Mobile phones are the unlikely weapons being used to fight cassava disease in Tanzania, in a collaboration between scientists and farmers. As part of the Digital Early Warning Network (DEWN) farmers from ten districts in the Lake Zone region of Tanzania will be trained to recognise the symptoms of Cassava Mosaic Disease (CMD) and Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD)

The Sigma-Tau Pharmaceutical has announced an innovative combination therapy fixed dose to fight Malaria, the disease that is responsible for 250 million cases worldwide and causes more than 880,000 deaths, especially among children under 5 years in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2008, malaria was endemic in 109 countries, 45 of them in Africa.

A UN assessment has revealed that flooding in northern Namibia during March severely disrupted HIV and AIDS treatment, care and prevention services. The floods, caused by heavy rains, affected more than 350,000 people in six regions with some of the highest HIV-prevalence rates in the country. The north is also one of the poorest and most isolated parts of Namibia, with limited social services, employment opportunities and infrastructure.

Women's groups in embattled Mogadishu are stepping into the aid vacuum to assist thousands more displaced by fighting in the capital, civil society activists said. "We have been helping in the past but now the situation is even worse so we have had to assume an even bigger role," said Asha Sha'ur, a civil society member and activist.

Aid analysts applaud the “courage” of the UK government’s just-released development policy paper, which detailed plans to allocate at least half of all new bilateral funding to fragile states, but question how the government can do the job well without shrinking other aid commitments.

Reporters Without Borders is very concerned about the still fraught political situation in Madagascar and its constant impact on the media. Several journalists have been harassed in recent weeks, a website was mysteriously blocked and a radio journalist was held for two weeks after being the victim of a heavy-handed arrest.

Nearly four months after the death of Franco-Congolese journalist Bruno Jacquet Ossébi, the Committee to Protect Journalists called today for authorities in the Republic of Congo to publicly disclose a report that was prepared weeks ago on their investigation. A magistrate appointed in February to oversee an investigation into the cause of the fire that ravaged Ossébi's residence in Brazzaville, Jean Michel Opo, told CPJ in mid-May that a police commission had given a report to his office.

On the occasion of the annual consultations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with non-governmental organisations (Geneva 30 June), Fahamu asked the Africa Bureau to respond to the report ‘Coercion and Intimidation in the Voluntary Repatriation of 37,000 Burundian Refugees from Mtabila Camp, Tanzania.’

The 4th edition of the annual Lola Kenya Screen audiovisual media festival for children and youth in eastern Africa will be held at Goethe-Institut, Nairobi, Kenya, August 10-15, 2009. The only festival in Africa exclusively designed for children and youth, Lola Kenya Screen was established in October 2005 to explore, identify and nurture creative talents among children and youth in areas of filmmaking, cultural journalism, events planning and presentation and critical appreciation of creativity.

Concern is mounting in Kenya that the government has leased a big slice of agricultural land to the Qatari foreign investors to produce food for export. Land rights activists are questioning the rationale of such a move, claiming the land could be used for domestic food production. The activists say that they are privy to information that the government has leased 40,000 hectares of land to the Qatari administration for cultivation of fruits and vegetables for export.

This report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) outlines the community-based approach to the decentralisation of HIV and AIDS services. The Wellspring of Hope was the first programme in Lesotho to provide HIV and AIDS treatment and care through an entire health service area as a result of this initiative.

The government has issued a stern warning to homosexuals and their sympathisers, saying it will not accept practice of unnatural sex even if it means losing out on the much needed donor support. The Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Dr Nsaba Buturo, told journalists at the Uganda Media Centre yesterday that they are ready to forfeit any amount of donor funding that is tagged as a condition to accept homosexuality.

More than 10, 000 Nigerian girls held captive as sex slaves in Morocco and Libya are to be repatriated, the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora has revealed in a statement. The girls reportedly from Edo State, the southern part of the country, aged between 13 and 17, had been held captive by sex slave traders, the statement said.

Demand for medical male circumcision has been rising in Kenya's south-western Nyanza Province since it became available as part of a package of HIV prevention services in November 2008. Although local communities do not traditionally practice male circumcision, intensive sensitization programmes by governmental and non-governmental organizations are boosting acceptability.

Uganda will pass a law banning female genital mutilation, which is rampant among pastoralist tribes in the country's eastern region, the president said in a statement on Friday. "The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless," President Yoweri Museveni told a gathering in the eastern Karamoja district.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the fragile 2007 Ouagadougou Peace Agreement, which ended five years of fighting and territorial partition between the government and the rebel “Forces Nouvelles”. National and local authorities need to dramatically increase the tempo of electoral preparations, administrative reunification and disarmament of armed groups or the country could slide back into open conflict.

