Habib Papy Boubendji, also known as Habib Bibalou, a journalist with the satirical weekly Le Nganga, was badly beaten by soldiers inside the presidential compound in Libreville on the night of 5 December, Reporters Without Borders has learned from several sources. “This incident could easily have ended tragically, with one more name being added to the grim list of journalists who have ‘disappeared’ after falling into the clutches of an African president’s bodyguards”, the press freedom organisation said.

African universities have rallied behind a scheme to integrate community-guided environmental initiatives into their teaching and research agendas. The African Association of Universities (AAU), a confederation of 212 universities, stated its support for the Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities (MESA) Partnership during the 1st MESA International Conference held at the UN Environment Programme headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, last week (24–28 November).

The close-down of several copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) southern Katanga Province has now developed into "an economic crisis", according to UN sources. According to the UN's peacekeeping mission in the DRC, MONUC, has expressed its concern over "the current economic crisis in south-eastern DR Congo’s Katanga province, which has led several mining companies to stop their operations."

The lack of clean drinking water and proper hygiene fuelled the spread of cholera in the south and southwest of the Republic of Congo, says the Congolese Red Cross, which has just completed a campaign to teach people how to recognise and stem the spread of the disease. It said the cholera outbreak began in the Boeunza region in February 2008 and that by the end of November 127 cases of the disease and three deaths had been registered.

Zed Books was this week announced as the winner of the prestigious 2008 Pandora Award from Women in Publishing, for ‘a significant and valuable contribution to publishing’. The Pandora Award has been presented since 1981 to an individual or organization for promoting positive images of women in publishing, bookselling and related trades.

The exclusion of disabled people living with HIV in Africa is so entrenched that they were even marginalised at the latest international conference on the disease, according to disabled rights activists. Rights groups claim that many of their members were shut out of the opening ceremony of the 15th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) held in Dakar, Senegal, last week, because they could not access the room. The only entrance to the amphitheatre that did not have stairs was reserved for the President of Senegal.

Dibussi Tande reviews the following blogs:

David Ajao
Muigwithania 2.0
Constitutionally Speaking
Reinventing Africa
Scribbles from the Den

With Sixteen Days of Activism now in full swing, organisations and governments are focusing significant attention on gender violence and the gender inequalities that play a large role in its prevalence in Africa. In assessing how far we have come over the last year, and what we need to do next, it is important to remember what is at the heart of making it all happen – money.

The government of ?China has extended a grant aid of 20 million Chinese Yuan (3 million US dollars) to Sudan for strengthening north-south unity. The Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng pointed out that the Chinese donation comes in the framework of the partnership between the Chinese and Sudanese people. While the Sudanese Finance Minister Awad Al-Jaz said the money will be used in the program of unity between the north and south.

Name a global economic woe, and chances are Charles Needham is dealing with it. Market turmoil has knocked 80% off the shares of South Africa's Metorex, the mining company he runs. The plunge in global commodities is slamming prices for the copper, cobalt, and other minerals Metorex unearths across Africa. The credit crisis makes it harder to raise money. And fighting has again broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Metorex has a mine and several projects in development.

cc. The present financial crisis afflicting the global economy should not be seen from the narrow focus of the credit crunch and its relationship to the subprime mortgage crisis in the Western countries, especially the US. The crisis goes to the very foundations of the global capitalist system and it should be analysed from that angle. What is at the core of the crisis is the over-extension of credit on a narrow material production base. This is in a situation in which money has become increasingly detached from its material base of a money commodity that can measure its value such as gold.

The expansion of the world economy from 1945 onwards was based on the US providing some kind of link between money and the gold standard, which the US tried to maintain until its collapse in the 1970s. Increasingly the dollar became the global currency but without a backing to its currency from a money commodity. The over-expansion of credit that has taken place since then, especially with the globalisation of the world economy, has meant that a lot of paper money and monetary instruments in the form of derivatives and ‘future options’ have lost any relationship to the ‘fundamentals’ in the material production of the world economy.

