Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on Thursday granted audience to the head of Madagascar’s transitional authority, Andry Rajoelina, the Senegalese press Agency (APS) reported. “I am leaving with a feeling of relief in the sense that the situation which prevails in Madagascar has been clarified to President Wade who is leading mediation between the two parties,” said Mr Rajoelina, who ousted President Marc Ravalomanana in March.

The West African Development Bank (BOAD) has loaned Mali a bout US$14 million for the partial financing of road projects in the capital, Bamako. Official sources said the money would be used to help build a multiple interchan geat La Paix roundabout in Bamako, develop the city section of the Main Road (RN 5) and Kwame Nkrumah Avenue.

The Chadian government handed 82 under-18 child soldiers over to UNICEF during an official ceremony. The children were caught following armed clashes between the Chadian national army and rebels of the Union of the Resistance Forces (UFR).

Africa Spectrum no. 1/2009 has just been published. It has established itself among the internationally acknowledged and accredited peer-reviewed African Studies journals and is included in the relevant internationally recognized abstracting and indexing lists. Africa Spectrum is with immediate effect an Open Access journal. We thereby seek to contribute towards reducing the existing asymmetric relations in the global academic world. As of the next issue (no. 2/2009) Africa Spectrum will also be published exclusively in English. We would like to encourage all to visit our web site and invite scholars to submit manuscripts:

Prof Philip Alston, a UN human rights official, on Thursday released his final report in which he accuses top police officials of running death squads and describes Kenyan courts as “slow and corrupt”. Describing the state of Kenyan justice system is “terrible”, Prof Alston said: “Investigation, prosecution and judicial processes are slow and corrupt.”

Harare Magistrate, Catherine Chimanda on 28 May 2009 ruled that editors of the Zimbabwe Independent , Vincent Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure, appear for trial on 16 June 2009. The two are charged under Section 31 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act which criminalises the communication of statements that are likely to undermine public confidence in the law enforcement agents.

Sudan's army says it has taken control of a town near its border with Chad, recently seized by rebels. Sudan says more than 60 people were killed during the fighting with the rebel Justice and Equality Movement around the town of Kornoi, in Darfur. The news comes as African leaders meet for talks, partly on regional conflict.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda should ensure that the recommendations of the Uganda Human Rights Commission are carried out and that independent commissioners are appointed promptly to the new Equal Opportunities Commission, the Human Rights Network-Uganda, the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative and Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Museveni.

High-level talks at a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) meeting in Gaborone last week failed to produce an agreement on the signing of the interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union. A week after the trade ministers of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Angola and Mozambique - the SADC-EPA configuration - met in Botswana's capital there is still no clarity about the region's position on a trade deal with the European Union (EU).

The IDMC has released a new profile of the situations of internal displacement in Sudan. As a result of Sudan’s numerous conflicts, about 4.9 million people remain internally displaced in the country; together they make up the single largest internally displaced population in the world.

Sub-Saharan Africa will receive around $10 billion from the IMF in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to help its economies weather the global financial crisis, the Fund's chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Monday. As part of a $1.1 trillion deal to combat the world economic downturn agreed at April's G20 summit, the IMF will issue $250 billion worth of SDRs, which can be used to boost foreign currency reserves.

The publication of potential “mismatches” between prevention strategies and the actual causes of HIV/AIDS in some African countries has already helped to improve efforts to combat the disease, according to the lead United Nations agency on the issue. The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said that a series of reports from Kenya, Lesotho, Swaziland and Uganda showed a “relative lack of evidence-based policies and programmes.”

The number of Somalis fleeing the latest escalation of fighting in and around Mogadishu has surpassed 67,000, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported today, adding that worsening security has also hampered aid delivery to the capital. Intense fighting between the Government and the opposition Al-Shabaab and Hisb-ul-Islam groups erupted in several north-west areas of Mogadishu on 8 May.

Disgruntled parents of Sojini Secondary school in South West Zimbabwe have expressed their anger towards the headmaster of the school whom they accuse of trying to milk them dry by demanding outrageous fees structures. Some of the parents revealed to AfricaNews that the school which is located in Mbembesi rural district, was demanding 10 and 16 buckets of maize plus some chickens for O and A’ level students respectively.