African leaders remained united in their condemnation of the arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir and called such a move a “slap in the face” on the ongoing efforts to restore peace in restive Darfur. The issuance of an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President, Bashir has been a hot issue during the African leaders' meeting in Sirte, central Libya and could end up with a total rejection of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Over 1.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes so far this year as a result of significant increasing violence in DR Congo, Sudan and Somalia, international agency Oxfam has said, as heads of state gather at the AU Summit in Libya to discuss peace and security across the continent.

Mali consumes 65 million tonnes of wood per year, which represents 90% of the country's energy consumption, according to the Malian government. Despite the adoption of a national programme for the increase in the use of butane gas and the Domestic Energy Strategy (SED), wood consumption remains high in the country.

Former Guinea Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Tidiane Soumare was released on Wednesday morning after being detained for a few hours at Peleton Mobile 3 (PM3), a garrison of the gendarmerie in Conakry, according to his immediate family. The former head of the “broad-based” government under the late President Lansana Conte had been arraigned on Tuesday evening and taken to PM3 as he failed to keep his commitments of making a monthly payment for US$200,000 as promised when he was first arraigned last March.

The International Rescue Committee is launching an emergency measles vaccination campaign targeting thousands of refugee children in Hagadera camp to contain an outbreak of the disease at the massively overcrowded site. The IRC has confirmed six cases of the highly contagious virus and suspects 19 other cases in Hagadera, one of three overflowing camps in Dadaab, eastern Kenya

The International Monetary Fund said Zimbabwe’s economy may be recovering after a decade of recession. “A nascent economic recovery appears to be underway,” Vitaliy Kramarenko, the IMF Mission Chief for Zimbabwe, said today in a statement. “To sustain positive economic trends and improve living standards, reform and stabilization efforts need to be stepped up.”

A survey by an anti-graft watchdog has found Kenya east Africa's most graft-prone nation with a bribe expected or solicited in nearly half of all transactions, followed by Uganda and Tanzania. The inaugural East Africa Bribery Index, according to Reuters yesterday, showed Kenya's police force was the most corrupt public institution with 66.5 per cent bribery rate.

Kenyan security forces beat and tortured hundreds of civilians in several communities during an October 2008 disarmament operation in Kenya's northeastern Mandera districts, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Human Rights Watch called on the Kenyan government to establish an independent inquiry without further delay to investigate and then prosecute those responsible.

In 2005, the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) project, which is run by the International Livestock Research Institute, set up a series of information centres throughout Ethiopia. The centres, equipped with a variety of information and communication technologies, provide farmers with information they need to develop new products and increase the yields of existing crops. The project is also attempting to improve the links between farmers and traders, creating opportunities for small-scale producers to sell to new markets, thereby increasing their incomes and helping to reduce poverty in the area.

Radio is often considered to be a one-way medium, but the African Farm Radio Research Initiative is investigating ways of combining radio and ICTs to gather content and to share information among farming communities throughout rural Africa.

The European Commission and UNIFEM are embarking on a programme that will be implemented in Rwanda, Kenya, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and Cambodia. With a total budget of €2,450,353 for three years, the programme will focus on promoting the leadership of HIV-positive women’s groups and gender equality advocates, to ensure that gender equality priorities are identified, realized and budgeted in national HIV and AIDS responses.

Electrogaz, Rwanda's public utility, is considering water rationing due to shortages caused by a prolonged drought in parts of the country, officials said. Environmental specialists blame the drought on climate change, with erratic rainfall and frequent dry spells combining to increase water shortages.

In a ruling Thursday, the Delhi High Court overturned a 148-year-old colonial law criminalizing consensual homosexual acts saying that it was a violation of fundamental human rights protected under India’s Constitution. In so holding, the court reasoned that “the criminalization of homosexuality condemns in perpetuity a sizable section of society and forces them to live their lives in the shadow of harassment, exploitation, humiliation, cruel and degrading treatment at the hands of the law enforcement machinery … A provision of law branding one section of people as criminal based wholly on the State's moral disapproval of that class goes counter to the equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 under any standard of review.”

Female internally displaced persons (IDPs) will again be able to learn job skills, take literacy classes and receive awareness programmes on reproductive health after the joint African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) helped reactivate women’s centres at an IDP camp in the Sudanese region.

