Pambazuka News 402: Thomas Sankara, revolution and the emancipation of women
Pambazuka News 402: Thomas Sankara, revolution and the emancipation of women
Blaise Compaoré and Françafrique killed Thomas Sankara in the belief that they could extinguish the example he set for African youth and progressive forces across the continent. They could not have been more wrong. One week before his assassination, in a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Thomas Sankara declared: ‘Ideas cannot be killed, ideas never die.’ Indeed, the history of humanity is replete with martyrs and heroes whose ideas and actions have survived the passage time to inspire future generations.
Their ideas, courage and sacrifice for the freedom and dignity of their people have made these martyrs larger than life. Thomas Isidore Sankara is one in a long lineage of African sons and daughters whose ideas and actions have left an indelible mark on the history of their continent. That is why 21 years after his death, Sankara continues to guide those who are struggling to end the domination of their continent and the enslavement of its peoples.
Sankara’s great popularity is in part a reflection of Africans’ disillusionment with corrupt leaders who are incapable of meeting the basic needs of their peoples and who take their marching orders from Western capital and institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. Sankara’s popularity is also rooted in the profound sincerity of his commitment to serving his people, his devotion to the cause of the emancipation of the Burkinabés and all African peoples. His charisma, honesty and integrity made him a hero for the ‘wretched of the Earth,’ to coin a phrase from Frantz Fanon, who was greatly admired by Sankara.
A GREAT VISIONARY
Above all, however, Sankara’s ongoing popularity is due to the ideas and values he embodied during his brief time on the African and international stage. Indeed, if Sankara arouses as much fervour today as he did 21 years ago, it is because he embodied and defended causes that still resonate today among the thousands of oppressed in Africa and around the world. Sankara was a genuine revolutionary and a great visionary who had the courage to take on the most difficult challenges and who held great ambitions for his country and Africa.
Most of the ideas or causes he defended two decades ago are still at the heart of the struggle for the economic, social and political emancipation of peoples around the world. He was an environmentalist ahead of his time in a so-called ‘poor’ country that was supposed to have other more pressing priorities than the environment.
Sankara was one of the first heads of State, perhaps the only one in his time, to condemn female excision, a position that reflected his unwavering commitment to the emancipation of women and the struggle against all forms of discrimination against women.
He was a relentless advocate of gender equality and the recognition of the role of women in all spheres of economic and social life. In his famous speech of 2 October 1983, he stated: ‘We cannot transform society while maintaining domination and discrimination against women who constitute over half of the population.’
His unrelenting struggle against corruption, long before the World Bank and the IMF picked up on this issue, made Sankara an enemy of all corrupt presidents on the continent and of the international capitalist mafia for whom corruption is a tool for conquering markets and pillaging the resources of the global South.
Sankara rejected the inevitability of ‘poverty,’ and was one of the first proponents of food security. He achieved the spectacular feat of making his country food self-sufficient within four years, through sensible agricultural policy and, above all, the mobilisation of the Burkinabé peasantry. He understood that a country that could not feed itself ran the risk of losing its independence and sovereignty.
In July 1987, Sankara, close on the heels of Fidel Castro two years earlier, called on African countries to form a powerful front against their continent’s illegitimate and immoral debt and to collectively refuse to pay it.
Once again, he understood before others that the debt was a form of modern enslavement for Africa; a major cause of poverty and deep suffering for African populations. Sankara famously stated: ‘If we do not pay the debt, our lenders will not die. However, if we do pay it, we will die…’
On the international stage, Sankara was the first African head of State, indeed the first in the world, to denounce the UN Security Council’s right of veto and to condemn the lack of democracy within the United Nations system as well as the hypocrisy that characterised international relations. Today, all of these ideas have become self-evident truths and are at the heart of popular resistance movements, including the World Social Forum that has become one of the most powerful major rallying points.
SUPPORTING POPULAR STRUGGLES AGAINST OPPRESSION
Among the great causes passionately championed by Thomas Sankara was his unwavering support for all popular revolutionary struggles and resistance movements against imperialist domination and colonial oppression. In his memorable speech before the UN General Assembly, on October 4 1984, Sankara stated: ‘Our revolution in Burkina Faso is open to the suffering of all peoples. It also draws its inspiration from the experiences of peoples since the dawn of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all of the revolutions of the world, of all of the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World.’
These revolutions and struggles inspired Sankara in his vision and desire to profoundly transform the economic and social structures in his country as well as the mentalities forged over centuries of foreign domination and oppression by dominant and exploitative classes internally and externally. This was the wellspring of his profound solidarity with the struggles of all oppressed peoples against the forces of domination.
Sankara’s commitment to solidarity was exercised with determination in every international body, from the UN, to the former Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the Non-Aligned Movement. Sankara was one of the first heads of State to support the struggle of the Sahrawi people against Morocco’s expansionist ambitions. He expressed the solidarity of the Burkinabés with the struggle of the Kanak people against French colonialism. During a trip to New York, he went to Harlem to express his support for the struggle of African-Americans against racism and discrimination.
Above all, the Burkinabé Revolution under Sankara showed its unwavering support and solidarity for all peoples resisting US policies of imperialist aggression. Before the UN General Assembly—in the very belly of the beast—Sankara forcefully condemned the United States’ illegal blockade and permanent aggression against the Cuban people. In this same forum, he condemned their unconditional support for the Zionist Israel’s state policies of territorial annexation and extermination of the Palestinian people.
THE SUCCESSES OF THE BURKINABÉ REVOLUTION
While Sankara came to power in a military coup d’état, his revolution was nonetheless a profoundly popular one. For Sankara, taking political power was a tool for liberating his country from foreign domination, and above all liberating his people from the multiple forms of economic, social, political and cultural domination.
In his historic speech of 2 October 1983, he explained that these goals would be achieved through the destruction of the neo-colonial state and the transformation of all socio-economic structures and institutions inherited from colonialism, including the army. And these transformations should lead to the transfer of power to the people for, as he stated: ‘the goal of this revolution is to exercise power by the people.’ This fundamental objective could only be accomplished by placing trust in the people and mobilising them to become conscious of the issues and sacrifices required.
Sankara believed it was futile to speak on behalf of the people if they could not be mobilised to become an integral part of the struggle and develop an identity forged in the fire of action. For Sankara: ‘I think the most important thing is to bring the people to a point where they have self-confidence, and understand that they can, at last…be the authors of their own well-being… And at the same time, have a sense of the price to be paid for that well-being.’ To a great extent, the Burkinabé Revolution was an original experiment in profound social, economic, political and ideological transformation. It was a bold attempt at endogenous development through popular mobilisation.
