A decision by Kenya’s chief justice to introduce the post of female judge in Shari'ah courts is sparking a heated controversy in the African country, with Muslim scholars lashing out at the move. Kenyan Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has earlier unveiled plans to introduce a post of female magistrate in the Islamic courts. He said that the move is part of judicial reforms in the African country, a claim rejected by Muslim scholars.

One of the post election violence suspects at the Hague, Uhuru Kenyatta, says that Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister should take political responsibility for ordering a mass action after the announcement of presidential election winner in 2007 in which President Kibaki was declared the winner. Uhuru said that the violence could have been stopped had Raila ordered so.

The World Bank has warned rich countries against considering cuts to development assistance at a time of growing fears over a potential global recession. 'The temptation is great when a crisis looms – as it does now - for rich countries to slash development assistance. This would be a grave mistake,' World Bank Vice President for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili, said.

Sick people have been left to their fate as Ghana’s doctors continue with their strike that began on 7 October over a salaries dispute, a move backed by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA). The actual dispute is with the government’s Fair Wages Commission (FWC) which the GMA is accusing of putting professionals with similar skills and job descriptions in different salary scales.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has condemned the ruling of the judge in charge of state disputes to shut down the satellite channel Tunisia TV. The judge designated to state disputes decided on 9 October to shut down Tunisia TV under the pretext of broadcasting an interview with Hemma Al-Hammami, leader of the Tunisian Communist Labor Party, following the launch of the electoral campaign.

A statement authored by Ruth Hall and Andries du Toit from the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) has described a proposal by the Democratic Alliance on tenure rights for poor people in former Bantustans as 'entirely unrealistic and probably almost impossible to implement'. 'The proposals they put forth are misguided, outmoded, and based on a mistaken analysis of the problem. They are likely to make matters worse, not better.'

There has been an increase in the number of cholera cases and deaths in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo where an outbreak has been ongoing since March, say humanitarian agencies. At least 6,910 cases and 384 deaths had been reported as of 3 October, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), compared with a total of 3,896 cases and some 265 deaths by 20 July 2011.

The counterfeit medicine business is a big business in Ghana. Experts say only 60 per cent of anti-malarial medicines in the country are genuine; the remaining 40 per cent are fake. As a result hundreds of people are dying yearly. But the institutions charged with the responsibility of dealing with the problem appear not to have the capacity to end it. This documentary investigates the counterfeit medicine business and reveals the business doesn’t look like ending now.

Every graduate in Ghana is mandated to do a year’s national service. The programme coordinated by the National Service Secretariat was introduced 30 years ago. The purpose was for graduate students to give their first fruits of labour to their country. Students should also be posted to areas where they can best apply the knowledge acquired at university. This documentary highlights concerns the programme is not achieving the purpose for which it was introduced.

At least 24 people have been killed and scores more injured in clashes between mostly Coptic demonstrators and military police outside the state television building in central Cairo. Essam Sharaf, Egypt's interim prime minister, called for a calm early on Monday morning as a curfew was imposed in central areas of the capital, including Tahrir Square. Egypt's leadership also held an emergency meeting late on Sunday to discuss the situation, with clashes also reported in Alexandria, Egypt's second city.

Police in the Tunisian capital have used tear gas in an attempt to disperse hundreds of protesters who were attacking authorities with stones and batons. The protesters, who are aligned with conservative Islamic groups, had gathered at the main university in Tunis on Sunday to protest against a ban on wearing the niqab, or full-face veil, as well as the closing of a mosque near the campus.

This article from Project Syndicate looks at Egypt’s public finances. 'The interest that the country pays on its foreign loans is larger than its budget for education, healthcare, and housing combined. Indeed, these debt-service costs alone account for 22% of the Egyptian government’s total expenditures. The impact has become impossible to ignore. With growing political uncertainty and a slowing economy, Egypt is likely to witness decreasing government revenues, increasing demands for urgent spending, and rising interest rates on government borrowing. This could lead to a fiscal catastrophe for the government at the very moment when the country is attempting a complicated political transition.'

