Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is probably one of Africa’s least-known yet controversial leaders. After a successful 30-year independence war against neighbouring Ethiopia, he won praise from the West in the 1990s for being part of a “new generation” of  progressive African leaders. In recent years, however, the Eritrean president has been increasingly criticised from abroad as running his small Horn of African nation along authoritarian lines.

Not usually keen on giving interviews to Western media, President Isaias Afwerki sat down this week for a nearly two-hour chat with Reuters’ Asmara correspondent Jack Kimball and East Africa bureau chief Andrew Cawthorne.

Has Isaias Afwerki been good or bad for Eritrea and Africa. What do you think?

By reaching the gates of Khartoum, Darfur rebels have dealt one of the heaviest blows to Sudan’s traditionally Arab ruling elite since independence in 1956.
Early on Sunday, it looked as though government assertions that the army had beaten back the initial assault were true, but what is the attack going to mean for Africa’s biggest country and the way it is run?
The peace deal with south Sudanese rebels in 2005 made clear Khartoum could no longer afford to rule by force over a mostly black African region where Christians and animists predominate.
Now rebels from Muslim, but largely non-Arab, Darfur have shown the ability of groups who feel neglected in the rest of Sudan to take the battle to Khartoum.
Will there be retaliation in Darfur? Sudan has oil money to buy weapons, but if the war could be won militarily then why has that not happened already?
Will it be a fight to the death between leaders in Sudan and Chad, who accuse each other - by many accounts fairly — of backing each other’s rebels? Or will they have to find a real accommodation?
Could the rebel assault in the longer term push Sudan and the fractious Darfur rebel factions into real peace talks?
And if that happened, would it lead to a more durable Sudan or towards the breakup of a state whose borders were drawn by British imperialists?
What do you think?

Ndesanjo Macha is Sub-Saharan Africa Editor of Global Voices, which monitors citizen media in the developing world. Thomson Reuters is not responsible for the content of this post — the views are the author’s alone.

In countries such as Zimbabwe where media and political freedom is extremely restricted, new technologies have become powerful tools for political campaigning, communication, advocacy and mobilisation. Bloggers and civic organisations have resorted to using new tools and applications such as Flickr, Facebook, SMS text messages, YouTube and mashups to fight for democracy, media freedom and good governance.

SMS Text Messages

If you are in Zimbabwe and your phone rings, you might be receiving news headlines from SW Radio, election updates from Kubatana.net or political jokes about Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Widespread mobile phone access in Africa has made SMS a powerful and useful tool for activists. Comrade Fatso, a Zimbabwean blogger, writes about the many political jokes circulating on SMS in his blog:

"... Another joke walking the streets of Harare is that the only difference between an election and an erection is that you can't rig the latter."

The UK-based SW Radio uses SMS to send news headlines to mobile phones:

"We now have an SMS news headline service sent to mobile phones.
If you have a friend or relative in Zimbabwe who would like to receive this service please email their mobile phone number to: talk@swradioafrica.com"

Kubatana, an online community of Zimbabwean activists, uses FrontlineSMS to send election news to their SMS subscribers and facilitate conversations. The organisation has also used this technology for its campaign, "What we want in Zimbabwe?" Amanda Atwood from Kubatana writes, "As announcements by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission have been trickling out, we’ve been forwarding them to our SMS subscribers, many of whom do not have access to television or radio, or who are hit by Zimbabwe’s persistent electricity shortage."

FrontlineSMS, a service designed for non-profits, was also used by the Nigeria Mobile Election Monitors last year. Ken Banks, the creator of Frontline SMS, describes his work with Zimbabwean activists in his blog.

Electronic Postcards

Sokwanele-Zvakwana is another pro-democracy civic organisation using new media tools to fight for democracy and rule of law. Its website offers free satirical e-cards as part of its non-violent campaigns for change. The cards are organised around different themes, here is an example:

Economy e-cards:

Zimbabwe's economy is in free-fall and it's no laughing matter. Spread a bit of cheer by sending a humorous e-card, or send a card to alert someone of the reality of our country's economic state.

They have posted a video of the e-cards on Jumpcut.