The pursuit of this objective required extraordinary efforts to emancipate mentalities, raise consciousness and mobilise the masses in the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) and other revolutionary structures. Despite some of the excesses of the CDR and the other revolutionary structures, there is no doubt that one of the major objectives of the revolution under Sankara was to create the possibility for the people to speak and express themselves freely and in so doing build their self-confidence. In this, the revolution was profoundly democratic and popular. Sankara once stated: ‘Misfortune will befall those who silence their people.’ This warning reflected the importance he placed on freedom of expression, an indispensable condition for encouraging Burkinabés at all levels of society to speak their mind.
THE WEAKNESSES AND MISTAKES OF THE REVOLUTION
As in all human endeavours, the Burkinabé revolution had its ups and downs. Despite its incontestable achievements, the revolution also had its weaknesses, weaknesses that ultimately undermined the cohesion of the leadership and even stoked opposition among certain segments of the population that initially supported it, such as the intellectual petty bourgeoisie.
One of the weaknesses of the revolution was related to the fact that the social forces that had a stake in its success—peasants and workers (both manual and intellectual)—may not have had the ideological tools that would have enabled them to better understand and support the pace of revolutionary change.
Another weakness lay in the difficulty of building a solid and durable coalition between Sankara and his comrades on the one hand, and the political parties representing the intellectual petty bourgeoisie on the other. This undoubtedly explains some of the mistakes made by the revolution’s leadership that contributed to alienating portions of the population and exacerbating the contradictions within the leadership when difficulties started to accumulate.
Perhaps, to some extent, activism took the place of the more patient work that was required to educate the masses so that the social and ideological obstacles to popular mobilisation could be overcome. Lastly, sabotage by enemies working in the shadows and the country’s relative isolation in the sub-region, in a similar vein to what occurred in Ghana and Guinea, put the final nail in the coffin.
LESSONS OF THE BURKINABÉ REVOLUTION
The Burkinabé revolution was the last major effort toward the popular and democratic emancipation on the African continent. Neither the end of apartheid in South Africa, nor SWAPO’s victory in Namibia brought the same kind of profound and significant economic and social transformation. The Burkinabé Revolution was an unprecedented experiment in profound economic, social and political change.
The revolution was a bold experiment in endogenous development with the construction of infrastructure (dams, railways, schools, roads, etc.) through the intense mobilisation of the masses powered by the principle of self-reliance.
Indeed, the principle of self-reliance was the basis of Sankara’s denunciation of so-called foreign ‘aid’ which he argued ‘produced nothing more than disorganization and enslavement…’ He refused to listen to the ‘charlatans trying to sell development models that have all failed.’ Of course, he was alluding to the so-called experts from the World Bank and the IMF who took control of economic policy in many African countries to disastrous effect.
Sankara’s position was in stark contrast to that of several African leaders who literally became beggars who no longer dared raise their voices against the injunctions and interference of their ‘development partners.’ Sankara showed that ‘poverty’ did not have to translate into a loss of dignity and an abdication of sovereignty.
The Burkinabé Revolution can also teach us some negative lessons that merit reflection. One of the lessons is the difficulty of building a sustainable and victorious relationship between the army and progressive intellectuals. Another lesson relates to the destiny of military coups: can a coup d’état truly serve as the basis for sustainable revolutionary change or is it condemned to be a flash in the pan? This question surely begs others. The point is that African revolutionary forces must study the lessons that can be learned form this experience in order to better pursue current and future struggles.
The ideas and principles that guided the Burkinabé revolution did not vanish with Sankara’s assassination. They will continue to guide African popular struggles and resistance movements until foreign domination has been vanquished and Africans have recovered their sovereignty. The best way to honour the memory of Thomas Sankara is to continue his fight and promote the values he embodied.
In truth, African revolutionaries have a duty not only to remember the Burkinabé revolution, but all the African revolutions that inspired it. We forget that Sankara was an ardent pan-Africanist who did not hide his ideological and political debt to Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Amílcar Cabral, among others. It is our duty to study the thinking and works of Sankara and other African revolutionary leaders and thinkers in order to be able to teach the younger generations. By preserving and developing the fundamental values and ideas of the Sankarist revolution and other African revolutions, we will forge the ideological and political tools we need to deconstruct the values and concepts of the dominant system and build anew from our own concepts based on our vision of the world and our realities.
Just as Che’s blood has fed the sacred ground of the Americas where worthy successors of the legendary Argentinean revolutionary are now taking root and pursuing the dreams of Simón Bolívar and other South American heroes, the sacrifice of Sankara and his illustrious predecessors will produce other Sankaras who will one day realise the dreams of Nkrumah and the other heroes and martyrs of the African revolution: to build an independent, united and prosperous Africa that is the master of its own destiny.
* Demba Moussa Dembele is the Director of the African Forum on Alternatives based in Dakar.
* This article, which first appeared in the French Pambazuka last year to remember Sankara's assassination, is translated by Gwendolyn Schulman, a writer and broadcaster for Amandla, an alternative views and news show on Africa, on CKUT 90.3 FM.
* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
Woman's fate is bound up with that of the exploited male. This is a fact. However, this solidarity, arising from the exploitation that both men and women suffer and that binds them together historically, must not cause us to lose sight of the specific reality of the woman's situation. The conditions of her life are determined by more than economic factors, and they show that she is a victim of a specific oppression. The specific character of this oppression cannot be explained away by setting up an equal sign or by falling into easy and childish simplifications.
It is true that both she and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current economic system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use as their pretext physical differences. It is clear that the difference between the sexes is a feature of human society. This difference characterises particular relations that immediately prevent us from viewing women, even in production, as simply female workers. The existence of relations of privilege, of relations that spell danger for the woman, all this means that women's reality constitutes an ongoing problem for us.
The male uses the complex nature of these relations as an excuse to sow confusion among women. He takes advantage of all the shrewdness that class exploitation has to offer in order to maintain his domination over women. This is the same method used by men to dominate other men in other lands. The idea was established that certain men, by virtue of their family origin and birth, or by divine right, were superior to others. This was the basis for the feudal system. Other men have managed to enslave whole peoples in this way. They used their origins, or arguments based on their skin colour, as a supposedly scientific justification for dominating those who were unfortunate enough to have skin of a different colour. This is what colonial domination and apartheid are based on.
