This report argues that missed opportunities in the education sector can be traced back more than 15 years to when, ironically, the Free Primary Education concept caused a vicious cycle of challenges which impeded on progress in the delivery of education services in Malawi. The report focuses on the issues of governance in the sector that place constraints on realising such goals as free primary education, capacity building of staff, investment in infrastructure and the increased efficacy of oversight mechanisms.

Thousands of demonstrators rallied in Tahrir Square on Friday, 1 July. Sharp clashes between youth on the one hand and police and regime thugs on the other on Tuesday and Wednesday 28 June and 29 June were the immediate impetus for the demonstration, says this article on the Jadaliyya website. 'But in addition to outrage about police brutality, which most Egyptians had hoped was a thing of the past, there is growing dissatisfaction with the limited changes since the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak,' says the article.

A woman paddling a canoe no longer arouses curiosity in eastern Rwanda. While still not a common sight, you can readily spot women wearing orange life jackets and sitting alongside men, paddling canoes and fishing on Lake Rwakibare. The president of a co-operative says, 'We currently have over 260 members, including more than fifty women.' The president says, 'Why should women expect their husbands to provide everything? In addition, current government policy requires that women are involved in all sectors, and that includes fishing.'

Equatorial Guinea is principally a destination for children subjected to conditions of forced labour. Children are recruited and transported from nearby countries – primarily Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, and Gabon – and forced to work as domestic servants, market laborers, ambulant vendors, and launderers. This is according to a 2011 US State Department report that finds Equatorial Guinea's response to human trafficking to be inadequate, particularly given the government’s substantial financial resources.

The suggestion that the entire populations of low-lying island States could be forced to move to other States due to the effects of rising sea levels is perhaps one of the most striking and well-known examples of the potential human impacts of climate change, states this paper from the UNHCR, which assesses the relevance of the principle that statelessness should be prevented in addressing the situation of low-lying island States. 'The paper begins by examining the elements of statehood under public international law. While there is a strong presumption of continuity for established states, the possibility of a total loss of territory for natural reasons, or the total displacement of a population and/or government, is entirely novel.'

The thesis of this new book is that the violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of 'slow violence' to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. 'Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.'

The first official Eritrean refugees arrived in Sudan in 1968; today, an estimated 1,600 cross the border every month to seek refuge in Shagarab, a large camp in the east of Sudan. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that northern Sudan has more than 100,000 Eritrean refugees but in 43 years, the profile of the refugees has changed. 'The new arrivals are generally young and well educated; they come from the highlands and have no cultural or ethnic ties with local populations,' said Mohamed Ahmed Elaghbash, Sudan's Commissioner for Refugees.

An epidemic of Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne viral disease, which began in early June in Congo’s capital Brazzaville, has spread to the neighbouring Pool region, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Between 1 and 23 June, there were 7,014 cases in Brazzaville and 460 in Pool, but no deaths, according to WHO. In Pool, which endured a series of civil wars between 1998 and 2003, damaging the local health infrastructure, only the towns of Goma Tse Tse and Kinkala, the regional capital, are affected.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Morocco to push for democratic reforms despite the vote approving a new constitution curbing the king's near-absolute powers. The February 20 Movement, which has organised months of demonstrations calling for reforms in the Arab world's oldest reigning monarchy, has denounced the new constitution as window-dressing. It says its approval in Friday's referendum, where it passed with 98 per cent support, was a sham. More than 6,000 protesters rallied in Morocco's main economic hub Casablanca on Sunday, chanting 'For Dignity and Freedom!', a reporter for the AFP news agency at the scene said.

Poorly-regulated, privately-run training schools in Senegal are churning out midwives who do not have a solid grasp of birthing or ante- and post-natal care, causing women and babies to die needlessly, according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Other basic competencies, as defined by the World Health Organisation, include referral in high-risk pregnancies or births; addressing miscarriages; and family planning. Most women who die during labour in Senegal do so because of post-partum haemorrhaging, according to UNFPA’s joint Senegal director, Edwige Adekambi.

