In light of the sustained problems of mismanagement and corruption burdening South Africa's provincial authorities, many have called for these institutions to be scrapped entirely. This, argues William Gumede in this week's Pambazuka News, would be a step too far and likely to make matters worse. Far more important, Gumede contends, is the need to dismantle a culture of cronyism and political impunity. The provinces in fact need greater power, the author argues, but this must be under the authority of figures genuinely motivated by tackling poverty and creating jobs.

Following Barack Obama's recent visit to Ghana, Ihechukwu Njoku tells Pambazuka News of his hope that the choice of destination will be seen as a celebration of a laudable government rather than a political snub.

John Otim discusses Okello Oculi’s 1968 work 'Prostitute' – 'a fast-moving early post-colonial piece of writing published by a young Makerere University student' – which he tells Pambazuka News readers makes for impassioned reading.

Zimbabwe’s constitutional conference designed as the first stage of drawing up a new constitution for the country collapsed in chaos in Harare on Monday only 10 minutes after the formal proceedings started. Neither President Robert Mugabe nor his coalition partner Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who were scheduled to speak, attended the meeting. Delegates from the two main parties – Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change – disrupted the opening address by the Speaker of Parliament, Lovemore Moyo, throwing bottles of water, jeering and heckling.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, claimed the war crimes case against him was built on lies and deceit as he took the stand as a witness in his trial at a special court in The Hague. Mr Taylor, 61, is accused of orchestrating a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone to gain control of the neighbouring country’s diamond resources, using methods including murder, sexual slavery and the recruitment of child soldiers during a decade-long civil war.

The image this week of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor, defiant in a black suit and dark sunglasses, taking the stand in a courtroom in The Hague – the first time an African head of state has been prosecuted for mass crimes – resonates powerfully. For many, the trial represents another victory for international justice and another signal of the end to impunity for the likes of Taylor, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Alberto Fujimori – presidents who murdered, raped and tortured civilians before eventually finding themselves in the dock. In Africa, however, the Taylor trial elicits mixed – and more complex – reactions.

In 2001 the United Nations announced the Millennium Development Goals, pledging to end global poverty by 2015. Paul Collier argued then that it needed to focus its concern on a much smaller group of countries than it had identified. There is, as he argued in The Bottom Billion, an essential difference between a poor family in China and an equally poor family in Chad. Although both enter into the global headcount of families living in extreme poverty, the poor family in China has credible hope that its children will grow up in a society of transformed opportunities: China will be part of the future global economy.

Kenyan manufacturers have lamented the decline in their export volumes to the US since the introduction of trade rules that do not offer exclusive access to textile products to the American market. The Apparel Sector chairman of the Kenyan Association of Manufacturers (KAM), Jaswinder Bedi, said Kenya's exports to US under the US African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) had continued to decline over the last six years.

Rival parties from north and south Sudan have agreed new plans to prevent conflict ahead of next week's ruling on their disputed border. The two sides ended 22 years of conflict in 2005 but tension remains high, especially in the oil-rich region of Abyei, claimed by both sides. A court in The Hague is due to rule on the border next Thursday and both sides have promised to abide by its ruling.

The Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has won another seven years in office, according to preliminary results from Sunday's election. The electoral commission said Mr Sassou-Nguesso took 78.6% of the vote. His nearest rival gained just 7.5%. About 2,000 opposition supporters came on to the streets of Brazzaville to protest. They were dispersed by riot police firing tear gas.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo should urgently investigate and prosecute senior army officials allegedly involved or complicit in rampant sexual crimes against women and girls, as part of its efforts to combat sexual violence, Human Rights Watch has said in a report. Human Rights Watch also called for a series of other actions to prevent sexual violence during conflict in Congo.

Two Sierra Leonean radio stations have been stripped of their licences. The national regulatory body, the Independent Media Commission (IMC), says the stations failed to comply with the country's media code. The IMC announced the withdrawal of the licenses of Radio Unity which belongs to the opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), and Radio Rising Sun, owned by the ruling All People's Congress (APC) on Jul. 7.

