Emmanuel Goujon

Voters go to the polls in Ethiopia on Sunday with little doubt that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will stay in power.

After an awkward year with Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi as chairperson, many at the AU fear he will seek re-election.

Women jump up in their fluffy orange cotton skirts, waggling their shoulders at men who are swift to join the dance.

African leaders on Friday ratified a convention on the protection of the continent's internally displaced people, refugees and returnees.

African Union peacekeepers have an acronym for the guerrilla war in Somalia -- VUCA -- meaning volatile, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous.

The UN envoy for Somalia blamed Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys on Wednesday for recent fighting in Mogadishu.

The AU's annual summit was to kick off Sunday with another year of crises likely to upstage an official agenda focused on infrastructure.

The mountainous region in north-eastern Ethiopia was ravaged by the border conflict that left about 80 000 dead between 1998 and 2000.

Every morning at dawn, Ethiopian soldiers poke long poles into the soil on the dirt track linking Badme with civilization, looking for landmines.

Comoran and African forces on Wednesday battled die-hard supporters of Anjouan's fugitive strongman as the federal authorities pledged a transition government in the Indian Ocean isle by the end of the week. Mohamed Bacar (45) was still on the run on the second day of the military operation.

A coalition of Comoran and African Union (AU) troops on Wednesday combed Anjouan hunting for its renegade leader after invading the Indian Ocean island the day before. The coalition staged its long-awaited landing in Anjouan's capital and main port of Mutsamudu, where they were greeted by cheering residents.

The African Union starts a heads-of-state summit in Addis Ababa on Thursday seeking to bolster the body's capacity to solve conflicts such as the crises in Darfur and Somalia. Since its inception in 2002, the pan-African body has lacked the funds and political drive to take effective action on the continent's flashpoints.