We must pay the closest attention to women's situation because it pushes the most conscious of them into waging a sex war when what we need is a war of classes or parties, waged together, side by side. We have to say frankly that it is the attitude of men that makes such confusion possible. It is men's attitude that spawns the bold assertions made by feminism, certain of which have not been without value in the war which men and women are waging against oppression. This war is one we can and will win – if we understand that we need one another and are complementary, that we share the same fate, and in fact, that we are condemned to interdependence.
At this moment, we have little choice but to recognise that masculine behaviour comprises vanity, irresponsibility, arrogance, and violence of all kinds toward women. This kind of behaviour can hardly lead to coordinated action against women's oppression. And we must say frankly that such attitudes, which can sink to the level of sheer stupidity, are in reality nothing but a safety valve for the oppressed male, who, through brutalising his wife, hopes to regain some of the human dignity denied him by the system of exploitation. This masculine foolishness is called sexism or machismo. It includes all kinds of moral and intellectual feebleness – even thinly veiled physical weakness – which often gives politically conscious women no choice but to consider it their duty to wage a war on two fronts.
In order to fight and win, women must identify with the oppressed layers and classes of society, such as workers and peasants. The man, however, no matter how oppressed he is has another human being to oppress: his wife. To say this is, without any doubt, to affirm a terrible fact. When we talk about the vile system of apartheid, for example, our thoughts and emotions turn to the exploited and oppressed blacks. But we forget the black woman who has to endure her husband – this man who, armed with his passbook, allows himself all kinds of reprehensible detours before returning home to the woman who has waited for him so worthily, in such privation and destitution. We should keep in mind, too, the white woman of South Africa. Aristocratic, with every possible material comfort, she is, unfortunately, still a tool for the pleasure of the lecherous white man. The only thing these men can do to blot out the terrible crimes they commit against blacks is to engage in drunken brawls and perverse, bestial sexual behaviour.
And there is no lack of examples of men, otherwise progressive, who live cheerfully in adultery, but who are prepared to murder their wives on the merest suspicion of infidelity. How many men in Burkina seek so-called consolation in the arms of prostitutes and mistresses of all kinds! And this is not to mention the irresponsible husbands whose wages go to keep mistresses or fill the coffers of bar owners.
And what should we think of those little men, also progressive, who get together in sleazy places to talk about the women they have taken advantage of. They think this is the way they will be able to measure up to other men and even humiliate some of them, by having seduced their wives. In reality, such men are pitiful and insignificant. They would not even enter our discussion, if it were not for the fact that their criminal behaviour has been undermining the morale and virtue of many fine women whose contribution to our revolution could be of the utmost importance.
And then there are those more-or-less revolutionary militants – much less revolutionary than more – who do not accept that their wives should also be politically active, or who allow them to be active by day and by day only, or who beat their wives because they have gone out to meetings or to a demonstration at night.
Oh, these suspicious, jealous men! What narrow-mindedness! And what a limited, partial commitment! For is it only at night that a woman who is disenchanted and determined can deceive her husband? And what is this political commitment that expects her to stop political activity at nightfall and resume her rights and responsibilities only at daybreak. And, finally, what should we make of remarks about women made by all kinds of activists, the one more revolutionary than the next, remarks such as ‘women are despicably materialist,’ ‘manipulators,’ ‘clowns,’ ‘liars,’ ‘gossips,’ ‘schemers, ‘jealous,’ and so on. Maybe this is all true of women. But surely it is equally true of men.
Could our society be any less perverse than this when it systematically burdens women down, keeps them away from anything that is supposed to be serious and of consequence, excludes them from anything other than the most petty and minor activities!
When you are condemned, as women are, to wait for your lord and master at home in order to feed him and receive his permission to speak or just to be alive, what else do you have to keep you occupied and to give you at least the illusion of being useful, but meaningful glances, gossip, chatter, furtive envious: glances at others, and the bad-mouthing of their flirtations and private lives? The same attitudes are found among men put in the same situation.
Another thing we say about women, alas, is that they are always forgetful. We even call them birdbrains. But we must never forget that a woman's whole life is dominated – tormented – by a fickle, unfaithful, and irresponsible husband and by her children and their problems. Completely worn out by attending to the entire family, how could she not have haggard eyes that reflect distraction and absentmindedness? For her, forgetting becomes an antidote to the suffering a relief from the harshness of her existence, a vital self-defence mechanism.
But there are forgetful men, too – a lot of them. Some forget by indulging in drink or drugs, others through the various kinds of perversity they engage in throughout life. Does anyone ever say that these men are forgetful? What vanity! What banality! Banalities, though, that men revel in as a way of concealing the weaknesses of the masculine universe, because this masculine universe in an exploitative society needs female prostitutes. We say that both the female and the prostitute are scapegoats. We defile them and when we are done with them we sacrifice them on the altar of prosperity of a system of lies and plunder.
Prostitution is nothing but the microcosm of a society where exploitation is a general rule. It is a symbol of the contempt men have for women. And yet this woman is none other than the painful figure of the mother, sister, or wife of other men, thus of every one of us. In the final analysis, it is the unconscious contempt we have for ourselves. There can only be prostitutes as long as there are pimps and those who seek prostitutes.
But who frequents prostitutes? First, there are the husbands who commit their wives to chastity, while they relieve their depravity and debauchery upon the prostitute. This allows them to treat their wives with a seeming respect, while they reveal their true nature at the bosom of the lady of so-called pleasure. So on the moral plane prostitution becomes the counterpart to marriage. Tradition, customs, religion, and moral doctrines alike seem to have no difficulty adapting themselves to it. This is what our church fathers mean when they explain that ‘sewers are needed to assure the cleanliness of the palace.’
Then there are the unrepentant and intemperate pleasure seekers who are afraid to take on the responsibility of a home with its ups and downs, and who flee from the moral and material responsibility of fatherhood. So they discreetly seek out the address of a brothel, a goldmine of relations that entail no responsibility on their part.
There is also a whole bevy of men who, publicly at least and in ‘proper’ company, subject women to public humiliation because of some grudge they have not had the strength of character to surmount, thus losing confidence in all women, who become from then on ‘tools of the devil.’ Or else they do so out of hypocrisy, proclaiming their contempt for the female sex too often and categorically, a contempt that they strive to assume in the eyes of the public from which they have extorted admiration through false pretences. All these men end up night after night in brothels until occasionally their hypocrisy is discovered.
Then there is the weakness of the man who is looking for a polyandrous arrangement. Far be it for us to make a value judgment on polyandry, which was the dominant form of relations between men and women in certain societies. What we are denouncing here are the courts of idle, money-grabbing gigolos lavishly kept by rich ladies.
