Chiefdoms in southern and eastern Sierra Leone will soon receive tens of thousands of dollars as their share of proceeds from the sale of diamonds mined in their region, Mineral Resources Minister Mohammed Deen told IRIN on Thursday.

The fertility and population growth rates in Uganda are among the highest in the world, according to a new survey by Uganda's Population Secretariat (POPSEC). The Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) for 2000 indicated that a Ugandan woman would give birth to an average of 6.5 children, the state-owned 'New Vision' newspaper quoted Acting Director of POPSEC, Paddy Nahabwe, as saying. "By comparison, a Kenyan woman will have an average of 4.5 children in her lifetime. This means that our population is growing rapidly and continuing to exert pressure on the environment," he added.

WFP on Monday welcomed the arrival in Mombasa port of a 54,000 mt shipment of maize, valued at US $24 million, as part of a substantial donation by the US government towards the agency's post-drought expanded school feeding programme in Kenya. "This food is not only a meal, but a passport to an education, a future, hopes and dreams," said Esther Ouma, a programme analyst for WFP Kenya. "Giving a nutritious meal to a poor student today is key to helping him or her become a literate, self-reliant adult tomorrow," she added.

The Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) on Tuesday claimed to have rescued more than 6,000 children to date from enforced fighting and slavery with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The army's 4th Division spokesman, Captain Khelil Magara, was quoted by the independent 'Monitor' newspaper as saying that the children had been rescued while fighting against the UPDF, and that a child protection unit had been formed in the 4th division to help those rescued.

A week before a meeting of signatories of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement, the Burundian Net Press news agency reported that the group of eight pro-Tutsi parties (G8) supporting the candidacy of Col. Epitace Bayaganakandi as president of the first phase of the transitional period has written to the mediator in the Burundi conflict, Nelson Mandela, drawing his attention to what they believe to be impeding progress in negotiations: stubbornness on the part of President Pierre Buyoya and the Forces pour la defense de la democratie (FDD) and Forces nationales pour la liberation (FNL) rebel groups.

Seminars on community peace building in Bukavu have contributed to the restoration of a "relatively peaceful" situation in certain zones, Save the Children UK (SC UK) said in its July update. Bunyakiri, Walungu and Kaziba were some of the zones in which the positive results were realised. SC UK supported some partner organisations working in Bukavu, ran these seminars which focused on the reintegration and protection of the child soldiers and the prevention of child recruitment.

The government of Sudan on Wednesday announced that it had fully accepted all the points of a joint Libyan-Egyptian memorandum, which has not been made public, on their peace initiative for Sudan. At a press conference in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il urged the two countries to take all the necessary measures to implement the initiative, Sudanese television reported.

The Ethiopian government has released 22 opposition Democratic Party (DP) members arrested in April for allegedly instigating students riots, AFP reported on Thursday.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has written to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo expressing its concern over the recent arrest of the editor of a weekly magazine on charges of criminal defamation.

Refugees who fled to southern Gambia to escape fighting in the Casamance region of Senegal have been trying to visit their villages to see if it is safe to return home, UNHCR said on Tuesday. However, some have returned to The Gambia after finding their houses destroyed. Others, UNHCR reported, said Senegalese troops who had taken up positions in their villages warned them to stay out of the area.

Five people are reported dead and some 139,000 others have been affected by flooding and waterlogged conditions caused by recent downpours in Ghanaian coastal towns, including the capital Accra, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday. The southern districts of Adoagyir, Nsawam, Zongo, and the Odaw Channel have been the worst affected by the flooding, OCHA said.

Veterans of the African National Congress' (ANC) former military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), intend reactivating dormant gold and coal mines in Mpumalanga province to create jobs and wealth for unemployed liberation struggle soldiers, African Eye News Service reported on Wednesday.

Amnesty International Holds a Training Seminar
for Human Rights Defenders in Cairo from 7-9 July 2001

To promote greater understanding about what we mean when we are talking about racism. There is clearly a need to engage constructively with racism in South Africa. Developing a common vision of the nature of the problem may assist in focusing our efforts towards achieving this objective.
Date: Wednesday, 25th July 2001 9.00 for 9.30 - 11h30
Venue: The Attic at the Sunnyside Park Hotel, Princess of Wales Terrace, Parktown.
As spaces are limited, please RSVP before 20/07. For directions or further information, contact Caron Kgomo ([email protected]) or on (011) 403 5650.

