Fear of infection and mass social change have driven a huge decline in HIV rates in Zimbabwe, offering important lessons on how to fight the Aids pandemic in the rest of Africa, scientists said on Tuesday (08 February). In a study in the journal PLoS Medicine, British researchers said Zimbabwe's pandemic was one of the biggest in the world until the rate of people infected with HIV almost halved, from 29 per cent of the population in 1997 to 16 per cent in 2007.

A lack of community support and persistent discrimination is being blamed for the re-recruitment of former child soldiers by the army and militias in Masisi territory, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC. Former child soldiers are being especially targeted in Kitchanga, 80 kilometres north-west of Goma. The town used to be a stronghold of the National Congress for the Defence of the People, CNDP, a rebel group which has now been officially integrated into the armed forces.

Black smoke billowed across morning rush hour traffic as angry backyarders in Nyanga blockaded Lansdowne road with burning tyres on Tuesday, forcing commuters to find alternative routes to work.The Backyarders from Nyanga’s Mau-Mau, Old Location and White City areas were protesting over the lack of housing for them and demanding the provincial government allocate houses to backyarders in housing projects in the area.