Mashups

Sokwanele has also created a Google map of election rigging using data from their Zimbabwean Election Watch series:

Explore the map and then consider whether elections held in this context can ever be considered 'free and fair'. Information on how to use the map, the map data limitations, and the background to how we mapped the data is provided below the map. Please visit our Zimbabwe Election Watch section, and explore our database for a comprehensive look at the many ways the articles listed in the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections have been breached by the Zimbabwean government.

Videos and Pictures

Sokwanele has a channel on the popular video-sharing site, YouTube and a Flickr account. Visit their Album of Terror to see the extent of state brutality against the opposition. There is a also a Flickr account from another user with Zimbabwe Playing Cards:

On the outside this looks like an ordinary set of playing cards. But take them out, it is a fantastic political weapon - against the murderous, corrupt, hypocritical regime of 'Robber Mugabe'.

Social networking

Various groups including Sokwanele have established their presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. There is a "Remove Robert Mugabe from Zimbabwe" group on Facebook. And a "Revive Zimbabwe" group. There is also a group supporting the presidential candidate, Dr. Simba Makoni.

A cultural activist network, Magamba!, has a MySpace page where they publish blog posts about the situation in Zimbabwe. The most visible member of the group is Comrade Fatso who also keeps a personal blog at Vox.

Mobile Phones

The South Africa-based election monitoring group, The Independent Result Center, set up a website to publish independent election results. During the elections, their trained monitors in Zimbabwe were sending information to South Africa via satellite and mobile phones.

This is how their monitors obtained information:

"ZimElectionResults.com obtained the results using polling agents who were specially trained to obtain data officially displayed. This information was transmitted to a results centre in South Africa using cell­phones and satellite phones to the centre which was manned by call centre operators.

Since election results were displayed publicly the agents were able to take photos of the actual results:

Polling agents were also equipped with a camera to photograph the actual official results posted by the ZEC. These will be archived on this web site later as forensic evidence. The polling agents also counted the number of people entering each polling station."

Blogs

Immediately after the government started muzzling the media during the elections, Zimbabwean bloggers became one of the key sources of information and commentary on the political and economic situation in the country. Visit Global Voices' Zimbabwe Elections 2008 page for links to posts written by Zimbabwean bloggers.

Online Political Jokes

According to one joke, Robert Mugabe is twittering! He joins the Kenyan President, Mwai Kibaki, on the popular microblogging site, Twitter:

... meetings, meetings, meetings. very boring.
12:03 PM April 04, 2008
Ooooo, nervous morning. Sending the wife shopping. She is getting on my nerves. Thinking of shutting the electricity down for laughs.
09:21 AM April 01, 2008
Thinking of live blogging the election results. Good idea?
06:42 PM March 31, 2008
Forcing people to eat election posters. Hey, at least they get fed this week. :) 01:49 PM March 29, 2008
just voted. Guess who I voted for?
01:49 PM March 29, 2008

The website Zimbabwe Democracy Now also has a Humour page on its website.

A longer version of this article is posted on Global Voices.

The "Business Call to Action," hosted by the British prime minister, drew some 80 CEOs of the world's biggest companies including Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Vodafone as well as top politicians to discuss how big business can stamp out global poverty.

The lure? Big profits. Ghana's President John Kufuor said it will be easier for U.S. and European businesses to make their next million in Africa rather than anywhere else. The credit crunch has made a few more believe this might be true.

"Three billion of the world's 6 billion people have mobile phones," Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin said. "And three-quarters of the new customers are in the developing world. This is a huge opportunity."

Two companies laid out how they were using technology to tackle issues unique to developing nations in a race to win market share. British telecom company Vodafone has made some headway, while Telefonica O2 is launching new products to allow migrant workers to send money home using their mobiles.

Vodafone CEO Sarin:

• Vodafone already has 2 million Kenyan and Tanzanian customers, out of 10 million in total, signed up to M-PESA, which allows customers to send much-needed money to loved ones using their mobile phones.
• The company operates in Afghanistan. To get around the problem of illiteracy, the firm has developed voice recognition software. Luckily you don't have to shout out your bank details or the amount you're sending - you give voice instructions and plug in the numbers.

