HEALTH-AFRICA: Demands for Anti-AIDS Drugs Grow Louder

From the UN headquarters in New York to Nairobi, the conference venue for the 13th International Conference on AIDS in Africa, the focus this week fell sharply on extending access to treatment with anti-retroviral drugs.

RIGHTS: A New Wall of Stigma Proving to Be a Setback in the Fight Against AIDS

"I lost my job after my employer came to know my HIV status. My children were chased from school and my relatives stopped visiting me," says Evelyne Apondi, whose husband succumbed to the disease two years ago.

HEALTH-AFRICA: AIDS Activists Push For More Access to Drugs to Reduce Deaths

"We want drugs! You talk as we die," were some of the angry voices by AIDS activists who protested Wednesday against failure by their governments to give them anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

HEALTH: Botswana’s Women-Led AIDS Success Story

Wearing a beauty queen's sash, Kgalalelo Ntsepe, had her audience at the International Conference on AIDS in Africa in stitches and in an almost non-stop round of clapping when she spoke this week.

HEALTH-AFRICA: Initiative to Fight AIDS From All Fronts

The silence in the room is chilling as everybody pays attention to an AIDS verse by children from a Nairobi-based institution caring for AIDS orphans.

HEALTH: A New AIDS Wave Washing Over Africa, Devastating Families

They are like babies now, says Prudence Mabele about the people living with AIDS she cares for as a volunteer in South Africa. "Some wear nappies; I need to wash and feed them."

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-NAMIBIA/: Musicians Let Down by Their Own System

Talented and ambitious musicians always set their eyes on becoming instant millionaires, but in Namibia artists still struggle for basic needs like food and accommodation.

LABOUR-AFRICA: Trade Unions Constrained By Lack of Resources

Pan-African trade unionism is being constrained by a lack of resources, revealed the continent's largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) after its two-yearly workers assembly which ended at the weekend.

RIGHTS-MALAWI: Media Workers Shun Government Call for HIV/AIDS Testing

Media workers in Malawi have responded negatively to a call by the government for them to act as community role models and go for HIV/AIDS voluntary counselling and testing.

RIGHTS-ZIMBABWE: Women Sue Government Over Enforced Name Change

What's in a name? Married women in Zimbabwe are taking the government to court over a procedure that compels them to adopt their husbands' surnames as a precondition to official documents, including registering the birth of infant children

ECONOMY-AFRICA: Struggling to Get Money to Make Money

Seeking to create home-grown business people, but lacking in the millions of dollars and years of experience needed to create large companies, African countries have sought to empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as a way to achieve an indigenous commercial class that can "take back the African economy."

TRADE: Arms Deal Plunges South Africa Into Its Worst Post-Apartheid Crisis

An arms deal worth about 3.9 billion U.S. dollars concluded between South Africa and several European multinationals has plunged South Africa into its worst post-apartheid political crisis.

ENVIRONMENT-AFRICA: Renewed Efforts to Protect Endangered Species

The President of Madagascar Marc Ravalomanana has announced that his country intends increasing its protected forest, wetland and marine ecosystems from 1.7 to six million hectares.

TECHNOLOGY-AFRICA: Women Find Reason for Optimism in Internet Usage

Slowly, but effectively, the Internet is empowering women in Africa to follow events as they have never witnessed before. The latest case in point is the women in Somalia who have been following their country's peace talks in neighbouring Kenya via Internet usage.

MEDIA-ZIMBABWE: Police Raid Newspaper Office

Press freedom has been dealt a mortal blow in Zimbabwe with the forced closure and confiscation of equipment of the country's only independent daily newspaper.

POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Officials Defy Mugabe’s Ultimatum, Hang Onto Farms

A government report into Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme has opened a can of worms, throwing the spotlight on corruption surrounding the ownership of multiple farms by senior government officials and others close to the establishment.

RIGHTS-MALAWI: Women Gang up against Child Labour

Women activists in Malawi have waged war against child labour saying it is one of the many forms of violence that women in the country suffer from.

TECHNOLOGY-AFRICA: Internet Creates a New Class of Users

Even critics of massive spending on computer and Internet technology in Africa, at what they fear is at the expense of poverty alleviation efforts, are conceding that so-called "New Media" are helping Africans economically.

TRADE: Kenya Woos Investors

For years investors boycotted Kenya and went to do business next door in Uganda and Tanzania.

RIGHTS-SWAZILAND: Women Battle With Culture in order to fight AIDS

Swazi women are engaged in a quiet cultural revolution with self-empowerment as their goal, but in the face of traditional laws that have long denied them equal rights. The battle directly affects women's ability to cope in the current AIDS crisis.

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-MALAWI/: Inspired by Oppression

Malawi's award-winning poet Jack Mapanje is using his work to remind Malawians of the country's former notorious detention camps.