World grain reserves are so dangerously low that severe weather in the US or other food-exporting countries could trigger a hunger crisis next year. Failing harvests in the US, Ukraine and other countries this year have eroded reserves to their lowest level since 1974. The US, which has experienced record heatwaves and droughts in 2012, now holds in reserve a historically low 6.5% of the maize that it expects to consume in the next year, says the United Nations.

Kenya is seeing a rapid rise in the number of mobile phone apps built by local designers - and both farmers and cash-strapped councils are reaping the benefits. In Nairobi, 'tech-incubators' are springing up, places designed to give young IT entrepreneurs the space - and sometimes a bit of cash - to develop their ideas.

Hundreds of Kenyan girls, including some as young as three years old, filed a petition in the High Court to try to force the police to investigate and prosecute rape cases they say have been ignored. The group of more than 240 girls accuse police of demanding bribes to investigate rape, refusing to record rapes unless the victims produced witnesses, and claiming victims had consented.

The UN Security Council has approved a resolution that presses West African nations to speed up preparations for an international military intervention aimed at reconquering northern Mali. The text unanimously approved by the council also urges authorities in Bamako and representatives of 'Malian rebel groups' controlling the north to 'engage, as soon as possible, in a credible negotiation process'.

Tanzania will have no sympathy for illegal immigrants from the Horn of Africa, even if caught using the country only as a transit route, a minister said. The minister for East African Cooperation, Mr Samuel Sitta, said during a visit to the Holili border post in the north that Tanzania was bound by international obligations not to offer passage for illegal migrants. He said there was a danger of the country being caught up in conflicts with other states if it allowed illegal immigrants to pass through its territory on the so-called humanitarian grounds.

Many Sierra Leonean women who are unable to repay small debts end up in prison for want of decent legal representation after their creditors report them to the police, meaning that civil disputes turn into criminal cases. An estimated 10 percent of all charges issued by the Sierra Leonean police involve the failure to repay small debts. The criminalization of debt upsets the livelihoods of the accused who are mostly petty traders. Their children at times are forced to live with them in detention and their incarceration often breaks up families and deepens poverty, said Advocaid, a Sierra Leonean civil society group helping women and children offenders.

Questions are being raised about how Tanzania’s plentiful mining sector will be affected by a potential gold rush from Canadian extractive companies, after the two countries concluded a foreign investment agreement. Jamie Kneen, a spokesperson for Mining Watch Canada who deals with Canadian companies operating in Africa, said the agreement is mostly just 'a political gesture'. Some of the explorations are happening in fragile ecosystems, including a wetland area and a game reserve, he argued, and local community groups are already beginning to voice concerns.

South African police have arrested 90 people after a protest at a mine turned violen, officials say. The miners were from the Gold Fields KDC Kloof mine in Westonaria, about 45km west of Johannesburg. More than 5,000 workers reportedly staged a sit-in there to demand better pay.

Somali refugees across the world have passed the one million person mark, said the United Nations refugee agency, highlighting the growing need for an end to conflict in the Horn of Africa. The vast majority of those refugees are living in regional neighbours, such as Kenya, Yemen, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Tanzania and Uganda, the UNHCR said.

Blog Africa is a Country has a post about the furore caused when one of Sweden’s most prestigious national dailies blew up an article on its front page about cultural director at Stockholm Culture House Berhang Miri (a Swede of Iranian descent) reshelving Hergé’s Tintin books because of their perceived colonial taint, generating heated press and internet debate. The blog post is an interview with Nathan Hamelberg, member of The Betweenship group (which probes racist structures from a young, mixed-heritage perspective), to explain the discussion and its wider implications in Swedish society.

Some 154 million people were reportedly driven further into poverty in Southern countries as a result of speculation-induced food price hikes in 2007-08. What are the best strategies for bringing about the structural change needed that progressive activists can lend their support to? asks this Corner House report. The workshop presentation, while endorsing regulatory measures including banning certain investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and vetting of derivative-based financial instruments, cautions against becoming focussed on regulation alone as an answer. Also crucial is the promotion of non-derivative, socially-based mechanisms to protect farmers and consumers from volatile food prices, as well as price interventions that do not pit Northern farmers against their Southern counterparts.

