In contrast to its North African neighbours, Algeria has yet to see sustained mass protests from a broad base of its population. Imad Mesdoua discusses why this is the case.

She walked in breathing laboriously, holding a piece of soiled cloth to her body. She grunted as she struggled off her clothes plastered to her skin by sweat and blood. She was crying.

A Revised Annotated Guide to the Bibliographies on Biofuels, Land Rights in Africa and Global Land Grabbing, March 2011
Source: Robin Palmer (Mokoro)
Summary: A revised annotated guide to the two bibliographies, which includes some of the main highlights from reports, press cuttings, journal articles, books (on biofuels) and TV, video and radio clips. The last is included as they can be revealing of the attitudes of those engaged in the land grabbing phenomenon.
Date: March 2011
(PDF 504KB)

Select Bibliography of Reports on Biofuels, Land Rights in Africa & Global Land Grabbing NEW
Source: Robin Palmer (Mokoro)
Summary: A new updated select bibliography of reports on biofuels, land rights in Africa and global land grabbing. 100 organizations are cited, with the majority of reports coming from FAO, GRAIN, SCI-DEV NET, Pambazuka News, IIED, and OHCHR.
Date: March 2011

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) canvassed their team and came up with a list of 50 inspirational African feminists. 'We know that there are far, far more women than we could include in our list, but we wanted to at least make a start at celebrating the achievements of some of these great women – and we hope our friends will forgive us our omissions! Take a look and let us know who else you would have added,' AWDF says.

African Union (AU) Commission chairman Jean Ping will be travelling to Europe to discuss the Libyan crisis with the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Before his departure from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Dr Ping said the AU’s position on Libya remains unchanged. He added that the bloc would seek a solution based on its proposed roadmap. AU is opposed to the Western military action against Libya.

The Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria has once again postponed the parliamentary polls until Saturday 9 April. This announcement was made on Sunday (03 April) after a meeting with all political parties' leaders in the country’s capital Abuja. Mr Attahiru Jega, INEC chairperson said that all the parties have fully endorsed the new date. As a result, other elections have been moved forward accordingly. Presidential election has been slated for April 16 while governorship elections in the 36 states will now take place on April 26.

Heavy fighting took place in Côte d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan, for a third day over the weekend as rival forces battle for power. Fighters loyal to the internationally recognised president Alassane Ouattara battled for control of the presidential palace and barracks still loyal to incumbent Laurent Gbagbo. The battle for Abidjan remains fierce, with heavy fighting reported on Saturday (02 April) around the Agban military base in the centre of the city.

The Libyan government should immediately comply with the first binding ruling against a state by the newly operational African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Egyptian Initiative on Personal Rights (EIPR), Human Rights Watch, and Interights said. In its pioneering decision, issued on 25 March and published on 30 March, the court unanimously ordered Libya to end any actions that would cause the loss of life or violation of anyone’s 'physical integrity' in violation of international human rights law.

South Africa has angrily rejected attacks on President Jacob Zuma by Zimbabwean official media, which on Sunday labeled him duplicitous and questioned his suitability to mediate between Zimbabwe’s squabbling ruling parties. In the clearest sign yet of growing tensions between Pretoria and Harare, the Zimbabwean government mouthpiece Sunday Mail said Zuma was erratic and an undesirable facilitator in the talks between President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

The clock is ticking to get help to neglected refugees fleeing Ivory Coast, Oxfam has warned. More than 100,000 people have already crossed the border from Ivory Coast to Liberia and are living in dire conditions in border villages. Unless more is done to get people to safe and serviced areas further inland, they risk being cut off as the rainy season approaches.

Media images of men in northern Kenya washing condoms for re-use have underscored the need to improve HIV communication and close gaps in the supply of condoms in rural areas. Local TV channels recently showed images of men in Isiolo, in rural northern Kenya, washing condoms and hanging them out to dry. The Ministry of Health recently said the country faced an acute, nationwide shortage of condoms; it has appealed to the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, PEPFAR, to supply 45 million condoms.

