only hit al-Shabab positions in Jilib, killing 10 of its fighters, an army spokesman said.

Kenya’s war against the Al-Shabaab militia has received support from the European Union, the US, Canada, Turkey, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Gulf Cooperation, who met Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his Somali counterpart Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and expressed their support for the military operation.

This paper from the Governance and Aids Programme at Idasa examines the role that local government might play in promoting food security for people living with HIV in a democratic governance context. It examines local government's role in food security through interviews with local councillors in the Tshwane area.

The World Bank has approved $250 million in funding for South African power utility Eskom to develop a wind and solar plant as part of a push to boost sources of clean energy. The World Bank said the funding through its Clean Technology Fund will finance a 100-megawatt solar power plant in Upington in the Northern Cape province and a 100-megawatt wind power project at Sere, north of Cape Town. 'The loan will help Eskom to implement two of the largest renewable energy projects ever attempted on the African continent,' the bank said in a statement.

As concerns deepen about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, parents can expect an indefinite extension of subsidising teacher salaries as the cash- strapped government struggles to meet the bloated civil service wage bill. Teacher incentives - a stipulated amount of usually between two to five dollars, which is paid by parents directly to teachers on a monthly basis - were introduced two years ago by the government to supplement teacher salaries. But many parents say the situation has become untenable and that they can no longer afford to contribute to teachers' salaries.

The global diamonds watchdog, the Kimberley Process, has cleared Zimbabwe to sell alluvial diamonds from the controversial Marange fields, despite documented evidence that top military and political chefs are involved in massive looting and that human rights abuses continue.

Zambia’s President Michael Sata has threatened to dissolve the newly-elected Parliament and call fresh general elections if opposition MPs continue shooting down his government’s motions. This was after opposition MPs voted against the new government’s nominees to sit on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Zambia has a hung Parliament, where two major political parties neither have absolute majority seats. President Sata’s governing Patriotic Front (PF) has 60 elected and eight nominated legislators totalling 68 - short of a two-thirds majority - in a 158-member National Assembly, which still has three vacant seats.

The occupy movement is spreading, and in more ways than one, says this article from which notes that environmentalists and climate campaigners have linked up with Occupy Wall Street protests in New York. 'The coming together of the two movements is a good sign because there is no way out of our ecological crises as long as the world’s richest 1 per cent keep control over the economy and our political systems.'

Senegalese musician Baaba Maal has put his voice behind the 99 per cent figure cited as demanding justice in the Occupy Movement. But, the post notes, 'BTW, Maal could have added that Africans have been going on about global Apartheid for a while. If you take the anti-privatization social movements of the early 2000s in South Africa, the role of activists like Dennis Brutus, the various World Social Forum meetings held in Dakar last year and Nairobi before that, the AIDS movement, the films of Abdourahmane Sissako (‘Bamako‘) or the protests against Shell in Nigeria, etcetera.'

Zimbabwe police Tuesday 01 November raided Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC party headquarters, fired tear gas at staff and beat up people in the central business district, witnesses said. Police 'blocked Harvest House (MDC headquarters) staff from leaving, but also threw tear gas at them. This is a deliberate attempt by the police to harass and decimate the MDC,' Movement for Democratic Change spokesman Douglas Mwonzora told AFP.

The number of people living with HIV in Egypt is estimated to be 11,000 people, but some say the number must be much higher. 'The stigma around the disease causes fear and mistrust, so people don’t end up getting proper info or receiving already available services such as testing and counseling,' writes Ahmed Awadalla on the blog He refers to a report that shows stigma and discrimination is rife in different sectors. 'It comes from healthcare providers, the government, the media, the workplace, religious leaders, and sadly family and friends.'

The Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) commissioned investigations on the 'land grab' in South Sudan which culminated into a 48-page dossier dubbed 'The New Frontier'. The dossier reveals that in the period 2007 to 2010 'foreign interests sought or acquired a total of 2.64 million hectares of land (6.52 million acres) in the agriculture, forestry and biofuel sectors alone'. According to the report’s author David Kuol Mading: 'That is a larger land area than the entire country of Rwanda,' said the report’s author, David Kuol Mading.

A tribunal in Nigeria has rejected an attempt by the opposition to declare President Goodluck Jonathan's victory in April's election fraudulent. The result triggered violence in northern strongholds of defeated opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari after he rejected the result. But the judge said Mr Jonathan won the election lawfully. Mr Jonathan, a southerner, obtained 59 per cent of the vote, while Mr Buhari got 32 per cent.