Pope Benedict XVI assumes leadership at a critical time in which the world's collective wisdom and leadership including that of the religious community is most important to face up to challenges of deepening poverty and under-development afflicting many people of the world.

I must say, with regard to Equatorial Guinea, the Government of Equatorial Guinea, as soon as they had arrested these people, sent a delegation here to say they are going to charge them because they have got sufficient information to say these people were planning to remove the Government of Equatorial Guinea by force.

We were asked to host the Pan African Parliament and we agreed to this.

The Communal Land Rights Bill then said, since there would be those collectives set up in terms of the other legislation, there was no need for them to set up other structures to deal with the land issues.

In Africa you have space...there a profound sense of space here, space and sky

I don't know why women would think they would be underrepresented in that 40 per cent, and I do not know why they think they would be underrepresented in that 60 per cent either. Because, any community that has their traditional leader in the area, one would expect that, among the people, they would want to ensure that this committee, that 60%, is properly representative.

As Africans, we need to share common recognition that all of us stand to lose if we fail to transform our continent.