Despite the fact that South Africa spends a higher proportion of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health than any other country in Africa, its health record compares badly against those of many poor African countries. 'As a country we spend 8,7 per cent of our GDP on health in both the public and private sectors, yet we have little to show for it compared with many countries that are a great deal poorer than us and spend much less on health,' says Daisy Mafubelu, chairman of the organising committee for the Department of Health's upcoming Nursing Summit in Sandton from 5 to 7 April.

With the global effort to eradicate polio seeing major gains, international health agencies have also been highlighting the fight against measles, the highly contagious disease that kills over 160,000 children each year. India is the hardest hit and Nigeria, despite its major oil wealth, is also at high risk, reporting 14,271 suspected cases and 7,754 confirmed last year, resulting in 151 deaths, reports AFP.

Nearly 50 grassroots women's groups from 13 sub-Saharan African countries are convening in Arusha for crucial talks on pertinent issues of women's ownership and control of land and resources to secure livelihoods. Dubbed as the 2011 ‘Women's Land Link Africa (WLLA) Grassroots Women's Land Academy', hosted by Maasai Women Development Organisation (MWEDO), it is facilitated by the Huairou Commission with its base in New York, in the US.

'Far from cooking up a plan to save the Earth, what may come out of the summit could instead be a deal to surrender the living world to a small cabal of bankers and engineers - one that will dump the promises of the first Rio summit along the way,' warns Jim Thomas about the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, due to happen next year. 'Tensions are already rising between northern countries and southern countries over the poorly defined concept of a global "Green Economy" that will be the centerpiece of the summit.'

Burkina Faso president's said he would meet disgruntled army officers and the head of the armed forces announced a curfew after a series of protests, but appeals for calm went unheeded on Wednesday as soldiers continued to protest. Shots were fired into the air in some neighbourhoods and the mayor's residence in Ouagadougou, the country's capital, was wrecked, witnesses said.

Bodies are lying in the streets of the besieged Libyan city of Misrata and its hospital is overflowing with the injured, an evacuee has said after arriving in Tunisia. Misrata is the only big rebel stronghold left in western Libya and has been under attack for weeks by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi. Accounts from Misrata cannot be independently verified because Libyan authorities are not allowing journalists to report freely from the city.

The 'Impact 2.0 iGuide: New mechanisms for linking research and policy', is a guide designed to help researchers identify the right Web 2.0 tools for establishing links with policy makers, for building their online presence and credibility and for effectively communicating their research.

Authorities in Greece say Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi is seeking to negotiate an end to the fighting that has pitted his forces against antigovernment rebels since February. Meanwhile, The New York Times reported on 3 April that at least two of Qaddafi's sons backed a plan to remove their father from power and usher in a transition to a constitutional democracy.

Poet and writer Khainga O’Okwemba reflects on the Kenyan activities around International Women's Day on 8 March and a ‘support women artists now’ day held at the end of March.

In a time of climate change, decentralized, adaptable and diversified water and energy projects are best suited to respond to increasingly variable and unpredictable weather patterns. Large dams risk becoming uneconomic due to droughts, and unsafe due to more extreme storms. They will also further degrade freshwater ecosystems which are already reeling under the impacts of climate change. In spite of this, the World Bank’s new Energy Strategy calls for increased funding for large dams. According to International Rivers, a strategy that is based on yesterday’s technologies cannot resolve tomorrow’s problems.

Thousands of people, many who left North Africa following recent unrest, are stranded on the Italian island of Lampedusa in appalling conditions, Amnesty International reports. The unequivocal assessment by Amnesty International's delegation on the island came as Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged 'to clear Lampedusa within 48-60 hours'. There are currently about 6,000 foreign nationals on the island, mostly from Tunisia.

