Amado Kafando's elation followed news on 7 March that the price of cotton, a crop he plants each summer in rows broken by a cow-tethered plow, hit a record $2.197 a pound, capping a two-year surge of 430 per cent. Finally, he said, cotton could fulfill the promise of its nickname in his homeland of Burkina Faso: white gold. But within weeks, Kafando was clenching his fists. The government and regional cotton monopolies, which Burkinabe farmers must sell to, announced they would charge growers 38 per cent more for fertilizer - and pay them as little as 39 per cent of the world price at the time for their crop.

On 27 May 2011 the Centre for Health Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), a Ugandan NGO, and the families of two mothers who died in government hospitals in 2009 in Uganda approached the Ugandan Constitutional Court alleging the women’s deaths were caused as a direct result of Uganda’s failing healthcare system. The petitioners argue that the tragic deaths are but two manifestations of a larger problem of an unacceptably high rate of maternal mortality in Uganda. They hope that a declaration to this effect by the Court will force the Ugandan government to increase its budget for maternal healthcare.

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.

The government ignored recommendations by the House committee on the rising cost of living in regard to importation of genetically modified maize. The committee’s chairman, Mr Ababu Namwamba, said this on the second day of a tour of the North Rift town of Eldoret to find out the factors that led to increased cost of farm produce. His team held a discussion with farmers. 'In our preliminary report, we advised the government to consult with the Kenyans first before giving a green light to the importation of GMO in the country,' said Mr Namwamba.

Domestically abused women who are financially dependent on their abusers can now report the crime with the assurance that they will be able to get financial and medical support from the state, thanks to the country’s new law on domestic violence. Women’s campaigners have welcomed the introduction of the new law, which was signed into the statue books on 8 July, and which criminalises domestic violence and offers protection to victims and their families. Until now domestic violence had not been illegal in Angola - and on the rare occasions it reached court, it was prosecuted under rape, assault and battery laws.

Nomonde Vumazonke is one of about 100 learners from schools across the Cape Peninsula who have spent two nights camping outside Parliament in an attempt to pressure the Minister of Education to adopt Norms and Standards for all public schools in the country. Vumazonke, who is in grade 12 at Sangweni Senior Secondory in Khayelitsha, said she and her fellow learners needed the education department to set regulations that will list all the physical infrastructure schools require to function properly. This would ensure there is a basic infrastructure level that every school must meet, she said.

Ghana's President John Evans Atta Mills has chastised the media for reporting that he 'would institute measures to check the menace of homosexuality and lesbianism'. He allegedly made the statement at the Sunyani Central Ebenezer Presbyterian Church. President Mills was said to have personally telephoned the acting editor of the Ghanaian Times to reprimand him over a recent publication in the state-owned newspaper of the raging homosexual issue, even though the story was originally a Ghana News Agency story.

Glen Ford for

As part of a broad climate of political intolerance, incidents of torture of both activists and criminals in South Africa appear to be on a disturbing rise, writes Jane Duncan.

The Kennedy 12 have been acquitted on all charges. No defence was led as no case was made against any of the 12 by the prosecution. However, clear evidence of a police frame-up did emerge and the only two credible witnesses (an ANC leader and a police officer) both testified to the correctness of the Abahlali account of what happened back in September 2009. A great day.

More details to come. Now we celebrate.

Today we celebrate a victory as all twelve men of the Kennedy 12 were acquitted of all charges against them and released in the Durban Magistrates Court. We celebrate as these fathers, brothers and sons are able to finally reunite with their families and friends whose pain and suffering we can only imagine. This is a victory for the truth and a victory for the poor – indeed a wonderful gift on the birthday of Nelson Mandela!

We see this as a great day for the 12, their families, their movement and the struggle of the poor in South Africa.

Tunisia is set to hire thousands of new teachers while at the same time doing away with a long-derided aptitude test for those wishing to join the ranks of educators. Many teaching hopefuls said the Contest of Aptitude for Secondary Education Teachers (CAPES) was a barrier to employment and a source of corruption. The education ministry will hire 2,000 new teachers, 1,345 new superintendents and 120 new chief superintendents.

