"A prophet has honour" as the saying goes - but "not in his village" is the concluding refrain. How else could one begin to understand the recent tragedy that befell prominent African literary and political figure, Ngugi wa Thiongo and his wife on their maiden visit to Kenya meant to end Ngugi's almost two decades of exile from the dictatorship of the KANU regime that had detained him without trial and persecuted him into and even in exile.

They were violently attacked and viciously robbed in the apartment they were staying in -a relatively secure area of Nairobi, a city that is dubiously mimicking the Nigerian commercial city of Lagos or South Africa's Joburg in notoriety. It is no wonder that Nairobi is now infamously referred to by residents as Nairobbery!

The couple took a very brave and courageous stance of disclosing the full details of their ordeal, which included the rape of Ngugi’s wife. What a way to be welcomed back to a country that you have given so much of your life, energies and resources for. It is an Afropessimist’s wish come through and true!

Our hearts go out to Ngugi and his partner and we send our solidarity at this grave hour and wish them the courage and conviction to weather this storm. If Ngugi had imagined this and written it in one of his novels or political essays many people would have dismissed it as fantasy. It is indeed true that life is, unfortunately, often stranger than fiction.

If this had happened during the nightmarish days of the Moi dictatorship many, including myself, would have been quick to point to the ruling regime and its hirelings as the culprits, thereby giving the criminal attack a political colouring. While Ngugi may not be a card carrying member of either the ruling Rainbow Alliance parties or any of the formal opposition parties no one is seriously suggesting that the attack was politically motivated. From all the reports of his hugely welcomed return home there has been nothing to suggest that he has uttered or done anything to ‘provoke’ this attack.

Despite several years of exile and political activism his return had largely been non political, to the great disappointment of many of his former comrades and youthful activists who had hoped that Ngugi's temporary return would fuel some political fires and provide a focus for more sustainable opposition to the faltering leadership of the Rainbow politicians. But Ngugi had stuck to his literary, cultural and academic activities.

So one has to conclude that the attack was criminal rather than partisan. However it does have many political implications. If a prominent "son of the soil" well known locally and internationally cannot feel and be secure in his native capital city then who on earth is safe in that city? Kenya has become like Nigeria where the minister of Justice was murdered by hired killers and up to now the killers and their sponsors "have not been found".

If a Minister of Justice cannot get justice where is the rule of law in that country? Who will blame Ngugi if he goes back to the U.S. and never makes any attempt to return to Kenya again? I hope and trust that this tragic incident will not diminish their political activism and vision for a secure and democratic Kenya in a humane world.

Crime against persons and property and the gratuitous violence that often attend them are serious problems for many African countries. Standard left-wing, progressive views will try to explain away these things as symptoms of deeper structural problems of inequalities and injustices in "the system" whereas right-wing persons will see these as "just criminals who deserve no sympathy". I don't know whether it is old age catching up with me but I am beginning to find faults with many of my comrades on the left. I am still not comfortable with the rightist instinct to personalize the issues but I am more and more drawn to "personal responsibility" of the offenders no matter the circumstances.

Nobody forced those people to plan and execute their violent crime against Ngugi and his partner. Worse still they needed not rape their victim and the physical torture suffered by both of them were simply gratuitous. The physical wounds will heal but the psychological stress and trauma will take long for both his partner and Ngugi.

Let us hope that their courage in not hiding the horrible truth may actually help them to deal with it in their private lives and may also provoke further action and debate on general insecurity across the country but especially the gender dimensions of generalized violence in many of our countries. Rape remains a taboo topic in many of our societies yet it is taking place everyday in all kinds of situations, armed robbery being one of the extreme contexts including war. It is about time we stop the denials and defensiveness around it and face it squarely: Rape is worse than death therefore its perpetrators must be dealt with sternly and victims supported by various means.
Pole Sana, to our good friend, Ngugi, and his partner.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa ([email protected] or [email][email protected])

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Nigeria's Senate has ordered a subsidiary of petroleum giant Royal/Dutch Shell to pay a Nigerian ethnic group US$1.5 billion (euro1.2 billion) for oil spills in their homelands, but the legislative body can't enforce the resolution, an official said Wednesday.

Participate in the first Global Health Watch by submitting case studies. We are calling activists, health workers and academics from around the world to submit case studies and testimonies to supplement the first edition of the report.