Libyan rebel leaders have welcomed an African Union offer to open talks with the government in Tripoli without the direct involvement of Muammar Gaddafi. The Transitional National Council said it was the first time the AU had recognised the people's aspirations for democracy and human rights in Libya. The talks offer was agreed at an AU summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. The AU also told members not to execute an arrest warrant for Col Gaddafi from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Pan-Africanism: A Viable Ideology to Address Africa’s Rape Redux/Euro-American 21st Century Neo-Colonial Re-Conquest & Scramble for Africa

When: 3:45 PM, Saturday, 16 July 2011

Where: Hilton Hotel, 1750 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852, (Across from the Twinbrook Metro station (Red Line) Rockville, MD)

Who: Molefi Asante, Ph.D., (Keynote speaker) Professor and author, Samar-Al-Bulushi, activist and journalist,Maurice Carney, Director of Friends of the Congo and human rights activist, and Peter Bailey, Activist and journalist.

On the anniversary of the Coalition Forces’ invasion of Iraq, Africa witnessed overt imperialist aggression by former European colonial oppressors and the US. Civil unrest in nations across Africa is partially caused by hegemonic Western influence, which few mainstream media outlets address as an important factor. In Egypt and Tunisia, popular movements have appeared to have extinguished their Western-backed dictatorial regimes. However, oil and resource rich nations including Ivory Coast and Libya face imperialistic machinations of a cabal of Western nations and Arab monarchial states fomenting illegal neo-colonial wars to drive nationalist governments from power. A third category of African nations in crisis is comprised of countries, such as Burkina Faso, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, where proxy resource conflicts or unpopular geopolitical Western-backed regimes struggle to hold state power.

While some applaud the progress of democracy on the continent, others denounce the re-conquest of Africa. The US supported military intervention of NATO, France, and the UN in Africa ‘in the name of democracy’ demonstrates the desire of Western powers to reassert their hegemony by nullifying independent nationalistic leaders and replacing them with subservient proxies willing to perpetuate super-exploitative and neo-liberal policies set forth by the Washington Consensus. The West hegemonic project over Africa is also a reaction to China’s meteoric 21st Century rise and grand entrance into the African scene, and an attempt to deny it and other rising powers such as India, Brazil the right to commerce with Africa and alter Africa’s intra-trade and self-determination. The US and Europe’s plans to make Africa terra nostrum is best demonstrated by the perfidious actions of the French forces, the planned imposition of AFRICOM, and the militarisation of the UN.

The speakers will discuss the US, NATO, UN, and France-led illegal and naked aggression in Africa, particularly in Libya and Ivory Coast, and the current trends in the African scene, highlighted by the regime change, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Ivory Coast with the capture of Gbagbo by the French troops, the overlooked movement of Burkinabe to remove the Compaore regime, the emergence of Southern Sudan and the ongoing crises in the Democratic Republic in Congo, Uganda, and Somalia.

Renowned Pan-Africanist activist and philosophical founder of concept of Afrocentricity, Dr. Molefi Asante is the keynote speaker to discuss the Anglo-European agenda to re-colonise Africa.

About Us: The Revival of Pan-Africanism Forum’s purpose is to rekindle the spirit of the African collective consciousness consolidated by an awakening of the African masses in the face of current forceful Western engagement in Africa.

Contacts:

Dr. Randy Short (731) 394-7217; Delmas Irigale (240) 550-4349; Makhaya Sibongile (225) 361-5417; Coti Chapo (240) 476-1791; or send an email to [email][email protected]

'The developers of GMOs have exerted great pressure to ensure that our recently enacted Biosafety Act of 2009 serves the interests of foreign Agribusiness, rather than farmers and consumers. The introduction of patented seeds and related chemicals into our farming systems threatens our agricultural practices, our livelihoods, the environment, and undermines our seed sovereignty. We believe that we can feed our communities and this country with organic and agroecological farming practices that do not destroy, pollute and contaminate food, land and seeds. Our ability to feed Africa through agro-ecological practices is recognised and supported by UN reports, the IAASTD report and many research findings. We call upon the government to support small scale farmers in having access to water and capacity building in agro-ecology and for this to be enshrined in our Kenyan policies.'

