Gambian authorities have dropped charges of conspiracy and incitement to violence against two journalists who were arrested on 10 September, the country's press union said. Baboucarr Ceesay, vice president of the Gambia Press Union and Abubacarr Saidykhan, a freelance journalist, were arrested and held for nearly four days after seeking permission to hold a peaceful protest against the recent execution of nine death row prisoners.

A 25-year-old asylum seeker lodged a complaint of bribery with the police against a Cape Town Foreshore Home Affairs official last week. Tatenda Chiguni (not his real name) also claims that his asylum document, which was processed after he laid the charges, was altered from its original state. The altered asylum document includes a condition stating that he should leave South Africa by 11 November 2012 or lodge an appeal. It is unusual for asylum documents to include this condition upon renewal.

Over 50 members of Uganda's main opposition political party - the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) have been arrested in the past two weeks by security agencies and are detained at undisclosed places, party officials say. There were unconfirmed reports that the activists are facing charges of plotting to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni's government.

An Egyptian talk-show host faces a four-month jail term after a court convicted him of insulting President Mohammed Morsi, state media reported on Monday. Tawfiq Okasha, whose show appears on his own channel, can appeal the sentence after paying 100 Egyptian pounds ($16.39) bail, a source in the court in southern Egypt said. The substance of the offending insult was not immediately available from court sources.

Reporters Without Borders says it is saddened to learn that Ahmed Saakin Farah Ilyas, a young TV journalist based in Las Anod, in the breakaway northwestern territory of Somaliland, was gunned down as he returned home yesterday (23 October). Employed by privately-owned Universal Television, Ahmed Saakin Farah Ilyas was shot several times in the head by gunmen who have yet to be identified. He was the 16th journalist to be killed this year in Somalia.

Zimbabwe’s three governing parties failed to find common ground on presidential powers and proposed security reforms in the new constitution at a crucial conference to review the charter that ended on Tuesday 23 October. President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party wants an overhaul of the draft constitution produced by an inter-party parliamentary committee claiming Zimbabweans favoured an all powerful Head of State and government. After two days of deliberations, Zanu-PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) formations in the inclusive government failed to narrow their differences.

Two politicians allied to Guinea-Bissau's ousted regime were severely beaten by soldiers after their arrest in the wake of an alleged coup, government and family members said. Yancuba Djola Indjai and Sylvestre Alves were "left for dead" about 50km from the capital one day after being seized by soldiers, a family member told AFP.

Yemen is looking to implement a new series of measures that would curtail the rising number of Ethiopian migrants that are entering the Arab Peninsula through its borders. Some 300 Ethiopian nationals who had been stranded in Yemen returned home late last month after they had been stuck in Yemen and Gulf countries for months, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. In total, nearly 1,000 Ethiopian migrants, stranded in Yemen, are being flown home by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with the last flight scheduled for early October in an effort to help the Ethiopians leave what has become an abusive situation.

In spite of the assurances by the Joint Task Force to bring additional troops to beef up security in Potiskum, Yobe, residents have continued to flee the town en mass. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that residents are fleeing the commercial town to other states and Local Government Areas, following series of explosions and gun attacks in which no fewer than 13 people have been killed.

Tackling the trafficking of women is being used as an excuse to further crack down on sex work and this is leading to abuses, an activist group said at the launch of a UN report that calls for legal empowerment of sex workers and the decriminalisation of sex work. 'The unspoken purpose of the anti-trafficking movement is to end prostitution globally,' said Tracey Tully from the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW). 'Under the guise of anti-trafficking,' this movement wants to change laws on prostitution by further criminalising sex work and to deny sex workers control over their own lives, Tully told TrustLaw.

Many Tunisians feel their revolution was hijacked and the current ruling party has not improved their lifestyles. There are many who will not rest until their demands are finally met. From the tenth floor restaurant of the El Hana Hotel overlooking Bourguiba Street, the stage of the Tunisian revolution, some of its intellectuals peer down. 'Don’t be too impressed by the city’s lights,' advises one. 'They’re deceptive. The alleyways aren’t so pretty.'

The 65-year old Yvonne Ntacyobatabara was living quietly with her husband in the southern Dutch province of Limburg when, in 2010, she was arrested on suspicion of genocide. She is accused of leading a group of young men in the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. Her trial begins today (22 October) in a court in The Hague.

A gay Nigerian asylum seeker who was living in Bradford has been deported from the UK. Olamiekan Ayelokun had argued that he could not return to Nigeria because he was at risk of homophobic persecution. He had been trying to stay in the UK ever since his visa expired in 2003.

Presidential aspirants have embraced the digital platform as they step up campaigns ahead of the General Election. They are reaching out to voters directly through social media signalling their determination to use digital technology as a new frontier in consolidating their support among voters, reports the Daily Nation.

On October 2 2012, Zambia's Finance Deputy Minister Miles Sampa and Minister in Charge of Chiefs Nkandu Luo were caught on camera during a Lusaka Council meeting browsing the online news website Zambian Watchdog. The online publication, known for its investigative reporting, was this month threatened with de-registration by the Registrar of Societies. In this post, Global Voices reports on how the Zambian blogosphere has responded.

In a major endorsement for investment in women – the bulk of food growers in the developing world – United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said food security could not be achieved without women, and that the world’s hungry also needed leaders to prioritise actions. 'Girls and women are society’s best chance to overcome hunger,' Ban told a gathering of world leaders, researchers, farmers and policy-makers at the presentation of the 2012 World Food Prize. Global leaders meeting in the midwest U.S. state of Iowa to discuss strategies to boost food production worldwide say the particularly challenging food security situation in Africa will require mobilising the continent’s best scientific minds, including those of African women.

A research team at Oxford University in the UK is very close to determining the efficacy of their new tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. If current clinical trials are successful, it will be the first new TB vaccine in almost a century. The urgent need for a new vaccine is emphasised by research showing that extensively drug-resistant (XDR) forms of the disease are rapidly spreading. Today, most babies in the world are immunized with the old Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, first used in 1921. The leader of the Oxford research team, Helen McShane, says it saves children's lives, but beyond infancy its effects are limited.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and INTERIGHTS have initiated a case against Egypt following its failure to address violations by army personnel against female detainees, in what has come to be known as the 'virginity tests' incident. The case, brought to the African Commission, alleges violations of the African Charter, to which Egypt is a signatory. The Commission, which sits twice a year, is expected to consider the NGOs’ request to hear the case during its upcoming session in October in Côte d’Ivoire.

For decades Nigeria has failed to fix chronic electricity shortages that stifle growth and help keep millions in poverty. That is about to change, the government says, when most of the power sector is privatised by the end of the year. Its target is to increase electricity output tenfold to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, reports Reuters. Turning on the lights in a country where power cuts are a daily ordeal could push Nigeria's growth into double digits and help diversify its economy away from oil, which in 50 years has created a super-rich elite but has done little to reduce mass poverty.

'Although the government of Uganda has made significant efforts to put in place fairly elaborate policy, legal and institutional mechanisms to address the environment[al] challenges of the gas and oil sector, the lack of capacity to implement these policies and enforce the corresponding laws has grossly undermined their effectiveness,' according to a recent Capacity Needs Assessment for the Environmental Pillar Institutions in Uganda conducted on behalf of the National Environment Management Authority by an independent consulting company with funding from the US government aid agency, USAID. Inadequate staffing levels, lack of knowledge and skills among existing staff, the absence of appropriate training institutions and chronic shortages of equipment and funds are highlighted as key weaknesses.