By Steve Bloomfield

I need a new phone. In fact, I've needed one for a long time. Bits of gaffer tape are holding it together, the battery lasts about an hour and now I'm having trouble hearing people at the other end.

My current Nokia, a battered old 6230, can make calls, send texts and take a fairly grainy picture. But in the three years since I bought it the humble mobile has  become one of the most useful tools a journalist can have.

By Steve Bloomfield

Africa is in the midst of its second mobile phone revolution. The first stage, which is still on-going in most countries, saw mobile phone usage shoot up across the continent (from 7.5m in 1999 to 76m five years later).

The number of users surprised everyone, including the phone companies themselves. This is what Mo Ibrahim, the founder of Celtel, said to me when I interviewed him last year:

"I must admit I never appreciated the depth of the market... It is amazing how people on lower incomes took so quickly to this."

By Steve Bloomfield

How many people have died in Darfur? It depends who you ask. And how you ask it. The Sudanese government once claimed it was 9,000, now they admit to 10,000. The UN once said it was 200,000, now they think it's 300,000. Some US activists put the figure at 450,000, or higher. When the ICC's prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accused Omar al-Bashir of genocide last month he came up with a new figure: 35,000.

There are reasons for the discrepancies – and not just political ones. Here's the breakdown:

9,000: the number of people Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir said had been killed during the counter-insurgency. This figure, crucially, excluded those who had died from diseases and starvation caused by their forced displacement. The Sudanese ambassador to the UN upped the number to 10,000 earlier this year.

By Steve Bloomfield

Marere doesn't feel like Somalia, at least not the Somalia of Black Hawk Down, warlords, and endless bloody violence. Nestled in the lower Juba valley, 20kms from the town of Jilib, it is a series of small rural villages that has tended to escape the worst elements of modern-day Somalia. Though desperately poor it has, until recently, been relatively calm.

I've visited twice in the last two years – the first time in 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts ruled most of southern Somalia, the second in 2007 six months after the Ethiopians had thrown the Courts out.

By Steve Bloomfield

It’s all gone quiet in Khartoum. After days of feverish speculation and doomsday scenarios that Omar al-Bashir would unleash the dogs of war on aid workers, peacekeepers and Darfur’s displaced if he were indicted… nothing happened. Not yet anyway.

But in the days that followed Monday’s announcement that Bashir would become the first world leader to be charged by the International Criminal Court, he has managed to build an impressive array of support both inside and outside Sudan.

By Steve Bloomfield

It hadn't rained for weeks. Not properly, anyway. But on Friday night it made up for lost time. Within about half an hour of the first raindrops the streets were flooded. Roads became raging rivers, waves crashing over car bonnets.

Few of the roads in Nairobi have any sort of draining system. Actually, few of the roads even deserve to be called roads. Even the main highways are covered in potholes which come in a range of sizes - from the three-footers you can swerve around with ease (so long as there is no on-coming traffic) to the bath-tub-sized craters you simply have to drive through and hope the suspension holds. When it rains heavily the pot-holes become impossible to spot.

By Steve Bloomfield

Mia Farrow, unlike many of the prominent Darfur activists, cannot be accused of not spending time in the field (when was your last visit, Matt Damon?). She has visited Darfur and Chad on countless occasions and has even made two trips to Central African Republic (CAR), a country few people even know exists, let alone decide to spend a few days in.

But in her attempt to bring some much-needed attention to CAR she has chosen an odd ally. Farrow has been named as an ambassador of CAR by President Francois Bozize and, according to a fascinating piece in the New Yorker, is introducing him to New York's hoipolloi at fancy cocktail parties held in exclusive members' clubs:

"In the plush cool of Doubles, President Bozize greeted Ambassador Farrow warmly. "She knows the country better than the President himself!” he announced to the assembled guests."

By Steve Bloomfield

There may well be more fruitless jobs in the world than "Darfur peace negotiator", but if so, I can't think of one. Jan Eliasson and Salim Ahemd Salim, the UN and AU envoys, never had much of a chance. By the time they took over in December 2006 the fatal consequences of the last failed peace effort were already being felt across the region.

The Darfur Peace Agreement, signed in Abuja in 2006, had been heralded as Darfur's great hope. All three rebel factions were present for negotiations overseen by America's top African diplomat, Robert Zoellick, and the UK's Hilary Benn. But just one, a faction of the SLA led by Minni Minawi, was persuaded to sign it.

By Steve Bloomfield

Abazar, a Sudanese singer I met in Darfur earlier this month, faces the sort of challenges few British musicians have to deal with. His political lyrics are vetted, and often banned, by Sudan's music monitoring committee while radio stations are willing to play only his love songs. He employs his lawyer more often than his backing band.

By Steve Bloomfield

So just how influential is China's role in Sudan? China buys Sudan's oil, builds up its infrastructure and sells them the odd Fantan. Western governments have blamed the Chinese for watering down UN resolutions criticising Sudan and some  Darfur activists insist on referring to the Beijing Games as the Genocide Olympics.

Both the West and the Save Darfur lot are, I think, over-stating China's influence on Sudan's policy in Darfur. But China certainly has a presence in Sudan.