The Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has urged oil firms to open up their accounts to scrutiny as part of a new anti-corruption drive. "Whatever you receive, you must publish... I would appeal to extractive industries to participate," he said.

Mauritanian police arrested top opposition presidential candidate Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah for a second time on Sunday on suspicion of planning a coup following the re-election of longtime leader Maaouiya Ould Taya. Ould Haidallah (63) a former president who was overthrown by Ould Taya in a 1984 coup, came a distant second to his rival, a former comrade-in-arms, in Friday's presidential election.

The Socialist Forum of Ghana has categorically rejected the decision of government to enter into a non-surrender agreement with the United States Government. It said: “We unhesitantly call for mass mobilisation to demonstrate to the world that the people of Ghana are peace-loving and reject all forms of impunity and to force a reversal of the agreement.”

An inter-agency team visiting eastern Liberia has reported that thousands of Liberian refugees are waiting on the Ivorian side of the border to return home once relief aid arrives – aid that will remain limited until the area is secured by peacekeeping troops.

Several hundred Malians and Burkinabe have been forced to flee their homes in Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa-growing region of Gagnoa, 300 km west of the commercial capital, Abidjan, after a wave of arson attacks and looting. According to humanitarian sources, the attacks by groups of young men have been going on for three weeks. Witnesses say that as well as Burkinabe and Malians, Ivorian northerners and other Ivorians who had moved to Gagnoa from central Cote d’Ivoire, have also been targeted, losing crops and other property.

The former ruling party in Cote d'Ivoire is threatening to withdraw from the reconciliation government, accusing President Laurent Gbagbo of human rights violations. The threat comes as northern-based rebels are refusing to take back their seats in the government.

Eastern Africa, which is under the umbrella of the socio-economic and political organisation, the Inter Government Authority on Development (IGAD), has shown some almost miraculous progress in the past year, argues Ferdinand Katendeko in an article for the Peace and Conflict Monitor. The region is composed of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti and Eritrea which have all experienced conflict. With the year 2003 drawing to an end in less than two months there is much to be hopeful about.

The Rwandan and Malawian governments as well as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) signed a tripartite agreement on Tuesday to repatriate close to 5,500 refugees who fled the central African nation at the height of the 1994 genocide.

The government of Sudan and the rebel group operating in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), extended a ceasefire agreement for one month on Tuesday in the Chadian town of Abeche.

What are the links between war and ideas of masculinity? Do the way men think about their gender offer incentives to armed forces to use violence? How are non-combatant males caught up in violence? What role does the state play in the promotion or collapse of alternative masculinities? This paper analyses the role of masculinity in provoking or perpetuating violence and conflict in war-torn northern Uganda.

There seems no end to the troubles that are dogging the peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 2000, the two Horn of Africa countries signed an accord in Algeria to end two years of fighting sparked by a border dispute. The indefinite postponement, last week, of the marking out of a border in the contested area posed a major setback to peace efforts.

Cabinet Minister Najib Balala says he will oppose the Terrorism Bill because "it intends to oppress Muslims". The minister said the Terrorism Suppression Bill, which is expected to be debated in Parliament this week, proposed draconian laws that "are inhuman and against logical thinking".

UNICEF says that it expects hundreds of thousands of children to return to studies during Liberia’s Back-to-School campaign - thousands of them for the first time in their lives. Speaking from New York on the first day of the massive education push, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that it is expected that increasing numbers of children - up to 750,000 - will take to their books as the effort to reach them extends into still troubled counties.

The government of Guinea violated the United Nations arms embargo on Liberia and supplied weapons that Liberian rebels used to commit atrocities, Human Rights Watch charged in a briefing paper released this week. On Thursday the U.N. Security Council, of which Guinea is an elected member, is due to review the sanctions regime on Liberia, which is in force until May.

Namibian farm workers will try to invade 15 commercial farms across the country next week after the government ignored their demands for land reform, the head of the Namibia Farmworkers Union (NAFWU) said on Tuesday.

Organised returns from Zambia to Angola will be suspended next week as the onset of the rainy season renders roads impassable, said the UN refugee agency today. The last return convoy of Angolan refugees in Zambia will leave on November 11 for Cazombo in Angola's western province of Moxico, the main destination of Angolan refugees in Zambia. UNHCR will resume repatriation at the end of the rainy season in May next year.

Fighting that erupted on Friday between a Mayi-Mayi militia and a Rwandan rebel group in South Kivu Province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has resulted in the displacement of thousands of civilians, with an as-yet undetermined number of wounded and dead, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC, reported on Monday.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) said on Monday that it noted the weekend joint rally of its governing partner the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) - and said it would discuss it on a bilateral basis.

Sixty-four formerly displaced Bakiga families were relocated from Lugogo tented camp in Kampala to Mubende district on 2 November 2003. The assistant commissioner for disaster management in the Prime Minister's office, Martin Owor, however, declined to reveal the exact location citing possible sabotage by politicians.

The repatriation of 350 refugees from the Central African Republic to the Democratic Republic of Congo has been delayed further pending the holding of more meetings to discuss details for the operation. "There are pre-conditions to be met before the repatriation begins," Jean Kitambala, the director for civil protection and refugees at the Congolese Ministry of Interior, told IRIN.