Full Coverage: West Africa

31.10.2005 Faced with impossible conditions for holding elections, a proposal by the U.N. and the African Union has allowed Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo to stay in office for up to 12 months, despite opposition from some citizens. The country continues in a state of "no war, no peace," as it has since a failed insurgency three years ago.

31.10.2005 In anticipation of renewed fighting with rebel forces, the Ivorian government is recruiting Liberian children alongside hundreds of other former combatants in Liberia’s civil war, said leading human rights group.

28.10.2005 A season of public art, film, music, theatre, poetry and debate is being held in London, 21 October-10 November to mark the 10th anniversary of the executions of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues.

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.

24.10.2005 The UK Government has backed down in the face of demands that it stop using aid money to fund privatisation public relations in the world's second poorest country.

23.10.2005 Africa's most populous country and the world's fifth largest oil supplier reached an agreement to greatly reduce its debt burden Thursday. The deal, however, will still force Nigeria to pay more in debt service than for health care over the next two years, even as 100 million of its citizens live on less than a dollar a day and the country struggles with a 5% HIV rate.

21.10.2005 A £10 billion debt relief deal for Nigeria might be undermined by negative conditions, a leading development group has warned.

20.10.2005 As Liberia awaits the verdict of the polls, exiled president Charles Taylor remains an unspoken force to be reckoned with, says Katharine Houreld.

19.10.2005 With 95% of returns counted in Liberia's historic presidential election and the two front-runners in a close tie, Liberians are now expecting to return to the polls for a November 8 run-off. They will choose between a former soccer star and a female Harvard-educated economist.

13.10.2005 After an enthusiastic voter turnout for the first Liberian elections since the end of civil war in 2003, citizens across the nation are glued to their radios, hanging on any bit of news about preliminary results. With many polling stations located in rural and hard-to-reach areas, official results are not expected for another 3-7 days.

13.10.2005 The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative will launch a report Police Accountability: Too Important to Neglect, Too Urgent to Delay on October 13th at 6:30 pm at the British Council, Accra, Ghana.

13.10.2005 Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure of Osun State government in Nigeria will be commissioned soon.

11.10.2005 Regulators from 15 West African nations agreed to a common regulatory framework for their national ICT markets during a three-day validation workshop held last month in Geneva.

10.10.2005 The telecommunications industry in Ghana has been described as one of the fastest growing on the African continent, as significant milestones have been achieved recently.

07.10.2005 AfriHUB, a project embarked upon to provide digital access to Nigerian tertiary institutions maintains that the centres built in Nigerian universities would be used to develop the Universal Mandatory IT Training (UMITT).

07.10.2005 Ninety teachers from Central, Western and Volta Regions of Africa would by the end of the year undergo ICT training to prepare students for the "i2cap"ICT Competition scheduled to take place at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in November and December 2005. The coordinator of the project, Mr. Ebenezer Kye-Mensah said.

06.10.2005 Fourteen years of civil war behind them, Liberians will go to the polls next week to elect a new president. There is renewed hope for the country's future, both among Americo-Liberians returning for this historic event and the youth of the country, who are finally learning to live in peacetime.

06.10.2005 Liberia faces a make-or-break situation as voters go to the polls next week, reports Reed Kramer.

03.10.2005 The president of Senegal has urged African countries "not to remain passive consumers of new technologies, but to keep in step with the rest of the world in developing an effective research capacity".