The Global Health Watch is a non-government initiative aimed at supporting civil society to more effectively campaign and lobby for 'health for all' and equitable access to health care. This is not a matter of finding a technical or economic prescription, but is one that requires political mobilisation to shift resources and attention towards the needs of the poor, and to reform the very political and social institutions that have generated the state of ill health today.

The Global Health Watch provides a platform for academics, activists and non-government organisations to:
- Promote the accountability of governments and global institutions that affect health (such as the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the World Bank)
- Identify policies and practices at the global and national levels that are unfair, unjust and bad for health
- Highlight the needs of the poor and reinvigorate the principle of 'health for all'
- Shift the health policy agenda to recognise the political, social and economic barriers to better health and to advocate alternatives to market-driven approaches to health and health care.

But Watch aims to do more than just produce another document - it also aims to provide a voice for health workers and the academic and non-government community from as many countries as possible. For information on how to submit a case study see http://www.ghwatch.org/english/casestudies/call.html, for more information about the Global Health Watch see www.ghwatch.org, to contact us e-mail [email protected]

African parliamentarians wanted powers to endorse or reject loans from foreign lenders as a means to manage spiralling debt, legislators from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) said. African parliamentarians had little say in negotiations for external loans, and too much power was vested in the finance ministries of many African countries, legislators from the 14-member bloc said after a two-day meeting in Zimbabwe.

The African Parliamentarians Network Against Corruption (Apnac), Zimbabwe chapter, which seeks to strengthen the commitment and capacity of MPs to fight corruption, will be relaunched next week, public accounts committee chairperson Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga has said. Apnac is a continental network which seeks to build the capacity of parliaments to exercise accountability with particular relation to financial matters, undertaking projects to control corruption and cooperating with organisations in civil society with shared objectives.

Fourteen foreigners went on trial in the tiny oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea on Monday, charged with plotting a mercenary invasion to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a government official in the capital Malabo said. The eight South Africans and six Armenians were arrested in Malabo on 6 March. They were charged with conniving with 70 South African mercenaries who were arrested 24 hours later in Zimbabwe as they were allegedly on their way to Equatorial Guinea to mount an invasion.

The World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is opening its doors for talks on its rules and guidelines for lending, a move that could influence billions of dollars in future loans to the private sector annually. The IFC says it is launching public consultations as it updates its environmental and social safeguard policies and reviews another policy on information disclosure.

There are so few working hospitals and health clinics in southeastern Liberia that patients in one district have to be ferried by canoe to neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire to receive any treatment at all, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a report on medical facilities in the area. The report, based on an assessment carried out by an ICRC team between 15 and 25 July, said the health services in the six remote counties of southeastern Liberia had virtually collapsed during 14 years of civil war.

A move to outlaw the death penalty in Senegal has ignited a debate about capital punishment in the country. "It is my point of view and my opinion that only God has the right to take someone’s life," said President Abdoulaye Wade during his July 15 announcement of a bill to ban the death penalty.

When the United Nations (UN) Security Council passed a July 30 resolution on Sudan demanding that the Khartoum Government halt killings in Darfur within one month or face economic and diplomatic action, aid agencies slammed the decision as providing more time for killings and rape by militias known as the Janjaweed. Nearly one month later figures indicate that there are currently 2.2 million conflict-affected people in Darfur and Eastern Chad. And as the UN deadline to the Khartoum government rolls to a close on August 30, activity by the Janjaweed is reportedly on the increase in West Darfur.

It now appears unlikely that strong UN action will be taken against Khartoum and that instead support will be given to the African Union’s efforts to solve the crisis. Sudanese government and rebel leaders are currently meeting under AU auspices in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, in an attempt to reach a political settlement and end the violence. The AU already has 80 observers in Darfur, protected by 150 Rwandan troops. However, an AU plan to send nearly 2,000 peacekeepers to monitor the region was rejected on Monday by a senior Sudanese official.

It may be that intervention under the auspices of the AU will be the favoured approach, because broader international action in Darfur through the UN is more complicated than it seems. One reason for this is that although Darfur is a charged topic in the United States ahead of the elections in that country, the most powerful member of the UN Security Council has been stung by its intervention in Iraq. It is unlikely that the US, even driven by the prospects of lucrative oil contracts, would risk an intervention in Sudan while it is embroiled in a disastrous occupation in Iraq. In any case, a “humanitarian intervention” in Sudan led by the US would be farcical while more than 100 000 of their troops are terrorising Iraq.