The Ethiopian government has publicly accused an editor and a columnist of involvement in a terrorism plot, according to news reports and local journalists. Woubshet Taye, deputy editor of the leading Awramba Times newspaper and Reeyot Alemu, columnist for the weekly Feteh, have been held incommunicado under Ethiopia's far-reaching anti-terrorism law since last week. The anti-terrorism law criminalises writing the government deems favorable to groups and causes it labels as 'terrorists', including banned political opposition party Ginbot 7. This is the first use of the law against journalists.

Millions of Congolese have lost their lives in a conflict that the United Nations describes as the deadliest in the world since World War Two. United States allies, Rwanda and Uganda, invaded in 1996 the Congo (then Zaire) and again in 1998, which triggered the enormous loss of lives, systemic sexual violence and rape, and widespread looting of Congo’s spectacular natural wealth. The film, 'Crisis in the Congo: Uncovering The Truth' explores the role that the United States and its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, have played in triggering the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st century. The film is a short version of a feature length production to be released in the near future. It locates the Congo crisis in a historical, social and political context. It unveils analysis and prescriptions by leading experts, practitioners, activists and intellectuals that are not normally available to the general public.

Representing 25 African countries and the Diaspora, the 2011 most outstanding women leaders represent a Pan-African diversity with multi-disciplinary academic, professional and social backgrounds. From poverty to women’s economic empowerment, to global warming and African women’s political participation, this new generation of African women leaders are proof that Africa can produce bold, visionary and inspirational leadership needed to lift Africa to its rightful place on the global stage.

Fahamu has a vision of a world where people organize to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognize their social responsibility, respect each other’s differences and realize their full
potential. Fahamu is looking for a qualified and passionate Intern to work with us for a period of three
months July?September 2011. The intern will be responsible for promoting Pambazuka books including coordinating sale of Pambazuka books; distribution of publicity materials and coordinating the participation of Fahamu/ Pambazuka in book fairs and related events.

On 23 March, the University of Johannesburg in South Africa cut all ties with Ben Gurion University in the Negev in Israel. Salim Vally is a senior researcher at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg and the coordinator of the Education Rights Project. While he was in Montreal in May 2011, giving a lecture at McGill University in Montreal entitled .

With ‘father of African liberation’ George Padmore commemorated with a plaque in London this week, Cameron Duodu reflects on Padmore’s enormous influence on the anti-colonial movement and his experiences in Trinidad, the US, the USSR, the UK and across Africa.

Global greenhouse gas emissions rose faster than ever last year and the market-based schemes set up to bring emissions down are in trouble. That’s the bad news from two recent reports by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Bank. The IEA said emissions in 2010 were five per cent higher than 2008, the previous highest year. It estimated that about 44 per cent of the emissions came from coal, 36 per cent from oil and 20 per cent from natural gas. It also said 80 per cent of projected emissions from energy generation in 2020 'are already locked in as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today'.

The French military has confirmed that it airdropped weapons to civilians fighting in rebel-held areas in the western part of Libya. Colonel Thierry Burkhard, a spokesperson for the French general staff, told Al Jazeera that the military had dropped assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers to groups of unarmed civilians it deemed to be at risk. The Le Figaro newspaper and the AFP news agency reported that France had dropped several tonnes of arms, including Milan anti-tank rockets and light armoured vehicles.

South Africa’s ANC Youth League ‘might speak in the name of the poor to advance its agenda but everyone knows that it is not a poor people’s organisation’ despite media portrayals of Julius Malema as a champion of the country’s oppressed, writes Ayanda Kota.

