Full Coverage: Africa

31.07.2007 MAPUTO, July 30 (IPS) - Over 1,000 Mozambicans, including children, are trafficked to South Africa every year where they are forced into prostitution or to provide free or cheap labour. In response, Mozambique's government last week approved a new law which will make human trafficking a crime punishable with long prison sentences.

31.07.2007 As Uganda starts negotiating with the Democratic Republic of Congo about reparations for plundering its neighbour’s resources and committing atrocities there between 1996 and 2001, a senior official in Kampala has suggested the talks may end with no payment being made. Henry Wasswa reports.
From: Institute for War and Peace Reporting

30.07.2007 Managing editor of the banned Daily News is reportedly battling for his life in a Johannesburg (South Africa) hospital after he was shot and seriously injured by a gang of three assailants on July 23, 2007

30.07.2007 The Ethiopian government has denied blocking aid and trade to parts of its southeastern Somali region but analysts and aid agencies say humanitarian access is limited and rising prices of food are evidence of security-related restrictions.

29.07.2007 Daratt (Dry Season) is the antithesis of Western film-making. Set in Chad after the country's lengthy civil war, it is slow, spare, measured, full of silences and ambiguities.

28.07.2007 A new and worse civil war in Sudan is possible unless the international community presses for a fundamental shift in the way the country is governed, says the International Crisis Group.
From: International Crisis Group

27.07.2007 Zimbabwean women are suffering increasing repression as they mobilize to confront the government in the face of a spiraling economic and social rights crisis in their country, according to a new report from Amnesty International.

27.07.2007 Residents in the Somali capital are becoming cut off from medical services because of the worsening security situation, with people too scared to walk in the streets and public transport deteriorating.

27.07.2007 The launch of the African Regional Action Plan in Tunis highlighted the continent’s involvement in ICT issues.It also examined ways of bridging the digital divide, improving internet governance and developing strategies for implementing the Geneva and Tunis decisions. In Geneva, participants had drawn up a road map aimed at building an inclusive information society.

27.07.2007 The trial of Bright Chbvuri the editor of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions’ The Worker magazine charged with practicing journalism without accreditation under the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), has been postponed to August 29, 2007

27.07.2007 Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) legislators have recommended the establishment of a Parliamentary Forum ICT policy and strategy to guide the development and adoption of ICT at the regional level. The development, widely seen as a move to harness and promote effective use of ICT in the legislative assemblies was adopted following a three-day workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa.

27.07.2007 The last two defendants out of 131 still striving to establish their innocence in a long-running treason trial in Ethiopia will begin presenting their defence evidence to the Federal High Court today.

26.07.2007 Officers of Rwanda’s National Police Force have killed at least 20 detainees since November, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Killing detainees is not the way to establish a state of law, says the human rights group.
From: Human Rights Watch

26.07.2007 Many experts point out that in Africa, ICT is yet to be effectively integrated into national development strategies. The UN's Economic Commission for Africa notes that traditionally, decision-makers have regarded ICT as a completely separate area and often fail to see its role in poverty reduction.

26.07.2007 The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) has concluded interconnection agreements with three cable systems to carry traffic between Africa, Europe and Asia. It has also included the Comoros in its planned fibre network, to which 29 African entities are party.

26.07.2007 SIDAn tutkimuksen mukaan vajaa puolet Saharan eteläpuolisen Afrikan maista kohtaa heikkouksia matkapuhelinverkkojen kattavuudessa. Tilanteen kohtentamiseksi tutkimus ehdottaa muun muassa vapaata pääsyä infrastruktuuriin sekä operaattorin maantieteelliseen sijaintiin liittyvän lainsäädännön kehittämistä.

24.07.2007 Legislation regulating non-governmental organizations in Zambia could severely compromise their work might even result in their operations being closed down, local groups are saying.

24.07.2007 Their mere presence gives hope to the population and deters some abuses, but UN peacekeepers must be more proactive in protecting Congolese civilians, said a refugee support group Monday. Renewed violence has forced 160,000 from their homes already this year.

24.07.2007 Police in Zambia's capital city of Lusaka blocked Q-FM, a private radio station from mounting their Outside Broadcasting (OB) equipment to cover live a demonstration organised by the OASIS forum and a Collaborative Group on the constitution, outside the gates of Parliament.

24.07.2007 Displaced people living in squalid shelters on the fringes of an official displacement camp in Sudan’s North Darfur region lack relief services as the official camp is full. Efforts by a visiting British official this week to persuade local authorities to open a new site to accommodate the overflow of Al Salaam camp near El Fasher, capital of North Dafur state, failed. Dozens of displaced families said they came here about 14 months ago from villages in North Darfur, fleeing renewed fighting in the region, but were not allowed to settle in the Al Salam camp proper, which already hosts 50,000 IDPs