Of the 158 MPs in Zambia, just 22 are women. With women representing just 14 per cent of parliament, Zambia is one of the poorest performers on affirmative action for female politicians in the South African Development Community, SADC, a regional interparliamentary body made up of 15 member countries. Zambia will hold its presidential and legislative elections in October. The Regional Women's Parliamentary Caucus, a policy organ of the SADC, has set a goal for women to make up half of Zambia's parliament after these elections.

In what is being described by many Egyptians as the country's 'second revolution', tens of thousands are currently staging protests and sit-ins in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other cities in the biggest wave of protests since the fall of Hosni Mubarak on 11 February. The 18-day uprising toppled the former dictator, however, many demonstrators maintain that his legacy is alive and well in the current administration. Anger now is directed toward the ruling military council and caretaker prime minister Essam Sharaf's transitional government. This Al Jazeera page carries a series of photographs depicting events in Egypt.

South Africa’s LGBT community now has a financial service provider, Gaysure, catering exclusively for its needs. 'The gay community is a much lower risk when it comes to insurance needs and thus it is long overdue for not just another company targeting the LBGT market, but a company catering specifically for their needs with a niche product,' say Gaysure on their website. Products and services provided by Gaysure include, car and household insurance, business insurance, life insurance, retirement planning and stock broking.

Children in Somalia are being systematically recruited to fight on frontlines, killed in indiscriminate attacks and denied an education, Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Other abuses include being flogged, and being forced to attend public stonings and amputations by Islamist groups, including al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab, the rights watchdog said in a report. 'As a child in Somalia, you risk death all the time: you can be killed, recruited and sent to the frontline, punished by al Shabaab because you are caught listening to music or "wearing the wrong clothes", be forced to fend for yourself because you have lost your parents or even die because you don't have access to adequate medical care,' Michelle Kagari, Amnesty's deputy director for Africa, said in a statement.

Having spent years uprooted by conflict, farmers in northern Uganda are again facing tough times – this time caused by the weather. In late June, Joel Lacung and Margaret Ataro of Got-Ngur village in northern Uganda’s Nwoya district, laboured under the scorching sun as they drove two pairs of oxen to prepare their land for the approaching second rice-planting season. They were among many rural farmers in Uganda whose livelihoods have been affected by increasingly erratic rainfall and high temperatures. Most were displaced by the years of conflict with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and remain poor and unable to acquire farm inputs.

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.'

Ron Singer interviews Abiye Teklemariam, founding editor of 'Addis Neger’ (‘New Addis’), which until 2009 was Ethiopia’s leading dissident newspaper.

The coming together of six East African states to sign the Cooperative Framework Agreement regulating use of the Nile – the first basin-wide agreement to attract the support of a majority of Nile riparian states – has elicited widespread media coverage. But, warns Fasil Amdetsion, ‘significant aspects of what appears in print is wrong.’

Mandela Park Backyarders would like to congratulate Abahlali Basemjondolo for striking back against the government to free their comrades. Struggling for justice has proved to be packed with obstacles put before us by those we put in power through ballot paper.

'Confronting Female Genital Mutilation: The Role of Youth and ICTs in Changing Africa' by Marie-Hélène Mottin-Sylla and Joëlle Palmieri is a new title from Pambazuka Press. For 25 years campaigners from within and outside Africa have worked on eradicating female genital mutilation. This fascinating short book reports succinctly but in depth on an innovative research and action project among girls and boys in francophone West Africa that explored whether young people’s use of information and communication technology could contribute to the abandonment of female genital mutilation.

‘We celebrate the victory that the shack-dwellers movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, has won in court today where ALL of the "Kennedy 12" have finally been acquitted of ALL charges against them,’ Bishop Rubin Phillip has said in a statement issued on 18 July. ‘Abahlali's victory today is a victory for all who speak the truth; it is a victory that should give courage to the poor of eThekweni, of South Africa, and the world who organise and mobilise together, and who speak and act for themselves.’

On the occasion of Nelson Mandela’s 93rd birthday, Elizabeth Barad reflects on the lives of anti-apartheid heroes, the late Walter and Albertina Sisulu and Helen Suzman.