The conflict that began in Libya on 17 February 2011 with a popular revolt against Gaddafi’s regime has triggered a mass exodus of the civilian population into neighbouring countries. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled, mainly into Tunisia and Egypt. An International Federation for Human Rights report, based on the findings of a mission to the Egypt-Libya border, reveals the vulnerable situation of refugees and migrants stranded at the Salloum Land Port and presents numerous accounts of violence targeting Sub-Saharan African migrants in Eastern Libya.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Groupe Lotus, ASADHO and the Ligue des Électeurs, have welcomed United Nations Security Council Resolution 1991 adopted 28 June and renewing the mandate of the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). In light of upcoming elections, the Resolution reads that the MONUSCO shall support the electoral process 'through the provision of technical and logistical support' including, 'by monitoring, reporting and following-up on human rights violations in the context of the elections'.

Amnesty International’s 2010 annual report on Senegal found that sermons by religious leaders fuel homophobia and undermine the fundamental rights of gay people in that country. The report was presented recently to media and civil society during a press conference held at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Dakar. Seydi Gassama, director of Amnesty International Senegal said, 'The situation of human rights in Senegal is far from brilliant. Religious tolerance is one of the characteristics of Senegalese people and we cannot tolerate religious leaders that pronounce threats against homosexuals.'

Patrick K. Wrokpoh, Liberian journalist and contributor to Pambazuka News, died last Friday following a brief illness. C. Winnie Saywah looks back on his career.

In this article, UNHCR Public Information Intern Dasha Smith speaks to Neil Grungras, who has spent many years advocating for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex refugees and asylum-seekers, and is the founder and executive director of the San Francisco-based Organisation for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM). This interview comes at a time when accounts increasingly emerge of persecution and violence towards refugees and asylum-seekers in parts of the world based on sexual grounds.

There are still a few escape routes open...

Nothing will stop Uganda's president...

TB is a leading cause of death among people living with HIV in Zambia, according to Justin O'Brien, policy, advocacy and communications manager for The Zambia AIDS Related Tuberculosis Project, ZAMBART, a nongovernmental organisation that aims to improve the quality of life of people with HIV and TB. About 70 per cent of Zambian TB patients have HIV, according to the World Health Organisation. Dr. Peter Chungulo of ZAMBART says that poverty and malnutrition, or undernutrition, also contribute to TB infections, whether it's new cases or relapses.

According to a recent study by the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), the SADC region will continue to require more energy in the future for its developmental needs, reports Kizito Sikuka for Southern African News Features. Member State utilities through SAPP have identified a number of priority projects for commissioning over the next few years to address the energy situation in the region. Most of these projects are targeted at renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro and wind – which are less polluting to the environment compared to other forms such as coal. These projects include the Mphanda Nkuwa hydropower project in Mozambique, Itezhi Tezhi hydropower in Zambia and the Kudu gas project in Namibia.

Forty years on, first and second generations of Igbo ‘removed from their parents and grandparents respectively who freed British-occupied Nigeria in 1960 and survived the follow-up genocide’, are ‘once again tasked and poised to restore’ their ‘lost sovereignty’, writes Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe.

Child marriage is increasingly recognised as a serious problem, both as a violation of girls’ human rights and as a hindrance to key development outcomes. As more resources and action are committed to addressing this problem, it becomes important to examine past efforts and how well they have worked. This International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) report summarises a systematic review of child marriage prevention programs that have documented evaluations. Based on this synthesis of evaluated programs, the authors offer an analysis of the broader implications for viable solutions to child marriage.

The countrywide shortage of neurologists is preventing people with epilepsy from getting proper care in the public sector. Epilepsy is supposed to be diagnosed by a neurologist, but in Gauteng there are only three hospitals with neurology departments. This means that everyone in the province who has epilepsy has to visit either Johannesburg General, Chris Hani Baragwanath or Pretoria Academic hospitals. Epilepsy can, for the most part, be controlled by daily medication but people normally only receive a six-months prescription.

