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The detention of 2016 Tutu Fellow, Peter Biar Ajak, has ended.  His wife Nyathon Hoth Mai confirmed in a Facebook post that he had been released. His release came several days after his pardon was first announced by South Sudan's President, Salva Kiir. 

The peace advocate was detained without trial by the South Sudan National Security Service on 28 July and held for almost a year.  When he was finally brought to trial on unsubstantiated charges, he was sentenced to two years imprisonment.  President Kiir issued a decree of pardon on 01 January to 30 people, most for minor offenses.  Kiir's list also included two critics of his regime - Peter, and Keribino Agok Wol.  Both were detained in 2018. 

2017 Tutu Fellow John-Allen Namu has released a documentary exposing the complicity of individuals in the Kenyan and Ugandan elite in illicit financial flows in support of South Sudan's warlords. John-Allen is an award-winning investigative journalist and the co-founder of Africa Uncensored.

The powerful three-part documentary titled, The Profiteers, is an expose of how South Sudan warlords plunder public resources to live in opulence in Nairobi while ordinary South Sudanese live in abject poverty. The money looted from Sudan's public coffers is then siphoned off to Kenya and Uganda through banking institutions where the cartels are laundering it by investing in other businesses. 

Later this month, Moroccan King Mohamed VI will travel to Nouakchott, Mauritania to participate in the 31st African Union Summit. It will be only the third summit that Morocco has attended since its re-admission to the African Union in early 2017.

Morocco withdrew itself from the African Union (the Organisation of African Unity; OAU) in 1984 to protest against the admission of Western Sahara as a full member of the organization. Morocco's relationship with Western Sahara is a complicated one. In 1975, Morocco invaded the territory following the withdrawal of the Spanish colonial administration.