The last part of Africa to be decolonised, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, remains one of the most peaceful. Yet, despite comprehensive protocols and agreements, SADC faces acute challenges characterised by tensions between member states, resource deficits, citizens’ exclusion, social discontent and limited internal and external coordination. Regional security cooperation requires adept infrastructures underwritten by political commitment; but the organisation’s Secretariat appears powerless to ensure policy implementation, says this International Crisis Group report.

Offering free education, making it compulsory and supporting it politically has been the winning strategy behind Burundi's successful bid to ensure that virtually all children get a primary school education. In this interview from the Africa Report website, UNICEF's representative in Burundi, Johannes Wedenig, expatiates on government's positive role in this development. There have been some major drawbacks to such an avalanche of new students, Wedenig admits. Not enough of qualified teachers, classrooms, desks and books has created real bottlenecks. So one of the 'side effects' to the surge in school attendance, notes Wedenig, has been overcrowding and an increase in the pupil-to-teacher ratio.

The South African Democratic Teachers Union has given Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga seven days to act on the Limpopo textbooks report. The union said a thorough investigation was necessary into those named in the presidential task team report on the Limpopo textbook crisis. 'Sadtu calls for the investigation to take place as a matter of urgency and no stone to be left unturned because we don't want to see a repeat of [the] Limpopo saga in 2013,' said general secretary Mugwena Maluleke.

The vast majority of pirate vessels illegally fishing off Sierra Leone are accredited to export their catches to Europe, an environmentalist group says. A report by the Environmental Justice Foundation says West Africa has the highest levels of illegal fishing in the world. Its says pirate fishermen fish inside exclusion zones, attack local fisherman and refuse to pay fines.

The panel writing Egypt's new constitution has released an unfinished draft of the document, calling for a public debate on the charter in the face of mounting criticism. The parliament-selected panel is dominated by Islamists. It has come under criticism from liberals and secularists who accuse the panel of seeking to place limits in the new constitution on religious freedoms and women's rights.

Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore has ordered 1,000 combat troops to be deployed in the northern region bordering crisis-hit Mali to guard against kidnappings, the foreign minister said. A complex web of rebel groups, including fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim), has controlled northern Mali since a coup in the country on 22 March threw the country into turmoil.

Kenya's President Mwaki Kibaki late Tuesday shattered MPs' dream to award themselves a controversial bonus of more than $110,000 each as a send off when he declined to sanction the deal stating the country’s economy was unable to shoulder the extra financial burden. The Head of State refused to assent to the Finance Bill 2012, saying that the country could not afford the colossal perks that the MPs had awarded themselves in form of a severance package totalling $25m.

The annual World Bank meetings opened on 11 October in Tokyo. On the agenda: a sluggish global economic outlook marked by a Eurozone crisis and uncertainty in the US. And with the BRIC bloc failing in its reputation as motor of growth, fears grow over the fall out for Africa, says this article from Africa Report.

Most Kenyans favour the International Criminal Court (ICC) trials but in an ironic twist, would vote for candidates facing crimes against humanity charges at the same court. This is according to an opinion poll by Gallup whose results were published by The Economist, an authoritative world affairs magazine. The survey also revealed that Kenyans voters would also vote for the candidate who would save the four from the trials during the March 2013 General Election.

The World Bank has rejected a call to suspend its involvement in large scale agricultural land acquisition following the release of a major report by the international aid agency Oxfam on the negative impact of international land speculation in developing countries. 'We share the concerns Oxfam raised in their report,' the bank stated in an unusually lengthy public rebuttal to the Oxfam Report. 'However, we disagree with Oxfam’s call for a moratorium on World Bank Group…investments in land intensive large-scale agricultural enterprises, especially during a time of rapidly rising global food prices.'

