Constitutive on the "International Day of Action against the Commercialization of Education" on Nov.5th 2008, the International Students Movement is calling for a Global Week of Action in April 2009 (20/04 – 29/04). We are a loose network of various progressive (student) groups from close to 30 countries on 5 continents. What unites us is the struggle against the increasing commercialization of education and for emancipating public education accessible to all members of society.

The Somali Coalition For freedom Expression (SOCFEX) condemns the arbitral detention of the editor of YOOL and the subsequent sentencing to five months by the regional court of Hargaisa in the self declared state of Somaliland after being accused of publishing newspaper without proper authorization. Mr. Mohamed Abdi Urad has been detained by the Somaliland police in late February 2009. He was held in the headquarters of Somaliland CID in Hargaisa. He appeared in court briefly once and was sent back to detention after prosecution failed to make credible charges.

During six days at the end of January, citizens, movements and organizations from 142 countries gathered in the city of Belem for the IX World Social Forum. More than 2300 activities involved 113 thousands participants in panels, debates, seminars, cultural events, marches, demonstrations, and open spaces for direct interactions in this edition of the event in the heart of the Amazon region.

A meeting held in Swakopmund, Namibia last week between the European Commission (EC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) group failed to break an impasse over concerns raised by South Africa over the economic partnership agreement (EPA), despite significant further concessions by the European Union (EU) to sweeten the deal.

Growing interest from Asia and Middle East countries to lease agricultural land in Africa "is not a bad thing" but must be handled properly and in a transparent way, a top World Bank official said on Thursday. Speaking at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director at the World Bank, said it matters how those foreign investments are made.

More opportunities for Chinese investment into Africa are to open up soon, with the announcement that China is to bolster its China-Africa Development Fund by an additional R19.8-billion ($2-billion). The state-run equity fund has already invested in 20 projects, totalling a massive R3.9-billion ($400-million), in Africa since it was established in June 2007. The latest development will give Chinese enterprises added impetus to sink their funds into the continent, particularly in light of the withdrawal of Western investors, many of whom find themselves under financial pressure because of the global recession.

Indian vehicle manufacturer Mahindra and Mahindra has increased its stake in the joint venture with its South African partner to 90 percent from 51 percent, and invested a further 30 million rands ($3 million) in the country’s automotive business. Mahindra South Africa, which launched its new multipurpose vehicle Xylo here last week, also expressed confidence in the South African auto market, though other manufacturers reported record drops in sales in the wake of the global economic downturn.

China has lost tens of billions of dollars of its foreign exchange reserves through a poorly timed diversification into global equities just before world markets collapsed last year. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the opaque manager of nearly $2,000bn (€1,547bn, £1,429bn) of reserves, started making huge bets on global stocks early in 2007 and continued this strategy at least until the collapse of the US mortgage finance providers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in July 2008, according to analysts and people familiar with Safe’s operations.

Telecoms operator Neotel has become the anchor tenant on the Seacom cable, poised to deliver vast quantities of cheaper bandwidth to SA through a deal struck by its parent company, Tata Communications. Tata, which owns 56% of Neotel, has signed up as the undersea cable’s first big customer, and has struck another deal to actually manage the cable, its billing systems and customer relations on behalf of Seacom.

Libya will exercise its right to buy Verenex Energy Inc., trumping a proposed C$499 million ($393 million) takeover of the Canadian explorer by China National Petroleum Corp. “We will exercise the right of preemption,” Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s state-run National Oil Corp., said today in an interview in Vienna. Libya wants to buy the Calgary-based explorer for “purely commercial reasons,” he said. Under the preemption clause, Libya has to match the offer from China’s biggest oil company.

This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations to function and to develop in more healthy, human and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society. It has been developed by the Barefoot Collective.

UNHCR’s Division of External Relations (DER) in Geneva is looking for a consultant with expertise in the development and use of Social Media platforms. Reporting directly to the Head of the Electronic Publishing Unit (EPU), the consultant will bring with them at least 3 years experience in the field of Social Networking and Web 2.0 interactive platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Google Earth, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.

Abou Al Abbass Ould Brahim, a Mauritanian journalist, ar rested and detained by Police 15 March for allegedly criticizing the military junta in the country, has been released without being charged to court, the sub-regional press freedom body, Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), said in a statement received by PANA Thursday.

The chairman of the African Union (AU), Libyan leader Mouammar Gaddafi, has called for a referendum in Madagascar as soon as possible under the auspices of the country's constitutional institutions and AU organs to find a solution to the political events presently prevailing in the country.