The country’s security chiefs have taken the current political fight over the reappointment of Gideon Gono a step further, threatening to take up arms to prevent the removal of the Reserve Bank Governor from his post. Robert Mugabe on Monday declared that Gono, his money-man for many years, will retain his job despite the political deadlock that has been created with the MDC over Gono’s position.

It is in Egypt's interest to show more respect for human rights, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday, hitting a raw nerve in U.S.-Egypt relations ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama. Clinton met representatives of Egyptian pro-democracy groups at the State Department one day after she received Egypt's foreign minister.

2009 is the year of the Big Change. Cheaper and more abundant international fibre capacity will come to East Africa and 2010 will see the same happen in West Africa. New cross-border fibre connections will tie more countries together: two announcements are in the news sections below. But Africa is in danger of getting all the pipes and hardware in place and missing out on thinking about the user and the services and applications they might use.

"Air cargo companies involved in illicit or destabilizing arms transfers to African conflict zones have also been repeatedly contracted to deliver humanitarian aid and support peacekeeping operations, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from a press release, the executive summary of the report, and chapter 3, with data related to past conflicts in Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and to continuing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Sudan.

Niger's president has dissolved parliament after the country's constitutional court ruled against plans to hold a referendum on whether to allow him a third term in office. Mamadou Tandja gave the order to dissolve the legislature on Tuesday, hours after the court said a move by the ruling coalition to hold a public vote on a third presidential term was illegal.

In 1997, the people of Benin were definitely ready for the arrival of cellular phones, referred to as GSMs in the area (GSM stands for Global System for Mobile communication, a specific mobile standard). The fixed telephone was not widely adopted due to a lack of bandwidth and of technology adequate enough to allow the volume of connections necessary to serve Benin.

An innovative new campaign was recently launched in Johannesburg, that aims to ensure that young people are empowered to use their cell phones and the Internet for positive self expression. The campaign was launched by Girls’Net, a daughter project of Women’sNet. Says Faith Nkomo of Girls’Net “80% of young people have access to a cellphone – we must be acting to make sure we take advantage of this tool to help young people access opportunities and create positive social spaces to interact in.”

Amnesty International has said Rwandan gays and lesbians face serious hostilities, harassment and intimidation in the East African state. According to the Amnesty International 2009 report, the treatment of the lesbian community is not isolated but indicative of general short-fall in the respect of human rights, saying the Rwanda government reacted with hostility to criticism on gay and lesbian community.

The Central African Republic (CAR) has been in the throes of a humanitarian crisis for more than a decade. Army mutinies, coups and attempted coups, rebellions, gangs that kidnap for ransom and, more recently, elements of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army have made life for civilians, especially in the north, extremely challenging, unpredictable, and very dangerous. As IRIN’s new documentary film, Under the Gun, demonstrates, many Central Africans have little say over where they live even.

When Nora Adhiambo, 21, started working as a housekeeper for a family in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, she expected to cook, clean and look after their young children; not that she would have to regularly have sex with her employer. "He would force me to have sex with him; every time he would sleep with me without a condom and this went on for two years," she told IRIN/PlusNews. "He threw me out when I told him I was pregnant; I realised later that I had not only left that house with a pregnancy but also HIV."

The war against HIV/AIDS, which has too often been fought in plush offices and conference centres, needs to be reclaimed by people in developing countries, who are most affected, or it will continue to be a losing battle. This was the message from the Global Citizens Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, organized by international anti-poverty agency ActionAid, and attended by a broad range of organisations in the field of HIV and AIDS to discuss using social mobilization to "repackage" the HIV response.

A radio producer was gunned down last week in crossfire in Mogadishu, while another journalist died on 26 May from gunshot wounds suffered while covering fighting in central Somalia in April. They are the third and fourth journalists to be killed in Somalia this year, report the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The Africa Advocacy Coordinator leads the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s advocacy and strategic communication initiatives in Africa. The Coordinator is focused primarily on women’s rights and armed violence in Sudan and Darfur, but also provides analysis and support for other Nobel Women’s Initiative issue areas, including violence and repression in Burma and Iran, climate justice and nuclear disarmament.

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative would be will be organising a side event in collaboration with Eastern Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders project and African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum (APCOF) at United Nations Office in Geneva (UNOG) on Extrajudicial Killings in Kenya and Police Reforms in East Africa on the same the day the UN Special rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings Philip Alston is to present a report on Kenya on 3 June 2009 from 2:00 -4:00 PM in room number 25.

