Girleffect.org tells the story of girls creating a ripple impact of social and economic change on their families, communities and nations. Last week, at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Girl Effect launched a new video that builds on the original message, and discusses important issues like child marriage and early pregnancy for adolescent girls.

It has been 18 months at the helm of one of South Africa’s toughest cabinet portfolios and already Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has endured a disgruntled doctors’ strike, a crippling public sector work stoppage, the untimely death of his deputy minister and complex debates on a National Health Insurance initiative, which is really the critical transformation of the health system. However, Motsoaledi is proving to be a survivor and a tactician who is determined to turn the health sector around.

The cancellation by Egyptian security of an international NGO conference in Cairo, just two days before it was to take place, is a brazen example of the government’s increasingly hostile behavior towards civil society, according to Freedom House. The conference, entitled 'Freedom of Association in the Arab World: Reality and Expectations', was organised by One World Foundation in cooperation with Al Sadat Association.

Malaria, and other common African infections, may make women more susceptible to HIV/AIDS than they are in the developed world, according to a study that may help solve the mystery of the vastly different infection rates around the globe. Researchers who compared immune cells in the genital tracts of women in Kenya and the United States, found that Kenyan women had more 'activated' cells, which are more vulnerable to attack by HIV. Cells can become activated as a reaction to infection.

The number of Congolese refugees repatriated from neighbouring Zambia by UNHCR since 2007 has topped the 40,000 mark. The milestone was passed last Sunday when a UNHCR-chartered boat carrying 555 people arrived at Moba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga province after crossing LakeTanganyika from the north Zambian port of Mpulungu.

The widening levels of inequality and poverty globally, coupled with sharp increases in the prices of agricultural products have aggravated the challenges of food security. Moreover, the diversion of land for the production of fuels (bio-fuel) in the face of environmental degradation as a result of climate change has aggravated the food crisis The recent debilitating economic slowdown has adversely impacted the situation on the African continent that is faced with a largely unsuccessful approach to agricultural production and food security and thus heavily reliant on imports and aid to meet its food requirements.

For hundreds of years, pastoralists in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro District have lived off cattle, managing grazing land communally. But this way of life is under threat, as business interests trump traditional land rights, with the blessing of the government. Susanna Nordlund has written a blog about her visit to Loliondo to explore reports of conflict between local Masaai communities and a foreign-owned safari company, in which she raises a number of allegations. We reproduce her post in the hope that this might stimulate a serious investigation of these events.

Socio-economic problems are the major cause of xenophobia in South Africa, the United Nations refugee agency said in Johannesburg on Wednesday. 'No society is xenophobic by nature, these attacks were caused by lack of development,' UN High Commissioner for Refugees deputy regional representative Sergio Calle Norena told the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions' summit on xenophobia.

In support of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from conflict and disaster areas, Ericsson and Refugees United, in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and mobile operator MTN in Uganda, have launched the first project to locate and reconnect refugee and IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) families through the innovative use of mobile phones and internet. The program enables refugees to use mobile phones to register and search for loved ones via an anonymous database.

When children work in order to ensure the livelihoods of themselves and their families, should this be defined as child labour, asks Salma Maoulidi.

Under one per cent of poetry books published in the UK are by black or Asian poets. 'This is, quite simply, not fair,' says Bernardine Evaristo, one of the editors of Ten, a poetry anthology published by Bloodaxe Books. A week before the launch of Ten, Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport told delegates at the Media Festival Arts that he is firmly in favour of 'broadening participation' in the arts and is 'very ashamed' that we still live in a country 'where many, many people don't get a chance to access the arts'. Unfortunately, writes Lara Pawson in the London Guardian, what he said next was not as hopeful: 'The debate has got to move on from the kind of box-ticking targets approach that says that in return for your grant from the Arts Council, you will get so many people from particular ethnic or social backgrounds.'

Ethiopia’s central bank announced a devaluation of national currency the birr by a fifth on 1 September, reportedly on the instructions of a macro-economic team chaired by President Zenawi. Placing the devaluation within in a wider political context, Seid Hassan outlines what the move means for the country’s economy and why it might please the IMF.

If we are to create and provide space and a platform for African autonomous thinking on issues of the future of the continent, we have to begin by liberating ourselves from Western ways of thinking and draw knowledge and inspiration from our own heritages, argues Dani W. Nabudere, in the second half of a two-part article based on his inaugural address to the newly formed Nile Heritage Forum on political economy.