O2 CEO Matthew Key:

• Telefonica has plans to for a similar service in Latin America, where many leave for the United States and send part of their wages home.
• Telefonica wants 200 million people to sign up for "a new suite of banking products," Key said.
• The company estimates there are 650 million money transfers back to Latin America each year, and its mobile phone products will slash the average $10 cost per transfer.

--Reporting by Chris Wills in London

After a month of withholdingZimbabwe’s presidential poll results, electoral authorities on May 2 announced what was widely known to be the real outcome: President Robert Mugabe had lost the vote. The announcement gave opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai 47.9 percent of the vote but said he faces a runoff after failing to gain enough votes for an outright majority. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change denounced the result as scandalous and maintained its stand that it had won more than 50 percent of the vote and that Mugabe’s 28-year rule was over.

The MDC faces a huge dilemma. If it boycotts a runoff poll, it would hand victory to Mugabe by default. But in the view of the MDC, human rights groups and Western governments, no fair or credible runoff poll can be held in Zimbabwe under a current climate of violence and intimidation they say is orchestrated by Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF. The MDC and Mugabe’s critics at home and abroad have also condemned the unprecedented delay in announcing the presidential result as part of the government’s grand plan to rig the vote in favour of Mugabe.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement: “The ruling party’s bloody crackdown on the opposition makes a free and fair runoff vote a tragic joke. The violence must stop and an impartial process be put in place before any new vote is held.”

Mugabe was quick to declare his willingness to go for a runoff. The MDC said there were issues it needed to consider before deciding on whether or not to participate. Should Tsvangirai accept a runoff to avoid handing victory to Mugabe? Should there be international intervention in Zimbabwe to avert wider bloodshed and if so what form should this take? Have your say.

It took six weeks of intense negotiation to end Kenya’s post-election mayhem and another six weeks of haggling over a new power-sharing cabinet. The 41-member cabinet has now been sworn in, with President Mwai Kibaki sharing portfolios with opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement. Kibaki’s disputed re-election after Kenya’s Dec. 27 poll triggered the country’s worst post-independence crisis that killed more than 1,200 people and uprooted more than 300,000.

The African Union moved swiftly to end the turmoil in Kenya, sending former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to mediate. He was back in Kenya on April 17 when the new cabinet was sworn in. Does the formation of the power-sharing cabinet mark a triumph for African diplomacy? Are there any lessons here for the post-election crisis in Zimbabwe? Has Kenya now turned the corner after the traumatic ethnic killings that battered its image as a comparatively stable African democracy and economy? What should be the priorities of the new cabinet? What measures need to be taken to resettle  displaced people, notably in the Rift Valley, and give them assurances of future security? What constitutional changes does Kenya need to ensure enduring peace and stability? Have your say.

Human rights activist Peter Tatchell is criticising Nelson Mandela for not speaking out against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe.

Here's what Tatchell, who has twice tried to make a citizen's arrest on Mugabe, says on his Web site. Do you agree with him?

"Nelson Mandela should publicly urge Robert Mugabe to stand down. He has a duty to support the Zimbabwean people's democratic will, and denounce the election fraud of the ZANU-PF dictatorship."

"Nelson is the hero of the anti-apartheid movement, but his silence on Zimbabwe's unfree and unfair elections is collusion with tyranny. He is betraying his fellow Africans in Zimbabwe."

"Britain should be pressing African Union leaders, including South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki and other top ANC officials, to call on Mugabe to retire. They should offer him a face-saving exit strategy. The Zimbabwean crisis needs an African solution.

"People around the world, including Zimbabweans, supported Nelson Mandela's freedom struggle against apartheid. It is now time that Mandela reciprocated this solidarity by calling for the release of the election results and for Mugabe to concede that he lost the presidential poll."

Scientists have joined forces to save magical Madagascar by using a new method they hope to apply to other hot spots of biodiversity. For full details you can check my colleague Deborah Zabarenko's story.

As someone who has had the great privilege of visiting this island continent twice I can only say: "Right on!"

Madagascar is a classic example of natural selection at work: most of its species have evolved in splendid isolation because the island broke free from the rest of Africa tens of millions of years ago. 

