Full Coverage: East Africa

28.10.2005 In a radio and TV appeal for help, Malawi’s President Binguwa Mutharika said the country was facing a national disaster from the worsening food crisis.

* OneWorld Guide to Malawi

28.10.2005 Water is life. But the people of Mkuranga district in Tanzania cannot take that fact for granted.

28.10.2005 As voters on Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar prepare to choose a new president Sunday, the main opposition candidate is expressing concern about the vote and its aftermath. Despite voter intimidation and a precedent of post-election violence, Seif Sharif Hamad hopes his party will bring about peaceful democratic change this time.

28.10.2005 Fifty years ago, the Tonga people were evicted from their lands along the Zambezi River when the construction of the Kariba Dam flooded their valley homes. Now, an oral testimony project is highlighting the voices of the Tonga, exploring the history and contemporary experiences of communities that paid dearly for their country's development.

27.10.2005 Three activists have won the prestigious Human Rights Defender Award: Omid Memarian, a journalist and web-blogger from Iran, Salih Mahmoud Osman, lawyer and human rights activist from Darfur, and Beatrice Were, an advocate for the rights of women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Uganda.
* The "ladies in white", wives and mothers of imprisoned dissidents in Cuba, this week received the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, along with Nigerian lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim and Reporters Without Borders.

27.10.2005 Heavy-handed tactics by the Uganda army against northern rebels are condemned by a leading development charity, which seeks international pressure on the government to protect civilians and aid convoys.

26.10.2005 The Zimbabwean government is well known for its repressive treatment of critics and independent journalists. A crackdown on the press over the past five years has left the country with no independent daily newspapers, no private radio news coverage, and only two prominent independent weeklies. What is less documented is the toll that this crackdown takes on the country's journalists, including those flee overseas and struggle to rebuild their lives in exile, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

25.10.2005 New mothers in Madagascar and Ghana have begun to hear about the importance of breastfeeding from many different sources--including their favorite singer--and the results are already beginning to show.

25.10.2005 The expansion of Information Communication Technology (ICT) would be strengthened in Amhara State during the current year, the State Capacity Building Bureau Ethopia said.

24.10.2005 Several months after Ethiopia's opposition accused the ruling party of rigging elections, they are now threatening to call peaceful strikes and demonstrations, accusing the government of arresting and killing its members.

21.10.2005 Conservation through Public Health (CTPH) in Bwindi, Uganda has built a telecentre in a bid to empower communities around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park to improve health and livelihoods.

21.10.2005 The food shortage in Malawi has worsened, with an estimated 4.6 million people in need of emergency food support and the situation expected to become more acute from December to March.

19.10.2005 Experts from Thailand are helping a Tanzanian drug company learn how to manufacture and distribute anti-AIDS drugs at home, making life-saving medications available in the country--where 1.6 million are living with HIV/AIDS--at a fraction of the previous cost.

17.10.2005 Investors and tourists can now gain information on Kenya using new technology.

14.10.2005 A new computerised global distribution system that enables service providers like airlines, hotels and car rental companies disseminate information about their services will be launched in kampala, Uganda.

13.10.2005 In developing country contexts, handheld computer applications are starting to show their benefits across development sectors. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other types of handheld computers offer considerable advantages over desktops or even laptops. Health and microfinance have been particularly keen to test handheld applications.

12.10.2005 UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 (OneWorld) - Rights groups have hailed the news that Ugandan rebels responsible for years of brutal attacks and child abductions are likely to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC), while urging the international community to work with the Ugandan government to ensure that indictments don't spark fresh attacks against innocent civilians.

11.10.2005 The good news is that Zimbabwe's aggressive anti-AIDS campaigns have made the country the first in Southern Africa to show a decline in its AIDS rate. The bad news is that that rate is still critically high, and thousands are dying from the disease each week.

10.10.2005 At least 18 supporters of the main opposition party in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar were wounded on Sunday after police opened fire on a crowd.

07.10.2005 Malawi's political crisis has distracted government and caused parliament to lose focus amid a hunger crisis threatening more than four million people, and could also jeopardise foreign aid, warns the British High Commissioner.