Friends of the Earth International, the world's largest federation of grassroots environmental organisations, is proud to announce that its chair, Nnimmo Bassey from Nigeria [1], will be a recipient of the 2010 'Right Livelihood Award'. [2] The Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' will be delivered in Stockholm on December 6.

Nnimmo Bassey, who is also Executive Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria, was nominated ‘for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally.’

Between October 14th and 17th October 2010, a Million Women Rise (MWR) delegation of British women will be attending the Third International Action of the World March of Women in Bukavu (province of South Kivu) in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The promise of legal aid is an empty one for most people in Africa, thanks to a shortage of lawyers, many of whom are located in capital cities rather than in rural areas. But a new approach that uses paralegals to provide frontline services could make legal aid a real option for people across the continent, writes Adam Stapleton, with plans underway for the establishment of ‘an international alliance of organisations to promote primary justice services to the poor.’

In this week's emerging powers news, a call for applications to attend a Fahamu study tour to India, emerging economies outpace Japan in the battle for trade with Africa, China extends Africa push with loans and a deal in Ghana, an Africa-China partnership in combating HIV/AIDS and India to train police forces of African countries.

The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council appears to be on the verge of ending the mandate of the UN Independent Expert on human rights in Sudan at its 15th Session despite the worsening human rights situation in the country. A draft resolution circulated earlier this week by the African Group failed to renew this mandate.

Investing in clean energy, sustainable transport, forests and environmentally-friendly agriculture is essential, if internationally-agreed goals to reduce poverty are to be achieved. This is among the central conclusions of 'A Brief for Policymakers on the Green Economy and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)', launched as heads of state and ministers met at UN Headquarters to review progress to date - five years before the MDG deadline of 2015.

Zimbabwe's education ministry has backtracked on a new policy, introduced in August 2010, to grant pregnant schoolgirls and the prospective fathers maternity and paternity leave from school, and has opted for disciplinary measures instead. "Learners in all schools may be suspended, excluded or expelled from school for various acts of misconduct of a serious nature," Stephen Mahere, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, said in a circular.

'My name is Sali Samaké and I live in Tamala, one of the villages in the region of Djitoumou, in Mali. We’re proud of our past. We always refer to Djitoumou, an ancient land name, to indicate our village’s position to outsiders. I was born in Defara, a neighbouring village, but my parents no longer live there. I was 15 when I got married. Now I am 56 years old.' - This is one story from a Panos project called Voices from the Ground, which follows five people in the developing world and reveals how progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is affecting them.

A father asks his daughter:
Study? Why should you study?
I have sons aplenty who can study
Girl, why should you study?

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/496/66982_logo_tmb.jpgIn October 2010 we will publish the 500th issue of Pambazuka News as we reach our 10th birthday. Over that time, we have built up a database of some 60,000 articles and news items on the website - all available for free. Some 2,500 authors have contributed articles, poems, audiovisual materials and commentary. Pambazuka News has become the oldest and largest (and of course most dynamic) citizen journalism site for social justice in Africa.

The number of readers continues to grow - some 660,000 unique visitors to the site during the last 12 months. Pambazuka News has played a significant role in supporting social movements to get their voices heard, and is widely used in advocacy by a wide range of alliances and networks. Pambazuka News provides a perspective of a proud, active and resonant Africa fighting for progressive social transformation.

We think this is something to celebrate. We'd like you to join us in this celebration. If you'd like to send messages of solidarity, congratulations (or even commiserations!), we'll publish them on this site at the same time that we publish a special anniversary issue of Pambazuka News.

We'd also like you to join us by helping us to reach the 1,000th issue of Pambazuka News - forward to the next 500 issues and our 20th anniversary.

We've given you the first 500 free. But now we want your help. Would you consider donating at least $1 for every issue we publish in the future. Make a monthly donation of $4.00 - or an annual donation of at least $48 - to enable Pambazuka News to continue to support the movement for freedom and justice. You can sign up for a .

We want to raise $300,000 to expand the services provided by Pambazuka News to our readers. Please consider this appeal as a serious one: it is the only way we can make sure that Pambazuka News survives and grows, but above all, remains independent.

For women living in rural areas, access to ICTs means first overcoming multiple barriers relating not only to their location, but also their gender. In a new publication, 'GenARDIS 2002 - 2010: Small grants that made big changes for women in agriculture', Jenny Radloff explores how seed grants were disbursed to innovative initiatives.

Donor support for science and technology (S&T) in Africa has been "disappointing", according to a report from the Commission for Africa published last week (12 September). Some US$3 billion, which the commission had urged donors to spend on building centres of excellence in S&T, has not been spent.

