Africa

The African Development Bank has approved its 2010-2014 agricultural sector strategy. The strategy seeks to position the bank to contribute more effectively to agriculture.

It is expected to enhance the continent's food security and reduce poverty levels while promoting conservation of natural resources.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for calm in Togo, where the provisional results of the 4 March presidential election were announced on Saturday, and for any grievances to be resolved through the proper channels.

"He calls for the same calm and restraint during this period as that which was witnessed on voting day," Mr. Ban's spokesperson said in a statement.

ELEVEN-year-old Aggrey Musene is perhaps one pupil who demonstrates the misery pupils and students in Namashet parish are going through, after a devastating landslide that buried and killed several of his colleagues. At least 50 pupils and students have been confirmed dead and over 100 are still missing, according to the Uganda Red Cross Society.

United Nations agencies and their partners on Saturday launched a polio immunization campaign targeting 85 million children under the age of five in 19 countries across West and Central Africa.

At least 16 people were yesterday evening wounded in two simultaneous grenade attacks in the city.

One of the attacks took place in Kimironko close to the taxi park, while the other occurred at Kinamba on the way to Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre.

The grenades exploded during the heavy rain Thursday evening at around 19 hrs.

More than 3,000 local election observers, 6,000 soldiers, and representatives of international election transparency watchdog groups are scattered across Togo on the eve of a presidential election crackling with tension, yet billed as a "national reconciliation" by its leaders.

At least 300 people, including 100 children, are believed to have been killed when landslides buried three villages in eastern Uganda late on 1 March after heavy rains. Some 2,000 people have been displaced and entire fields of crops ruined.

Almost half a million people have petitioned Parliament to drop debate on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Religious leaders and HIV/Aids activists handed a copy of the petition with signatures, collected mainly through the Internet from all over the world, including Uganda, to Speaker Edward Ssekandi on Monday.

Russian efforts to acquire oil and gas fields in Africa and prospect for minerals on the resource-rich continent have yielded little success over the past decade due to lack of a coherent national strategy, experts say.

Millions of Egyptian children continue to live in poverty, despite recent gains made for young people, particularly on the legislative front, a study commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has found.

Brigitte Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson, head of the Convention démocratique des peuples africains (Democratic Convention of African Peoples (CDPA) opposition party, is Togo's first female presidential candidate.

But she has withdrawn from the electoral process.

After 18 years of successful multi-party democracy, Ghanaians are bracing themselves to review the Fourth Republican Constitution.

Following cabinet's approval of a memorandum on the consultative review, government has established an independent body to spearhead the process.

Amnesty International and Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) have disclosed that some Nigerians and other Africans are being held without trials in secret maximum security cells in Gambia.

Free primary and secondary education has lifted Uganda's ranking on the UN Human Development Index (HDI). The spike in the number of students, since the Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education programmes was introduced, has contributed greatly to the country's improved global standing.

U.S President Barack Obama has criticized the controversial anti-gay law which has been proposed to Uganda's legislature.

Speaking at a national prayer breakfast in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Obama described the proposed law as "odious," according to a text posted to the White House website.