The Guinean authorities have declared a state of emergency as violence continues in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election. Reports say three people were found dead in the capital Conakry after the latest clashes between the security forces and opposition supporters. The winning candidate, Alpha Conde, says he wants to lead a process of national reconciliation.

With Western countries battling to maintain low currencies and the US accusing China of deliberately undervaluing the renminbi as part of an ‘international currency war’, Sanou Mbaye asks ‘what does this herald for African countries?’

'Morocco has been able to persist in flouting its international legal obligations toward Western Sahara largely because France and the United States have continued to arm Moroccan occupation forces and blocked the enforcement of resolutions in the UN Security Council demanding that Morocco allow for self-determination or even simply the stationing of unarmed human rights monitors in the occupied country,' writes Stephen Zunes on 'Despite 35 years of exile, war, repression and international neglect, Sahrawi nationalism is at least as strong within the younger generation as their elders, as is their will to resist. How soon they will succeed in their struggle for self-determination, however, may well rest on such acts of international solidarity by global civil society.'

The Security Council has urged parties to the 2005 peace pact that ended the country’s long-running civil war to take urgent action to ensure the holding of peaceful and credible referenda on self-determination in less than two months’ time. Sudanese are slated to vote on 9 January on whether the south should secede from the rest of the country and also to determine the final status of Abyei, an oil-rich area in the centre of the country, as set out in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

A 'forgotten emergency' has left tens of thousands of pastoralists in Djibouti needing food and nutrition assistance as well as longer-term coping mechanisms, according to the UN. The tiny Horn of Africa state is the subject of a US$38.9 million appeal for food aid ($16.2 million), agriculture and livestock ($6.5 million), health and nutrition ($7.4 million), water and sanitation ($2.4 million), and emergency preparedness and sanitation ($6.4 million).

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has launched a national programme to improve living conditions in the oil-rich country's informal settlements and slums, local media said Tuesday. According to a UNICEF report published in June, 87 per cent of Angola's urban population lives in shanty towns and just 42 per cent of people have access to water, down from 60 per cent in 2001.

An Angolan minister has told the BBC that a convoy carrying Chinese mine workers was attacked in the region of Cabinda this week. He said that two soldiers guarding the workers, contracted by Angola's state oil company Sonangol, were killed. A faction of the Cabinda separatist movement Flec has said it carried out Monday's attack.

As the deadline to deport undocumented Zimbabwean migrants on or after 1 January 2011 looms, human rights activists warn South Africa could face a potential human rights disaster, though a senior South African official says the government is not aiming for a 'massive deportation operation'. Rights NGOs working with Zimbabwean migrants said they were bracing for hundreds of thousands to be deported.

Refugee Space Project is a 'Space', a 'Platform' or 'Network' intending to connect refugees among themselves first of all, and then with other non-refugee people (friends of refugees) so that they can reason about the life of these people of concern and share their stories, ideas and ideals to raise public awareness about the reality of life they are leading in the world.

Israel is building a 60km-long barrier on its southern border with Egypt aimed at physically keeping out African asylum-seekers amid a rising tide of intolerance towards people widely referred to as 'illegal workers'. The barrier will be built at two locations which witness the most crossings - near the Gaza strip and near Eilat. The estimated US$1.35 billion project is due to be completed at the end of 2013.

The last court hearing of the trial of Dr. Isatou Touray, the Executive Director and Amie Bojang- Sissoho, Programme Coordinator for the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) that took place on last Wednesday, 3 November 2010, before Magistrate Emmanuel Nkea of the Banjul Magistrates’ Court has begun to raise eyebrows, says a press release from a coalition of NGOs.

As G20 leaders mull the global consequence of quantitative easing in the US, Horace Campbell highlights the need for a democratised international body that can hold major powers accountable. ‘Without such a body, the kind of competitive devaluation that has been initiated by the US could be a recipe for full-blown warfare.’

Approximately 8,000 Somalis, who fled across the Kenyan border from the Somali town of Belet Hawo following intense fighting there, were ordered to return to Somalia by the Kenyan authorities between 1 and 2 November. On 4 November about 3,000 were forced further into Somalia by Kenya's administrative police, where they are at risk of serious human rights abuses. Amnesty International is urging those concerned by the development to write to the Kenyan authorities.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the independence of most of the French-speaking African states and has been so celebrated in France and in the former French Sub-Saharan African states. The independence of North Africa followed a different course, but the 1954-1962 Algerian War heavily influenced French policy in Sub-Saharan Africa - usually referred to as Afrique Noire (Black Africa). Less celebrated are the political assassinations which were carried out in the lead up to the 1960 independences. Thus the November 3, 1960 death of Felix Moumie, the Cameroun independence leader, by poison in Geneva, merits attention to remind us that State-sponsored murders have terrorism of population as an aim.

‘When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits – limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration,’ writes Vandana Shiva. ‘Making peace with the earth was always an ethical and ecological imperative. It has now become a survival imperative for our species.’

Fifteen years ago Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists who led protests against Shell Oil company were hanged by the Nigerian government after a sham trial on trumped up charges. Justice in Nigeria Now remembers Ken Saro Wiwa and his colleagues, noting new revelations about Shell’s PR strategy after the deaths of the Ogoni activists.

The visible aftermath of violence is easy to see at the tent camp of Gdaim Izik and the Western Sahara city of Laâyoune, still reeling from two days of deadly clashes with Moroccan troops, less clear is a death toll or the actual circumstances surrounding the military action. The crisis began early Monday (November 8th), when Moroccan forces intervened to disperse a tent camp near Laâyoune set up three weeks ago to protest against Morocco's social policy in Western Sahara.

The turn of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to new sources of financing, including kidnapping foreigners, extorting smugglers, and dealing in drugs is raising alarm among security agencies of the greater Maghreb. The countries of the region have officially committed themselves to co-ordinating their efforts to tackle the al-Qaeda threat in the region. Algeria, Mauritania, Niger and Mali have already set up a joint military headquarters in Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria and a joint intelligence centre in Algiers.

Massive increases in carbon emissions will worsen climate change if the European Union does not urgently revise its energy policy, experts warn. The EU plan to increase its share of bio-fuels to 20 per cent by the year 2020 constitutes a major mistake, according to a new study. 'In Africa, we expect to see prices of food increase due to the new production of bio fuels,' Chris Coxon, Brussels-based spokesperson for ActionAid International, an anti-poverty organisation, told IPS in a telephone interview.

Four minors are among nine people who have been sentenced to death for a carjacking in Khour Baskawit in South Darfur. The case has raised fresh concerns over protection for children's rights in Sudan. Sudan is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits the execution of minors. In line with this, Sudan reformed its laws in January 2010, raising the age at which an offender can face capital punishment from 15 to 18.