The US position is further complicated by the contention that the US has only become interested in the Darfur crisis because it threatens a peace deal between the Government of Sudan and the Southern People’s Liberation Army that would have opened up Washington’s access to Sudan’s plentiful oil supplies in the south of the country. Lastly, theories are circulating that the US supports the Darfur rebels against the Khartoum government because it is not sufficiently pro-American. All these factors leave the US hopelessly compromised with regards their credibility in leading an international intervention that is purely aimed at ending the conflict and does not contain insidious connotations related to political and economic ambitions. That this complicates an international response is to say nothing of other factors that might impact on the UN Security Council, such as the largely supportive role that the Arab League has lent Khartoum.

But whatever the UN decision on August 30, criticism remains as to the inadequacy of efforts to date. Part of the reason why it seems like attempts to end the crisis have been half-hearted is that genocide inevitable develops its own myths. The result is that it appears as if a particular situation has spun out of control and is too complicated for immediate action. In this scenario, the various parties are doing all that they can to rescue a seemingly irredeemable situation. But it is important to engage in an unmasking of myths because often they serve to perpetuate genocide.

The first myth to uncover is an obvious one. This is that the increased media attention of the last few months mirrors the timeline of the crisis and that therefore the time for response has been too short to yield results. In fact, the Darfur crisis played itself out throughout last year, so that in October, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) noted that tens of thousands of people who had fled from Darfur in western Sudan to neighbouring Chad were “invisible” to the humanitarian community, receiving practically no assistance.

The myth that the Darfur conflict is a crisis of the last few months is central to the failure of the international community because it shows that the early warning signs were ignored - or that at the time the conflict did not carry the political relevancy needed for international action. What has been opted for now is a kind of genocide crisis management, with a strong sense that more time is needed and that diplomatic ventures must be allowed to run their course. But both the international community and the Government of Sudan have known about the crisis in Darfur for far longer than it has been in the media spotlight. How much more time exactly would they like? How many more people must die?

This is linked to the idea that genocide somehow ‘just happens’. In reality, genocide has its own social, economic and political aspects. It has been argued that in Africa, the legacy of colonialism, economic problems and inequalities mean that governments or powerful groups can promote differences and conflict as a mechanism of power rather than addressing the root causes of desperation.

Another area that needs to be challenged is that of the “peace process”. There is a sense that once a “peace process” is underway or the perpetrators engaged in diplomacy, then whatever crisis that is underway is about to be solved. But this, as the organisation Genocide Watch points out, often obscures the fact that genocide is not conflict but rather one-sided violence of one group against another. Therefore it is the “genocidal nature of the government in Khartoum” that needs to be confronted. A peace process will not necessary result in a solution. Often, the “peace process” - and this would also apply to other diplomatic efforts - can work to distract attention from genocide or result in the international community being more lenient towards a perpetrating regime.

Often, genocide is characterised as an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy. In Sudan, it has been argued that what is happening there is a result of a kind of clash of civilisations between ‘Africans’ and ‘Arabs’. But as Alex de Waal has pointed out, this obscures a “complicated reality”. “Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim, just like Darfur's non-Arabs, hailing from the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and many smaller tribes.”

The ‘African’ versus ‘Arab’ theory may act to obscure the original causes of the conflict such as conflicts over resources, especially water and land. It may also work to obscure the historical causes of conflict, such as the fact that Sudan was a colonial construct arbitrarily created, in which the British entrenched divisions between a wealthy North and the rest of the country. Understanding complicated historical and political factors is important in understanding why the Darfur crisis has developed and is crucial in any solution.

In conclusion, the shameful response of the international community to the Rwandan genocide should have resulted in lessons being learnt on how to deal with similar crisis situations. But not even the obvious reminders presented by the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide in April helped to move the world from genocide crisis management to genocide prevention. That these lessons have not been learnt indicates that those institutions responsible for protecting international human rights standards have not been made accountable for the decisions that they make with regards the lives of those who suffer as a result of inaction, nor have they been able to move towards clear decision-making that is based not on the interests of the powerful but in the interests of ordinary people who suffer most at the hands of violence.

