International Monetary Fund is optimistic about the economic prospects of Africa and says the continent has weathered the effects of the global financial crisis.

Africare, the oldest and largest NGO working exclusively to provide development and humanitarian assistance to Africa is among 10 charities that will receive a portion of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize money awarded to him in October 2009.

The world football's governing body, FIFA, is set to tighten player transfer regulations after discovering many loopholes with the current player registration system.

Jonathan Naber, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, won the Lemelson-MIT Illinois Student Prize for innovation on 3 March for his work on developing an affordable prosthetic arm for people in developing countries. The materials science and engineering major accepted the $30,000 cash prize on the behalf of the Illini Prosthetics Team (IPT).

My final destination in this week's visit to Africa was Zambia, where I sought the views not just of the government but also of the people—in a town hall with civil society, students, and the media. Zambia has one of the highest economic growth rates in sub-Saharan Africa: 6.3 percent in 2009 and the outlook for 2010 appears positive.

This year there are less than half the reported meningitis infections than in the same period in 2009, but more patients are dying - 13 percent in 2010 versus 8 percent in 2009 - according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Multi-Disease Surveillance Centre in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which tracks 14 countries prone to meningitis outbreaks between Senegal and Ethiopia.

With Britain leading the way, G8 leaders pledged at the U.K.-led Gleneagles G8 Summit in 2005 to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010. Significant progress has been made in some areas yet, as the universal access pledge comes due, only one-third of people in need of HIV treatment worldwide receive it, while more than 10 million more people in urgent need of life-saving HIV treatment wait. Most people living with HIV are still unaware of their status. And fewer than half of pregnant women living with HIV receive the drug regimen that can extend their own lives and save their children from infection.

The executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Michel Kazatchkine, sat down with IRIN/PlusNews at the launch of the organization's 2010 report, where he answered some hard questions on what may be a turning point in HIV/AIDS funding.

A dedicated African academy for education in the oil refining industry, and research that could result in the better vetting of ships that carry oil around African coasts are two of the ‘coming of age’ projects that have been embarked on by the African Refiners Assocation (ARA) which held its 5th annual conference in Cape Town this week.

Chelsea striker Didier Drogba was on Thursday named African Footballer of the Year for 2009. This is the second time the Ivory Coast international his won the award.

AFRICAN countries such as SA must have clean and transparent tender processes that offer equal opportunity to all bidders, a senior visiting US trade official said yesterday.

In order for Africa to be liberated from hunger and unemployment among its youths, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) yesterday advised the continent to embrace modern method of farming.

Ivorian international Didier Drogba, was last night named the winner of the Glo-African Footballer of the year award for the year 2009 at an impressive ceremony that was staged in Accra, Ghana. Drogba beat his closest rivals Samuel Eto'o of Cameroon and Ghana's Michael Essien to the award.

Ghana's tourism Minister, Mrs. Zita Okaikoi, has called on Africans to take advantage of the upcoming South Africa 2010 to harness the tourism potentials on the continent.

The Gambia Tourism Authority (GTA), in collaboration with the Gambia Hotel Association (GHA, is preparing for the forthcoming 35th Annual Congress of the Africa Travel Agency (ATA) to be held in the Gambia in May 2010. It is in this regard that a business forum was held at the Kairaba Beach Hotel attended by the members of the Hoteliers Association, senior officials of GTA and other stakeholders.

Getting rid of the incentives for military take-overs on our continent is, if you ask me, something both the ECOWAS regional grouping and the pan-African organization, called the African Union, A.U., have yet to take seriously.

For quite some time, dogs have been one of the main tools used to detect land mines. However recently, there is a new animal that is proving to be just as useful in sniffing out landmines and other unexploded ordinances-rats. The non-profit APOPO, based in Tanzania, has been training rats for mine detection and is currently putting them to work in Mozambique to clear minefields left over from conflicts in the 1960s, 70s and 90s.

By press time most bookmakers tipped him favourite.

In a news conference in Yaounde yesterday, the association's president, Ahmed Bachir Diop, assured that all was ready for the three-day reflection on African cotton.

Food insecurity on the African continent is severely aggravated by a depletion of nutrients in the soil that leads to a decrease in soil productivity.