Within this same system; prostitution can, economically speaking, include both the prostitute and the ‘materialist-minded’ married woman. The only difference between the woman who sells her body by prostitution and she who sells herself in marriage is the price and duration of the contract. So, by tolerating the existence of prostitution, we relegate all our women to the same rank: that of a prostitute or wife. The only difference between the two is that the legal wife, though still oppressed, at least has the benefit of the stamp of respectability that marriage confers. As for the prostitute, all that remains for her is the exchange value of her body, a value that fluctuates according to the fancy of the male chauvinist's wallet.
Isn't she just an object, which takes on more or less value according to the degree to which her charms wilt? Isn't she governed by the law of supply and demand? Such a concentrated, tragic, and painful form of female slavery as a whole!
We should see in every prostitute an accusing finger pointing firmly at society as a whole. Every pimp, every partner in prostitution, turns the knife in this festering and gaping wound that disfigures the world of man and leads to his ruin. In fighting against prostitution, in holding out a saving hand to the prostitute, we are saving our mothers, our sisters, and our wives from this social leprosy. We are saving ourselves. We are saving the world.
* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/
October 08, 2008
PRESS STATEMENT: CLEANING THE VOTERS’ REGISTER FOR PEACEFUL AND CREDIBLE ELECTIONS IN DECEMBER2008
We, the members of the Civic Forum Initiative (CFI) a coalition of Civil Society organizations committed to the conduct of a free, fair, peaceful and transparent election in Ghana on December 7, 2008.
Having met at Alisa Hotel, North Ridge, Accra on Thursday, 2 October 2008, to inaugurate our coalition and take stock of the limited registration exercise of July- August 2008, realized that, the challenges that face our country constitute a grave threat to the holding of credible elections in 2008 and beyond.
Have concluded that;
The present voters register should be cleaned to restore the confidence of the voting public in it and create the appropriate environment for free, fair and peaceful elections; and
CSOs and other citizens groups and public-spirited Ghanaians from all walks of life should be mobilized to participate more effectively in the election process in our country.
The Forum accordingly wishes to affirm its commitment, to ensuring credible and peaceful elections by;
i. Appealing to political parties, traditional authorities, churches and all religious bodies to appeal to their members to volunteer information to the EC on all cases of underage, alien, double or multiple registration and deceased persons whose names remain in the register;
ii. Educating the voting public to participate fully in the exhibition of the voters register and thereby help clean it up through the removal of illegal names;
iii. Giving maximum publicity to the exhibition of the voters register to ensure the maximum effectiveness of the exercise;
iv. Mounting an observation of the exhibition” of the voters register and make recommendation on further appropriate measures to be taken to guarantee the integrity and credibility of the register;
v. Undertaking a broad advocacy campaign to ensure free, fair, transparent and peaceful election on December 7, 2008;
vi. Disseminating peace messages throughout the length and breadth of Ghana to ensure peace and national unity before, during and after election 2008;
vii. Asking the security agencies to firmly and impartially perform their duties before, during and after the election;
viii. Advising all political leaders and election candidates to bring their influence to bear on their political support base to keep the peace and ensure a successful election in December 2008; and
ix. Appealing to all Ghanaians in all they do to put Ghana first, political power second.
* For more information, please contact the Civic Forum Initiative Host Secretariat at: Tel.021-506466/518017; Fax: 021-518018 or by E-mail; [email][email protected]
Elimu Yetu Coalition – Kenya’s National coalition(network) of Civil Society Organizations committed to the realization of Education For All goals (EFA) as spelt out in the Dakar framework for action – wishes to confirm to all that we will host CONFINTEA VI Africa’s Civil Society Summit on 3rd November 2008 at the Hilton Hotel, Nairobi Kenya. Find attached the registration form.
The Registration Form for the Doha Global Civil Society Forum (27 November 28 November 2008, Doha, Qatar) and the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus (29 November 2 December 2008, Doha, Qatar) is now online.
Reflecting on his time spent in The Marcus Garvey Library in the London borough of Tottenham, Ronald Elly Wanda salutes the legacy of the library’s namesake and his seminal contribution to the pan-African movement. Following his discussion with a local librarian, the author suggests The Marcus Garvey Library to represent a redefinition of the library for the modern age.
From January 27th to February 1st 2009, the city of Belem will host the World Social Forum. During six days, the city assumes the position of being the center of planetary citizenship and a global reference for those who don't agree with inequality, injustice, intolerance, environment destruction and prejudice.
In a potent challenge to the Bush administration’s stated aim of increasing security on the African continent, Nunu Kidane argues the US’ sudden interest in the military AfriCOM initiative to reflect both unease over future control of natural resources and the increasing Chinese presence in Africa. As a means of actively opposing the initiative’s progress, the author urges readers to participate in the Resist AfriCOM campaign to say a clear and unequivocal ‘no’ to Washington’s AfriCOM programme.
The European Union is preparing to impose swingeing taxes on goods imported from Guyana as punishment for the Caribbean island's refusal to accept a free trade accord. Unlike 13 other governments in the Caribbean, Guyana has opted out of signing an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU.
Sokari Ekine interviews Tunji Buhari, an environmental campaigns worker for Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Friends of the Earth, Nigeria. Buhari is based in Lagos and has been working with ERA on their anti-tobacco campaign.
While exploring Rwanda’s alternative experience of women’s emancipation, Grace Kwinjeh outlines the potential conflict between nationalism and social liberation within many post-colonial African nations. Though post-colonial nationalisms have often amounted to the reinforcing of patriarchal systems of governance and the subordination of women, in Rwanda, the author argues, women’s experience of political representation in a post-genocide society has been more complicated, an experience essentially revealing the role of political systems in determining the levels of freedom and democracy that countries’ citizens enjoy.
Exploring the challenges and limitations to have faced Tanzania’s educational development, Salma Maoulidi assesses the progress of various educational initiatives and the prospects for the country’s population. Underlining the importance of the role of both state and non-state actors in Tanzania’s implementation of effective policies, the author argues that putting adult learning and education (ALE) back on the national development agenda will be critical for the country’s negotiation of an ever globalising world.
In the run-up to the third India-Brazil-South-Africa (IBSA) Summit to be held this month in Delhi, Sanusha Naidu considers the prospects for Chinese integration into a growing pillar of South-South cooperation. Emphasising the extent to which IBSA’s parts far from represent a unified force, the author argues that the bloc’s immediate future lies more in consolidating collaboration between its current members than in being concerned about capturing China’s global leverage.