Freedom Now! host Dedon Kamathi interviews Mahdi Nazemroaya, one of the last independent journalists in Tripoli, and former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, about Nazemroaya's findings regarding the fabricated claims that led to the US war on Libya.

Visit this Facebook page to find out more about the ecological Internet campaign against the hubris that humans can or should geoengineer our shared biosphere.

African countries which persecute gays will have their aid cut, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell has said. He was quoted by the Britain’s Mail on Sunday saying that already his country has cut aid to Malawi by £19million after two gay men were sentenced to 14 years hard labour. Mr Mitchell, one of Mr Cameron’s closest allies, is also threatening to impose further aid 'fines’ against Uganda and Ghana for hardline anti-gay and lesbian measures.

Malawi has said there is no reason to apologise to newly-elected President of Zambia Michael Sata over his deportation and declaration as a prohibited immigrant in 2007. Seventy-four-year Sata, elected President two weeks ago after beating a Mutharika-ally Rupiah Banda, on Saturday snubbed the Malawian leader’s invitation to attend the Comesa summit in protest against the Mutharika government and demanded for an apology concerning the 2007 quarrel.

The poorest countries in Africa are not merely the victims of natural calamities. They are also ravaged by the continued denial of market access as promised in the Doha trade negotiations, say African trade diplomats. Almost six years ago at the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Hong Kong ministerial meeting, the least-developed countries (LDCs) in the global trading regime, drawn largely from Africa, were assured that their industrial products will be given duty-free and quota-free market access in rich countries. Sadly, there are grave doubts now that these promises will be addressed at the WTO’s eighth ministerial meeting in December.

Food prices are likely to become more volatile in coming years, increasing the risk that more poor people in import-dependent countries will go hungry, the United Nations said in an annual report on food insecurity published on Monday. Global food price indices hit record highs in February and were a factor in the Arab Spring of unrest in north Africa and the Middle East. Prices have since eased but the UN report said economic uncertainty, low cereal reserves, closer links between energy and agriculture markets and rising risks of weather shocks were likely to cause more dramatic price swings in the future.

For a man who thrives on giving the impression he is in total control, Robert Mugabe surprised many people on Thursday when he admitted he could not call for elections when he wants them. Addressing the ZANU PF Central Committee in Harare Mugabe said: 'We were looking forward to holding elections soon but I’m not in control of the mechanism that would lay the road to elections this year.' For months ZANU PF was adamant that elections would be held this year.

After years of living in fear of showing her ID or driving licence to anyone, a transgender Durban woman can now proudly display her documents without being embarrassed or harassed. Her physical journey to womanhood started two years ago when she began hormone treatment and since then she has developed breasts, her facial hair has diminished and her weight has gone down by almost 30kg because the increase in oestrogen has led to a decrease in muscle mass. The task of changing her gender officially was much more difficult. Home Affairs said that since she had not undergone any gender reassignment surgery, her journey to womanhood was incomplete and her details could not be changed.

West Africa Network for Peace building (WANEP) in partnership with Crises Management Initiative (CMI) has launched a project on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in Accra. The initiative is aimed at harnessing the dynamics and socio-political impart of gender-based violence for sustainable peace processes in West Africa. The Project dubbed: 'Addressing GBV in Peace Processes in West Africa', hopes to increase the capacity of local and regional mediators in West Africa to address GBV more effectively in peace mediation processes.

Evicted from their homes in 2009 when the government initiated efforts to restore Kenya's largest water tower, the Mau Forest Complex, thousands of the affected families are still without permanent shelter. The fact that the country's policy on internally displaced persons (IDPs) has remained in draft form since 2009 does not give the evictees hope that their plight will be resolved soon.

Media reports that Zambian Watchdog reporter George Zulu is in police custody are not true, the reporter told the International Press Institute, while expressing concern that the newspaper's staff is being intimidated by police who want them to reveal their sources on a controversial story. IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie called on Zambia's new government to be diligent in protecting the rights of journalists to report freely and in calling to task police or other officials who would intimidate journalists or pressure them into revealing their sources.