Several Sudanese women have been flogged as a punishment for dressing "indecently", according to a local journalist who was arrested with them. Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, who says she is facing 40 lashes, said she and 12 other women wearing trousers were arrested in a restaurant in the capital, Khartoum.

Across most of sub-Saharan Africa, there are fewer than five doctors for every 100,000 people. Each year 20,000 health professionals leave their posts to pursue jobs in urban areas outside their own countries. That’s why innovative approaches to human resource planning and quality service provision are urgently needed if African countries are to reduce maternal death. Such an approach was presented at a recent conference in the Ethiopian capital on Human Resources for Maternal Survival: Task-shifting to Non-Physician Clinicians.

United Nations humanitarian agencies have stepped up their relief efforts in the West African country of Benin, where more than 20,000 people have been displaced or affected and numerous farms destroyed by floods. Mosquito nets, water purification tablets, blankets, tents and mats are being distributed and assistance is being provided with water and sanitation and with maternal health care in the wake of the floods.

The United Nations-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has signed a grant agreement with Togo worth $20 million over two years, the first part of a five-year grant that will allow the country to scale-up treatment and care for people living with HIV. “This agreement reflects Togo’s determination to continue its fight against the AIDS epidemic,” said Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund, who travelled to Lomé to sign the agreement.

Angola's move to hold its elections this year are doubtful following the absence of a Constitution. Media reports in the rich oil nation said the country's body in charge of drafting a new constitution said preparations of the document would take longer than expected.

MDC activist Patrick Danga, who was arrested by the police while restraining ZANU PF MP Patrick Zhuwawo from manhandling an MDC MP, is still detained at Harare Central police station. Zhuwawo is also Robert Mugabe’s nephew. The MDC MP for Mutare Central, Innocent Gonese, told us on Thursday that Danga has not been taken to court and is still detained, and yet the real criminals, who threw bottles and disrupted proceedings at the All-Stakeholders constitutional conference, remain free.

Further evidence has emerged that a substantial proportion of switches to second-line treatment in a resource-limited setting, triggered in the absence of viral load testing, are unnecessary and result in an avoidable inflation in drug costs as people switch to more expensive regimens. The findings, published in the August 1st edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases, are likely to lend further support to calls for viral load testing to be made more accessible in resource-limited settings to confirm cases of suspected treatment failure.

A group of Tunisian bloggers started a new campaign on Facebook last week to condemn censorship of the internet by the Tunisian Internet Agency and put pressure on the government to unblock the social websites YouTube and Dailymotion. Over the last few months, internet users have received "404: Page Not Found" errors when trying to surf the two websites. Observers say the motive behind the blockage might be political, coming as it does in the months before Tunisia's presidential and parliamentary elections.

Nigeria's gas flare-out date has once again been extended - this time to 2011. The decision follows 25 years of political procrastination by the federal government and illegal behaviour on the part of major oil multinationals engaged in flaring associated gas (AG), the byproduct of oil production in the Niger Delta.

Eight Malagasy women die per day while giving birth, either due to complications during the pregnancy or during delivery, according to a recently-published national Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).

This report seeks to provide an overview of existing social protection policy and programming initiatives in the West and Central Africa and to assess the extent to which these address the particular manifestations of childhood poverty and vulnerability that characterise different countries in the region. It highlights challenges in the design and implementation of child-sensitive social protection and offers a number of policy recommendations based on the analysis and lessons learned.

Many commentators and development professionals echoed this refrain during the G8 2009 summit held in Italy from July 8 - 10. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, added his voice to the veritable cascade of dissension by declaring that the G8 “will have to update their politics to grapple with problems that none of them can solve alone: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more. Political co-operation to address these problems is …a global necessity.”

As commercial sex workers in South Africa are fighting for the legalization of sex working, a report by Open Society Institute has revealed harrowing human rights violations inflicted to this minority group by society. Compiled by Open Society Institute’s Sexual Health and Rights Project together with Open Society’s Initiative for Southern Africa this report states that trans women sex workers faced not only physical and sexual violence from police but also public taunting and humiliation for their sexual orientation, gender identity and the kind of work they do.