* Patrick Burnett works for Fahamu. Please send comments to

Reference URLs:
http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/sudan/darfur.html

http://www.genocidewatch.org/Never%20Again.htm
http://allafrica.com/stories/200408021131.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/comment/0,11538,1285443,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4449674,00.html

Oxfam GB

Oxfam GB's Pan Africa Programme enables platforms for staff, African civil society networks and affected people to change international and continental public policies and practices that negatively impact on citizens rights, security of lives and livelihoods in Africa. A new position has opened up for a dynamic person to coordinate the administration and communications function based in Nairobi supported by the Pan Africa Policy Advisor.

Many Ethiopians, who left the country for either political or economic reasons, are often heard confessing that in all respect life for Ethiopians in the Diaspora is not as glamorous as one is led to believe. Obviously, it is always a bitter struggle to survive in an alien society. As the saying goes, you have dignity only in your own country. Most Ethiopians in the Diaspora do not seem to be comfortable in their second home.

Global Mappings: A Political Atlas of the African Diaspora is an interactive website that demonstrates linkages between transnational black politics, social movements and world historical events of the 20th century.

More than 2.6 billion people - over 40 per cent of the world's population - do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water, warns a major report released by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Entitled 'Meeting the Millennium Development Goals drinking water and sanitation target - A mid-term assessment of progress', the report details the progress of individual countries, regions, and the world as a whole between the MDG baseline year of 1990 and the half-way mark of 2002.

Kenya Diaspora Network has announced the launch of the Skills-Bank Database which will enable the Kenyan Diaspora community to know and identify its resource capability in a fast, reliable and efficient manner.

Original articles, photography (black and white), and other forms of representation which focus on any aspect of transnationalism and diaspora with particular reference to the context of forced migration are invited. For further information, please contact: Sharryn J. Aiken, Editor-in-Chief, email: [email protected] Deadline: 1 September 2004.

The small Malian town of Zegoua - population 22,000 - doesn't have a great many ”claims to fame”. In one respect, however, it has achieved something remarkable. "Since January 2002, there's not been one case of neonatal or maternal mortality in Zegoua or any other nearby village,” Yaya Coulibaly, director of the Zegoua Community Health Centre, told a group of local and international journalists recently.

Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of Germany's brutal crushing of an ethnic uprising in Namibia. The German government has refused to consider any compensation claims, pointing to its role as development aid provider in Namibia, as proof of its commitment to mend fences. But the descendents of the Herero insist on compensation as well as a public apology from Berlin, just as other countries did for the crimes of the Nazi era.

'incommunicado' is a weblog that focuses on the spread and reappropriation of ICT across the 'Global South'.

It is a beauty pageant with a twist. The contestants are young and pretty. They wear evening gowns and blow kisses. And they are infected with HIV. A pageant to combat stereotypes of Aids patients as skeletal wheezers with blotchy skin is an eye-catching idea. The question is does it succeed in eroding stigma?

Speaking about the "genocide" committed by imperial German troops 100 years ago, German Development Minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul referred to the "colonial madness" that had led to racism, violence and discrimination. "All what I have said has been an apology by the German government," the Minister concluded her speech, followed by loud applause by listeners.

A nationwide campaign began last Wednesday to increase voter registration and public awareness about general elections scheduled for the early 2005. The UN Peace-building Support Office, in conjunction with the Central African Republic's Communications Ministry, is conducting the campaign.

"To own Somalia's problems and eventually its solutions, we must take possession of our country, and everyone must return our property to us, and all interferences in our affairs must stop. But if our land remains someone else's playground, and we continue to be victims of everyone else's machinations, then we won't make the necessary link between our post-collapse and America's post-Sept. 11," writes author Nuruddin Farah in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

What a joy to open this book and feel the rich uniqueness of Malangatana’s spirit flow over you - the vibrant energy, the colour, the movement, the people and creatures that are undeniably African. Originally published in 1998 in Portuguese by Editorial Caminho (Lisbon), this English translation is a welcome addition to the growing - though still woefully limited – number of monographs on significant contemporary artists in Africa.

