Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in Swaziland protesting against poor governance which has led to a shortage of essential medical supplies in sub-Saharan Africa's sole absolute monarchy. More than 500 people demonstrated in Mbabane, the capital, on Wednesday (27 July) while nearly 1,000 protested in the western town of Siteki. AIDS groups have warned of an imminent shortage of anti-retroviral drugs in a country where a quarter of the people between the ages of 15 and 49 are believed to carry HIV.

Despite 12 years of reform, Morocco’s universities continue to fall short of expectations, with students complaining that the training they get does not meet the demands of the job market. Professors in this North African country of 32 million people echoed their students’ grievances, adding that Moroccan universities are poorly managed and riddled with corruption. 'The kind of training provided by universities remains poor and does not meet any of the educational, pedagogic, academic and intellectual conventional standards,' Zakaria Rmidi, a student preparing for his master's degree in English studies, told IPS.

Opposition members of parliament in Burkina Faso have called on France to open its archives to look for evidence of involvement of the French secret services in the 1987 death of Thomas Sankara. The call is the latest effort in a long-running struggle to force a full and open inquiry into the assassination which brought Burkina Faso's current president, Blaise Compaoré, to power. 'Evidence presented in other countries indicates that France was involved in the death of Thomas Sankara,' said MP and lawyer Stanislas Benewindé Sankara - no relation to the former president - at a 16 July press conference in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital.

Governments, especially in Africa, need to have strong accountability measures in place in order to effectively reach women in rural areas through gender responsive budgeting. This was one of the recommendations in the Global Call for Action plan drawn up at the end of an international high-level meeting on gender responsive budgeting held in Kigali from 26 to 28 July. The meeting was held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the European Union. Delegates also agreed that there was a need to strengthen the skills, competencies and abilities of local government leaders.