Zambia’s former president Rupiah Banda has spoken out for the first time since leaving office three weeks ago, denying links to a gold scam and purchase of luxury vehicles.

The whereabouts of 25 lobbyists who were arrested on Saturday 15 October in Angola’s capital Luanda remains unknown. The 25 were seized while protesting against rights violations, poverty and the 32-year rule of President José Eduardo dos Santos. One of the organisers of the demonstration, Mr Carbono Casimiro, told the local Ecclesia Radio that police descended on peaceful protestors and journalists with unnecessary force before seizing them at the Independence Square, while accusing them of several political crimes.

The Oakland Institute has launched a campaign against Iowa-based investor Bruce Rastetter and fellow investors in the industrial agricultural corporation AgriSol Energy’s attempt to acquire 325,000 hectares of land in Tanzania that is home to 162,000 people. According to the institute the proposed site is inhabited by former refugees from neighbouring Burundi.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 per cent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water. 'The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,' says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

The desire to have a strong economy and employment may decide who will be Kenya’s next president, according to an opinion poll by Infotrak. The poll indicated that 86 per cent of Kenyans want to participate in the 2012 polls because they yearn for change. At the same time, half of Kenyans would like the General Election in August, while 37 per cent prefer December 2012.

The chairperson of the Coalition of Ivorian female leaders (CFELCI), Mrs Mariam Dao-Gabala, has launched a sensitisation campaign for the mass participation of women in the country's parliamentary elections, scheduled for 11 December. Entitled 'Why not female MPs?' the campaign aims at mobilising women to break from the past and participate massively in the elections.

An open death threat has been made against journalist Joseph Mwale, who was fired from the Malawi Institute of Journalism (MIJ) radio over a leaked recording of a conversation where Foreign Minister Professor Peter Mutharika was captured discussing his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidature in the 2014 presidential elections. The message threatened the journalist that they will make him 'a villain because you will soon die'.

REDRESS – a London-based charity that works with victims of torture, many from Africa - has produced a short film on the trial of Joseph Mpambara, an important genocide case. In July, a Dutch court sentenced Mpambara, a businessman from Mugonero, Rwanda, to life imprisonment on war crimes. The trial took place on the basis of universal jurisdiction. The film offers a very rare opportunity to see the inside work of the appeals court in the Netherlands, as its judges try to establish if Mpambara was responsible for war crimes that took place in 1994 in Rwanda. The film is available from the REDRESS website.

Global Press Institute (GPI) has announced that Gertrude Pswarayi, a GPI reporter on their Zimbabwe News Desk, won this year’s 2011 Kurt Schork Award in the local reporter category for her piece 'Political Rape Survivors Come Forward in Advance of 2011 Election', an article published last December about women who were raped and exploited in Zimbabwe.

South Africa’s National Climate Change Response Policy, which was approved by Cabinet this week, would help the country map out a socioeconomic transition to a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy and society, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa said on Friday. The policy would seek to balance the objectives of job creation, economic growth, environmental sustainability and reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Almost half a million Ivoirians remain displaced five months after the country’s post-electoral civil conflict ended, afraid of returning to their homes for fear of reprisals, while a sluggish response to funding appeals means living conditions for many are getting worse. A 12 October report by NGOs Oxfam, CARE and the Danish Refugee Council warned of a two-thirds shortfall in the UN appeal for emergency funding to deal with around 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, as living conditions for many deteriorated.

Developing countries, particularly from Africa, are concerned about attempts by industrialised nations to change the negotiating dynamic of the World Trade Organisation. They are worried that developed countries want to introduce new issues at the multilateral body’s eighth ministerial meeting later this year without first completing the unfinished Doha agreement. The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) trade negotiations, launched in 2001, were meant to correct the historical imbalances and asymmetries in the global trading system and were designed to enable poorer countries to integrate into the system.

The Libyan authorities have put the capital, Tripoli, on maximum alert after clashes between forces loyal to the National Transitional Council (NTC) and supporters of the former leader, Mouamar Kadhafi, left three dead and 30 injured. The clashes in the capital between NTC combatants and a group of Colonel Kadhafi’s supporters, estimated at between 20 and 50 armed men, were in the districts of Abu Slim and Al-Hadba. Kadhafi, who disappeared after NTC forces took Tripoli on 22 August used his latest audio message broadcast by the Syrian channel Arrai, to rally his supporters to fight the NTC.

'How could they make this decision without us meeting first?' asked a visibly bemused President Museveni at a news conference, called in reaction to Parliament’s unanimous decision to set up an ad hoc committee to probe bribery claims in the oil sector. The NRM leader has every reason to worry when trusted cadres such as Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa, Chief Whip John Nasasira and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who many believe has inscribed his name on the presidential door as Mr Museveni’s successor, are publicly humiliated by corruption allegations. Talk is rife of a silent rebellion within the party - not least inspired by the secrecy shrouding the oil deals.

Issue No.21 of Amandla Magazine is now available. Apart from a focus on the issue of unemployment, it contains a Q&A with Ronnie Kasrils and articles on the euro crisis, the Occupy Wall Street protests and the arms deal.

There are only four weeks left until the closing date for all Stage 1 2012 STARS Impact Award applications: the deadline is 1pm GMT, Monday 7 November 2011. To apply to the 2012 Impact Awards, visit you can apply online or download the application form. If you have any questions about the application process, contact us at: [email][email protected] The STARS Impact Awards identify and support local organisations that achieve excellence in the provision of services to disadvantaged children and that demonstrate effective management practices.

The latest edition of the 'We Have Faith - Act Now for Climate Justice' newsletter, which deals with climate change and news in the lead up to the COP17 event in Durban, is now available.

President Jacob Zuma needs more time to decide if any remedial action will be taken against Minister of Cooperative and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka and national police commissioner General Bheki Cele. On Monday, Zuma's spokesperson Mac Maharaj told the Mail & Guardian the president is still 'applying his mind' on the two matters, despite them first having come to his attention several months ago. Shiceka and Cele find themselves in hot water after Public Protector Thuli Madonsela delivered two separate, damning findings into the duo's actions while undertaking official duties.

The law does not necessarily make much difference when it comes to child labour: in Guinea and Mauritania the worst forms of child labour persist despite it being banned by law, leading child protection experts to call for a better understanding of the dynamics behind it. West Africa adviser for child protection at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Joachim Theis told IRIN: 'Until now there has been very little discourse which makes the links between strategies taken by parents to find a solution for each child in the context of informal employment, and the application of international norms.'

The Eugene Terre'Blanche murder trial was expected to enter its second week in the high court sitting in Ventersdorp on Monday. Last week, seven witnesses took the stand. Five of them testified that the two farmworkers accused of killing the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader had confessed to the crime. Terre'Blanche's former employees, Chris Mahlangu and a minor, are accused of beating and hacking him to death in his North West farmhouse on 3 April last year.