A number of human rights organisations and Nubian activists have joined lawyer Shehata Mohamed in the lawsuit he filed through the Administrative Court questioning the legality of Saudi mogul Al-Walid Bin Talal’s ownership contract of 100,000 feddans in Toshka, Upper Egypt. They say the contract stipulates that Talal can obtain seeds without the supervision of Egyptian authorities; can hire foreign labour force that would be immediately granted work permits; can cultivate whatever crops he chooses; isn’t bound to a deadline to start cultivating the land; and can export any or all produce to anywhere outside of Egypt.

Cameroon is one of many African countries being targeted by foreign investors for agricultural lands. As of late, a French investor has taken a huge swath of land for sugar cane and the Malaysian company Sime Darby is in the process of negotiating for 300,000 ha in the southern part of the country for palm oil plantations. Chinese investors are also keen on acquiring farmland in Cameroon. In September 2010, GRAIN visited the Upper Sanaga region, in the centre of the country, to take a closer look at the project of one such Chinese company.

Carl Blidt, the current foreign minister of Sweden, admitted in 2001 that oil was part of the conflict in Sudan. But he has also been a member of the board of directors of Lundin Petroleum, points out this article on The Current Analyst website. 'Now, as a prominent politician in Sweden he seems to be interested in human rights and justice in Africa,' says the article.

For over 24 hours on October 15, bloggers blogged about water in a global Blog Action Day. The final count for Blog Action Day stands at over 5,600 bloggers from 143 countries, reaching more than 40 million readers, according to the organisers. 'It was a remarkable display of support for an issue that gets woefully little coverage in the mainstream media.'

Ibrahim Bello says he can earn $23 in two hours extracting gold from the ground, more than he can make in two months from cultivating millet. Such is the economic draw of the 'gold rush', with impoverished farmers digging up rocks by hand in open mines, that many are in denial about its devastating consequences. At least 400 children have died from poisoning caused by illegal gold mining since March because the ore being unearthed around their villages contains high concentrations of lead, contaminating the air, soil and water.

If African countries had had the capacity to do climate change projections, their data could have been fed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) assessments for the continent, said Richard Odingo, former vice-chair of the IPCC at one of the discussions ahead of the Seventh African Development Forum. The IPCC is still recovering from its controversial warning about the impact of climate change on food production in Africa, cited in its synthesis report. The warning turned out to have been based on a non-peer reviewed academic paper for three North African countries.

Passive before human rights abuses in Angola, the British government often shows little concern for people who have come to this country seeking refuge, writes Lara Pawson in the London Guardian in reference to Jimmy Mubenga, a man who died while being deported to Angola. As the facts of Jimmy Mubenga's death come to light, we would do well to consider why he ever sought refuge in the UK, and why 'I don't want to go' were among his last words, she says.

Uche Igwe calls on President Goodluck Jonathan to address the theft of oil in Nigeria.

Upcoming international climate talks will be 'a total flop', according to Africa's leading spokesperson on climate change. Neither this year's talks in Cancun, Mexico, nor the ones in South Africa next year, will deliver a deal with set targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction, said Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia and coordinator of the Committee of Ten African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change. His statements have provoked anger from some critics who see them as undermining the African Union's stance on climate change.

Southern African nations need to agree on a common operational system to manage energy in the region, environmental experts advise. If they don’t, the region could experience power shortages and resulting economic deficits. The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), which was formed in 1995 as part of an inter-governmental agreement between the twelve mainland SADC countries, is an ambitious regional initiative that encourages electricity sharing and the selling of surplus to their neighbours who experience power deficiencies.

Nine people have been charged in what the Environment Agency is saying is biggest investigation ever into illegal electrical waste exports from the UK to West Africa. All nine have been charged with offences under the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007 and European Waste Shipment Regulations 2006 and bailed to attend Havering Magistrates Court on November 11. In some instances, it is alleged by the agency that 'considerable sums' of money changed hands in deals to collect and recycle electrical waste while treatment costs were avoided.

Scientists are failing Africa in its attempts to adapt to climate change, a conference was told this week. They spend too much time collecting data and attending conferences, and not enough time providing practical solutions that local people can implement, according to Anthony Nyong, manager of the Compliance and Safeguard Division at the African Development Bank.

Bomb blasts killed 12 and injured 8 people in Abuja during Nigeria’s 50th anniversary celebrations on 1 October. Dibussi Tande finds the country’s bloggers ‘torn between sadness for the innocent victims, anger at the perpetrators, and outrage at the federal government for its inept handling of events before and after the blast.’

Will Africa end up paying for technologies that commodify life, or demand reparations for ecological damage done by the North, asks Patrick Bond.

While climate change has captured the headlines, many countries are running out of freshwater supplies, threatening human health and causing conflicts between nations. Water should be at the top of the global and national agendas, argues Martin Khor.

Inter Press Service (IPS) Africa will be hosting a media workshop to improve the knowledge of reporters and provide additional skills on covering water issues in southern Africa. The training will be conducted alongside the SADC Multi-stakeholder Water Dialogue, scheduled from 12-13 October in Maun, Botswana. Participants include print and radio journalists from SADC countries.

Climate change is already negatively affecting the lives and livelihoods of poor men and women. Yet it is estimated that less than a tenth of climate funds to date have been spent on helping people in vulnerable countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, says this Oxfam policy brief. The poor are losing out twice: they are hardest hit by climate change they didn’t cause, and they are being neglected by funds that should be helping them, says the brief.

Following a controversial ruling by US Judge José A. Cabranes of the Manhattan-based federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals that transnational corporations ‘cannot be held responsible for torture, genocide, war crimes and the like’, Abena Ampofoa Asare discusses the challenges for establishing responsibility and valuing human rights over profit.

The UAE controls more than 2,800 square kilometers in farms in Sudan as a result of its decision to invest in agricultural projects in fertile Arab nations to slash its soaring food import bill, according to a Sudanese official. The farms, scattered over Khartoum, Jazeera, Nile and other arable provinces in the East African Arab country, are more than triple the area of Bahrain and account for nearly 3.5 per cent of the UAE’s total area.

With land rights under Kenya’s new constitution poorly understood by many in the country, civic education and greater pressure on parliament to draw on land expertise are needed, writes Beatrice Fantoni.