A project launched in 2009 in Uganda's Bushenyi and Mbale districts enlists trusted local residents, such as farmers, agriculture extension workers, shopkeepers and school teachers, to disseminate and gather information about agriculture using mobile phones. The workers help the Ugandan farmers treat not only sick goats, but also blighted bananas, coffee berry bacterial infections, discolored tomatoes and other plant and livestock problems.

Preparations for an independence referendum for Sudan's oil-rich south are behind schedule, putting the country at risk of renewed civil war, diplomats and activists say. Plans for the January 11 vote, meant to decide the fate of the Southern Sudan, were signed as part of a 2005 peace deal between the government and southern fighters, and any postponement could reignite civil war in Africa's largest country.

Despite Nottingham University’s Professor Oliver Morrissey’s claim that Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) will accrue only 0.01 per cent of Ghana’s GDP to consumers, and imports from the European Union will go up by six per cent, he is emphatic that Ghana should “not fear the EPA.”

As millions of children around the world start school this month, many are discovering something critical is missing. It's not teachers or textbooks - it's toilets. Poor sanitation doesn't just cause high rates of illness and absenteeism, but it also affects a child's intelligence, aid agencies say, with research showing that diarrhoea and worm infestations can lower IQ.

External donors contributed some US$1.6 billion in aid to the government of Mozambique in 2009. These donors have all committed to making aid more effective by adhering to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and to the Accra Agenda for Action. However information about how much money is available, how it is being spent and what are the results of that aid are still poor, says this study.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the fragile political and economic situation following the devastating war with Ethiopia (1998-2000). Just a decade ago, Eritrea might reasonably have been described as challenged but stable. Today it is under severe stress, if not yet in full-blown crisis. While not likely to undergo dramatic upheaval in the near future, it is weakening steadily. Its economy is in free fall, poverty is rife, and the authoritarian political system is haemorrhaging its legitimacy.

After being diagnosed HIV-positive Margaret Bikyele could not even manage the simplest of household chores, let alone being able to work to generate an income for her and her two sons. Since her diagnosis in 2005 and in the years that followed, the Bikyele family’s prospects in life had looked bleak. That is until Bikyele became the recipient of a social cash transfer scheme in 2007 and began receiving 10 dollars a month.

Two Kenyan activists working on the cases of suspects charged with terrorism for the July 11, 2010 Kampala bombings have been illegally detained in Uganda and are at risk of abuse, Human Rights Watch has said. Human rights activist Al-Amin Kimathi of the Kenyan Muslim Human Rights Forum and Kenyan lawyer Mbugua Mureithi were arrested on September 15, 2010, when they arrived at Entebbe airport, and taken to the Ugandan police's Rapid Response Unit headquarters in Kireka, Kampala.

With Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi speaking at Columbia University in the US this week, Alemayehu G. Mariam calls upon the institution’s President Lee C. Bollinger to extend the same reservations towards Zenawi that he did towards Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007.

For the last year and a half two creative Zimbabweans, Juma and Willard, have hustled their way from the traffic lights on Roeland Street to a studio in Woodstock, Cape Town, crafting everything from bags made out of old t-shirts to recycled crate-chairs for corporate clients. Not content to just be small time capitalists, from Mondays to Fridays they run art and craft workshops for 100 kids in Khayelitsha and on Saturday mornings they teach conversational English with a group called Chatterbox (made up of primary school kids). This is their story.

Maps of vegetation biomass carbon density are important for quantifying terrestrial carbon sinks as well as potential emissions to the atmosphere from land-use change. Worldwide, living vegetation stores an enormous 500 billion tones of carbon, more than 60 times annual anthropogenic carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The tropics and sub-tropics combined store 430 billion tones of carbon, while boreal and temperate ecoregions store 34 billion tones and 33 billion tones, respectively.

With concerns that a Protection of Information Bill (the Secrecy Bill) before South Africa’s Parliament will create a secret state, Pregs Govender writes that debate needs to interrogate the desire for secrecy against the right to information in a society in which the lack of socio-economic rights diminishes the ability to access political and civil rights and vice versa.

Two prominent human rights workers, one of them a lawyer, were arrested this week in Uganda as part of a US-sponsored local 'security response' to bombings in Kampala over the summer. 'As an investigator for Reprieve, I work closely with one of them: Al-Amin Kimathi, director of the Kenyan organisation, Muslim Human Rights Forum, who has assisted hundreds of rendition victims and now represents those charged with the Kampala bombings. He is one of the most tireless human rights activists in Africa, and is now at grave risk of torture himself,' writes a colleague.