Half of the ten member commission of the African Union (AU), to be elected in Maputo this week, will be women, according to Ana Nemba, the permanent Mozambican ambassador to the AU.

The former president of Mali, Alpha Oumar Konare, looked set to become Africa’s top diplomat Tuesday, after the formal withdrawal of Amara Essy, the current interim chairperson of the African Union Commission. Essy said: "The Office of the President of Cote d’Ivoire, my country, announced on Monday 7 July, 2003, the withdrawal of my candidacy to the post of Chairperson of the African Union."

On a street by the river port in the oil town of Warri, dozens of Nigerian soldiers and marines shelter behind sandbags, pointing their machine guns towards an unseen enemy. They are mounting a 24-hour watch on the southern approaches of the Warri River. "The situation in the Niger Delta has graduated from restiveness to insurrection," Enilama Umoku, a political science lecturer at Delta State University near Warri, told IRIN.

Four people were killed and seven others injured on Wednesday when rebels shelled the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, for the third consecutive day.

The repatriation of Eritrean refugees from Sudan, which resumed last month, has been halted due to the start of the rainy season, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said.