The Civil Society Coalition for Quality Basic Education has asked Malawi president Bingu wa Mutharika to transform the Commission of Inquiry on the University impasse into a Dispute Resolution Dialogue Committee in order to resolve the stand off which has led to the firing of four Chancellor College Academic Staff Union (CCASU) lecturers. The Coalition observes that since the president, as a Chancellor, is subject to the inquiry’s probe, the objectivity of the commission is likely to be compromised as he is known to have already taken sides and so the commission may be forced to change its modus operandi to accommodate him.

Everyone is trying to hide behind somebody else.

Residents of a Philippi informal settlement and police have clashed again as protests over electricity supply entered their third day. Three police Nyalas cordoned off the corner of New Eisleben and Sheffield roads on 21 July when protests flared up again in Siyahlala. Residents set containers on fire and used them to block off sections of Sheffield Road, while teenagers and children lined the road, armed with rocks, watching for police.

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.

Israel has violated the right to free expression by approving a law that penalises individuals and organisations that call for boycotting Israel, say IFEX members the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) and Human Rights Watch. The law, approved in a 47-to-38 vote by Parliament on 11 July, makes it a punishable offence to publicly call for a boycott - economic, cultural or academic - against Israel, its institutions or any area under its control.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned sweeping arrests and attacks on journalists, as well as censorship by the administration of Malawi President Bingu Wa Muthiraka against media outlets reporting on nationwide antigovernment protests that erupted on Wednesday 20 July. Police arrested a contributor to Nyasa Times, a UK-based online news site critical of the government, journalist Collins Mtika. Vitima Ndovi, a freelance journalist in the capital, Lilongwe, was also arrested.

'The death of newsprint represents the end of an era. And news gathering will not be replaced by the Internet,' argues this article about the US news industry, but which has relevance for the industry globally. 'Journalism, at least on the large scale of old newsrooms, is no longer commercially viable. Reporting is time-consuming and labor-intensive. It requires going out and talking to people. It means doing this every day. It means looking constantly for sources, tips, leads, documents, informants, whistle-blowers, new facts and information, untold stories and news. The steady decline of the news business means we are plunging larger and larger parts of our society into dark holes and opening up greater opportunities for unchecked corruption, disinformation and the abuse of power.'

A new report from Action Against Hunger and the Oakland Institute, 'Achieving Regional Integration: The Key to Success for the Fight Against Hunger in West Africa' assesses the relevance and potential of regional institutions and mechanisms in reducing hunger and undernutrition in West Africa - where chronic hunger remains pervasive - decades after the devastating droughts of the 1970s. The report analyzes the role regional institutions have in the fight against hunger and argues that, despite weaknesses, the existence and commitment of regional institutions is key. 'Many issues, such as price volatility, are regional by essence and cannot be tackled effectively by individual countries. Without integration, most West African states will remain subject to the agenda and goodwill of international donors, institutions, and richer countries. Resource-poor African governments need to implement regional policies for sustainable food production, smoother regional trade, and regulated agricultural markets.'

A United Nations report has said that disconnecting people from the internet is a human rights violation and against international law. The report railed against France and the United Kingdom, which have passed laws to remove accused copyright scofflaws from the internet. It also protested blocking internet access to quell political unrest

The conditions agreed to by Walmart and Massmart as part of the Competition Tribunal’s conditional approval of their merger could be abandoned if the case has to be reheard by the tribunal. This is just one of the possible outcomes of what is increasingly being seen as a high-risk attempt by three government departments to extract additional concessions from Walmart and Massmart. Not only might the country lose the commitments that have been made by the merging parties but it is possible that Walmart could approach the US government and in turn the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it is put under unacceptable levels of pressure to agree to additional commitments.

More than three years ago, peace accords signed in the North Kivu provincial capital, Goma, were supposed to signal the end of violence and displacement in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, as the country heads for general elections in November, armed factions continue to destabilize the country. In this analysis, IRIN explores the sticking points in the protracted conflict, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.

At least 38 soldiers have been arrested over an assassination attempt on president Alpha Conde of Guinea, who was nearly killed last Tuesday when his home was bombarded with rockets. An official of the Guinean government told the AP news agency on Thursday that many of the men arrested have ties to Guinea's previous military rulers. Conde, 73, escaped unhurt from the incident, but a member of his presidential guard was killed and two others injured as they fought off the attack for over two hours.

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.