In light of the current global economic downturn and bailout plan for the rich, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem examines the hypocrisy and profound limitations of a neoliberal market orthodoxy ostensibly hostile to state intervention yet increasingly reliant on its restorative role. Berating the continued failure of Western institutions to provide adequate conditions and support for African development, the author urges African governments to turn their backs on foreign ‘aid’ and instead concentrate on their own course of action.
Following a review workshop in Kenya, the East African Community (EAC) deputy secretary general announced that national consultations on the proposed EAC political federation were on course in Rwanda and Burundi. In addition, military commanders from 13 Eastern Africa countries met in Kenya, under the patronage of the AU, to finalise preparations for the establishment of a ‘united force to deal with conflicts on the continent’ through the Rapid Deployment Unit and the East African Stand-By Brigade. Regarding the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Institute for Security Studies is set to publish a monograph arguing that ‘regionalisation/integration have both an external and internal logic’ and going further to explain that ‘the inability of ECCAS to discharge its mandate on human security is a function of the perceived potential benefit and cost to domestic politicians with regards to their political security or future. Thus, a weak ECCAS is a reflection of its importance to the political calculus of member states’.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki arrived in Zimbabwe on Monday in a bid to save the country’s power-sharing deal after the opposition party was denied key cabinet posts. Though the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai threatened to pull out of the deal, he said he still hoped the mediator would unlock the impasse so that the country may move forward. The African Union (AU), calling on its Member States not to accept the unconstitutional change of government in Mauritania, has reiterated the position of its Peace and Security Council (PSC) for restoration of the constitutional order and has welcomed the unanimous support of the international community. The AU, following a PSC meeting, called for urgent, flexible and sustainable funding for its peace operations on the continent.
In other news, the AU-EU Ministerial meeting called upon the African and European Commissions to further contribute to the new Africa-Europe relations framework, characterised by a consensus on values and a shared vision, and based on a more open and mature dialogue addressing global issues as well as to share experiences, best practices, and to develop joint initiatives. More than 200 civil society organisations are meeting for the ‘Second Euro-African Non-governmental Conference on Migration and development’. In addition, to mark ten years after the United Nations issued the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, a high-level conference entitled ‘Ten Years of Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement - Achievements and Future Challenges’ will take place in Oslo. Further, the Korean Strategy and Finance Ministry and the Import-Export Bank of Korea, in collaboration with the African Development Bank are organising the 2008 Ministerial Conference on Economic Cooperation between Korea and Africa under the theme ‘Promoting Synergies between Africa and Korea’.
It was exciting, and a little strange, to find good news . I hadn't picked this up, here in the U.S.A., where the Angola 3 and I live. I'd been paying a lot more attention to Africa, because I pay a lot of attention to mining, everywhere, but especially in Africa.
I sent your piece to the editor of the San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, which hopes to have their website back up tomorrow, October 15th, and they were glad the news surfaced in Pambazuka. Hugely important case in African American history.
*Thanks Ann Garrison for passing on the article - Pambazuka Editors
This article, , begins with an extremely inaccurate premise. Assuming that the author really has no background in any African liberation movement, nor in he politics of black liberation or class struggle, it makes me wonder what kind of analysis Pambazuka offers to the black community.
By “black” I mean those Africans involved in the class struggle as well as the movement for international African unity, because for those of us in the Western Hemisphere that is the context out of which the term black originally evolved. Not only is the premise of the article crooked, but the whole text degenerates into an attack on the African liberation movement in Southern Africa, and elsewhere.
One must ask if this article was written by a disillusioned Afrikaner with a monkey on his back. While Melber tries to come across as somebody trying to spark “a broad political debate”, that cannot honestly happen based on Melber’s half-baked assumptions, misrepresentations of current events, and a hidden agenda.
The military mindset in Africa did not arrive with the black liberation movements, which came late to the scene. Kwame Nkrumah documented the long list of coups d’etat up from 1957 up thru 1970 or so. In the states where coups occurred, not only were military regimes installed, the rulers also were staunchly pro-imperialist. Those who couped Nkrumah, Azikiwe, Lumumba, Obote and others were in the West’s pocket, in every instance.
While your author tries to introduce Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre into the discussion, he is inept at presenting an argument which justifies the article’s title.
First, the hard fought victories won by FRELIMO, ZANU and MPLA to defeat colonialism cannot be compared to any other wars in modern history. Melber dismisses all this with a sweep of his word processor. However, for those of us who appreciate that period of struggle, we know the hawks of Imperialism have sworn eternal vengeance. They declared, thru out the US media on the eve of the Lancaster House Accords in 1980, that Africans were too stupid to build the stone buildings at Old Zimbabwe and had no business naming the country after ruins that either Arabs or Europeans had left.
Second, that these countries struggled to build democratic societies while facing extreme odds because of military attacks from South Africa, assisted by Israel and the US, it is miraculous that military regimes do not administer power in any of those countries. The grip some forces exercise on power reflects the history of repression which not only demanded their rise, but demanded emergency measures. The Southern Africa security question was never adequately addressed by the world bodies, and it emerged out of imperialist racism. So Melber is not only wrong on this point, but completely haphazard. He neglects to state how the SADF created an extensive ecological disaster thru out Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Angola. The warfare against peasants in Mozambique, carried out thru war criminals enlisted in Renamo, was a precursor to the violence demonstrated against the Tutsi by interhamwe machete murderers in Central Africa. Zimbabwe helped settle the security question during that period.
The security issues of Southern Africa have never been definitively articulated the way the US, by comparison, has defined its security issues. Minorities in Southern Africa have never been violently subdued and enslaved or gradually given rights, as a form of long-term policy. Political parties in Africa do not recognize any traditional path of development for African people. In terms of security issues, Renamo in Mozambique is a counterinsurgency party which the US would smash as a domestic terror organization. Same as for UNITA in Angola.
Finally, the fact that democracy is a stunted child in Africa does not mean it has to be paraded thru out the Southern African states as their particular embarrassment. No mention is made of supposedly democratic Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda, elsewhere.
Melber’s article should have been more accurately named something along the lines of something like An ad hominem attack on Black liberation, and subtitled, “Niggers don’t deserve independence”.
As a Zimbabwean I was disappointed that the writer, still regards the Zimbabwe case as an academic political science assignment. Clearly I just didnt see his point at all. People are dying in that country. More people would have died if Tsvangirayi had proceeded to the runoff elections.
Mugabe's youthful butchers were instructed to wait in the villages until the outcome. We appreciate meaningful help from the international community and this includes the writer but please spare us this academic grandstanding.
