Global Voices Online

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…“

Meskel Square on “Moving on from the Digital Indaba“:
“Overall it was a huge success. One way of judging that is to look at all the discussions that are still carrying on in posts and comments and Technorati links. The discussions started with the race debate which I now wish I hadn't joined (there was just something about that pig/hairless-bulldog). But it has now moved on to thinking about what should come next.”

Forum Realisance believes (Fr) former colonial powers and pharmaceutical companies are partially to blame for the AIDS crisis but saves harsher words for Africans and failed African leaders: ” Ignorance and illiteracy reproduce AIDS blindly without the least use for reason. Isn't it sacred and legitimate to protect oneself? Why not do it? By weakness in front of the beauty of orgasm? Weakness because of the taboo of sexuality? Curious logic.”

Reject the Ethiopian Invasion! picks up on reports of a mystery aircraft which landed at Mogadishu, rumored to be carrying arms from Eritrea. “The last thing Somalia needs is more arms,” the blogger writes. There is also part of a transcript of the U.S. State Department media briefing which dealt with Somalia, Ethiopia and the plane.