For general news on Africa, including in-depth coverage of hunger and poverty issues, the Washington-based news portal, allAfrica.com, is an excellent resource. For a closer look at social and political issues, Justice Africa's website offers a rich archive of analysis and research.

For the latest humanitarian developments, the IRIN news service provides coverage of UN-related issues from the across the continent.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has useful country briefs, as well as general information about hunger and food aid, emergency reports and appeal updates.

The very latest updates on food insecurity across Africa are published regularly by the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fewsnet). Widely used and trusted by aid professionals in the field, Fewsnet compiles reliable country briefs and in-depth reports based on extensive assessment and analysis. Countries are rated according to level of alert.

Other alert services include the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) and the World Food Programme's (WFP) Humanitarian Early Warning Service.

FAO produces two key reports: the The State of Food and Agriculture and State of Food Insecurity in the World which plots progress towards the fulfilment of the first Millennium Development Goal, which commits to halving world hunger by 2015. Britain's Department for International Development (DFID) has also produced a useful factsheet on the first goal.

For in-depth research on hunger-related issues, the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) runs a comprehensive website and produces a Global Hunger Index jointly with Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe, listing countries according to levels of hunger. IFPRI's August 2005 report, "Looking Ahead: Long-term prospects for Africa's Agricultural Development and Food Security", offers a blueprint for reversing the chronic decline in the continent's food security.

Even the definition of famine is highly contentious, an issue examined in this extract from "The Challenge of Famine" by John Osgood Field, published on the website of the International Famine Centre at University College Cork. The book may be more than ten years old, but the issues remain as relevant as ever.

An extensive presentation covering the history of famine and current challenges is available from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Author and activist Alex de Waal's 1998 book "Famine Crimes: Politics & the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa" should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding hunger in Africa. More recently he has developed a new hypothesis for hunger in Africa, known as New Variant Famine, incorporating the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS.

The Make Poverty History campaign advocates that much of Africa's food insecurity is borne not out of food shortages, but out of poverty, debt and trade imbalances. Their website is particularly useful for those interested in getting involved in campaigning.