Reports that police had fired shots during an opposition rally at the weekend have raised fears that Malawi's upcoming May elections could be marred by violence. News reports said two people were wounded when riot police fired live rounds at a crowd to stop a rally by opposition parties in the southern city of Blantyre.

The cholera epidemic in Zambia has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to suspend 107 of its 179 school feeding programmes. WFP spokeswoman Lena Savelli told IRIN on Monday that the decision to "suspend the feeding in these schools follows reports from government and local media that these areas are affected by cholera".

The Zimbabwe government has suspended the acqusition of farms and the issuing of further land offer letters in a move it says is aimed at cleaning up confusion in the land reform exercise. John Nkomo, special affairs minister responsible for the land reform programme, said in interviews published in local newspapers that he would also investigate compliance with the government's one-man one-farm policy.

Mothers in some parts of rural Mali are being given free mosquito nets impregnated with insecticide if they take their children for full series of vaccinations against preventable diseases such as measles and polio. Health workers told IRIN that this programme had significantly reduced infant mortality and malnutrition in a region where child deaths amongst the highest in the world.