A new adittion to the alphabet soup of armed rebel groups in Africa's most oil-rich region: the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). From the BBC, Feb. 17:

A Nigerian militant commander in the oil-rich southern Niger Delta has told the BBC his group is declaring "total war" on all foreign oil interests.

From Africa News Dimension, Feb. 15:

Around 10,000 Eritrean-Americans marched from the White House to the Department of State in Washington , DC to urge the U.S. government to ensure the enforcement of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission's (EEBC) "final and binding" decision to demarcate the border between the two countries.

From Reuters, Feb. 14:

Militias in Somalia are looting shipments of aid for drought victims and forcing aid drivers to pay bribes, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

At least 16 people were injured Jan. 20 as Ethiopian police cracked down on opposition protests in the capital, Addis Ababa, on the second and final day of celebrations marking Timkat, the Epiphany festival of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Demonstrators joined up with religious processions around the city, and were attacked by police, who charged with truncheons. (South Africa Mail & Guardian, Jan. 20)

The international community has been attempting to restore peace to West Africa, long torn by multiple inter-related ethnic and civil conflicts. Now, just as Liberia is hailed as a success story—with the country's first post-war president, and Africa's first woman president, taking office Jan. 16—neighboring Ivory Coast is once again descending into war. Behind the new bloodshed is a continuing Anglo-American-versus-French struggle for control of the region and its precious resources—including significant and virtually untapped oil reserves.

Royal Dutch Shell has shut down a tenth of Nigeria's oil production, after armed militants kidnapped four foreign oil workers and blew up a major pipeline Jan. 11. The incidents followed attacks on pipelines owned by the Nigerian state-owned oil company in December, disrupting supplies from the world's eighth-largest oil exporter for several days.

More than 3,500 Congolese soldiers, supported by 600 UN troops and helicopter gunships, launched attacks Dec. 24 on guerillas operating in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sixteen government troops and some 35 guerillas are reported killed in fighting near the city of Beni in Nord-Kivu province. An Indian blue beret peacekeeper was killed and four of his colleagues wounded when their camp was hit by a guerilla rocket-propelled grenade. But 300 Nepalese peacekeepers and 1,500 government troops captured the guerilla-held village of Nioka, 50 miles north-east of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district. The guerilla militia the operation was launched to uproot, the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda), is seeking the overthrow of President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, across the eastern border.

From AP, Dec. 23:

PARIS — A French military tribunal opened an investigation Friday into allegations that French peacekeepers facilitated attacks on ethnic minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans, judicial officials said.