Ethiopia and Uganda have signed bilateral agreements to cooperate in regional security operations. The deal also seeks to strengthen economic ties while allowing for the free movement of people between the two countries. Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs ministry said the agreement would enable the two countries to take a common position on regional security affairs. Among the issues to be prioritised are Somalia, South Sudan and Eritrea.

Some 40,000 famine-hit people have fled to the Somali capital Mogadishu over the past month in search of food and water, the UN refugees agency said. 'Over the past month, UNHCR figures show that nearly 40,000 Somalis displaced by drought and famine have converged on Mogadishu in search of food, water, shelter and other assistance,' said Vivian Tan, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. 'A further 30,000 have arrived at settlements around Mogadishu.'

Nigerian security forces killed at least 23 people in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri in retaliation for a bomb attack blamed on a radical Islamist sect, Amnesty International said on Monday (25 July). Boko Haram, a radical group which wants sharia law more widely applied across Africa's most populous nation, has been behind almost daily shootings and attacks with homemade bombs in and around Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Pretoria has welcomed the sentencing of human trafficker Adina dos Santos (28) to life imprisonment. Dos Santos was also given a one-year sentence in the Pretoria Regional Court for living off the money the young women had made. She was found guilty in May of trafficking three girls from Mozambique to Pretoria in February 2008.

Police have started questioning the Ocampo Six suspects in connection with the 2008 post-election violence. Three suspects - former police boss Hussein Ali, Tinderet MP Henry Kosgey and radio presenter Joshua Sang - have already recorded statements. The move to question the suspects, fingered by prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo as bearing the greatest responsibility for the mayhem, is said to be aimed at convincing the International Criminal Court that Kenya can try them at home.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has met with northern elders on the menace of Islamist sect Boko Haram, blamed for a spate of deadly bomb and gun attacks especially in the city of Maiduguri. The meeting explored different options to bring about peace and security in the beleaguered state and other affected areas in northern Nigeria, said a minister who briefed journalists after the meeting.

Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22 per cent of men and 30 per cent of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence. Research shows that male sexual violence is a component of wars all over the world and also suggests that international aid organisations are failing male victims, reports The Observer newspaper.

Despite its decision to grant diplomatic recognition to Libya’s rebels, the Obama administration is struggling to find ways to provide them with the $34 billion in frozen Libyan assets held in US-controlled bank accounts, officials say. Administration officials held at least two meetings this past week to explore ways to release the money, which the opposition Transitional National Council says it urgently needs to pay salaries and buy critical supplies. But the funds are ensnared in a thicket of legal regulations.

Seven Malawians killed in anti-government riots this week were buried in a mass grave on Friday 22 July as President Bingu wa Mutharika threatened to stamp out any further protests against his rule. At least 18 people have been killed and 200 arrested in unprecedented protests against Mutharika, with soldiers firing live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds calling for an end to what they say is autocratic rule.

Four elderly Mau Mau war veterans have been given permission to sue over alleged British colonial atrocities committed during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya more than 50 years ago. The ruling issued by a High Court in the UK granted the war veterans permission to sue for compensation for the atrocities meted out to them by the British authorities between the 1950s and 1960s.

With General Magnus Malan – the main architect of South Africa’s apartheid military – passing away on 18 July (Nelson Mandela's birthday, no less), Horace Campbell reflects on Malan’s central role in the systematised discrimination of apartheid and the system’s troubling legacy.

South Africa would not be able to escape an escalated European crisis unscathed, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Thursday, adding its direct economic exposure to the countries affected was reasonably low. 'South Africa's direct economic exposure to those countries affected by current market turmoil is reasonably low,' Gordhan said in an opinion piece published in Business Day. 'The greater risk for South Africa is the potential for contagion that results in a prolonged and expanding crisis in Europe and undermines global growth significantly.'

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has released the report, 'The Price of Hope: Human Rights Abuses During the Egyptian Revolution'. This report follows a fact-finding mission that was conducted in Egypt in March 2011 and documented the grave human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces against the protesters during the popular uprising. The investigation covered the period between 25 January and 11 February 2011, the day President Mubarak stepped down, with a special focus on Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, the cities that witnessed the most violence.

A South African refugee rights group has called on the South African authorities to extend the deadline for Zimbabweans to get permits, warning that thousands of people are yet to receive their paperwork. The end of the Zimbabwe Documentation Project is less than two weeks away and South Africa is set to resume deporting undocumented Zim nationals when the process is finalised. But according to the Cape Town based PASSOP group, thousands of people have not got their documents yet, and fear is rising that they face possible deportation in the coming weeks.

The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) has revealed visual evidence of mass graves in South Kordofan, which corroborates new eyewitness reports, obtained by SSP, of systematic killings and mass burials in this conflict-torn region of Sudan. The evidence found by SSP is consistent with allegations that the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and northern militias have engaged in a campaign of killing civilians.

Zimbabwe’s immigration officials say they have instructed their officers at border posts not to accept illegal immigrants and refugees seeking to enter into the country. The ban is targeted at refugees mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia whom Zimbabwe accuses of using the country as a transit point to South Africa. The government-owned Herald newspaper reported that five border posts usually used by the Ethiopian and Somali immigrants had been instructed not to allow refugees into the country.

Kenya has agreed to open a new camp near its border with Somalia to cope with the influx of refugees fleeing the region's worst drought in 60 years. The lfo II camp in Dabaab will open its doors to 80,000 refugees within 10 days, the Kenyan government said. Prime Minister Raila Odinga agreed to open the new camp after visiting Dadaab's three existing camps where an estimated 380,000 refugees are now living at facilities intended to cope with a population of 90,000 people.

While Kenya struggles to cope with the influx of refuges fleeing the drought in Somalia, it is estimated that about 1,300 people arrive daily at the Dadaab refugee camp. It takes on average nine days in 50-degree Celsius heat for those fleeing the drought in Somalia to travel the 80 kilometres of the sandy, expansive desert that separates Dadaab in Northern Kenya from Somalia. The journey to Dadaab is a treacherous one, made even more perilous as it snakes through territories of lawlessness where armed bandits and even police harass the refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced recently that Germany was prepared to sell six to eight patrol boats to Angola as part of an international cooperation deal. 'Germany is ready for an energy and raw materials partnership,' Merkel said during a visit to the oil-rich country. Politicians in Berlin are concerned about Angola's human rights record. Claudia Roth, the head of the Greens, described it as a bad move following the controversial decision to sell battle tanks to Saudi Arabia last week, calling Merkel the 'patron saint of the arms lobby'. And Rolf Muetzenich from the SPD parliamentary group alluded to Germany's concern over Angola's human rights record.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Jacob Zuma have agreed that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi must go. Cameron, who is on a working visit to South Africa, told reporters in Pretoria on Monday that he and Zuma believed Gaddafi needed to step down from power. However, Zuma said: 'What happens to Gaddafi must be decided by the Libyan people. You need to negotiate how, why and where he must go.'