Global Voices Online

Khadija discusses US military interest in Africa: “According to the US African Command website, Somalia -– invaded by US backed Ethiopian troops in Jan 2007, under the guise of hunting Al–Qaeda –- is in desperate need of assistance.”

Listen to Eritrean music: “This is the last day of Eritrea Week. I don’t know enough about much of the music I’ve collected this week to write full posts so I decided to make you a mixtape instead.”

Addax posts an article in English announcing the Eritrean government's decision to outlaw female genital mutilation. Adds the blogger [Fr]: “Note that this practice is now condemned by the African Charter of Human Rights in its Article 5.”

Akin is happy to hear that FGM is banned in Eritrea: “Learning that Eritrea has banned the practice of Female Genital Mutilation or Circumcision (FGM or FGC) is definitely great news and to be celebrated.
It marks a beginning of what should be a wave of the civilising of customs, traditions and religious practices that cause undue physical harm without any particular health benefit apart from a modicum of social acceptance.”

Tear of Eritrea writes about political persecution in Eritrea, “Suppression of Political Dissent and Free Expression Governing party and government leaders and journalists arrested in 2001 as alleged traitors, spies, and foreign agents continue to be held incommunicado in undisclosed prisons. In 2006 a website issued a detailed but unconfirmed report asserting that 31 prisoners, including the leaders and journalists, were being held in isolation cells in a remote jail built expressly to hold them. The report claimed that nine of the 31 had died in captivity (one by suicide).”

Read Celebrating Miserable African Leaders and K'naan, Somalia Needs You, at The sub-Saharan African Roundtable.

The US needs to reconsider its policy in the Horn of Africa, read Weichegud's analysis.

Africa Unchained writes, “Karekezi, S…surveys (PDF) the dissemination of renewable technologies in Sub-Saharan Africa…and attempts to evaluate the potential for these technologies to meet the energy needs of Africa’s poor…“