In regards to , I have several problems with this method of thought not the least of which is the author's serious legitimization of the bankrupt ideals of Julius Nyerere. Indeed, one could argue that for the weakness and arrogance of Nyerere at the founding of the OAU, Africa could have acheived a much stronger Union. We tend to forget that the Union of African States was the correct model to follow. But, the Union of African States gave way to the OAU in order to keep the likes of Nyerere in the overall African fold. Nyerere's regionalism was really nothing more than a sabotage of Nkrumah's program of a strong African Union.
It is true that regionalism, even Nyerere's sub-continenlaism was a failure if for no other reason than that it was meant to not succeed towards African Unity. Tanzania was a feable attempt to unite two little East African states. Such a structure did not even rise to the level of regionalism much less sub-continentalism becasue it did not include East Africa: Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Mozambique or Ethiopia. Recall that Ethiopia was a member of the Casablanca Group and as such, Ethiopia was very friendly towards Nkrumah's project for Continental Unity.
Stop apologizing for Nyerere. He lived a long life. And, he was head of ststae for many years. He had plenty of time to correct his mistakes. But, he never did. I think he failed to do so becasue Pan-Africanism was never a part of his commitment nor internal ideological make up. Indeed, I know of nothing prior to the OAU that indicates any commitment on the part of Nyerere to Pan-Africanism. Of course he sang the Pan-Africanist song just as he sang the socialist song. But, Nyerere's idea of Pan-Africanism was not Pan-Africanism which was defined by Nkrumah as the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. And, Nyerere's socialism may have include some socialist policies, but it was NOT scientific socialism. In fact, Nyerere went so far as to emphasize this point by calling his socialism "African socialism".
Unfortunately, the author does not even rise to this occasion. Instead he mentions something that none of us has ever heard of before now; namely some kind of weird liberal democracy. I mean, really! In these times in which even the most right wing free market capitalists, such as George W. Bush and Gordon Brown, have been forced to use scientific socialist methods to try and rescue world capitalism, we in Africa are still too cowardly to acknowledge that anything short of scientific socialism, such as what we see in China, will NOT lead to African Unity and NOT solve African problems.
Abdurrahman Nelson's letter on, , assterts that Nyerere was not a scientific socialist, and that George Bush and Gordon Brown are using scientific socialist method to deal with the financial crisis! This is to confuse nationalization with scientific socialism; in any case, Nyerere nationalized all commanding heights of Tanzanian economy, and he was not scientific socialist.
Your commentry, , is a bunch of facts/observations but with no clear conlusion - in short very misleading.
Your commentry talks about democracy in the ANC as if the ANC came to power without resistance from those they defeated(competitors). Address issues knowing that an ideal situation is only on paper not in real life! People are trecherous and cunning! Therefore expect prudence from rulers and not church service while the Laws of the state prescribe between acceptable and non acceptable behaviour.
Therefore rewrite your article - it has all the truth but has misplaced facts!
Love thy neighbour the same way you would want them do unto you, then we shall be building the nation. And not what Bishop Tutu is doing in his old age, that is Dividing the Nation!
And give credit to the ruling party. They are facing elections just around the corner.
In a wide-ranging discussion of the circumstances behind President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil’s 2007 official visit to Burkina Faso some twenty years after the assassination of Thomas Sankara by the west African nation’s incumbent, Carlos Moore in conversation with the publication Ìrohìn reviews the state of the African continent and the role of nations’ leaders in countries’ development. As Moore cogently argues, in their dealings with Western powers most of today’s African elites function in a self-interested manner entirely consistent with dominant relations of exchange seen as far back as the 15th and 16th centuries, representing the same obstacle to improved livelihoods, wider development and equitable distribution of power they have always done.
The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Witwatersrand is Southern Africa’s premier centre for academic research and teaching on migration and social transformation. The FMSP is seeking a researcher for its Migrant Rights Monitoring Project (MRMP). The MRMP builds on the FMSP’s record of research and advocacy with sustained, rigorous social science research into migrants’ access to basic social services; the implementation of asylum policy; and the nature and causes of rights abuses against non-nationals in South Africa. Closing Date: 31 October 2008.
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, the international NGO tracking the social & environmental conduct (positive & negative) of over 4000 companies, is seeking a highly-motivated person to be its Francophone Africa Researcher & Representative. The Centre’s website (www.business-humanrights.org) is recognised as the leading information hub on this subject. closing date: 28 October 2008.
This paper investigates the impact of the framework and strategies to retain critical health professionals (CHPs) that the Zimbabwean government has put in place, particularly regarding non-financial incentives, in the face of continuing high out-migration. The study investigated the causes of migration of health professionals; the strategies used to retain health professionals, how they are being implemented, monitored and evaluated and their impact, in order to make recommendations to enhance the monitoring, evaluation and management of non-financial incentives for health worker retention.
The African continent is quickly becoming a proxy battleground for Washington and Beijing, as the latter's appetite for emerging markets and raw materials grows. In July 2008, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "China's full court press to establish influence and connections in Africa and Latin America may be seismic in its future implications for the United States." China's burgeoning influence in Africa is now squarely on the Pentagon's radar screen.
The general policy lessons from the high-growth economies of Asia for others are clear: the need for an educated and healthy workforce, timely investment in infrastructure, and the assiduous extension of governance; and the importance of making every effort to access the global economy. But the challenge for African and other policy-makers is less about knowing 'what'they should do than about 'how' they can do it.
Talks on forming a Zimbabwean cabinet deadlocked on Thursday with political parties still fighting over who should control key ministries but negotiators said they would try again on Friday, the opposition MDC said. President Robert Mugabe voiced optimism a deal could be reached but said both sides were digging in their heels and compromise was needed on all sides.
Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu remain in custody in Bulawayo Central Police Station tonight following their arrest earlier in the day. The seven other members that had been arrested before the demonstration had started have all been released without charge.
According to March 2008 statistics only 3.6% of internet users in the world were from Africa. Asia contributed to 37.6% of internet users globally, but this percentage is inflated by large numbers of users from China. The number of fixed lines has not increased significantly, and in some cases has even shrunk. And, in addition to this, a new divide is emerging: the broadband (or “high speed internet”) divide.
Judges at the International Criminal Court have asked for more evidence before deciding whether to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's leader. Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo wants the court to issue a warrant for President Omar al-Bashir over war crimes allegedly committed in Darfur.
Anthony Kimani Muhia is as ambitious as he is entrepreneurial. The 32-year-old farmer from central Kenya has figured out much of what's wrong with the country's farming system, and he's determined to change it, starting with himself. His plot of land feels not much bigger than a handkerchief – about ¾ of an acre – but he’s been using it to find new ways of farming that might help him, his family and his community escape the poverty trap.