PRESIDENT Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, speaking on the eve of the birth of a new African Union, said that the continent is poised to make a "political leap forward" as Europe has done. Wade, speaking here ahead of the last-ever summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on Monday through Wednesday, warned against gradual integration and urged that African development follow a joint strategy instead of each country fending for itself.

Complete, highly integrated online library covering a wie range of issues for nonprofit and for-profit organisations.

Nonprofit organizations have been using the Internet for years to organize their constituents and advocate their causes. Use these resources from the Benton Foundation to learn the ABCs of online organizing and help your organization be more effective.

To manage and run a research programme, write summaries, reports and advocacy campaign materials; prepare publications for printing; manage local and international information dissemination and exchange and an e-mail newsletter; facilitate a research reference group; organize and facilitate multi-stakeholder workshops/dialogues. Closing date: 28 July - Send CV and a letter of motivation via email
or Fax (011) 339 3270 or P O Box 11383, Jhb, 2000.

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council has substantially revised its existing website. This revision is designed to provide: clearer navigation and more contemporary design features; improved content; new features. Please review the site and pass this message on to others. The Council hopes that the improved site will communicate and disseminate information about the Council to members and strategic partners more effectively.

The disparity in the treatment between leaders in rich and poor countries will eventually become too obvious to be sustainable. And, if perpetuated, it will severely undermine the authority of the system of international law, causing it to be seen as merely victors' justice with a few juridical trimmings to give it legitimacy, writes Richard Gwyn.

The recent results of the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International are no good news for anti-corruption campaigners in Zimbabwe.

The state owned media took advantage of the ZCTU’s decision to postpone the two-day national strike to make unsubstantiated claims that the stay-away had been delayed due to a lack of consensus within the labour movement. While the private Press did not cover the impending strike extensively, the state media went to great lengths to portray the ZCTU as a discredited labour organization whose threat was aimed at “destroying the economy”. It also provided extensive publicity to the ZANU PF-affiliated ZFTU run by Harare municipality driver Joseph Chinotimba. Surprisingly however, none of the media has investigated the credentials of the ZFTU to find out which unions comprise its membership and how many workers they represent.

In January 1998, Singer Rankin, along with other members of the WWF Board of Directors, visited Tanzania. While there, they were introduced to the Udzungwa Mountains Women's Development Project. Started a few years before, this program has grown from an endeavor to introduce fuel-efficient stoves to local women, to a women-based enterprise that includes a restaurant fueled by such stoves and an outreach program that includes helping women learn how to run businesses. Local women are now conserving a biological treasure, protecting their source of water, and generating income for their families. WorldWomen-Work is providing general funds to support this successful win-win program.

Women & Politics in Uganda, which won a 2001 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, explains why the women's movement in Uganda has made its presence felt so forcefully and quickly in this country since 1986. Unlike women's movements in other African countries, the Ugandan women's movement has distinguished itself by establishing greater autonomy from the state, suggesting that societal autonomy is critical to its efficacy, although other key factors are also discussed.

A new batch of articles is now available on the Africultures English website. Olivier Barlet's Editorial "The endogenous gaze"; "Karmen Geï" by Joseph Gaye Ramaka (Senegal), film review by A Mensah; "You have to be inside something to change it": Interview with Simon Njami, "Nigeria: the photographic giant", by Erika Nimis; "Koudou, the foiled-tographer", by Ananias Leki, Ivoirian photographer; "Lomé's street photographers have got the blues" by Guy Hersant; "Press photographers in Benin" by Monique Phoba; "The photographic studio: a social testing-ground" by Jean-François Werner; and "I have to be a jack-of-all-trades": interview with Beninese photographer, Erick Ahounou, by Olivier Barlet.

The national organised crime head of the detective service, Assistant Commissioner Albert Eksteen, was arrested at the department's headquarters in Pretoria on Tuesday for fraud involving about R40 000.

Lack of access to information and technology affects Africa in general and women in particular. However, through the efforts and co-ordination of many government and NGO agencies, that essential access to information is slowly progressing throughout southern Africa.

A good education system is increasingly important not only for the success of a modern knowledge-based economy but also for the creation of a socially just society. The explosion of knowledge about the nature of learning, combined with the growing power of technology, create the potential to transform the most fundamental unit of education: the interaction of teacher and learner.

VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) has already been making waves in Africa. Mothers in Ethiopia use it to talk to their children in the USA. ISP owners in Ghana are arrested for using it. Togo has companies that do outsourcing work with it. The Guinean state telco has watched its revenues collapse because of it. Even South Africa's Telkom (see first item in News Round-Up and Snippets) is testing it. The genie is out of the bottle and and governments and state telcos are struggling to keep up. Mawuli Tse of iBasis describes how VOIP can be used in positive ways to change life in the continent.

The world is awash with guns - at least 550 million of them. An endless cheap supply of small arms has spawned an epidemic of killing. In a three-part series, Guardian writers hunt down the dealers, talk to the victims and ask what can be done to stop the trade.

Small World Theatre (SWT) collaborated with Tanzanian performers to find out what prevents people, particularly women in poor communities, from participating in elections.

A media ethics body run by journalists providing advice and support to members of the public who experience difficulties with the print and broadcast media, supplying media training for NGOs, and undertaking research on aspects of media law and ethics.

Access to Justice is pleased to announce the publication of its biannual Cases on Human Rights (CHR). Cases on Human Rights brings together, in a single volume, groundbreaking, distinctive and empowering human rights cases from across the Commonwealth, and this current edition encompasses cases from Nigeria and South Africa. Cases on Human Rights will expand vistas of legal scholarship and professional expertise in the protection and defence of human rights and will appeal to a broad spectrum of human rights practitioners.

Global economic arrangements enable a wealthy white minority to rule a world that's largely populated by people of color, says Africa Action executive director Salih Booker. In the first of what will be a continuing series of occasional interviews with Africa advocacy groups and NGOs in the United States, allAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with Booker about a new organization - Africa Action - formed through the merger of three of the oldest Africa advocacy groups in the United States.

The issue of reparations has to be on the agenda of the Third United Nations World Conference on Racism in Durban later this year, Jubilee South Africa and other anti-debt movements insisted at the weekend.

First we would like to thank all of you who responded to our survey questionnaire. We received a 5% return (308 replies). The distribution of our respondents did not reflect our subscriber base, with a disproportionately lower number of responses returned from African countries. The results are nevertheless interesting.

· 55% of respondents work in Africa
· 39% work in NGOs, 13% in Universities, 10% in international agencies, and the remainder in sectors such as consultancies, media, private sector, CBOs, government, and funding agencies
· We asked which three categories of the newsletter were you liked most:
o Rights and democracy 37%
o Development 33%
o Conflict, emergencies and crises 25%
o Education and social welfare 25%
o Editorial 27%
o Health 21%
o Women and gender 20%
o Internet and technology 19%

We suspect that these findings indicate that in many areas we may need to improve the quality of materials that we include. We hope we can do so with your help. Please continue to send us information for inclusion in the newsletter.

As you know, we will be closing down during August, and during that time we hope to be able to make some changes to the structure of the newsletter to make it easier for you to use the materials we publish.

Using discarded computers in rich countries for the benefit of disadvantaged populations in poorer countries is the idea behind World Computer Exchange. The first doubt that arises is how people are supposed to maintain the machines. I have heard too many stories of 'donated computers' being given to non-profit organisations, schools, etc... and then being left to rust in a storeroom because they are not useable or the recipients do not have the skills to use them. However, the WCE provides installation, connection and maintenance plans along with each donation it makes. In addition, recipient schools are partnered with tech-savvy schools in developed countries. There are, of course, tech-savvy schools in developing countries as well - it could be interesting to engage tham as partners with the recipient schools.

This report from the the Commonwealth of Learning details current issues faced in telecentres. It is available as a book but can also be downloaded in .pdf format and read using Acrobat Reader. It offers information and advice on the organisation and running of telecentres. It has been designed for policy-makers, centre managers and all of those in education, training, health and community development who are keen to serve urban, peri-urban, rural and other disadvantaged communities.

This interview is an interesting look at a multi-national's vision of the future internet and the role of open-source software. "IBM is spending millions of dollars and taking some of most important software code and adding it to Linux. That means that Linux is getting better and better, faster and faster, than any other operating system out there," claims Mike Nelson of IBM. Read about high bandwith, fast internet access and smarter computers that will be able to handle PETAbytes of information - and hope it will be deployed in Africa as readily and easily as in developed coutries.