'When we listen to our leaders' vigorous condemnations of the human rights abuses and lack of democracy of Qaddafi's and other authoritarian regimes in the Mediterranean we would do well to bear in mind how new-founded and limited is their concern for human rights, and how likely it is that they will try to co-opt any new governments in the region to their war against sub-Saharan migrants,' argues a leading human rights lawyer on the website of the Institute of Race Relations. 'For in the past decade, as well as cheerfully returning dozens of suspected Islamists to torture under cover of the flimsiest of diplomatic assurances, Britain and Europe have used Qaddafi and other repressive north African regimes as front men for policies causing thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean and beyond.'

With drought spreading to almost all regions of Somalia, officials and aid workers have expressed concern for those affected, saying drought was now a major cause of displacement. 'Drought, not insecurity, is now the main reason for new displacement in Somalia,' the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA Somalia) said in a March update. 'More than 52,000 people have been displaced due to drought since 1 December 2010, many of them moving to urban areas in search of assistance.'

‘The UN must take its responsibility seriously. The world is waiting and watching to see what actions will be taken against other outlaws. Gaddafi is one among many,’ writes Wazir Mohamed.

Egyptian authorities have opened dozens of criminal investigations into hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public land contracts that were awarded illegally to real estate developers associated with former President Hosni Mubarak without proper procedures at below market rates. The current probes are the first steps, and perhaps the most obvious, that emerge in post-Mubarak Egypt towards the country's new economic future - one many here say could be less susceptible to cronyism and shady deals by government officials.

The Emerging Powers in Africa Initiative commissioned four research policy reports in June 2010 following the successful completion of the first round of commissioned reports that was undertaken in 2009, culminating in an electronic publication available on the Fahamu website. Understanding that attention towards China’s deepening engagement with Africa should not overshadow the activities of other emerging powers in Africa, including India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa, the four research policy reports sought to develop an African perspective by strengthening the civil society voice in the discourse surrounding the engagement between Africa and these emerging powers. To this end, the research projects were themed around comparative African perspectives on China and other emerging powers in Africa by providing seed funding to African civil society organisations and activists to undertake research that can contribute to the emerging scholarship on the footprint of the emerging actors in Africa. The completed research reports are available .

The North African protests have renewed enthusiasm for ‘a popularly driven process mass mobilisation’, not only as a means for people to force changes in leadership, but also to ‘demand a greater say in the running of their own lives’. But can the masses sustain their status as 'full-blown political subjects', rather than 'victims' in need of ‘empowerment’, asks Michael Necosmos.

'Arise, Africa arise
Let the world see your beauty
Let them note your strength
And know that though brow beaten
You will stand undefeated...'

Three African nations voted for the UN Security Council resolution that opened the door to the Western military intervention in Libya. Demba Moussa Dembele regrets that South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria provided the votes for the resolution to be passed.

The ‘public narrative of an “Arab Spring” excludes much of the world's population both from public attention and concern and from discussion of what meaningful political change might look like and how it can be supported by people in other places,’ argues Oliver Kearns.

A new survey by African democracy institute Idasa shows growing dissatisfaction among SA citizens with local government performance, with only one in ten citizens satisfied with the quality of service delivery provided by their district and municipal council. This is a dramatic decline from its previous survey conducted in 2006 which showed four in ten citizens (39.5 per cent) were still satisfied with service delivery by their local government.

As evidenced by Ivorians’ experiences in the wake of their country’s disputed election results and the looming threat of civil war, African leaders’ insistence on ignoring pre-established rules severely jeopardises their constituents, writes Cameron Duodu.

Northern Africa is not the only part of Africa where uprisings are taking place. In countries like Swaziland, Gabon, Cameroon, Djibouti, and Burkina Faso we've seen massive student uprisings and worker demonstrations brutally suppressed in most cases. Editor-in-chief of Pambazuka News Firoze Manji talks to the Real News Network about what's happening in Southern Africa. Watch the .

With the 2011 Forbes List of the world’s billionaires recently released – and acutely aware of the huge volume of unaccounted for money found in offshore havens – Joan Baxter discusses the ‘highly stratified world that has become treacherously top-heavy’.

