Pambazuka News needs your financial support.

This year we were told by a small loyal family foundation that, due to their own budgetary constraints, they will no longer continue to fund Pambazuka News. In addition, a major US foundation that provided core funding for Pambazuka News over the last two years did not renew their grant owing to a shift in funding priorities. The future of Pambazuka News is now at stake.

Pambazuka News, only seven years old this December, already has an estimated readership of 500,000. We have published more than 470 authors and 41,000 articles, news stories and announcements, 100 blog reviews and carried nearly 30 podcasts – all freely available on the website (http://www.pambazuka.org).

Believing we should be in constant dialogue with you, we have published more than 1000 reader letters and some 200 online comments (many of them articles in their own right). And since 2006, we have been publishing a French language edition (http://www.pambazuka.org/fr). We have also published six books on key issues facing Africa such as African women’s rights and China’s growing influence in Africa.

Pambazuka News has played a central role in a wide range of campaigns, including the Protocol on the Rights of Women, media and freedom of expression, and 16 days of activism against gender violence. In 2006, we supported the establishment of the African Union Monitor initiative to enable civil society organisations to engage the African Union in policy dialogue, provided daily updates at the AU Monitor website (http://www.aumonitor.org), and published a special issue on union government.

As one of our contributors wrote: ‘Pambazuka News has, in the short time of its existence, carved a niche for itself as an important forum where Africans talk frankly among themselves and reflect on the condition of their continent and its place in the global order.” As a result, for the third year running, we were voted as one of the ‘Top 10 who are changing the world of Internet and Politics’.

The demand for Pambazuka News continues to grow. We want to make Pambazuka News available in Portuguese and Arabic. We want to produce a printed edition in order to make Pambazuka News available to those without Internet access. We want to establish an award for young writers, artists and activists who have made significant contributions to the cause of social justice in Africa. We want to establish a Pan African Fellowship Fund to develop the future champions of social justice in Africa.

To make all this happen, we are going to need your help.

If you think Pambazuka News is important, then why not show your support by making a donation of $50 a year (or more). For that small amount, you’ll continue to get some 6000 articles and news reports a year. That’s a bargain in any language. And you know that by making such a regular contribution, you are not giving to charity, but helping to build a fighting fund for social justice.

Not all of you, we know, can afford to make such a donation. Even a small contribution will help. And many of you live in countries where it is difficult to send money abroad. So the onus is on those of us who can afford to, to assist. Please consider this a bargain subscription.

And if you work for an institution, why not arrange to take out an institutional subscription at our low rate of $200 a year?

Pambazuka News needs your help. You can donate by going to:

Alternatively, you can send donations in local currency cheques to our offices in Nairobi, Cape Town or Oxford at the addresses shown below.

Fahamu Kenya, PO Box 47158 – 00100, GPO Nairobi, Kenya

Fahamu SA Trust, c/o 10, Pinehurst Rd, Kenwyn, 7780, Cape Town, South Africa

Fahamu Trust, 2nd floor, 51 Cornmarket Street, Oxford OX1 3HA, UK