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.

East African Environment Ministers have ended a meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to discuss a set of radical policy proposals to deal with environmental pollution, including the introduction of a pay-as-you-pollute taxes, according to a statement from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on Saturday. The Ministers for Environment and Natural Resources from the IGAD region met to adopt the regional environment policy and strategy as well as the environmental assessment policy framework.

The wife of Ghana's ex-leader Jerry Rawlings is shocked after being barred from contesting the December election, her spokesman has told the BBC. Nana Konadu Rawlings was chosen last weekend as the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP). She defected from the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) party, although Mr Rawlings has not done so. The election commission said her nomination papers had not been completed before the deadline.

A new report by the World Bank's Africa's Pulse records that citizens in some African states are enduring greater extreme poverty than they were before - citing Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon. At the same time, it says, other countries on the continent, such as Guinea, Zambia, DR Congo, Ghana and Mali, are already accounting for a significant proportion of global mineral output. The report claims that, excluding South Africa (a notable exception, since it's historically been Africa's mining 'melting pot'), sub-Saharan growth is forecast soon to rise to 6% from 4.8%.

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.

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.

A historic court battle is looming that will hopefully clarify for Kenyans the meaning and scope of the fundamental freedoms of expression, the media and access to information as guaranteed in the new constitution and how these rights relate to the fight against corruption.

President Koroma is expected to win a second term in next month's elections, but not because he has transformed the country; he has deployed clever tactics. The legacies of identity politics, violence, corruption, poverty and inequality remain.

South African children have equal rights under the Constitution, but the worlds into which they are born and their opportunities in life are very unequal. This was the message Katharine Hall, senior researcher at the Children’s Institute (CI) at the University of Cape Town shared at the launched the South African Child Gauge 2012, an annual review on the state of South Africa's children.

Zimbabweans are showing the evidence of having been torn in all directions in the transitional period. They have been scarred by the party political wars since the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from late 2000 onwards first posed an electoral challenge to the Zimbabwe African National Union? Patriotic Front (ZANU?PF). Zimbabweans, as represented in this stratified?random and nationally representative sample from Freedom House, are not sure it seems on what to believe and how to relate to political and economic circumstances.

The International Criminal Court pleaded for stronger support from the UN Security Council on to ensure states cooperate with its war crimes inquiries, complaining it had faced problems in cases on Darfur and Libya. International Criminal Court President Judge Sang-Hyun Song said the court's followup to the only two cases referred to it by the Security Council had been problematic and that some countries had refused to cooperate.

Another bombshell is about to be dropped onto South Africa’s raging political and legal battlefield and it involves one of the most contentious and emotive issues in our country - land.

In this submission, ARTICLE 19 outlines its concerns that, over the last four years, there has been an escalation in violations of the right to freedom of expression and information, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in Djibouti.

Malawi has opened up negotiations on the economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union, which have been deadlocked since 2002. The new round of negotiations may see President Joyce Banda’s administration change the status quo and sign the free trade agreement. 'We have opened up negotiations and consultations on EPAs. We can’t ignore the issue anymore like the previous administration, and President Banda will pay attention to this,' said the country’s trade minister John Bande.

Uganda should deploy oil revenues to create universal old age pensions and universal health insurance to make a more humane society. This would be a real investment in the future of the nation. So says Dr. Ezra Suruma, Uganda’s former Minister of Finance, in this exclusive interview with Oil in Uganda. He accepts that it will be prudent to place some of the revenues in an Investment Fund - because too much money flowing too fast into the general budget would be difficult to absorb. But, he argues, all Ugandan citizens should become individual shareholders in the Investment Fund, in order to ensure that each and every citizen benefits directly through annual dividends - and also to create citizen-shareholder pressure for transparent and corruption-free management of the funds.

It is often assumed, erroneously, that fundamentalists represent and defend the ‘real Islam’. Yet in Africa and around the world there are courageous dissenters who stand up to extremists at great personal risk.

The Swaziland House of Assembly has reversed its vote of no-confidence in the government, amid great controversy. On Monday (15 October 2012) after an eight-hour debate members rescinded a vote that had taken place two weeks earlier. That vote, by a three-fifths majority of members of the House, was enough to force the cabinet to resign, in line with Section 68 (5) of the Swazi Constitution. The first vote had cause a political crisis because the government, led by Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini, refused to resign and King Mswati III did not sack him, as he is required to do under the Constitution.

A generation of leaders who won their spurs during Algeria's 1954-62 independence war against France remains in power, having defeated a violent challenge by armed Islamists in the 1990s and, at least for now, seen off the rebellious spirit that toppled Arab autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya last year. Among the old guard is President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 75, who has served three terms and is thought unlikely to seek a fourth, if only for undisclosed health reasons. But with a presidential election due in 2014 there is no clarity on who might take over Africa's biggest country, an OPEC oil producer which supplies a fifth of Europe's gas imports and cooperates with the West in combating al Qaeda-style militancy.

Nigerian security forces deployed to quell the Boko Haram menace in Maiduguri have denied engaging in extra-judicial killing of unarmed civilians. Local people should expose the militants among them so that the government can withdraw the troops.

Rwanda's defense minister is commanding a rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that is being armed by Rwanda and Uganda, both of which sent troops to aid the insurgency in a deadly attack on UN peacekeepers, according to a UN report. The UN Security Council's Group of Experts said in a confidential report that Rwanda and Uganda - despite their strong denials - continued to support M23 rebels in their six-month fight against Congolese government troops in North Kivu province. 'Both Rwanda and Uganda have been supporting M23,' said the 44-page report, which was seen by Reuters.