This is what evolution and natural selection are all about. It is no coincidence that Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace separately stumbled upon this profound notion in the 19th century while observing life on islands -- or, more specifically, the difference to be found in life on islands often only a few miles apart. 

Madagascar, because of its size and the length of time it has been a cast away, is a prime an example of natural selection run riot.

Its snakes have no venom because that is an evolutionary trait they picked up after Madagascar and the rest of Africa went their separate ways.

It has boa constrictors (which I have observed in its forests) which are found nowhere in Africa but are found in South America. Why? How? Because, or so goes one theory I have heard, Madagascar and South America BOTH broke free from Africa at one point. So it stands to reason that they might both keep something that died out in Africa and vice versa.

That is the dynamic of natural selection.

I could go on and on and on. Madagascar is most famous for its roughly 70 species on lemurs, dainty primates that come in all shapes and colors. The largest among them, the indri, has a haunting cry that belies its small stature and which sent tingles down my spine the first time I heard it.

Much of the indri population is now restricted to a fragment of isolated habitat in a protected reserve. An island on an island.

For a good popular introduction to the study of island life I would recommend David Quammen's superb book "The Song of the Dodo." It inspired me to go to Madagascar in the first place with my wife when I was a Johannesburg-based correspondent.

And if you really want to see natural selection at work on an island, go to Madagascar yourself. Eco-tourism can help preserve species by giving rural people an economic incentive not to hunt them or destroy their habitat.  And that can only help the scientists and their new efforts to save this cradle of weird and wonderful evolution.

Human-animal relations are at breaking point in Kenya's renowned Maasai Mara game reserve.
Visitor numbers have dropped 80 percent since a deadly post-election crisis at the start of the year, meaning the Mara Conservancy, the non-profit organisation that manages the park, is in financial crisis.
It has had to cut back on anti-poaching patrols, lay off staff and suspend a successful cattle compensation scheme that had encouraged conservation by paying local Maasai for livestock killed by leopards and lions.

Attacks by predators are on the rise, and some Maasai say they are ready to hunt down the big cats stalking their herds - something that would slash animal numbers in the park and hurt any revival of Kenya's vital tourism sector.

In a bid to continue protecting the reserve's wildlife, two Conservancy staff members have taken their fundraising efforts online, both with modest success. 

Joseph Kimojino, a ranger with 20 years experience, writes an impassioned blog describing the job, the dangers of setting ambushes for cattle rustlers and how the Maasai have responded to the cutbacks. He has raised more than $35,000 since January.

Asuka Takita, a Japanese vet who trained in Kenya and speaks fluent Swahili, as well as the Maasai language Maa, also uses the Web to recount tales of treating wildlife in the park and domestic animals on the escarpment above - including vaccinating thousands of dogs against rabies. Her readers have donated about $50,000 to date.

Both have received support from around the world, but what do you think? How important is it to conserve wildlife when tens of thousands of Kenyans remain homeless because of political violence? What will the long-term effects be on the economy?

       He hardly fits the bill as an American Idol, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown won fans for an extraordinary pledge to buy 20 million anti-malarial nets for use in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

Brown made the commitment in a video-taped appearance on Wednesday's "American Idol" charity TV special "Idol Gives Back" which brings celebrities, charities and viewers together in a bid to raise tens of millions of dollars for children's charities in Africa and the United States.

Oil company Exxon Mobil, one of the "Idol" corporate sponsors, separately announced a $10 million donation to the fund raiser to be spent on anti-malarial efforts in Africa.

Brown's pledge on behalf of the British government represents about one-sixth of the 120 million life-saving mosquito nets that experts says are needed to protect every child and family around the world from contracting the disease.

Malaria No More, one of six charities that will benefit from "Idol Gives Back" fundraiser, said it hoped Brown's announcement would spur other world leaders to take similar action.

 "This generous pledge will ensure that millions of African parents can protect their children from the deadly disease," said Peter Chernin, chairman of Malaria No More.

 Organizers hope Wednesday's fundraiser will bring $100 million this year in donations from viewers of the U.S. singing talent show.  Last year's inaugural event raise $76 million.

"American Idol" is  the most watched TV show in the United States with about 27 million viewers a week and is also broadcast in a taped version in about 100 countries overseas.