An international tribunal should be set up in Kenya to try those implicated in clashes after December's disputed poll, an inquiry into the violence says. The commission found that in some areas, the violence was planned and organised with the support of politicians and businessmen.
A community in eastern Uganda has banned the deeply rooted practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), an official has said. Kapchorwa district chairman Nelson Chelimo said it was "outmoded" and "not useful" for the community's women.
The ex-premier of South Africa's Gauteng province has resigned from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to join those calling for a new party. Mbhazima Shilowa said the rebels, led by ex-Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, would hold a convention on 2 November.
Royal Dutch Shell has appealed a Nigerian court order requiring it hand over the site of a key base in the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta. A high court in Rivers State ruled in July that the site of the Bonny lifting terminal belonged to the local community, not the oil multinational.
South Africa's new Health Minister, Barbara Hogan, has called for a renewed global effort to find a vaccine for HIV, which can lead to Aids. Ms Hogan said it was unquestionable that HIV caused Aids and conventional medicines were the best treatment.
Almost two-thirds of people - 60% - in 26 countries say higher food and energy prices this year have affected them "a great deal", a BBC report has found. The BBC World Service global study said that while all nations had felt the burden of the higher costs, the problem was most acute in poorer countries.
Spain’s accelerating effort to send back unaccompanied children who enter the country illegally might subject them to danger, ill-treatment and detention, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The government needs to halt repatriations until it has a process to ensure their well-being, and, as an immediate step, give them the same right to an independent lawyer that adult migrants have under Spanish law.
Ethiopia’s parliament should reject a draft law that would criminalize human rights activity and seriously undermine civil society groups, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch called on donor governments to speak out publicly against the bill, which is expected to be introduced in parliament this month.
Mawusi Awity and her husband were willing to jeopardize his military career for her dream of running for parliament in Ghana but there was another price to pay that she could not afford. "The excessive use of money to win the minds and hearts of the voters is making it difficult for women to get into the forefront of politics," Awity told IPS.
When in 2003 Kenya followed its neighbours Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi in introducing free and compulsory primary education for all, the response from the public as well as international donors was overwhelming. Within the first few weeks more than 1.3 million new students were enrolled. Those who had previously not been able to send their children to school rushed to the school gates and the trend has continued ever since.
The World Bank has agreed to help developing countries strengthen their economies, bolster their financial systems and protect the poor against the financial turmoil in international markets. Robert Zoellick, the bank's president, said the contagion affecting the global economy “has been a man-made catastrophe and responses to overcome it lie in all our hands.''
The recent debate about the poverty statistics released by Kenya’s Ministry of Planning vis-à-vis allocation of community development fund (CDF) is an issue about targeting of the prized funds. Established in 2003 through the CDF Act in The Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 107, the fund is expected to support constituency-level, grass-root development projects.
Sudan's president, accused of genocide by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), launched a national initiative on Thursday to bring peace to Darfur. Rebels dismissed the move by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as a public relations trick and boycotted the launch.
Life is getting tougher and tougher for Burundi's 12,000 urban refugees and asylum seekers. Amid rising prices and dwindling opportunities to make money, hundreds of refugees have left the capital, Bujumbura, over the past two years and moved to refugee camps where they can get assistance and free schooling for their children.
The second Pan-African film festival, intended to raise awareness of the various forms of violence committed against women in Africa, will open here on 26 November. Sponsored by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the Government of Senegal, donors, non-governmental organizations and other partners, the festival is held on the occasion of the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women,” 25 November.
As the first-ever report by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on fistula is scheduled to be presented to Member States today, the Campaign to End Fistula announced a fourfold increase in the number of countries it serves. According to its annual report, the campaign now works to prevent and treat fistula in over 45 countries in Africa, Asia and the Arab States. When the Campaign to End Fistula was launched in 2003, it covered 12 countries.
On the heels of UNFPA’s recent efforts to promote maternal health at the High-level meeting on the Millennium Development Goals has come increased media exposure to the plight of mothers in developing countries. Prominent print and photo coverage in the 10 October 2008 edition of the Washington Post highlights the perils of poor access to emergency obstetric care and limited health-care resources to the lives of women and children.
The global financial crisis will hit trade between China and Africa, but Beijing will keep expanding its investment in the continent to maintain strong ties, senior officials have said. Sino-African trade reached $74-billion in the first eight months, up 62% from a year earlier. "We cannot be very optimistic about sustaining such growth," said Zhou Yabin, head of the Africa department at the Ministry of Commerce.
Angolan oil exports, the country's main source of revenue, will continue to increase in the near future thanks to growth in demand from China which will compensate for possible setbacks in other markets, according to analysts from Portugal’s Banco BPI. “Despite certain conditions that could limit the demand from developed economies, China's strong growth provides guarantees that, in the near future, demand for Angolan oil should be maintained,” say the BPI analysts in the latest report on Angola, published in September.
Two of the prolonged myths about Africa is that her history is limited to the continent’s colonial past and secondly African’s have contributed little to the development of the world’s science, technology and agricultural innovations. And even the few publications which do mention Black inventors rarely cite inventors outside the US. Keith Holmes sets out to counter these omissions and in doing so, he provides us with a comprehensive catalogue of Black inventions and inventors as well as a glimpse into the socioeconomic and political history of Black people.
This year's International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is a call to everyone, from policy makers to the public, to recognise the rights and dignity of people living in poverty. Amnesty International, other NGOs, civil society organizations, people living in poverty and supporters around the world will mobilize to raise their voices and demand action from governments.
The Eastern Africa Journalists Association (EAJA), an association that brings together journalists unions and associations in Eastern Africa, today published a regional report on "Gender Equality in the Media in Eastern Africa". The report is based on key gender planning concepts, namely Sex and Gender, Gender Equality and Gender Mainstreaming.
An additional 5,500 people have been displaced this week from the capital of strife-torn Somalia, the United Nations reported today, bringing the total number of those uprooted by fighting between Government forces and Islamic insurgents since 21 September to over 61,000.
Drought-hit Ethiopians are facing a worsening food situation as the cost of maize soars nearly three-fold in some areas of the Horn of Africa country compared to last year, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has cautioned. Migration by people from rural to urban areas in search of food is increasing, it noted, and aid agencies have identified critical malnutrition. A rapid assessment team said it found grave water and pasture shortages in some areas.
Corruption, arms sales and a civil war in Africa: France's biggest ever bribery scandal sees 42 leading figures of the French business and political world on trial. They are accused of being involved in a murky network said to have facilitated the illegal transport of arms to Angola in the 1990s.
