The Lesotho chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MILES) has won the bid to host this year's Annual General Meeting of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). At a meeting of the Regional Governing Council of MISA held on Wednesday, February 18 2004, in Pretoria, it was decided by a vote of nine to one to hold the next MISA annual general meeting and conference in Maseru in August 2004. The other bidding chapter was Namibia. It will be the first time that Lesotho will be hosting this prestigious event.

The tiny African kingdom of Lesotho declared a state of emergency Wednesday and appealed for more food aid, saying thousands of people would otherwise face severe shortages because of prolonged drought. Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili said the mountainous territory's population of around 2 million required 57,000 tons of food products to feed some 600,000 people who would need aid until the 2005 harvest. "The severe drought during the 2002/2003 cropping season led to untimely planting of food crops, and the last winter saw neither rain nor snow throughout the season," Mosisili said.

Lesotho remains a fragile democracy despite electoral reforms designed to strengthen its political system, a South African political think-tank has argued. A new report by the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) argues that steps towards deepening democracy in the tiny country continued to be undermined by ongoing social and economic problems, which could serve to reverse some of the gains made so far. The report, "The Road to Democratic Consolidation in Lesotho, Reforms and Challenges", noted that the political culture remained adversarial, and problems of political violence and poor accountability should not be regarded as solved.

A new 71 page research report from the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) seeks to evaluate the prospects for the endurance of multiparty democracy in Lesotho. The data used is based primarily on information gathered during interviews with key stakeholders - i.e. political parties, electoral commissioners, civil society and the donor community - in the political processes in Lesotho. The text is descriptive and analytical. It is mainly concerned with current events and the recent past in Lesotho, but also places events in context by bringing out distinguishing characteristics of the country's politics, its problems and prospects, and the principal elements of its democratization process.