On 9 October, the Institute for Policy Studies sent the newly appointed World Bank president Dr. Jim Kim a letter signed by 58 organizations from around the world urging him to champion financial transaction taxes (FTT) – a tiny tax on stocks, bonds, currency and other derivatives trades - as an innovative way to raise much-needed money to address climate change, health and other development priorities in poorer countries. The groups – including WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, AFL-CIO, World AIDS Campaign, United Methodist Church, and the Main Street Alliance – come from a broad cross-section of civil society and show a growing consensus that it's time for developed countries to get serious about meeting their promises on climate and development finance.

Sign a petition demanding their release in the absence of a fair and transparent trial.

President Francois Hollande looks set to make African leaders sweat at a gathering of French-speaking nations in Democratic Republic of Congo this week, when he attempts to cut murky ties with France's former colonies. Hollande has vowed to promote democracy in a continent known for flawed elections and 'sit-tight' leaders, and, unlike his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, he will travel to Africa without any company executives, something that would 'muddy the waters', one adviser said.

The United Nations and other international actors must now create a different plan for the restoration of peace and decent livelihoods to the people of Libya.

It is estimated that in South Africa around 2,500 children develop cancer every year, but less than a third (700 children) are actually diagnosed and treated. 'We suspect some cases are treated, but just not reported [to the Paediatric Cancer Registry], but many go untreated because they are just never diagnosed,' says Professor Christina Stefan, head of Paediatric Oncology at Tygerberg Hospital.

The illegal and fraudulent scheme is an attempt by the government to shirk its responsibility of providing adequate pension to retired workers, who have committed their active and productive lives to the society.

In the absence of any credible, scientific evidence that the long-term consumption of GM foods is indeed safe for humans, we need to call on key actors in the food industry to stop using GM products.

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria visited several communities in Kogi, Edo, Cross River, Benue and Delta States inundated by waters and have issued their findings in a special report available on their website. Excessive rains are believed to have caused the overflow of dams and the flooding thereof of communities along the banks of River Niger and Benue in Nigeria. The floods have led to destruction of farmlands across the affected states, complete inundation of hundreds of communities, loss of property in unquantifiable sums and about 104 deaths going by official statistics from the Nigerian government.

The deeper causes of the miners’ tragedy are to be found in a pattern of clampdowns on workers’ struggles. Local authorities have a track record of frustrating and even prohibiting gatherings to protect powerful mining interests.

In rehashing well-known but better forgotten facts to whip up sentiments, Achebe runs the risk of stoking the fires of antagonism among Nigerians. It is a controversy he can ill-afford given his age and fame.

The high cost of maintaining parliaments, some of them mere rubber-stamping money guzzlers, is a luxury African economies can ill afford, as the Kenyan and Nigerian cases show.

Anglo-Dutch oil and gas super major, Shell, will appear in a Dutch court to account for damage it caused in Nigeria. This is the first time in history, an European company is appearing in a Dutch court. Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) made this known to AkanimoReports in an online statement.

Nairobi's Kenyatta University has opened a campus in the north-east town of Dadaab and courses will be open to Kenyan citizens and refugees living in the nearby refugee complex, the world's biggest with almost half-a-million people. UNHCR officials working in Dadaab attended the formal opening of the tertiary education facility, which will welcome its first students in January for diploma, undergraduate and master's courses in subjects such as finance, marketing, project management, education, public administration, community mobilization, peace and conflict studies.

Whereas there are various causes of a breakdown in mental health, LGBT persons have been known to suffer serious mental health breakdowns on account of their sexuality and identities and the expression of the same thereof. Several studies suggest that gay men, lesbians and bisexuals appear to have higher rates of some mental disorders compared with heterosexuals. Discrimination may help fuel these higher rates.

Oil and gas are likely to play an ever more prominent role in Ghana’s fast-growing economy following new discoveries both in the Jubilee field and the Tano Basin. Italian giant Eni, made a major discovery last month in the offshore Cape Three Points block, some 50 kilometres from the coast. Eni is continuing to drill other wells to confirm the feasibility of commercial development, but the production test revealed that this new well is capable of producing about 5,000 high quality barrels of oil per day (bpd).

