cc. With events in the central African region unfolding at a dizzying pace over the last week, Friends of Congo (FOTC) responds to questions posed to them in the aim of enhancing readers’ understanding of developments on the ground. Casting doubt on the nature of Laurent Nkunda’s reported arrest and highlighting the persistently extra-parliamentary and undemocratic nature of negotiations between Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame around Rwandan troops entering the DR Congo, Friends of Congo discuss some of the limitations around recent efforts to achieve greater stability in the troubled eastern region of the country.

The small, dusty village of Mayange lies 20 kilometres from Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Its health centre has fewer than 40 beds but serves an estimated 35,000 people. In most ways, the Mayange centre is like thousands of other health facilities across the continent which struggle to meet patients’ needs with very few resources and staff. Thanks to an innovative partnership involving the government, non-governmental organizations and private companies, the Mayange centre now uses mobile telephones to provide better treatment.

The Rwandan government should honor its international obligations by enacting legislation to abolish life imprisonment in solitary confinement, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the presidents of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. In December 2008, the Rwanda Parliament prohibited life in solitary confinement for genocide suspects transferred from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) or extradited from other countries and found guilty by Rwandan courts.

Rwandan government has dismissed senior officials working for the Fund for Support of Genocide Survivors (FARG) for alleged misappropriation of millions of government funds targeted for survivors of the infamous 1994 genocide, local media has reported. Since 1998, the government has reserved 5 percent of its annual budget to create a fund to aid the survivors with education, housing, social rehabilitation and general support.

The Swedish government has suspended 80 million kronor in aid to Rwanda following the United Nations report accusing the country of supporting armed rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, International Development Cooperation Minister Ms Gunilla Carlsson said.

Survivors of Rwanda's genocide and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have welcomed the life sentence given to its mastermind Theoneste Bagosora. Bagosora and two co-defendants were found by a UN tribunal to have led a committee that plotted the massacre of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Mr Ban said the sentences were a "major step in the fight against impunity".

Kenya must step up its efforts to track down a Rwandan genocide suspect, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) says. The ICTR chief prosecutor is expected to tell the UN Security Council he is not satisfied with the level of cooperation and assistance from Kenya.

Rwanda's booming manufacturing and farming sectors could push growth in the country to 10% this year, according to the Rwandan central bank governor. Agriculture is particularly strong and is growing at a minimum rate of 10%, said Francois Kanimba.

A Paris appeals court has rejected an extradition request for a man accused of a role in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. A Rwandan court sentenced Isaac Kamali in his absence in 2003 to death for his alleged participation in the massacre. Mr Kamali, a mathematics professor, who also holds French nationality, was detained at a Paris airport in 2007.

You will play a leading role in defining our strategy in the Africa region, assessing where we will have an impact and how we can make a difference. You will engage with people on the ground, government officials and other relevant national and international organisations. You will have worked or lived in the area and have a broad understanding of the political and social factors affecting the region.

Following the arrest of Lieutenant Colonel Rose Kabuye in Frankfurt, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem explores the core hypocrises and injustices underpinning France’s attempts to try a key figure in the Rwandan genocide. The author contends that France has since 1994 been attempting to wash its conscience through denial and counter-narrative, and that whatever one may think of Paul Kagame’s current regime the recent French indictments should never be mistaken for justice. Far from a move towards genuinely bringing an alleged player in the genocide to justice, Abdul-Raheem suggests judicial developments in the France reflect the guilt of a former imperial power with blood on its hands.

The Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Adama Dieng has said Kenya must try those implicated in the Waki Report on post-election violence. He said civilians; politicians, security officers and their senior commanders are in the crosshairs of war crimes and crimes against humanity investigations and indictment in the Waki Report. Dieng said forgiving suspects named by Justice Philip Waki "in the name of peace and reconciliation" would breed impunity and future violence.

While neighbouring countries struggle to get pregnant women to visit antenatal centres, women in Rwanda seem to be flocking to them. Rwanda manages to reach 72 percent of pregnant women with HIV testing and counselling and other prevention of mother-to-child services (PMTCT), but fewer than 20 percent of Burundi's health centres offer PMTCT services, while Kenya is reaching half its pregnant women.

Costs of Internet broadband in the country are expected to reduce from $3,000 to $25 for each Megabyte per second a government official has said. Nkubito Bakuramutsa the Director General of Rwanda Information Technology Agency (RITA) said that Rwandans will purchase much cheaper Internet bandwidth after the country's national Internet backbone is connected to the coastal submarine cables expected to be completed by 2010.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has accused its neighbour Rwanda of sending troops across the border in support of a Congolese rebel leader. Dozens of people were injured in fighting near Goma, the eastern provincial capital of eastern Nord-Kivu, but Rwanda denied involvement saying the accusations from Kinshasa were "ridiculous".

The World Bank has announced that it has approved $24 million for a program that will see Rwanda develop her national capacity to provide broadband connectivity. The money that was cleared through an International Development Association (IDA) financing grant for the Regional Communication Infrastructure Program - Rwanda Project (RCIPRW), is supposed to increase the availability of broadband to more than 700 Rwandan institutions including schools, health centers and local government administrative centers. IDA is the concessional lending arm of the World Bank.

While exploring Rwanda’s alternative experience of women’s emancipation, Grace Kwinjeh outlines the potential conflict between nationalism and social liberation within many post-colonial African nations. Though post-colonial nationalisms have often amounted to the reinforcing of patriarchal systems of governance and the subordination of women, in Rwanda, the author argues, women’s experience of political representation in a post-genocide society has been more complicated, an experience essentially revealing the role of political systems in determining the levels of freedom and democracy that countries’ citizens enjoy.

The United Nations will do everything possible to stop Congo's eastern conflict from becoming a wider war after the government accused Rwanda of sending troops over the border, a U.N. official said on Friday. Democratic Republic of Congo has asked the U.N Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on what it says was a Rwandan military incursion this week into eastern North Kivu province in support of Congolese Tutsi rebels.

Rwanda's parliament has decided that all education will be taught in English instead of French. Officially the Rwandan decision is a result of joining the English-speaking East African Community. But relations between Rwanda and France have been frosty following the 1994 genocide, when France was accused of supporting Hutu militias.

A former prosecutor was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of genocide, extermination and murder by the United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the wake of the 1994 killing spree in Rwanda. The ICTR found that Simeon Nchamihigo, former deputy prosecutor in Cyangugu Prefecture, instructed the Hutu-dominated rebel group known as the Interahamwe to seek out and kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus with the intent to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group and accomplices of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front.