While pressure mounts for the Zimbabwean government to draft an inclusive constitution, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in that country remains uncertain about its future in the newly formed government of national unity. Following a public statement earlier this year that called for the drafting of the new constitution to be a people driven process, it now appears that the government is willing to engage.

eBrain, the national ICT4D network in Zambia and IICD partner since 2002, will play a key role in organising the 2010 eLearning Africa Conference in Lusaka, Zambia. This annual international conference is the biggest event in digital learning in Africa.

More than 100 magistrates and judges in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been sacked as part of President Joseph Kabila’s campaign to clean the judiciary of greasy dealings. Making the announcement this week, the Minister of Justice, Luzolo Bambi Lessa said the move was only the beginning as other sectors, including the military, were also to feel the pinch of the anti-corruption whip.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is continuing to kill and kidnap civilians in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the UN. In the first fortnight of July alone, the Ugandan rebel group carried out 33 attacks in the districts of Upper and Lower Uele, killing 26 civilians and abducting 144, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Poor food security in Akobo, the main town in Southern Sudan's Jonglei state, is being exacerbated by a huge influx of displaced people, including 19,000 who fled attacks by cattle rustlers. “The gap analysis that we have done shows that the needs are greatest among the recent IDPs,” David Tolu Lemiso, health project manager at the NGO Nile Hope Development Foundation (NHDF), said. “Out of 3,442 households from Nyandit, 2,050 are still badly in need of help, and that is minus those from Wanding, Kuechar and Ogal payams [sub-divisions].”

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced plans to invest up to US$97 million over 10 years in improving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for children and adults in sub-Saharan Africa. The world's second largest drug manufacturer has pledged $16 million in seed funding to a public-private partnership that will develop new paediatric formulations of ARV drugs, GSK said in a statement this week.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the root cause of the country’s many crises, namely the reluctance of the long-ruling National Congress Party (NCP) to enact policies that would bring justice to the victims of its many conflicts. To end Sudan’s centralised, exploitive and unaccountable governance, the NCP must accept judicial reforms and transitional justice mechanisms as key elements of a Darfur settlement and at the same time fulfil its side of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which halted decades of civil war.

cc As Africa surpasses the Middle East as an oil supplier to the US, Emira Woods argues that satisfying the US's addiction to fossil fuels remains the primary influence on the country's foreign policy. With global energy multinationals like Chevron and British Petroleum (BP) battling for a piece of sites like the Kosmos Energy-owned 'Jubilee Fields' off the Ghanaian coast, the US AFRICOM (AFRIcan COMmand) remains a symbol of US efforts to consolidate its access to oil resources. Will Obama's commitment to a greener economy translate into concrete policies, Woods asks, or will we continue to see increased military backing for an oil-based agenda?

In his tribute to the late Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, Horace Campbell points out that if Tajudeen could mobilise 7 million people to stand up against poverty in Africa, just think what all of us could achieve in the name of Pan-African unity and reconstruction. Buoyed by an inspirational life, Campbell outlines the tasks before the Pan-Africanist movement, highlighting the need to re-politicise Africa's youth along democratic, emancipatory lines in a spirit befitting Tajudeen's legacy.

Fusion of Tabule, Balangi and Milo Jazz music regenerates accord at
Awojoh feast. I muse at crossroads, a communion of ancestral spirits:
sharing assorted kola nuts, drinking palm wine from gourd of peace.
Titans of unity: Clifford Fyle and John Akar were patriots of mettle,
glaring humility, steadfast nationalism, and integrity as selfless love.
Homegrown fowl savor fangadama: happy-clutching chicks roaming.

Teary-eyed folk embrace each other, tropical breeze hones a melody.
Sacrilege of alabaster balm of love: shrapnel pierced nation’s psyche.
Compatriots return home; to where their umbilical cords are rooted.
Christian or Muslim pray for healing, sharing, caring: God forgives.
Church bells toll: abiding gratitude hallows unerring artisan’s craft.