A controversial hormone drug, long opposed by several Black, Latina and Native American women’s health groups, has found its way to Africa where new research has made some alarming discoveries. In the just-published study of seven African countries, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found that women who used the Pfizer drug Depo Provera – a hormone-based contraceptive injection - were twice as likely to acquire and pass on HIV as those who didn’t.

President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire is determined to apprehend compatriots he accuses of committing crimes during the country’s protracted post-election crisis. The position bumps against his other declared quest for national reconciliation. When he arrived in Accra on an official visit on 6 October, President Ouattara sought to proclaim national reconciliation but at the same time pushed for the arrest and repatriation to Cote d’Ivoire of persons who have been indicted for war crimes. Earlier, his foreign minister, Mr Daniel Kablan Duncan, had signed a tripartite agreement with Ghana and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of the approximately 18,000 Ivorian refugees.

Sierra Leone's opposition parties have announced an indefinite suspension of their participation in parliament, citing 'attacks on democracy' they say are being perpetrated by the governing All Peoples Congress (APC) party of President Ernest Bai Koroma. Among other things, they demanded the 'immediate' lifting of a ban by the police on political processions, rallies and public meetings.

A network of Pan-Africanists from Ubuntu Pan African Network and Pan Africanist Unity groups are initiating an invitation to Cynthia McKinney to serve as the African World Envoy starting 28 October 2011. It has been recognized that Cynthia McKinney, a former US Representative and 2008 Presidential Election Candidate, has contributed her voice and her life to justice and WORLD peace. She is a long time proponent of abolishing NATO and a tireless voice against the genocidal exploitation of humans and the environment by multinational companies and the West.

14 October will see the launch of the book 'The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive
Accumulation and the Peasantry'. The launch forms part of a day-long event taking place at Nyerere theatre one at the University of Dar es Salaam, which will see top academics discussing the theme of the book. Click on the link provided to access the full programme.

Morocco is to blame for the current stalemate in the talks to end the long dispute with Western Sahara, writes Ahmed Boukhari. Morocco has refused to discuss the nationalist Polisario Front’s proposal for a process of self-determination that would include independence.

For four decades the UN has clearly and repeatedly affirmed the right of the Sahrawi people to self-determination, writes Juan Soroeta Liceras. Morocco’s continued occupation of Western Sahara violates international law, just like the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Young Senia has spoken before delegates of the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee and met with politicians and NGOs in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Here she explains parallels between the Sahrawi tea ritual and the people’s quest for freedom.

'The Western Sahara is the last country in Africa that has not been correctly decolonised - instead, the right of the Sahrawi people to post-colonial independence has been frozen in time,' writes Konstantina Isidoros in introducing this special edition of Pambazuka News. 'If we are to take the rule of international law as our guiding foundation, then Morocco has blatantly defied international law twice, by its illegal invasion of someone else’s sovereign territory and by its illegal occupation that still continues today.'

Returning home from Algeria, Salama finds that as a Sahrawi living in occupied territory, he has ‘become a breathing person without a soul.’

A young woman is told she can only benefit from a land redistribution scheme if she provides sexual favours to the Moroccan official administrating it.

42-year old Hamdi would like to marry but he can’t afford to, thanks to his economic situation – one that is shared by many other Sahrawis in the occupied territory.

25 years old this year, El-Ouali Amidane is another Sahrawi prisoner of conscience serving a five-year sentence in a Moroccan prison, which everyone hopes will end this October 2011. He was jailed for taking part in a peaceful demonstration for self-determination inside the Moroccan Occupied Territory, as an active member of the Sahrawi human rights organisation CODESA. El-Ouali has become passionate about writing short stories; below we publish two pieces shared with international campaign networks by his family.