Zimbabwe's power sharing government has "a long way to go" before the United States lifts sanctions, an official said Thursday despite an appeal for their removal. "We have not yet seen sufficient evidence from the government of Zimbabwe that they are firmly and irrevocably on a path to inclusive and effective governance, and as well as respect for human rights and the rule of law," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters.

The Zambia National Farmers’ Union publishes up to date market information on the web and sends out trader and price details to farmers using a system of SMS messages. ‘I used to sell my crop for a very low price, just because I had no idea of how the market was moving’’ says James, a small-scale farmer from the Chongwe district in Zambia. ‘I often felt confused when I was dealing with traders’, he adds. ‘I thought that I had to take the first bid the retailer offered’.

Sierra Leone's vice president, Samuel Sam-Sumana, on Mar. 13 ordered an indefinite ban on radio stations owned by the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) and its main rival, the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP). This comes in the wake of a wave of politically-motivated clashes between rival party militants across the country these past two weeks. The situation has deteriorated so much so that by-elections in Gendema, a remote town bordering Liberia, had to be put on hold.

More than 200,000 people in Namibia have been affected by heavy flooding near the northern border with Angola since January, the United Nations said on Friday. Fields of crops have been soaked and the loss of agricultural produce could have an impact on the region's food security, said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In order to end the sexual violence plaguing the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it is necessary to stop the activity of armed groups but also to ensure security forces have strong discipline, the top United Nations envoy there has said. Responding to a group of women victims of such violence as he continued to assess the humanitarian situation in North Kivu province, Alan Doss, Special Representative of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for the DRC, voiced the need to “put an end to the presence of armed groups, but also to put discipline into the heart of security forces.”

Concern over malnutrition among long-term refugees from Western Sahara have sparked two assessment missions to their camps in western Algeria by humanitarian partners, the first of which embarks tomorrow, the United Nations refugee agency has announced. Staff of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Programme (WFP) will accompany representatives of donor countries and their partners from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on a three-day mission to the camps of Sahrawi people, starting tomorrow.

The United Nations refugee agency said today it was hastening to replace supplies and put preventive measures in place after five accidental fires swept through two camps for Sudanese refugees in remote eastern Chad in the past four weeks. A 9-year old boy died and some 1,455 people were left homeless in the Amer and Djabal camps, due to the fires, which were caused by poorly tended open fires fanned by heavy winds, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

The African Union suspended Madagascar on Friday, the strongest condemnation yet by the international community after opposition leader Andry Rajoelina took power with the support of the army. The AU decision echoed criticism by southern African bloc SADC, the European Union and United States. Weeks of political unrest in Madagascar have killed at least 135 people, devastated the economy and worried foreign investors.

The electoral campaign in Algeria started officially on Thursday (March 19th), giving candidates until April 6th to convince voters and collect enough support to win the race. From now through the end of the campaign, Algerians will see more of their presidential candidates. They will listen to their platforms; weigh their backgrounds and achievements and challenge their promises with everyday reality. Voters have until the polls open on April 9th to make up their minds

For three days and nights 28-year-old Comfort Wilson rode in the back of a pickup truck from her rural village in Liberia to the capital, Monrovia. She came with 30 women from her village sleeping in the truck bed, eating food they prepared at home. They came, along with women from Mozambique, Guatemala, Kosovo and 25 other countries, as a global show of support for the idea that more women must be involved in building and maintaining peace.

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a major rebel group in Darfur, has cancelled plans to hold more peace talks until the Sudanese government lets back aid groups it expelled from the troubled region. The announcement marks the latest escalation in the Darfur crisis since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir this month over alleged war crimes in the region. Sudan, which does not recognise the ICC, rejects the charge.

The Maasai of Kajiado, like many indigenous communities the world over, are continuously victims of historical and contemporary injustices arising from land and natural resources. This is occasioned by their unique and distinctively different livelihood system from the mainstream Kenyan society and their refusal to embrace the modern agricultural economic systems, despite much pressure to do so. Most recently, their lands in the Kajiado district are being threatened by the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Bill 2000 which will urbanise Kajiado as part of the Nairobi Metropolitan Area (NMA).

The Grand Coalition Government in Kenya seems to be losing the war against corruption. In the wake of widespread starvation and rising costs of living, TI-Kenya’s National Corruption Perceptions Survey shows that many Kenyans believe the government has the power, the ability but not the will to tackle corruption. Parliament stands especially indicted in the failure to uphold the common good.

Access to mobiles phones has transformed the lives of rural women farmers boosting income and expanding knowledge, a pilot study in Lesotho has found. Three years ago, Evodia Matobo, then 62, a small-scale poultry farmer in Lesotho's rural lowlands, was stacking plastic containers to feed her chickens. Now she talks about "feeders, agricultural shows, workshops, experts."