Salone is a heartland not wasteland: inspiration ripens genius in me
National Anthem unites us; renaissance to love peace blooms like a
baobab tree on one foundation. A fallen elephant is taller than grass.
Ignorance, curry-peppered fame ruined homeland. Tenacity as mental
prowess weather storms: rising motherland blazes into Star of Africa.

cc In one of the most significant legal rulings in the post-apartheid history of South Africa, victims of apartheid have finally received the green light from a US judge to sue multinational corporations that knowingly aided and abetted the regime. The implications of this ruling are colossal, writes Khadija Sharife, not only for Africa but for the world at large.

'Africa and the end of hunger' is an extract from Pambazuka Press's groundbreaking new book . The Food Rebellions! ebook is also available on its own for

cc UK-based lawyer Mihret Goitom tells how his sister–in-law’s attempt to escape Eritrea and join her husband ended in tragedy, after she and her children were incarcerated in a refugee camp in Sudan en-route.

cc Legislation that allows the Zimbabwean president to pass new laws without parliamentary approval in times of crisis is open to abuse, warns Mutsa Murenje. Highlighting the dangers that the Presidential Powers Act poses to democracy, Murenje calls on all Zimbabweans to increase their awareness of the country’s legislation so that they can challenge and ‘say no to evil laws’.

cc After years of seeing President Yoweri Museveni rewrite the constitution to run for yet another term, some Ugandans simply want Barack Obama to ‘denounce dictatorship’, writes Beth Tuckey. But given that Uganda is one of the US’s most important allies despite Museveni’s poor credentials as a ‘responsible democratic leader’, Tuckey asks how easy it would be for Obama to change the nature of the relationship between the two countries.

cc International media reports on growing instability in the Niger Delta largely in terms of its effect on global oil supply and prices, writes Kia Mistilis, but for region’s 12 million inhabitants, the struggle is about their survival. Despite the vast wealth oil revenue has generated for Nigeria, communities in the Delta continue to live in ‘abject poverty’. As peak oil and a looming world energy crisis raise the stakes even higher, these local communities and ecosystems are bearing the brunt of conflict between activists, militant groups and the Nigerian forces protecting the economic interests of the government and multi-national companies.

Sanusha Naidu rounds up this week's Sino-African news.

Cyrus Degraft-Johnson and Alhassan Suhuyini, journalists of two Accra-based radio stations were on the night of July 9, 2009 violently assaulted by security personnel working for the city authority, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the incident occurred at about 21: 30 GMT in Shiashi, a suburb in the eastern part of Accra, where Degraft-Johnson, reporter of Joy FM, had gone to cover an ongoing demolition exercise by a combined team of AMA guards and police officers to rid the city of illegal structures.

cc Chachage explores whether nationals of a country ought to have the option of dual citizenship, in the third and final part of

Because of the by people like you, 36,000 refugees in the Mtabila refugee camp in Tanzania are no longer in danger of being forcibly returned to Burundi where they feared they would face persecution.

Samir Amin

The Institute of Development Studies in collaboration with the Directorate of Public Service (UDSM), Mwalimu Nyerere Chair, UDASA, University of Dar es Salaam School of Law, UDSM Philosophy Club and Educational Perspective UDSM Chapter, is organizing a memorial gathering in honour of the late Professor Haroub M. Othman. The event will be held on 18th July 2009 at Nkrumah Hall, at the University of Dar es Salaam, Main Campus starting from 10 am. This event is open to the general public and you are all invited.

“The African Grantmakers Network will change the face of global philanthropy. And it will happen right here in Africa”, said Sarah Mukasa, Director of Programmes at the African Women’s Development Fund, at a meeting organized to establish a network of African grantmakers. After years of careful planning, preparations, consultations and meetings, the AGN was launched in Accra at a meeting convened by the African Women’s Development Fund, TrustAfrica and the Kenya Community Development Foundation—and attended by key African grantmakers.

Haroub Othman could have worked anywhere in the world, but out of a deep love for the country, 'he chose Tanzania as his station in life', writes his former student and friend Chris Miana Peter, in a tribute to the 'irreplaceable' professor. Othman was one of the most committed academics and civil society activists in Tanzania and Zanzibar, says Peter. His remarkable work through the Zanzibar Legal Services Centre established him as a local institution, while many of his students, whom he treated as equals and to whom he gave opportunities to excel, have gone on to 'hold high offices in governments all over the world'.