In 2011 Global Witness visited 67 communities in three provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This short film tells the stories of the people they met, who are impacted by the expansion of industrial-scale logging. A pattern of similarly devastating outcomes emerges. This film was shown at the World Bank’s annual meeting in Washington DC, September 2011. The World Bank is undertaking a review of its forest policies, such as those implemented in the DRC.

One of the striking features of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is that it is mainly being signed by Western/'developed' countries, says this post from ACTA is the last-gasp attempt of the US and the EU to preserve their intellectual monopolies. Much of the challenge to the old order is coming from the BRICS group of emerging countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Of those, the one in the vanguard of adopting innovative approaches to making knowledge widely accessible in the Internet age is Brazil. One of these approaches is a draft bill for a civil rights-based framework for the Internet.

AFRODAD has published a new report entitled ' Ecological Debt: the case of Tanzania'. The report interrogates and defines the concept of ecological debt, it traces the origins and applicability of the concept in Africa and more specifically in Tanzania, it identified the fact that repayment of Third World financial debt is having destructive effects on natural environments.

On 22 September, a shocking study from Oxfam International provided the evidence and insight on how the World Bank, coupled with the United Nations, used the carbon credit scheme introduced by Al Gore, and other green advocates, to literally rob landowners in the country of Uganda of their property, and even bringing about the death of a child when they burned down homes and villages. All so that a grove of trees could be planted on that land.

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Nine months after an uprising that deposed former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and inspired the Arab Spring, Tunisians elect politicians on 23 October to an assembly that will rewrite the country's constitution. Parties running candidates have agreed the assembly will sit for one year. An independent committee set up by Tunisia's caretaker government to oversee the poll said nearly 11,000 candidates would contest 218 seats in the assembly.

Some of Egypt’s Public Transit Authority (PTA) workers returned to work 4 October, after striking for two weeks. Workers from the Giza and Imbaba transit garages have remained on strike, however. The workers were on strike to demand fair wages and better work conditions.

Prior to the 2010 South Africa World Cup, submarine fibre optic cabling was laid to improve the speed and reliability of broadband. Despite this, Internet World Statistics reports that only 11.4 per cent of Africans have internet access, far below the global average of 30.2 per cent. Considering that a World Bank study suggests every 10 per cent of broadband penetration increases developing countries' per capita GDP growth by 1.38 per cent, the scarcity of Africa's online network has significant economic repercussions.

The ECOWAS Community Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on 26 September adjourned indefinitely its hearing over applications for the review of two landmark judgements brought before by it by Gambian authorities involving two Gambian journalists. The first relates to the illegal arrests and torture of Musa Saidykahn, a former editor-in-chief of the banned The Independent newspaper. In the second case, the Gambian government was ordered to release Chief Ebrima Manneh, a foreign editor of the privately-owned, pro-government the Daily Observer newspaper and compensate him. Costs were awarded against the authorities in both cases.

Uwezo Tanzania has completed its second Annual Learning Assessment and has found results similar to its first year: only three in 10 Standard Three pupils can read a Standard Two level Kiswahili story, only one in 10 Standard Three pupils can read a Standard Two level English story and only three in 10 Standard Three pupils can add, subtract and multiply at a Standard Two level.

Three former Anglo American workers who were left destitute and devastated by lung disease acquired in their line of work have expressed their desire for justice, reports The New Age Online. Wilson Mafulwane, Daniel Thakamakau and Alpheos Blom form part of hundreds of former Anglo American workers who are squaring up against the global mining giant in a court battle domiciled in Johannesburg and London. Their course closely resembles the Cape PLC case where 7,500 South African asbestos miners successfully sued for more than £21m (about R268m) in a London court.

The New Age Online reports that human skulls taken from Namibia by German colonizers returned home after more than 100 years, but the reconciliatory gesture instead has ignited anger and renewed demands that Germany pay for its sins in this corner of Africa where more than 60,000 people were killed. The return of 20 skulls taken to Germany more than a century ago for racist experiments also has fueled anger about current injustices by a people decimated when they rebelled against German colonizers.