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Pambazuka News is produced by a pan-African community of some 2,600 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators who together produce insightful, sharp and thoughtful analyses and make it one of the largest and most innovative and influential web forums for social justice in Africa.

Latest titles from Pambazuka Press

From Citizen to Refugee

Uganda Asians come to Britain
Mahmood Mamdani
'On the face of it, life in the camp presented a sharp and favourable contrast to the open terror of living in Uganda. But it was the Kensington camp, and not Amin's Uganda, which was my first experience of what it would be like to live in a totalitarian society.' Mahmood Mamdani
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African Awakening

The Emerging Revolutions
The tumultuous uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have seized the attention of media but what about the rest of Africa? With incisive contributions from across the continent, "African Awakening" presents the 2011 uprisings in their African context.
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Demystifying Aid

Yash Tandon

This pamphlet from Pambazuka Press shows that 'development aid' is not what it purports to be - the effects of actions of well-meaning allies in the North who support aid to Africa for reasons of ethics or solidarity are, unfortunately, the opposite of their good intentions.
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To Cook a Continent

Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa
Nnimmo Bassey
Exploiting Africa's resources has delivered huge profits to the North and huge damage to Africa's environment and economies. Overcoming the crises of environment and climate change means also addressing corporate profiteering and resource extraction.
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Earth Grab

Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes
Diana Bronson, Hope Shand, Jim Thomas, Kathy Jo Wetter
As greedy eyes focus on the global South's resources this book 'pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead.
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Pambazuka News Broadcasts

Pambazuka broadcasts feature audio and video content with cutting edge commentary and debate from social justice movements across the continent.

See the list of episodes.

AU MONITOR

This site has been established by Fahamu to provide regular feedback to African civil society organisations on what is happening with the African Union.

Perspectives on Emerging Powers in Africa: December 2011 newsletter

Deborah Brautigam provides an overview and description of China's development finance to Africa. "Looking at the nature of Chinese development aid - and non-aid - to Africa provides insights into China's strategic approach to outward investment and economic diplomacy, even if exact figures and strategies are not easily ascertained", she states as she describes China's provision of grants, zero-interest loans and concessional loans. Pambazuka Press recently released a publication titled India in Africa: Changing Geographies of Power, and Oliver Stuenkel provides his review of the book.
The December edition available here.

The 2010 issues: September, October, November, December, and the 2011 issues: January, February, March , April, May , June , July , August , September, October and November issues are all available for download.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

war

South Sudan: Africa’s newest state should sustain the dream

Aloys Habimana

2011-07-13, Issue 539

cc ENOUGH projectSouth Sudan’s independence is ‘a dream come true’ for the country’s people, but ‘to avoid turning that dream into a nightmare, the new nation’s leadership will need to adopt a line of governance that reflects greater commitment to human rights, public freedoms and justice for all,’ cautions Aloys Habimana.

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Nigeria’ s Golden Jubilee: Blood, tears and recrimination

Dibussi Tande

2010-10-14, Issue 500

cc N CBomb blasts killed 12 and injured 8 people in Abuja during Nigeria’s 50th anniversary celebrations on 1 October. Dibussi Tande finds the country’s bloggers ‘torn between sadness for the innocent victims, anger at the perpetrators, and outrage at the federal government for its inept handling of events before and after the blast.’

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Isaias Afewerki and Eritrea: A nation’s tragedy

Selam Kidane

2009-07-02, Issue 440

cc gordontourSince winning its de facto independence in May 1991, Eritrea has come to represent a tragedy, laments Selam Kidane. Having fought and suffered alongside one another during the country's liberation struggle, Eritreans have seen their country embroiled in conflicts with every one of its neighbours under the leadership of Isaias Afewerki. With President Isaias increasingly viewing power as 'a weapon of self-aggrandisement' and surrounding himself with a sycophantic clique of military associates, the hope of the post-independence years has tragically faded, Kidane concludes.

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DRC: The future has come and gone

Lansana Gberie

2009-06-04, Issue 436

cc Julien HarneisReturning to DRC for the first time since 1996, Lansana Gberie finds that a little cash comes in handy for dealing with bureaucracy and that it is impossible to get anything done without a ‘fixer’. Considering the conflicts in the country’s history, Gberie notes that in Congo ‘money is always at the centre of the bigger drama of suffering’ and that justice – or the interests of victims of mass atrocities – has had to be subordinated to wider geopolitical interests. Leaving Kinshasa after just over a week, Gberie finds himself feeling that he is ‘in a place whose future has come and gone’.

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Report on Gaza conflict: Audio interview

John Dugard

2009-05-21, Issue 433

cc flickr.comIn an audio interview [mp3] about an independent fact-finding report into the war in Gaza commissioned by the League of Arab States, John Dugard, the former special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories and the head of the investigation, discusses the findings of the report. Comprised of the contributions of individuals from six non-Arab countries, Dugard's report comes to the conclusion that the Israeli defence forces were responsible for a number of war crimes and crimes against humanity in their offensive earlier this year. This was a verdict also reached about the activities of Hamas forces, but the report regards those of Israeli to have been far more severe. While the report found potential suggestions of genocide on the part of the Israeli forces to be too strong, Dugard nevertheless emphasises Israeli's 'wish to impose collective punishment on the people of Gaza' and the minimal cooperation from the Israeli authorities his team received when investigating the actions of both sides.

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Zionism: An endless river of blood?

Rabbi Weiss speaks to Riaz Tayob

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss

2009-04-30, Issue 430

cc Amir Farshad EbrahimiZionism is the root cause of suffering, bloodshed and the rift between Arabs and Jews, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesperson for Neturei Karta International – an organisation that represents anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews – has said. In an audio interview [mp3] with Riaz K. Tayob at the Durban Review Conference, Weiss said that Zionist movement transformed Judaism into ‘a materialistic, political, nationalistic goal’, which presented its critics as ‘anti-Semitic’ or ‘self-hating Jews.’ Speaking of his hopes too see the Palestine question addressed, he added that the Holocaust should not be used to further Zionist goals or to justify the oppression of another people.

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Darfur, ICC and the new humanitarian order

How the ICC’s “responsibility to protect” is being turned into an assertion of neocolonial domination

Mahmood Mamdani

2008-09-17, Issue 396

On July 14, after much advance publicity and fanfare, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court applied for an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, on charges that included genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Important questions of fact arise from the application as presented by the prosecutor. But even more important is the light this case sheds on the politics of the “new humanitarian order.”...

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Somalia: Time to pay attention

Frankie Martin

2008-08-05, Issue 392

While the world looks elsewhere, Somalia is in flames. The nation just topped a list of the world’s most unstable countries by Foreign Policy magazine, and the United Nations has declared the humanitarian situation there “worse than Darfur.”...

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G8 Hokkaido: An exercise in Escapism

John Samuel

2008-07-10, Issue 387

The meeting of G8 leaders in Hokkaido, Japan, proved to be an exercise in escapism, writes John Samuel. The final communiqué of the G8 leaders is more of a recycled rhetoric of broken promises. This meeting, held in the midst of financial, fuel, food and climate crisis, failed to recognize the gravity of the crisis.