The governing body of the United Nations trade and development agency has convened a meeting in Geneva to highlight the need to keep the food crisis affecting Africa from being forgotten as governments focus on tackling the global economic downturn. While the food crisis may not be making the headlines it did last year, food security is still a major concern in many African countries, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

South Africa has passed a new law that compels all cell phone users to register their SIM cards. Users who fail to register would be barred from their network services. The new law came into effect on July 1 2009. It seeks to assist the country’s law enforcement agencies investigate and combat serious crimes. In a joint statement to the public MTN, Cell C and Vodacom said all cell phone subscribers have to show proof of identity as well as present a utility bill to show proof of residence to be registered.

The government of Gambia is to pay compensation to the families of the 44 murdered Ghanaians in that country in 2005. Ghana's Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Akudzeto Ablakwa, said the two governments arrived at the decision in Libya after a discussion between Presidents Atta Mills and Yahya Jammeh.

The co-chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee on constitutional reform, Douglas Mwonzora, on Friday said comments made by Robert Mugabe that the new constitution must be anchored on the Kariba Draft, were just a reflection of Mugabe’s personal view point. Mwonzora told over 2,000 delegates attending the ‘2009 people’s constitutional convention’ that Mugabe’s views were not binding on the constitution-making process. During a question and answer session many delegates had voiced concern that Mugabe was imposing the Kariba draft on the people.

A meeting of a Commonwealth committee on Zimbabwe, which is set to host a roundtable discussion in South Africa next week, could pave the way for the possible readmission of the country into the 54-nation grouping. The group of former British colonies suspended Zimbabwe in 2002 after the widespread violence that characterised, and ultimately cemented, the result of the presidential elections that year. Zimbabwe then quit the grouping in 2003 after then South African President Thabo Mbeki failed to get the suspension lifted.

Darfur rebels signed an accord with one of Sudan's main opposition parties in Cairo on Wednesday, agreeing to push for a new transitional government, both sides said on Friday, a move that will infuriate Khartoum. The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which attacked Khartoum last year, and the opposition Umma party told Reuters the deal was a "declaration of principles" and shared ideas and did not amount to a political or military

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has dealt a body blow to the delivery of health care services in countries hard hit by the disease, new research has found. The National Bureau of Economic Research at Princeton University in the United States compared data from national Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in 14 sub-Saharan African countries – eight in relatively low-prevalence west African countries and the remainder in higher-prevalence east and southern African countries.

If HIV treatment standards in the global South do not keep up with standards in wealthy nations, history will not judge well current efforts to expand treatment in resource-limited settings, Dr Kevin M De Cock, outgoing head of HIV at the World Health Organization, told the 2009 HIV Implementers’ Meeting in Windhoek, Namibia, earlier this month.

cc Awaiting execution on death row in the US state of Georgia, Troy Davis is an innocent victim of entrenched racial discrimination within the US judicial system, writes Keith Jennings. With his legal representatives not 'claim[ing] his innocence in a timely fashion', Davis faces the prospect of being murdered by Georgia's authorities simply for not submitting his papers on time. If the US is to practise what it preaches and show the world that it is genuinely tackling domestic racial discrimination, such a flagrant human rights violation must be put right immediately, Jennings concludes.

On Friday the Tree of Life team sat with parents from Epworth and Whitecliffe communities and heard about their fears for their children.

This time last year
when the youth militia rampaged through their neighbourhoods in ‘preparation’ for the elections
the children went through the most terrifying ordeals one can imagine.
They were taken to the militia bases,
they watched their mothers being raped,
their fathers beaten and tortured
and they were beaten and raped themselves
they watched their houses being burned down
and their parents killed

the fabric of their lives destroyed

and a year later they still live in the ashes
with old memories haunting their dreams

Nothing has been done for the children

‘They visited hell’ said one mother who had her 8 year old son taken for 3 months
‘and they still live in fear – for it has not gone away
they are still training the militia for the next elections’

And then we began speaking of the healing
and of Chiyedza offering her skills in drama and counselling
to go out to the communities to help teach new ways of working
We heard people offer their small houses as venues
and their time to learn techniques of counselling
These people who have been stripped of their livelihoods
volunteering to help protect the orphans
and repair the damage
what little they had – they were prepared to share.

‘For these children are the parents of the new generations’ they said

Utterly shaken we came out of the meeting
to the news that the years funding we had asked for
had been reduced to a bridging loan for 3 months

Throughout civic society
those groups who, on meagre budgets, have helped with the healing
and with gathering the orphans
the groups that help hold the dignity of the nation
are struggling to survive

'there is no money for Zimbabwe (global economic crisis/ unstable government/uncertainty/hold up in funding/etc.) sorry for that'

so we have to wait
wait for the children
a year
a lifetime

It is mid-winter
the leaves are falling
the grass is dry
beige-gold world lit by the first crimson lucky bean trees
and filled with butterflies

* This poem was originally featured on .