With a couple of clicks, a photo appeared on the Burundian human rights activist’s computer screen: a hillside; a prone, male body, its severed head lying next to it; another man, naked, sitting, ankles and wrists bound, still alive when the photo was taken but since deceased; the uniformed legs of several other men, allegedly police, standing over the scene; the back of a jeep-type vehicle. 'This is reality,' said Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa, chairman of the Association for the Protection of Human and Prisoners’ Rights, in his small Bujumbura office, adding that the photo was taken in April 2011.

Since the Patriotic Front government of President Michael Sata took power in 2011, several operations have destroyed dwellings deemed illegal. The previous government, helmed by President Rupiah Banda, was perceived as soft on corruption; its party supporters accused of displacing legal land owners to sell their land. In September 2012 about 100 middle-class houses were pulled down in Lusaka. Over 50 houses were demolished in the Zamtan shanty area of Kitwe, Copperbelt Province, and in Eastern Province, about 100 houses in a forest reserve of the provincial capital, Chipata, have been identified for destruction.

Despite ongoing concerns from Egypt and Sudan over Ethiopia’s ambitious Renaissance Dam project along the Blue Nile River, the Nile Tripartite Committee is in the country to study the impacts the dam will have along the country’s Nile River. The International Panel of Experts (IPoE), consists of six experts from Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, and another four international experts. The experts committee, so far in its study has hinted that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will have no negative impact to down stream countries; Egypt and Sudan. However, its final findings and recommendations on the impacts of the controversial project will be submitted to the governments of the three countries in less than 9 months.

Experts around the globe are calling for a joint effort to tackle the world's leading cause of suffering and disability - mental health disorders. Nearly 450 million people have mental health disorders and more than three-quarters live in developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), eight in every 10 of those living in developing nations receive no treatment at all.

The US ambassador for war crimes, Stephen Rapp, said a lack of resources impedes the tracing of millions of dollars allegedly stolen by former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was recently sentenced to 50 years for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Rapp told the Associated Press that the special court does not have the funds to trace Taylor's assets but some investigations will be done by the UN sanctions committee.

At least 35 people were killed on Monday when Nigerian soldiers opened fire after a bomb blast struck their convoy in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, nurses at the hospital that received the bodies said. The nurses in the Umaru Shehu hospital said 30 of the dead were in civilian clothes, while another five wore military uniforms.

Nigeria's attorney general said the country would not appeal an international ruling that handed the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to its neighbour Cameroon ten years ago, despite calls from the Senate to re-open the dispute. Nigeria gave up Bakassi in 2008 after years of political disputes, legal skirmishes and violence that killed dozens of people and nearly pushed the two nations into war. Its decision not to pursue a legal challenge was an attempt to avoid a new diplomatic row over the disputed territory.

The UN refugee agency has for the first time issued guidelines for UNHCR staff and other aid workers on how to identify and support male victims of rape and other sexual violence in conflict and displacement situations. The new publication, compiled by UNHCR's Division of International Protection, was launched at a recent debate in Geneva on the rarely broached subject. The participants included academics, aid workers, women's rights activists, lawyers and diplomats.

The Egyptian doctors' strike is entering its 'decisive week', the strike's general committee said. The doctors began an open-ended strike on 1 October to demand better working conditions and an increase in the healthcare budget. The committee confirmed its commitment to abide by decisions of the Doctors' Syndicate's general assembly and to ignore decisions by the syndicate's leadership which is 'simply against the strike'.

Cameroonians are burning increasing amounts of charcoal for cooking and heating as the country’s electricity and gas supplies fail to keep pace with demand, raising concerns among environmentalists about growing deforestation and carbon emissions in the country. At local markets in Yaounde, the country’s capital, sales of charcoal are booming. The trade is especially attractive to young people who are jumping at a rare employment opportunity, and even older traders are now changing their wares.

The extraction of the much needed water from a large underground aquifer in northern Namibia may need to wait for further studies, officials have warned at a water investment conference. The aquifer, discovered in July, may contain enough water to sustain about one million people living in the area for 400 years at the current consumption rate, as well as boost development through irrigation in this poor, heavily overgrazed area where women and children walk for hours to get fresh water from boreholes.

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the US ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three US counterterror officials and a former intelligence official.