Lila Chouli gives a behind-the-scenes view on protests in Burkina Faso. The spontaneous protests might prove that kicking a leader out might not need a formal organisation.

‘The tragedy that is unfolding in front of our eyes is not just about the excesses of one industry… It is about the continued and deliberate silencing/sidelining of the majority of humanity by a tiny dictatorial fraction that, for centuries and generations has always gotten away, literally with murder,’ writes Jacques Depelchin.

Drawing upon a range of online reflections and social media activity, Sokari Ekine underlines the high stakes and contested understandings around the ongoing crises in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya and Egypt’s ‘post-revolution’ experience.

An international company has benefitted from a massive handout of land in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Alemayehu G. Mariam shows what the devastating consequences of the deal will be for local people.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has established a $57-million fund for renewable energy projects across the continent. The Denmark-backed Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa joins two other similar green energy funds in the region worth $6-billion being run by the AfDB and twelve non-African donor countries.

This campaign example from the New Tactics for Human Rights website profiles the 5-in-6 program in South Africa, which raises awareness of the widespread problem of domestic violence through a nomination campaign for male role models. By recognising and honouring local male role models, Charles Maisel taught groups of ordinary men to talk about domestic violence and to see that it is an underlying part of the other problems their communities were facing.

Fierce contestations over the African state has weakened rather than strengthened states on the continent when it comes to performing their functions, said Omano Edigheji from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. He was speaking at an event held in Ghana to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on Africa. The neoliberal agenda, he argued, had very little democracy. If anything, it was very supportive of autocracy. In effect, the dominant neoliberal regime supported authoritarianism. The African state has to be both developmental and democratic.

Despite the 'evident lack of prioritising' by the South African government on addressing issues affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people, in accordance with the constitution, some of the country’s gays and lesbians say voting is a right that citizens should be proud of and have urged the gay community to make their mark in order to hold the leaders accountable on human rights. This, as South Africa gears for local government elections on 18 May, with some in the gay community indicating that they will not vote since, they say, government does not take hate crimes and other issues affecting LGBTI people seriously.

'The Botswana Caucus for Women in Politics has failed to realise the objectives it was intended for, but we will not give up on it just yet,' says Margaret Nasha. The BCWP is a platform established to enable women from all political parties to converge and support each other in their attempts to make their mark in a male-dominated field. When it was set up 15 years ago, its membership was initially restricted to women in parliament. Nasha, the first woman to serve as Speaker of Parliament in Botswana, explained that four years in, they realised that only women from the ruling Botswana Democratic Party were benefiting from it and they decided to open membership to any active woman member of a political party.

Why are the voices of the people with the real voting power excluded from the presidential debates? Sokari Ekine reports back from the blogosphere on Nigeria’s looming election; Libya and the AU; forced removal in South Africa; female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone; and an SMS-based programme to address the security of sexual minorities in Kenya.

'Two leaders of the social justice movement Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, are being sought by police. They are at risk of arbitrary arrest and ill-treatment,' writes AIUSA, in a call for the public to write letters of appeal to Zimbabwean officials.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has expressed its deep concern about the case of Ms. Iman Al-Obaidi, a lawyer, from Benghazi. On Saturday 25 March 2011, Ms. Iman Al-Obaidi declared in the presence of journalists that she had been beaten and raped by security forces agents in Tripoli. She reported that other women who may still be in detention were also victims of rape. Ms Al-Obaidi showed the journalists marks of injury. While she was testifying in Hotel Rixos, Tripoli, Ms. Al-Obaidi was forced into a car and driven away.

Two weeks after establishing the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), Morocco reformed another state body. The Mediator Institution, set up in mid-March to replace the 10-year-old Diwan Al Madhalim, will have greater powers to tackle rights abuses and conduct probes. The institution will have the power to carry out inquiries and investigations, propose disciplinary action or refer cases to the public prosecutor.