A brigade will deploy to Africa next year in a pilot program that assigns brigades on a rotational basis to regions around the globe, the US Army announced in May. Roughly 3,000 soldiers - and likely more - are expected to serve tours across the continent in 2013, training foreign militaries and aiding locals.

In this podcast, Africa Today speaks with Dr. Isaac Saney on Latin American Studies, Race in Cuba, and Cuba's role in Southern Africa. Dr. Saney is the author of 'Cuba a Revolution in Motion'.

Food cannot be grown without water. In Africa, one in three people endure water scarcity and climate change will make things worse. Building on Africa’s highly sophisticated indigenous water management systems could help resolve this growing crisis, but these very systems are being destroyed by large-scale land grabs amidst claims that Africa's water is abundant, under-utilised and ready to be harnessed for export-oriented agriculture. In this report, GRAIN looks behind the current scramble for land in Africa to reveal a global struggle for what is increasingly seen as a commodity more precious than gold or oil - water.

Rapid urbanization is an important characteristic of African development and yet the structural transformation debate focuses on agriculture’s relative merits without also considering the benefits from urban agglomeration. This UNU-WIDER Working Paper argues against an ‘agro-fundamentalist’ approach to African development, but says the short-term imperative of reducing poverty necessitates further agricultural investment.

The EU and the US have been asked to help the African Union force in Somalia (Amisom) to wrest the port of Kismayo from Somalia's Shabaab Islamists, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said on Tuesday 12 May. 'Our aim is to get to Kismayo by August,' Odinga said, saying that taking the Shabaab’s last bastion would entail an 'operation by land, sea and air'. 'We have asked the EU to help us with the Atalanta forces that they have there; they are reluctant,' Odinga told a meeting with international media.

Opposition to next year’s national election in Swaziland is growing. Elections are held every five years and the next is due in 2013. But prodemocracy activists in Swaziland have been calling for a boycott. All political parties are banned and many opposition voices are silenced in the kingdom, ruled by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch. The latest call came from participants at a ‘People’s Parliament’ organised by the Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations held in Manzini at the weekend.

Identity Kenya has reported that two gay men were attacked by a mob after they were caught having sex in Kayole estate late last month. The two men were beaten by the mob on the night of 27 May 2012 as they were caught in the act by passersby. One managed to escape while the other died after being stoned by a crowd of people.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has called for a shift in the global economic paradigm. Director-General of the global job watch body, Juan Somavia, stressed the need to turn around the current inefficient growth patterns of world economy, for a redefinition of priorities and the political conviction to overcome the dogmas of the past. Somavia said 'there has been too much ideology in defining policies and too little human sensitivity to the individuals, families, communities. Too much financial, too little social.'

Ethiopia’s only ISP, state-owned Ethio-Telecom, has just installed a system for blocking access to the Tor network, which lets users browse anonymously and access blocked websites. At the same time, the state-owned printing presses are demanding the right to censor the newspapers they print.

Representatives of the International Criminal Court arrived in Tripoli on Sunday to try to secure the release of a detained delegation visiting Muammar Gaddafi's captured son, a Libyan official said. The four-member delegation was being held in the western mountain town of Zintan after one of its lawyers, Australian Melinda Taylor, was found carrying documents regarded as suspicious for Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a Libyan lawyer and a militia member said.

James Elangwe, 87, belongs to the Balues, the only clan in which inheritance passes through the female line. But this doesn't mean that women inherit. Instead, it means that when a man dies, the first son of the man's sister inherits. Elangwe says matrilineal inheritance puts women at a greater disadvantage than patrilineal inheritance because wealth leaves the immediate family. Elangwe's wife belongs to a tribe where inheritance passes from father to son in a patrilineal system. Women cannot inherit, but he says at least it stays within the immediate family if there is a son.

Considering the debate generated by healthcare reform in the United States and the gradual withdrawal of the French state from public-funded social action, one might think that social protection is an endangered idea. On the contrary, the right to security is an integral component of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 22) and an important part of the Millenium Development Goals (MDG), as conceived by the United Nations. This Global Voices blog examines social welfare systems in several African countries.

In this broadcast, Africa Today speaks with Dame Babou, Senegalese journalist and host of 'Africa Time' and Hamadou Tidiane Sy of Questaf.com on recent developments in West Africa - the coup in Mali and the Tuareg insurgency in Northern Mali.

The film Seeds of Freedom charts the story of seed from its roots at the heart of traditional, diversity rich farming systems across the world, to being transformed into a powerful commodity, used to monopolise the global food system.The film highlights the extent to which the industrial agricultural system, and genetically modified (GM) seeds in particular, has impacted on the enormous agro-biodiversity evolved by farmers and communities around the world, since the beginning of agriculture. You can watch a preview of the film through the URL provided.

The 2012 Gender in Nigeria Report launched recently shows that gender inequality is at highly worrying levels. There is a lack of gender balance in the economy, education, politics, health, access to justice and almost all areas of human development. According to the report, 'Nigeria's 80.2 million women and girls have a significantly worse life chances than men and also their sisters in comparable societies; 60-79% of the rural workforce is women but men are five times more likely to own land. '

As a treatment provider for tens of thousands of HIV+ people across the globe, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says it is deeply concerned about the proposal outlined in the editorial piece 'ARV Programme Not Free Entitlement for Those Affording' which appeared in The Herald 15 May 2012 issue. The article proposes to shift the financial burden of purchasing antiretroviral medication (ARVs) to HIV+ people who can 'afford' as a response to the looming funding gap for ARV treatment (ART). While the increasing funding retreat by international donors is a serious concern that needs to be dealt with, making the already vulnerable group of HIV+ people pay for their treatment is the last option that should be considered.

The Angolan government announced on Friday in Luanda that it concluded fully the withdrawal of Missang forces in the territory of Guinea Bissau. According to a press note from the Angolan government, which reached Angop, the process included a complete withdrawal by sea and air of all military personnel, as well as all military equipment and techniques of Missang.

The oil industry in Uganda will be the most capital intensive that the country has ever seen. Many ordinary people believe that it may also result in mass job creation, alleviating unemployment and under-employment - said by some reports to run as high as 80 per cent among rural youth - that not only blights lives but could also foment social and political unrest. But the reality is that the oil industry is notorious for consuming large sums of money in its operations, while employing relatively few people, most of whom have particular expertise.

The Kimberly Process intersessional in Washington, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) urging the diamond monitor to tackle what it calls continuing human rights violations in Zimbabwe's Marange fields. The meeting, which ran from 4-7 June 2012, will take up a range of topics related to the mining and trading of conflict-free rough diamonds. Human Rights Watch Africa director, Daniel Bekele urged the Kimberley Process, under the chairpersonship of the United States, to address the ongoing rights abuses in Zimbabwe’s Marange fields and the lack of transparency by mining companies operating there.

AIDS activists and researchers are at loggerheads over the planned South African trial of a lower dose version of the controversial antiretroviral stavudine, which has in the past been responsible for debilitating side-effects in HIV patients. In the one camp, the Treatment Action Campaign, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without borders) and the Treatment Action Group have serious concerns about the proposed trial.