The Sudan government has agreed to end military flights over Darfur and has signed a peace deal to end 20 months of hostilities with rebels from the western region. After three weeks of difficult talks sponsored by the African Union (AU) in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, the parties to the conflict late Tuesday signed a series of breakthrough agreements touching on security and humanitarian issues.

also in Africa

IN MALAWI, most local civil society organisations were initially critical of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad).

Activists regarded the development plan as "top-down", drafted by a handful of presidents, and adopted by African leaders without public consultation in 2001.

They complained that its emphasis on promoting foreign investment and trade ignored the constraints facing especially poor countries such as Malawi.

After some reflection, however, more than 70 such groups formed a coalition called the Malawi Economic Justice Network, which has welcomed Nepad as a "landmark in the process of shared aspirations for African unity".

According to coalition spokesmen Dalitso Kingsley Kubalasa, the network still has reservations about the plan, but remained "hopeful that a genuine Nepad" could help Africans reduce poverty, achieve gender equity and attain global economic viability.

Rather than "giving up on Nepad because the process has not been ideal", he says, Malawian organisations have decided instead to put forward their own suggestions for advancing Nepad "to make it really work".

According to a recent study by the United Nation's (UN's) office of the special adviser on Africa: "Overall, there is evidence of growing efforts to involve or consult with civil society organisations and the private sector in implementing Nepad."