Côte d’Ivoire still faces formidable obstacles before it can achieve true national reconciliation and begin the path to recovery, a United Nations report says today just weeks before the West African country is slated to conduct much-delayed presidential elections.
In order to reduce poverty and foster inclusive development through affordable access to the internet, APC is working on a resource kit for realising a universal access agenda, present promising options, experiences, lessons and opportunities in pro-poor access provision in developing societies.
The development community is experiencing an explosion of interest in providing low cost devices, such as laptops, to students in developing countries. infoDev is now working to develop a web-based “community of practice” that will share lessons among the different initiatives.
Nokia launched a regional research center in Nairobi on Sept. 30 to gain a better understanding of the needs of African consumers, said Dorothy Ooko, communications manager for East and Central Africa. Nokia Research Africa (NoRA) will work with universities and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to develop prototypes of devices that are suitable for the African market, with an eye on offering benefits in health care and education. Nokia researchers will also study the telecommunication services sector on the continent.
A demand for scrap metal by China is fuelling an unprecedented rate of crime in Kenya and vandalism of key installations to meet a growing demand for raw material. Electricity, phone cables and railway lines have been vandalized as the Chinese importers continue to pay premium prices for metal.
Tuberculosis patients who are also HIV positive and require being booked for Anti Retroviral drugs should can do that, Amon Nkhata, ART officer responsible for sexually transmitted infections has said. He said it is safe to combine the two treatments and added that earlier deaths reported were rumour.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai failed Friday to agree on who should control powerful ministries, leaving their proposed unity government in doubt. Four days of lengthy negotiations, Tsvangirai said he still hoped that diplomatic efforts by fellow African countries would find a way to save the month-old power-sharing deal, seen as the best chance for rescuing the country from economic collapse.
As millions of Zimbabweans face a daily battle to survive, it is becoming clear that ZANU PF continues to hold the nation hostage – this after police and war veterans prevented the MDC from distributing critically needed food to hungry orphans in the Nyanga rural district in the eastern Manicaland province last week. The severe food crisis is taking it’s toll on the country and unknown numbers of people are beginning to suffer the effects of extreme hunger and malnutrition.
A call by the MDC for parliament to investigate this year’s political violence has touched a raw nerve in the ZANU PF system. On Wednesday MDC Mutare Central legislator Innocent Gonese tabled a motion for a parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the violence which rocked the country after the March 29 elections, that were won by the MDC. Harare East MP Tendai Biti also tabled another motion asking parliament to investigate the ‘militarization and politicization of food distribution.
An increase in violence in northern Darfur last month has displaced around 50,000 people, many of whom could be short of food and water, a United Nations official said on Saturday. Gregory Alex, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in northern Darfur, said around 24,000 people fled their homes after clashes between government and rebel forces near the areas of Birmaza and Disa.
The European Union will press Mauritania's military government next week for a return to constitutional rule and the release of ousted President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. The bloc could impose sanctions if no progress is made in talks which start in Paris on Monday, the French EU presidency said on Friday.
Ivory Coast's long-awaited presidential election, which will cement peace between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebels, is "technically impossible" this year and will be held in 2009, an electoral official said on Friday. The vote in the world's No. 1 cocoa producer, which had already been delayed several times since 2005 by political conflict and sporadic violence, was scheduled for Nov. 30.
The World Bank has announced that it has approved $24 million for a program that will see Rwanda develop her national capacity to provide broadband connectivity. The money that was cleared through an International Development Association (IDA) financing grant for the Regional Communication Infrastructure Program - Rwanda Project (RCIPRW), is supposed to increase the availability of broadband to more than 700 Rwandan institutions including schools, health centers and local government administrative centers. IDA is the concessional lending arm of the World Bank.
African leaders from three regional economic blocs are due to hold a historic joint summit in Uganda this month to harmonise regional integration policies and programmes in a move that may give fresh impetus to the long-conceived goal of an African Economic Community.
Scores of bloggers and Facebook users in Tunisia have banded together to push for a national day to defend the freedom of expression. A number of bloggers initiated the group "November 4th: A National Day for the Freedom of Expression" on Facebook. The group is now leading a campaign to promote the idea.
The ILO global reports have particularly highlighted the link between poverty and racial discrimination and examined in detail the situation of ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, people of African descent, the Roma and religious minorities. The effects of multiple discrimination, particular discrimination faced by women on the basis of race and sex, were stressed.
A human rights framework not only offers distinctive strengths but also specific tools for development work. It is therefore essential for development actors to actively integrate human rights into development planning. For this purpose, Dignity International has released a new learning manual named "From poverty to dignity: A learning manual on human rights based development" designed to be a guide, to encourage and inspire facilitators who want supporting materials that can give them a push in realising a good human rights learning programme.
This report from UNCTAD examines Africa’s export performance after trade liberalisation to draw lessons for use in the design of future development strategies. Liberalisation over the last 25 years has removed policy barriers that were seen to inhibit export performance. Despite this the level and composition of exports has not changed. Exports have not diversified and as a whole market share is down from 6 per cent of world exports to 3 per cent.
Uganda is well endowed with natural resources and some 24 per cent is at present under forest cover. However, as in most Africa countries, Uganda’s forests are in decline. Mount Elgon forest was gazetted under the Forest Department from 1938. The status was changed to a National Park in 1993. Its management was transferred to the wildlife authorities. This report assesses impacts of the change in legal status on people's livelihood by means of a modified household economic model.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has accused its neighbour Rwanda of sending troops across the border in support of a Congolese rebel leader. Dozens of people were injured in fighting near Goma, the eastern provincial capital of eastern Nord-Kivu, but Rwanda denied involvement saying the accusations from Kinshasa were "ridiculous".
South Africa launched its first clean technology fund last month (30 September) in Johannesburg with around 400 million South African rand (US$39.3 million) ready for its first investments. The Evolution One fund will inject capital into projects like water treatment technologies, waste management and thin-film solar panel development, says Zuko Kubukeli, an executive director with Inspired Evolution Investment Management, which is managing the fund.
Uganda has been elected to occupy a non-permanent seat of UN Security Council when delegates today cast their votes to the international body's powerful for 2009-10 term. Uganda, which was already assured of a seat from a unanimous regional backing has been joined by Japan, Turkey, Austria and Mexico.
Nigerian journalist Eiphraim Audu shot and killed on Wednesday by six unknown gunmen near his residence in Lafia, central Nigeria. Mr Audu was a senior radio journalist with Nasarawa State Broadcasting Service and chairman of credential committee of forthcoming Nigeria Union of Journalist elections in Nasarawa.