KENYA: Words that Reshape a Country’s Identity

The goal is ambitious: Kenya’s first literary journal, Kwani?, wants to bring new thinking to the country - and ultimately the continent - and reshape African identities. The journal aims to provoke, create, entertain and develop a literary community that isn’t afraid to question the status quo.

AGRICULTURE-AFRICA: Food Security Requires Increased Fertiliser Use

A mix of organic and inorganic fertilisers, together with good seed could help Africa to replenish depleted soils and to grow more food in the fight against hunger and food insufficiency.

Q&A: ‘ We Were Told To Go To The Mortuary’

Two understaffed and ill-equipped public clinics serving 600,000 people: it is in neighbourhoods like Dandora that the battle to reduce maternal mortality is won or lost.

TRANSPORT-SOUTH SUDAN: Going Nowhere, Fast

Motorcycle Juba style: sit as far back on the seat of the bike as possible. Hold handlebars only loosely when riding but rev frequently whenever stationary.

UGANDA: In Search of Peace and Justice

Alice Anywar lives in the Pagak resettlement camp in Gulu and at 39 is a multiple victim of the over 20 year-old Lords Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda. The rebels first attacked her home in Kilak village in 1987 killing both her parents and abducting her 12-year old brother. In 2002 they murdered her husband whom she had met in a refugee camp.

ETHIOPIA: Russian Business to Showcase Goods at Addis Ababa Fair

When the 13th Addis Ababa International Trade Fair officially opens tomorrow, the Russian trade delegation hopes to make its presence felt with participating industrial companies and business enterprises.

POLITICS: Two Kenyas, Two Dreams: Which Do We Want?

Kenya's civil society has rebuffed efforts by its embattled government to restore its tattered image in the wake of waning public confidence in the state. Their major grievance is that the country's problems, including high level graft, are the result of a culture of impunity that has engulfed the nation's top officials and politicians.

TRADE-GHANA: Rice Farmers’ Markets So Close and Yet Out of Reach

Last year, rice farmers took to the streets of Ghana’s capital of Accra and accused the government of allowing imports to destroy their livelihoods.

HEALTH-UGANDA: Pads From Papyrus

The average income in the Kyenjojo district in western Uganda is less than a dollar a day. Spending twice that on a single sanitary pad is an unaffordable luxury for most women.

SOMALIA: Sharif Returns to Power as Militants Advance

A rare sense of optimism rose in Mogadishu in the early hours of Jan. 31 as people learnt that the leader of a moderate faction of the Union of Islamic Courts, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, had been elected as head the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

EAST AFRICA: Increasing Women's Participation in Government

Kenya’s poor record of improving percentage of women in decision making positions has come under scrutiny, but its neighbours are doing significantly better.

SOMALIA: Counting the Cost After Ethiopia Withdraws

The suicide car bomb that struck Mogadishu Jan. 24, killing at least twenty people and injuring nearly fifty others is an explosive comment on the failure of the Ethiopian military deployment to Somalia two years ago to oust Islamist forces it believed represented "a clear and present danger" to Ethiopia.

RIGHTS-ETHIOPIA: Strangling Criticism

The Ethiopian parliament has voted into law a controversial bill which bars any civil society organisation receiving more than 10 percent of its funding from foreign sources from engaging in human rights issues.

SOMALIA: Poverty Forces Children Into the Streets

Hassan Maye, 13, has been fending for himself and his family in the streets of Mogadishu since he was ten. He shines shoes in the Sinai neighbourhood in the southern part of the Somali capital. On a good day, he says he earns 18,000 shillings - equivalent to roughly 50 cents.

KENYA: Tourism Industry Picking Up Again After Election Violence

As the eagerly awaited recovery in tourism after the election violence in Kenya takes off, bad news has come in the form of corruption allegations.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: New Nile Pact Stalled

Ten years of negotiations over a new protocol governing shared use of the Nile River are hanging in the balance, with Egypt and Sudan refusing to give up their present power over how much water is used by countries further upstream.

ECONOMY-TANZANIA: Investing The Money Under The Mattress

Omari Saidi heard bad news about the global financial crisis, but the 34-year-old Tanzanian taxi driver felt too far removed from the world market to worry.

ETHIOPIA: Political Space Narrowing

Bertukan Mideksa has a reputation in Ethiopia as a competent politician, but voters will not be able to cast ballots for her in the next national election. The revocation of her 2007 pardon has sent a chill through Ethiopia's opposition parties.

KENYA: Press Freedom: Going, Going, Gone

Dark clouds are forming against freedom of expression in Kenya, following the recent passing of a controversial Bill by parliament. The Kenya Communications (Amendment) Bill, awaiting presidential assent to become law, gives the state powers to invade media houses, seize broadcast equipment, control broadcast content, even taking a station off air.

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Sanitation: 'This Is the Way We Live'

In 1925, Mahatma Gandhi remarked that "Sanitation is more important than political independence." More than 80 years later, access to basic sanitation remains out of reach for 546 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

SOMALIA: Piracy Threatens Aid Effort

Pirate attacks in East African waters this year have disrupted the delivery of much-needed food aid to Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, U.N. World Food Program officials said the commencement last week of a European Union naval escort mission should help guarantee regular food shipments in the early months of 2009.