The winner of the 2009 will be announced on Monday 6 July at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Caine Prize, widely known as the ‘African Booker’ and regarded as Africa’s leading literary award, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity of taking up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

The 2009 shortlist comprises:

- Mamle Kabu (Ghana) ‘The End of Skill’ from ‘Dreams, Miracles and Jazz’, published by Picador Africa, Johannesburg 2008
- Parselelo Kantai (Kenya) ‘You Wreck Her’ from the St Petersburg Review, NY 2008
- Alistair Morgan (South Africa) ‘Icebergs’ from The Paris Review no. 183, NY 2008
- EC Osondu (Nigeria) ‘Waiting’ from Guernicamag.com, October 2008
- Mukoma wa Ngugi (Kenya) ‘How Kamau wa Mwangi Escaped into Exile’ from ‘Wasafiri’ No54, Summer 2008, London.

cc David Sogge reviews 'The Politics of Aid: African Strategies for Dealing with Donors'. Edited by Lindsay Whitfield, the book finds that donors continue to call the shots on aid, despite the promise behind new recipient-friendly policies. If anything, donor dominance and influence are becoming even greater.

cc While acknowledging that Kenya's Grand Coalition Government (GCG) has given rise to much debate and commentary, Zaya Yeebo argues that civil society's ability to influence change without violence is often ignored. Though other African countries see their people's voices expressed through groups such as trade unions and youth organisations, Kenyans' voices are muted by the noisy contestations of the country's political elites. The tendency of the last few years to 'franchise' the role of civil society out to international NGOs must be challenged, Yeebo contends, and Kenyans must look to the recent examples provided by Ghana, Sierra Leone and South Africa of how people power can bring about change. But while Kenyan civil society can draw inspiration and even support from outside, it alone must work to stoke popular pressure if effective and lasting political reform is to be achieved, Yeebo concludes.

Africa-China relations have gained worldwide attention, writes Adams Bodomo, and constitute the topic of much academic and diplomatic discourse. In this paper, Bodomo explores two important issues within this topic – whether the relationship between the two parts of the world is symmetrical or asymmetrical, and the exact role of soft power in this constellation. Bodomo argues that prominent economies on the African continent such as South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria have an important role to play in ensuring a symmetrical relationship with China, in which Africa can also take part in a symmetrical cultural diplomacy with China, for example through setting up African cultural institutes around the country.

cc Campus cults have ‘entrenched their diabolical tentacles’ across Nigeria’s institutions of tertiary education, write Kola Ibrahim and Ayo Ademiluyi, despite a mass movement against them in 1999 after five students were killed at Obafemi Awolowo University. Cults are to blame not only for the recent killing of twenty people in Edo State, but also for incidences of robbery, intimidation of students and the community and rape in a number of universities. Poor economic prospects make cultism an attractive option for youths, but there are also reports of officials allegedly using cults to protect their economic and political interests by suppressing student union activists, write Ibrahim and Ademiluyi. Noting that affected institutions lack a ‘viable, radical, independent and issue-based students' movement’, they suggest that this is what is needed to tackle the ‘monster of cultism’.

A coalition of over 200 civil society organisations and networks gathered at a forum New York on 23 June, before the UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development. This report, prepared by the International Trade Union Confederation, contains their recommendations for the conference.

cc The Kenyan government has conceded that the country has a problem with the widespread and systematic use of extrajudicial killings by the Kenya Police Force, as highlighted in a report by UN special rapporteur Professor Phillip Alston, writes Louise Edwards. Now, however, the focus must shift to action to be taken to address the problems with policing the report raises, says Edwards. ‘Police reform is a daunting and long-term process,’ Edward notes, that ‘requires substantial law reform, a radical shift in policing culture from one of impunity to accountability and the restoration of trust between police and the community.’ But, Edwards cautions, ‘None of these urgent reforms will happen in Kenya without the political and financial commitment of the government.’

cc Chambi Chachage doesn’t hate America, he actually loves it ‘a lot’. It ‘could be a model for deracialising the continents’, Chacage believes, as ‘probably the only habitable continent for humans that is not really seen as a continent that belongs to a particular “race”.’ But says Chachage, America is also haunted by what President Obama describes as the 'original sin of slavery and racism', epitomised by the Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of native Americans. Chacage concludes that what he feels is actually what historian Colin Legum describes as a ‘disappointed love’ – the colonised ‘believe there has been no proper recognition of, nor retribution for, the injury of colonialism’, while the colonisers ‘feel let down because Africa has not lived up to the expectations of European liberal values.’

The Tanzanian government must ensure that thousands of Burundian refugees who have been living in the Mtabila camp are not sent back to their country under coercion, Amnesty International has said in this press release.