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.

Dibussi Tande reviews the following blogs:

Agendia Aloysius
Nigerian Best Forum
Gef’s Outlook
Tgoose's Blog
Scribbles from the Den

cc Many lessons can be drawn from the historic 2008 elections in Ghana, writes Mawuli Dake. Different campaign strategies yielded diverse results, and voters are now looking more at politicians’ character and conduct when choosing their preferences rather than mere appearances or the provision of gifts, Dake maintains. Ghana went through three contentious rounds of voting, which resulted in the opposition’s victory and the transfer of power from one government to another without a single loss of life. This is a positive not just for Ghana, Dake suggests, but for the whole of west Africa.

The Sudan

That unknown village
Repugnant stage
A child killed
A mother raped
A father tortured
The whole world
Witnessed
Yet did nothing
I
You
Through silence
We all are accomplices

cc Exploring the Mau Mau reparations case and Kenya’s subsequent decades-long struggle with the politicisation of land, Leigh Brownhill advocates the importance of social reparations and individual compensation for atrocities committed under British colonial policies, programmes, soldiers and settlers. British land reform policies implemented to punish the Mau Mau ultimately contributed to the impoverishment and social inequality of wide segments of Kenyan society. Although Brownhill believes that individual reparations for Mau Mau survivors and their families are necessary and appropriate – particularly with regard to Kenyan women continuing to carry the burden imposed by British counter-insurgency – she argues a more inclusive, social reparations-based approach will curb inequality in a way faithful to original Mau Mau principles.

On the night of 18 February at around midnight and after Kenyans celebrated the 52nd anniversary of our hero Kimaathi Wachiuri, city council tractors embarked on demolishing all structures on Mwariro market in Kariokor. The land, measuring about 42 acres, has been supporting at least 3,000 poor Kenyans. By the next morning of 19 February all the structures had been brought down and the residents had lost all their wares. Several residents were shot at by administration policemen on that night, and were treated and discharged at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). The land is said to have been allocated to a private developer of Somali nationality by the former MP Maina Kamanda and the current Councillor Muchiri. On contacting the area the MP seems to have failed to secure the land on behalf of the residents. Today, the residents are being hoodwinked to move to another piece of land in Ngara, which is not empty… It is now a month since this demolition occurred. is calling for action to stop this continued harassment of poor citizens. We shall be mobilising locals in the area to stop the demolition and construction of any new property on this land. We are asking our friends of Bunge La Mwananchi to join us to restore the livelihoods of the Kariakor people. We will stop this by any means necessary!
For and on behalf of Bunge La Mwananchi – Kariakor network

* Francis Wambugu is with – Kariakor network, the Kenyan people’s parliament.

Mr President, two human rights defenders, Oscar Kamau King’ara and John Paul Oulu, were murdered in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, two weeks ago. I was deeply saddened to learn of these murders and join the call of US Ambassador Michael E. Ranneberger for an immediate, comprehensive and transparent investigation of this crime. At the same time, we cannot view these murders simply in isolation; these murders are part of a continuing pattern of extrajudicial killings with impunity in Kenya. The slain activists were outspoken on the participation of Kenya’s police in such killings and the continuing problem of corruption throughout Kenya’s security sector. If these and other underlying rule-of-law problems are not addressed, there is a very real potential for political instability and armed conflict to return to Kenya.

Women’s groups in Sierra Leone have signed a statement condemning the use of violence against women during a political clash which took place in Freetown on 16 March. The statement calls for the police to ensure that those responsible for the violence be brought to justice and for government and political party leaders to publicly condemn violence against women, including in a political context.

cc A just world is a noble goal, but in a ‘power-asymmetrical’ world in which richer nations mete out inappropriate measures for developing countries – from sanctions to arrest warrants – international rather than home-grown attempts to deliver justice can themselves easily become unjust, cautions Vikas Nath. The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) recent issue of an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, for example, is widely seen across the African Union as likely to inflame rather than resolve the Darfur conflict. Nath underlines that each of the existing 13 arrest warrants issued by the ICC have been solely for citizens of four African countries, despite the perpetrating of crimes against humanity in Iraq, Gaza, Colombia and the Caucasus region, and concludes that solutions native to the African continent represent a far more appropriate means of resolving conflict.

cc Fearing for her life, South African activist Maureen Msisi is calling for support in the face of a petition from bond homeowners for her removal from Protea South, where she campaigns for fellow residents of informal settlements. Msisi’s efforts to ensure that residents can chose whether or not to be relocated elsewhere have put her in conflict with local government and middle-class homeowners in the area, who want to see all informal settlements eradicated. The petition alleges that Msisi is ‘promoting violence, only represents foreigners, and is blocking development in the area’. Msisi’s son, Bongani Xezwi, believes that her removal would not stop people from organising and fighting for their rights, but that without her community leadership abilities, chaos and aggression would be more likely.