Although most of Africa threw off colonial rule four decades ago, the continent's education systems still bear the heavy imprint of curricula designed by erstwhile foreign regimes. In the face of poverty, unemployment, disease, global competition and rapidly changing technology, Africa must ask whether those colonial models are still relevant. Most African countries have removed the derogatory references from colonial education but retained its essential structure. The language of instruction, the teacher training traditions and the learning materials remain largely intact.

Bonte Gold Mines Limited, a Canadian owned company, has closed its Ghana alluvial operations along the river Bonte at Bonteso in the Ashanti Region. It took just about one week for the company to complete its liquidation process without following the due processes for mine decommissioning. The workers have accused the company of keeping them in the dark about the liquidation and owing them unpaid wages. Farmers whose lands were affected by the operations of the mine also received no compensation. Perhaps worst of all, the company closed without reclaiming or repairing the land destroyed by the operations of the mine.

Council for Economic Empowerment for Women of Africa (CEEWA-U)

CEEWA-U is seeking applicants for the position of Programme Officer - Finance. The Officer will be responsible for fundraising activities, monitoring and evaluating programs and for representing CEEWA-U at selected workshops and network meetings. The successful applicant will be a graduate with experience in policy advocacy and research and at least three years of experience working with NGOs/CSOs, preferably in the field of human rights.

International Rescue Committee

The IRC is seeking an emergency health volunteer for its Sudan Program. You will contribute towards the implementation of IRC's current health projects and help ensure that all stated goals and objectives are met.

Merlin, UK

The Country Manager will be responsible for the management and development of Merlin's Liberia Programme. The successful applicant will have a minimum of three years experience in a management position in an NGO environment, an understanding of security management and experience of working in an emergency context.

In March 1999, the establishment of The Daily News put an end to the media's one-sided presentation of Zimbabwe's political situation, and gave the opposition an important channel of communication. Ragnar Waldahl demonstrates how this alternative to the state-run media gave voters access for the first time to competing accounts of the state of political affairs, and made the 2000 election the most exciting and open in Zimbabwe's short history.

Political ethnicity assumes that ethnicity is a total identity and that ethnic diversity is the ultimate political horizon. From this perspective, space is ethnicized and self-determination means ethnic government. Yet by making membership a voluntary act that in no way infringes on one’s other social identities, civic ethnic associations make ethnicity a partial identity, comfortably articulated with other identities.

More than a year after inter-militia fighting in Ituri district in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo sent thousands of residents fleeing for their lives, many are still holed up in an internally displaced persons' (IDPs) camp near the airport of Bunia, the main town in the district. "I can't return to my home because the militiamen have taken everything I had," said Maki Ayanga, one of the IDPs.

One of the vice-presidents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Wednesday appealed to hundreds of Congolese refugees in Cyangugu, southwestern Rwanda, to return home. The refugees fled there when fighting flared at the end May between loyalist and dissident troops of the Congolese army in the town of Bukavu in eastern Congo.

This article from Malaria Journal looks at care-seeking for fatal malaria among children under five in southern Tanzania. Findings showed that in the case of 78.7 per cent of malaria deaths, biomedical care had been used in the form of antimalarial drugs from shops, government or non-government facilities. In cases of suspected malaria at all ages, including those which involved convulsions, modern care was sought by the vast majority (90 per cent as a first resort).

Zimbabweans living in South Africa face serious obstacles in accessing political asylum. But as the political crisis continues to grow in Zimbabwe, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is failing to advocate for Zimbabweans’ right to protection under international standards and South African domestic legislation. UNHCR has not provided sufficient support to the Government of South Africa in defining and implementing its refugee policy towards Zimbabweans. Further, UNHCR staff in South Africa downplay the political crisis in Zimbabwe and show a marked tendency to dismiss the legitimacy of Zimbabweans’ overall case for asylum, making a minimal effort to provide direct protection.

I think Eva Dadrian’s article (Pambazuka News 169) is important insofar as it highlights the need to control these mercenaries. Emphasis was put on the use made by African governments of these illegal forces; however, greater emphasis should be put on the danger they pose for those legitimate governments and leaders in Africa (see Kibaki in Kenya) that do not toe the line of the "developed" world. But again it goes to the heart of the problem: Why Africans do not establish something workable? Why trust is not built among countrymen to run their own things? Aside from mercenaries and inequality, the problem is the so-called leaders. Thank you for a great online product.