There’s clear consensus that defining and demarcating the border between North and South Sudan is a necessary precondition for peace. But deploying Ethiopian peace-keepers to Abyei is simply a ‘band-aid’ that ‘would not help peace and may even make things worse by intensifying regional rivalry,’ writes Yohannes Woldemariam, given the Ethiopian government’s lack of neutrality in Sudan.

The infant mortality rate and under-five mortality rate are globally regarded as among the best indicators of the health of a community, argue three University of Cape Town professors in this article about informal settlements. 'In Khayelitsha about 60 children among every 1,000 born alive die of diarrhoea-related illness before their fifth birthday - 10 times more than in our southern suburbs. That under the prevailing conditions this number is not appreciably higher could be ascribed to households doing their utmost to maintain as high a standard of hygiene as possible.'

Economist and UN advisor Professor Jeffrey Sachs may be optimistic about the prospects of the Nigerian economy, but Uche Igwe says the facts on the ground don't back up Sachs' positive outlook.

Is microfinance is helping families out of poverty or merely plunging them into debt? Khadija Sharife speaks with one recipient about her experience.

In an open letter to US President Barack Obama, the Million Signatures Awareness Campaign calls for the immediate liberation of the Cuban Five.

The Law, Gender & Sexuality Research Project at the Makerere University School of Law in Uganda is putting together a book on the life, work and legacy of David Kisule Kato. David was murdered in his home in January and is considered a founder of Uganda's LGBTI human rights movement. The project is calling for submissions of essays, fiction, poetry, web blogs, art, crafts, photographs, film, documentaries, speeches, diaries, letters and other correspondence, music, academic publications, etc. that reflect any aspect of the life and work of David Kato.

The North-South Institute (NSI) is pleased to invite applications for two Helleiner Fellow Visiting Researcher positions in 2011-12. The program is open to post-doctoral students or mid-career policy researchers working in a university, policy research institute, think-tank, or other relevant organization.

Michio Kaku’s new book shows how science and technology are transforming ‘social relations among humans and between humans and the universe,’ writes Horace Campbell, but it fails to convey that ‘[t]echnological revolution by itself cannot change society; it requires the intentional and purposeful intervention of humans to make a break from traditions of slavery, bondage and exploitation.

A parliamentary budget office would assist Tanzanian MPs in engaging with the executive, argues Eugenia Madhidha.

An estimated 10 million people across the Horn of Africa are facing a severe food crisis following a prolonged drought in the region, with child malnutrition rates in some areas twice the emergency threshold amid high food prices that have left families desperate, the United Nations reported. In some areas of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda, drought conditions are the worst in 60 years, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update.

Of all the vulnerable groups in the country, the most affected are nearly a million children, most of whom either stay home or have returned to schools looted or destroyed during the fighting.
The UN Children's agency UNICEF and the US-based non-governmental organisation Save the Children have been actively involved in a 'Back to School' initiative with support from the Ministry of Education.

Clashes between Egyptian security forces and more than 5,000 protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, have left more than 590 injured, according to witnesses and medical officials. Tahrir Square, the epicenter of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's former president, was sealed off early on Wednesday (29 June) as lines of security forces in riot gear strived to regain control from demonstrators. Witnesses said the clashes started on Tuesday when police tried to clear a sit-in at the state-TV building, which included families of those killed during the country's revolution earlier this year, known as the 'martyrs', according to the Daily News, an Egyptian news website.

A police officer and two others have been arrested as suspects in the stabbing death of journalist Ibrahim Foday of 'The Exclusive' newspaper near Freetown, Sierra Leone, say the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Foday was beaten and stabbed on 12 June in the east of the capital while covering clashes between neighbouring villages Kossoh and Grafton over a piece of land, report the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and other IFEX members.

A new report from Unicef notes that global income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is 64 per cent higher than it was 200 years ago. The report notes that the poorest 20 per cent of the world's population holds two per cent of its income. At the rate of change posted in the past 20 years, it will take more than 250 years for the bottom 20 per cent to go from two per cent to 10 per cent.