Full Coverage: East Africa

31.01.2005 When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, the people of Hafun lost most of their homes along with their fishing boats - and thereby their livelihoods. Now many are terrified of the sea and need help to overcome their trauma.

31.01.2005 Environmentalists claim a million wild animals are snared annually for their meat, and while the scope of the problem is not fully known, conservationists say it could endanger Africa's wildlife as much the great herd massacres of the 1970s and 1980s.

28.01.2005 Mozambique's most prominent and wanted criminal, the killer of star journalist Carlos Cardoso, "Anibalzinho", has been returned from Canada to Mozambique. The convicted killer escaped from a high-security prison in Maputo in May 2004, and will now face a new trial in the November 2000 slaying.

27.01.2005 The recent UN report on defeating poverty promoted the distribution of bednets as a "quick-win" method of preventing malaria and saving millions of lives. A project in Uganda is taking that idea a step further, developing a successful business model to encourage the distribution of bednets, while making sure the most vulnerable have access.

26.01.2005 Ethiopia has made a gesture to accept the boundary commission recommendations "in principle". Although not enough to bring Eritrea to the negotiating table, this may be a gesture to break the impasse.

26.01.2005 Media rights watchdogs have long criticised the conditions under which journalists in Zimbabwe operate. Since the start of the year, however, the circumstances of the country’s media have become bleaker still.

25.01.2005 The UN independent expert on human rights, Ghanim Alnajjar, has urged the international community to "remember those affected by the tsunami in the Puntland region of northeastern Somalia where more than 150 people were killed and about 50,000 people have been displaced".

24.01.2005 Iranian President Mohammed Khatami offered aid, trade, and friendship to Zimbabwe last week as he visited the country during a seven-nation African tour.

21.01.2005 The Asian tsunami demonstrated how the media can positively affect efforts to bring relief to people in crisis. Well, Liberia is still in crisis. Tuberculosis has staged an alarming comeback in much of the world. Starvation is rampant in North Korea. Civilan victims of fighting in the Congo and Colombia made the list for the sixth straight year. See what else didn't top the news--but should have--in 2004.

19.01.2005 Continued tensions over the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia constrain efforts to help millions of people in both countries to escape poverty. The UN envoy appointed to mediate in the conflict regrets that the Eritrean leadership will not recognise his role.

19.01.2005 Recently OneWorld Radio Africa (OWRA) partnered with 3 radio stations in Zambia and a Zambian based NGO, to help give voice to the HIV/AIDS issues faced by rural communities in Zambia. The focus was on the interface of radio and Internet inorder to provide rural communities with access to HIV/AIDS experts and policy makers hundreds of kilometers away.

14.01.2005 The country that won Africa's first Olympic gold medal--in 1968--is now bidding to become the first African country to host the games.

14.01.2005 South Africa's neutrality and history give it a moral authority in Africa that many richer countries (and former colonial powers) can't claim. From Burundi to Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, and Darfur, President Thabo Mbeki has drawn on this standing to try to spread peack across the continent in 2004, demonstrating to the world that Africa can be relied upon to solve its own problems.

13.01.2005 The keynote speaker at Jubilee Debt Campaign's annual conference will be President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania. A challenging afternoon of debate and activism in store for debt campaigners. London 26th February

12.01.2005 Can the peace agreement in Sudan lead to resolution of the long-running civil war in neighbouring Uganda? Civil society groups in Uganda are desperate for peace and plead with the international community to facilitate a resumption of talks which broke down in the new year.

11.01.2005 In Kenya to witness the signing of Sunday's historic Sudanese peace agreement, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell attended a youth roundtable on HIV/AIDS, calling the disease--which kills 140,000 adults annually in Kenya alone--the "greatest weapon of mass destruction" in the world.

11.01.2005 The newly agreed peace in southern Sudan could promote the end of fighting in Northern Uganda and Sudan's western Darfur region, aid officials and government spokespeople are saying. "The deal is surely a dawn of hope for us," a top Ugandan official in a district bordering the Sudan said on Monday.

11.01.2005 LIPRODHOR is the only independent human rights NGO working in Rwanda at regional level. It will be forced to close unless new funds can be found by March. Amnesty blames the Rwandan government.

07.01.2005 Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa weathered tough criticism in 2004 for his government's apparent kow towing to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).

07.01.2005 Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa weathered tough criticism in 2004 for his government's apparent kow towing to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).