The music blaring through Nyahera village in Kenya's southwestern Nyanza Province comes from two large speakers strategically placed at Mzee Dishon Onyango's home. Youths, some as young as 12, gyrate to the beats of their favourite music and consume a local illicit brew; others smoke bhang [marijuana] with abandon.

Tanzania's HIV prevalence has dropped to 5.7 percent from a high of seven percent in 2004, according to the recently released Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indicator Survey 2007/08. The study was carried out among people aged between 15 and 49 in all 26 regions on the Tanzanian mainland and the semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar.

China's economy is huge and expanding rapidly. In the last 30 years the rate of Chinese economic growth has averaged 8 percent per annum. The economy has grown more than 10 times during that period, with Chinese GDP reaching US$3,42 trillion by end of last year.

Chinese companies are shopping for companies in Europe and around the world, undeterred by the global financial crisis. In fact, they are hunting for bargains. Analysts and business leaders say the economic meltdown that has pummelled global stock markets may be bad news for the West, but it could be a boon to Chinese companies flush with cash and looking for places to put it — despite being burned on earlier investments.

Portuguese-speaking countries are focussed on improving economic and business communication with Beijing, via the Forum Macau, which they see as strengthening relations between China and the Portuguese-speaking world. The overall positive balance and the promise of greater future efforts came from the Session on Mutual Investment between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, organized in September by the Forum Macau, which recently published the speeches made by the participants.

The current question on most peoples lips within South Africa's clothing industry is will the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) extend the quotas on Chinese apparel and textiles that are due to end this year? However, I feel extension or no extension will make very little difference to the economics of this industry sector. Admittedly, if the quotas do end we may see a sudden influx of imports from China as they offer price incentives to our clothing importers in order to recapture market share.

In late 2006 South Africa imposed quotas on the importation of selected clothing lines from China. In the past 18 months tralac has been monitoring on a periodic basis, the changes in the selected quota imports and making preliminary assessments as to whether they may be indicating that they are meeting their specific goal of slowing the trade flows of clothing imports from China.

Jacques Depelchin - 2008-11-14

Jacques Depelchin traces the roots of the DRC crisis to the pathological need to ‘be finished with’ that began a long time ago. At independence, it was seen as necessary to ‘be finished with’ Lumumba, and all that he represented in terms of hope and true independence for his country and his people – an idea that was too threatening for those who had, hoped to continue benefiting from the country’s riches. Depelchin calls for a return to humanity and its pure ideals, and a greater sense of agency for those who suffer the most form injustices.

The real enemies of African farmers
Moussa Touré - 2008-11-14

In a follow-up piece to the fifth International Conference of the Via Campesina movement held in Maputo, Mozambique in October 2008, Moussa Touré singles out the comments of Mamadou Sissoko, honorary president of the Réseau d'Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (ROPPA), for special attention. In a break from the emphasis put on foreign multinationals, Sissoko was also keen to point the finger at the role of African leaders for the range of problems faced by farmers across the continent. Taking up Sissoko’s argument, Moussa Touré surveys the post-colonial experiences of farmers and the progressively greater dominance of a self-interested bourgeoisie within individual African countries, underlining the importance of the Via Campesina movement and other farmers’ interests groups in ensuring greater representation and power for local groups.

This posting, might be of interest to your readers:

In 1944 a Swedish economist by the name of Gunnar Myrdal published a seminal work on race relations in the US titled, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Over six decades later we have a black man of African descent running for the highest office of the most powerful nation on earth. Will the dilemma at long last find a historic resolution? Has Western democracy matured to a point of accommodating aspirations of black people?

The Swedes seem to have an answer to all that. They answered that by awarding the Nobel Prize to another economist by the name of Paul Krugman. Mr. Krugman, if you ever read the New York Times, is the guy who consistently tried to straighten president Bush on his 'misguided' economic and political doctrine. And Krugman supports Barack Obama. Go figure.

The award could not have come at a worse time for the Republican Party nominee John McCain. The economy is in shambles. As a top economist, Krugman has said, McCain is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago."

Well, the Swedes must have divined it. The award is typically shared by two or three researchers. Why couldn't the Nobel Committee wait a little longer until they found at least a second researcher to share with Mr. Krugman? We believe $1.4 million is more than enough for two in these financially trying times. By their timing the Swedes seem to have been in some existential hurry to realize the overdue quest of their countryman, of blacks, White America, and modern democracy itself. We wish them luck.