Pervasive use of ethnic and religious stereotypes by law enforcement across Europe is harming efforts to combat crime and terrorism, according to a report released today by the Open Society Justice Initiative. Ethnic profiling occurs most often in police decisions about who to stop, question, search, and, at times, arrest. Yet there is no evidence that ethnic profiling actually prevents terrorism or lowers crime rates.

OI are looking for a consultant to work a total of 30 days over a three – four month period to undertake project work relevant to the OI digital presence. We are preferably looking for someone who can work two days per week. The successful candidate will need to be a highly experienced digital communications professional who is able to come into the post and take over on both digital campaigns work and web managerial tasks with confidence. We particularly need support from a web specialist to help us move forward on some areas of site development.

cc Considering Tanzania's position in relation to food crises around the world, Ng’wanza Kamata laments the inability of Jakaya Kikwete's government to develop the 'agricultural revolution' it once promised. Highlighting that food production difficulties have over the years invariably been attributed to drought and peasant farmers' supposed laziness and poor agricultural methods, Kamata argues that the government should now begin to look in the mirror and acknowledge its own shortcomings. With the budget for agriculture consistently low despite the sector's support for around 80 per cent of Tanzania's total population, the author contends that the country's producers essentially remain subject to the same exploitative relations first imposed during the colonial period. In the face of contemporary political elites' willingness to embrace biofuel production methods, Kamata stresses that the touted agricultural revolution should prioritise the needs and role of the country's poor agricultural majority and not simply bend to the will of foreign corporations.

cc Deeply concerned about the profound discrimination experienced by Kenya's transgender community, Audrey Mbugua berates Kenyan society for its unjust treatment of a marginalised group. Rather than creating 'transgender rights' per se, Mbugua calls upon the country to view transgender people as human beings like any other group. Deeply scathing of Kenya's entrenched 'trans-phobia' and the divisive nature of different groups' competing for recognition, the author implores those marginalised to see themselves as part of a wider struggle for justice that transcends identity politics.

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cc Mphutlane wa Bofelo comments on the ‘barbarity of wage-slavery’, after confronting working conditions at a hotel in Mauritania, where staff work long hours for meagre wages. This situation prevails in the restaurant and hotel industry throughout the world, writes wa Bofelo, with big South African companies ‘paying their workers as little as three hundred rand per month and some who do not give a salary at all, paying their labourers with the tips from their clients’. Wa Bofelo is disturbed that ‘even Muslim-owned businesses have resorted to this… practice of employing people without a salary’. Halaal certification, wa Bofelo argues, should take into account labour-relations practices, labour rights and human rights culture, not just whether a enterprise is Muslim-owned or has prayer facilities.

cc Dambisa Moyo’s argument that aid is detrimental to Africa’s development has made her a star on the literary and academic circuit, writes Ronald Elly Wanda, but it isn’t true. Moyo’s recent book Dead Aid, Wanda says, makes no ‘correlation between Africa’s development and its accompanying social and historical conditions’ nor does it explore the possibility that ‘exogenous factors have and continue to hamper development in Africa’. If Moyo’s argument that Africa’s culture of dependency is to blame for its woes was true, writes Wanda, the economies of countries which have received virtually no foreign aid – such as Eritrea, Mauritania and Somalia – should have improved notably, which is not the case. The real problem, Wanda argues, is not aid itself but the way in which it is structured and delivered.

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The Congolese people do not have what it takes to be one nation, Digital Congo writes in response to call for a united country. There is no where else in the world, says Digital Congo, where people who have had such a history of oppression and exploitation ‘would not have the capacity and the willingness to fight for their country's development, rule of law, and good governance’. As a ‘people’ we do not share common interest, common history, and common vision of our future, says Digital Congo. Most people in most parts of Congo ‘identify themselves with nations in the neighbouring countries where they have a common culture, aspiration and blood ties’, and would rather fight for neighbouring countries. While secession is still seen as a controversial idea, as long as Congo remains a single state, ‘all Congolese people will never live up to their potentials’ Digital Congo suggests.

Underlining the importance of South–South cooperation and a new 'look east' policy for the new South African premier, Sanusha Naidu considers the prospects for the country's foreign policy under Jacob Zuma's presidency. With China likely looking to diversify its risk portfolio through providing loans to companies like the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Naidu highlights South African banks' probable desire to serve as intermediaries between the African continent and India's burgeoning private sector.