I agree with the author, we know the and we know that women can make a difference. We have know this for a long time, but somehow our organising has not been succesful. We can not wait to say the same in 2013, we need to fill the gap that has made women not access these positions, we need a woman president come 2012, but more so we need women who are leaders of integrity as being a 'woman' is not enough platform. There are many many qualified women, what we need is a strategy that is different from the past.

cc As the international financial crisis points to the collapse of laissez faire economics and discredits market fundamentalism, Africa and the global South should break free from failed neoliberal policies and the institutions that have promoted them and define their own paths to development, writes Demba Moussa Dembele, director of the Forum for African Alternatives.

The crisis provides fundamental lessons, says Dembele, the first being that markets do not have self-correcting mechanisms, and that market failures are not less costly than state failures. Secondly, "the collapse of the neoliberal dogma is a major blow to the international financial institutions. What is even more devastating to them is the reversal of most of the policies they had advocated for decades in Africa and in other ‘poor’ countries under the now discredited SAPs (structural adjustment programmes). The IMF and the World Bank are supporting fiscal stimulus – expansionary fiscal policies – in the United States, Europe and Asia."

Thirdly, its clear that the state remains a central player in solving crises caused by markets, and is not the sole cause of economic and social problems in Africa that neoliberal policy has categorised it as. Dembele notes that many development agencies do not have Africa’s best interests at heart, citing failures to cancel debt and to dedicate 0.7 per cent of GDP to official development assistance budgets, along with restricting the access of African exports to Western markets. In contrast, US$4 trillion was made available in matter of weeks to tackle the international financial crisis, 45 times the total aid budget of the European Union and the USA for 2007.

Dembele calls for Africa and Africans to forget neoliberal capitalism and explore new paths to ‘an endogenous development for and by its people’, recommending that Africa should restore capital controls and reject unfavourable trade liberalisation policies, as well as reversing the privatisation of key sectors and natural resources. Likewise, the author calls for African governments to restore the role of the state in the development process, reclaim the debate on African development while learning from the experiences of other countries in the global South, and to build an alternative means for financing development including South–South co-operation and the integration of diaspora remittances into a coherent strategy.

WOZA leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, appeared in Bulawayo Magistrate’s Court again today in a continuation of their trial on charges of disturbing the peace. The matter had been postponed from Thursday last week to give the Magistrate time to rule on a constitutional application on the grounds that the sections under which Williams and Mahlangu are charged violate their constitutional right to freedom of expression, association and assembly.

As the world, including Zimbabwe, commemorates International Women’s Day,
members of WOZA find little to celebrate. As organisations, both local and international, take the opportunity afforded by International Women’s Day to speak out about the need for gender equality, respect for women’s right and an end to violence, WOZA joins the chorus. Yet we understand that women in Zimbabwe, and Africa as a whole, need much more than rhetoric – they need action. And actions speak louder than words.

Independent publisher, Écosociété, which published the book "Noir Canada" (Black Canada) that denounces the practices of Canadian gold mining companies in Africa, received a new libel lawsuit for $5 million by Banro Corporation. Écosociété is already confronted with an initial lawsuit for $6 million, launched by Barrick Gold after the book’s publication. According to the publisher, in both cases they consist of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP).

President Rupiah Banda has launched the US$400 million Kariba North Bank extension project and said the Government had placed emphasis on building new power stations as well as expanding the existing ones. Mr Banda said to facilitate this development in the electricity sub-sector, the Government was in the process of concluding the legislation to make the sector one of the priority sectors in the provision of incentives under the Zambia Development Act.

Nearly 15 years since apartheid ended, millions of black South Africans still live in self-built shacks – without sanitation, adequate water supplies, or electricity. But A Place in the City will overturn all your assumptions about ‘slums’ and the people who live in them. In this film, shot in the vast shack settlements in and around Durban, members of Abahlali baseMjondolo, the grassroots shackdwellers’ movement, lay out their case against forcible eviction and for decent services with passion and eloquence, in a political climate where grassroots campaigners like them are more likely to be met with rubber bullets than with offers to talk.

The Radical Youth Network (RYN), along with the Anti Privatisation Forum (APF) strongly condemns the killing of Teboho “Diventsha” Tsotetsi by members of the Sebokeng Community Policing Forum (CPF). It is not the first time the community of Zone 20 in Sebokeng has experienced attacks from the people they claim to be protecting them. Sebokeng Police station has become a haven for thugs and gangsters!

Helen Zille and the City of Cape Town need to stop trying to score cheap political/elections propaganda points and be honest with the people of Cape Town (see press statement of City of Cape Town below). The so-called ‘water management devices’ are simply pre-paid meters in drag. Like the pre-paid meters which have been declared unconstitutional and illegal by the Johannesburg High Court, these devices dispense the 6000 ‘free’ litres per month/per household and then automatically cut off.

Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is poised to halve from the average of the past decade to slightly more than 3 per cent in 2009 as the continent is struck by the “third wave” of the global economic crisis, the International Monetary Fund has warned. Antoinette Sayeh, director of the IMF’s Africa department, said the crisis that began in developed economies and then hit emerging markets was hurting the world’s poorest continent via low global commodity prices, tighter credit markets and depressed external demand.