Mohamed Mohamud, Somalia

Even when not at war in a military sense, countries are generally engaged in a struggle for economic power and players in the international system are increasingly regarding the health of their economies as a priority. Despite the Cold War having long ended, the primacy of insecurity - the infinite striving for security - has not. It is presently manifested in both economic and psychological realms, as countries seek to increase economic competitiveness and to reduce unemployment within their borders.

Historically, the goal was to secure and extend the physical control of territory, and to gain diplomatic influence over foreign governments. Today's corresponding geoeconomic goal is not to attain the highest possible standard of living, but rather the conquest and protection of desirable roles in the global economy.

There will be long-term (perhaps permanent) 'winners' and 'losers' in today's battle for the system's power positions, with the spoils of victory including; industrial supremacy, technology and information leadership, and the economic capacity to sustain a modern military. The losing states, on the other hand, will face the problems resulting from reduced fiscal resources, reduced economic growth and a smaller economic pie, permanent relegation to the ranks of 'the resource extraction/branch plant/cash-crop economies', second-rate technology and information systems, and a lack of the economic means to escape the poverty cycle.

The Graduate School, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand has announced a Proposal Writing Course in the Field of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria from the 23rd - 26th November 2004. This course is designed to equip researchers with managerial skills to meet competitive demands of proposal writing in response to local and international funding opportunities.

The technologies needed to halt global warming for 50 years already exist, according to research published in Science. And the study’s authors, Stephen Pacala and Rob Socolow, say implementing them should begin immediately. The study focuses on the role of carbon dioxide released when fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are burnt.

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has condemned South African telecommunications giant Telkom's threats of legal action against the owners and operators of the website http://www.hellkom.co.za. Telkom alleges that the site is an infringement of its registered trademark and, therefore, a violation of the country's trademark and intellectual property law. The corporation has demanded that the website be shut down immediately.

The Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) has welcomed the release from prison of Anas Guennoun, director of the weekly newspaper "Al Ahali". According to reports, Guennoun was released during the first week of August 2004. On 2 April, Guennoun had received a 10-month prison sentence for defamation. The sentence appeared to stem from an article written by the journalist that allegedly defamed a politician.

Akina Mama wa Afrika will be holding the Eastern Africa sub regional Training of Trainers Workshop (TOT) from 15th- 19th November 2004 in Mombasa, Kenya. The TOT is a composite part of the African Women’s Leadership Institute (AWLI) programs. The TOT aims to strengthen AWLI alumni capacities to transfer the information obtained at the AWLI to a wider constituency of women at local, national and regional levels. A formalised mechanism for the transfer of skills and information is a prerequisite to the sustainability of a progressive women's movement in Africa.

Environmental degradation resulting from a prolonged drought in northern and northeastern Somalia is threatening to destroy the livelihoods of an estimated 120,000 livestock rearers, a United Nations official said on Monday. "The livelihoods of 120,000 people are threatened and they have to find other means of livelihood," Robert Hauser, World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director for Somalia, told IRIN.

The World Bank infoDev program has recently published an 'Information Technology Security Handbook' for individuals, organisations and governments in developing countries.

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has received over Ushs 3 billion (USD1.7m) from the country's three telecom operators towards its Rural Communication Development Fund. Under the Communications Act each provider of ICT services has to contribute 1% of their annual revenue to the Fund. Announcing receipt of the money, the Commission's Director said that their target was for every district to have, amongst other services, an Internet point of presence and ICT training centres by the end of the year.

Undercover investigators have arrested an army captain and four soldiers from the SA National Defence Force for allegedly ambushing, stripping and robbing illegal Zimbabwean immigrants. The soldiers are also accused of raping a number of Zimbabwean women before making them swim the crocodile-infested Limpopo River back to Zimbabwe.

At least 60 people were left to die of suffocation in a crammed transport container after June clashes between rebels in northern Ivory Coast, according to witnesses quoted in a draft report by United Nations human rights experts. According to the survivors, the makeshift prison had no air vents and the detainees were left with no food or water. The final version of the UN report is expected to be published soon.

Foreign donors are skeptical that Zimbabwe's "increasingly repressive government" will "fairly or honestly" channel funds for antiretroviral drugs to groups and individuals who need the money, the New York Times reports. Earlier this year, the Zimbabwean government announced a pilot project to distribute antiretroviral drugs at no cost to patients in select government hospitals.