A Ugandan journalist has been accused of sedition after writing two articles that speculated whether the Ugandan government was involved in July bomb attacks in Kampala, report the Human Rights Network of Journalists-Uganda (HRNJ-Uganda) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The sedition law is routinely used against dissident journalists. More than a dozen Ugandan journalists are currently being prosecuted under the law.

Months before Southern Sudan holds a referendum on possible secession from the north, officials have warned that feeding the influx of expected returnees will pose a problem. “A lot of people came just before the census, more came just before the elections,” said Matthew Abujin, Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC) secretary in charge of Central Equatoria. "With the referendum, we are expecting a very big number. Nobody wants to stay on the wrong side of the border.”

Five years after a local charity opened a university to offer this bullet-scarred city’s youth an alternative to militia life and emigration, the first degrees have been awarded. "I want our people to know that education is the ladder of life and that every step of development that a community makes depends on the level of the community's education," one of the 27 new graduates, Qoole Qowden*, recounted.

In Senegal many women refuse to take mentally disabled children on public transport; families hide children with mental or neurological disorders, and some parents disown them outright. Such is the stigma of having a child with these widely misunderstood illnesses. "In Senegal people simply regard children with such conditions as 'abnormal', whatever the disability - mental or physical," said Ngor Ndour, a psychologist specializing in mental disorders in children.