That is why there has been a growing outcry that the growth of ‘speculative capital’ has over-run the growth of ‘productive capital’ with large amounts of money and credit circulating without the backing of any production at all. That is also why the relationship between the ‘fundamentals’ in the economy and the new credit instruments created on a daily basis in many cases from speculative ‘short-selling’ have become narrower and narrower over time. This is also why the present financial crisis is also a reflection of the energy and food crisis, because oil and food products such as wheat, rice and other commodities have been subjected to speculative trading to back up paper money many years in the future. The British Prime Minister, among the world leaders, is the only one who has seen this connection when he brought it up in the World Bank meeting a few months ago and also when he met the US Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Barrack Obama, when he visited Europe recently.

Thus the amount of credit floating around the world is ‘loose money’ completely run-wild, which claims a relationship with a narrow production base. This is in a situation when the US is increasingly unable to repay debts it has accumulated in its Treasury Bonds and Bills, in which the rest of the world have placed their reserves. Most African countries have millions of dollars in these US Treasury bills, which are held as the countries’ ‘reserves.’ China, India and Japan have trillions deposited in these ‘T’ bills and bonds This means that should the world economy collapse under pressure of ‘loose money’ wanting to be given a value (which they do not have) so that the holders of that ‘money’ can preserve their wealth, those holdings in US Treasury bills (or US debt to the rest of the world) will be lost forcing many weak economies to collapse along with it.

This is why it is wrong to conclude, like many people do that capitalism has the capacity, as it has shown over the years, to always reinvent itself by growing a new skin to resist the pangs of crisis inflicted on it by its own greed. That is a false conclusion. US and British capitalism are being put under pressure to stay a float only by nationalising a number of banks and the corporations that can no longer sustain their operations because of shortage of ‘liquid cash.’ These corporations and banks demand that the state should bail them out. The state is being forced to bail these enterprises out on condition that they shall sell the bulk of their shares to the state. This means that these capitalist states are being forced to move in the direction of central planning and management of the economy. For lack of space, we cannot go into this matter in greater detail.

In short, what Karl Marx called ‘the financial oligarchy’ is demanding that the state should take over their burdens and maintain the ‘value’ of their valueless credit instruments while insisting that the poor workers and the middle classes shall take care of themselves. In other world, the oligarchy demand communism for themselves while relegating socialism and capitalism for the middle class and the working class and the other poor strata of society because socialism and capitalism are the only ways through which the middle class and the working poor can ‘compete’ among themselves for survival. Remember that Marx defined communism as: ‘to each according to his needs’ and socialism as: ‘to each according to his capacities.” Capitalism can now better be defined as: ‘to each according to his own devices,’ which is a paradigm fit for the working poor.

THE CREDIT CRUNCH AND THE FOOD CRISIS

The economic crisis has also revealed the way credit over-expansion has affected food prices throughout the world. In fact when the credit crunch struck the world and the food crisis was announced, the crisis was recognised as a global food crisis. That is why the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank immediately held a special session of the Boards of Governors of their institutions to develop policies to deal with this crisis when it became clear that the food crisis was likely to stay with us until 2015 at the very least.

Immediately following the meetings of these multilateral institutions, the World Food Organisation-FAO held an urgent Food Summit on June 3-5 in Rome, in which the Summit called for an immediate response by governments. After the World Bank meeting, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, wrote a letter to the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who was at the time the chair of the G8, in which he asked the group to act with speed to address the soaring food prices. What was significant was that Gordon also recognised that the financial market-based risk management instruments, including derivatives, had to be considered as contributing to the food price volatilities. What did Gordon Brown mean by this statement? The real problem underlying currency instability and commodity price volatilities is the fact that the dollar, which acts as a global reserve currency, is not backed by any solid money commodity such as gold or silver. These money commodities were historically overwhelmed by the growth of capitalist wealth. As a result not all paper wealth that was held by economic actors could be changed into gold in periods of crisis when the demand for ‘real’ money became overwhelming. With the collapse of the gold standard in the US in the 1970s because of the outgrowth of Eurodollars, attempts were made to rely on other commodities such as platinum to back up the dollar, but this was a non-starter because the cost of storing platinum was too high to be borne by paper wealth holders. But financial instruments, especially future options and instruments called derivatives continued to grow in volume.

This is what led to the food commodities coming into the picture to back up future contracts and derivatives expressed in US dollars. The centre of the global commodity trade is the Chicago Board of Trade-CBOT. It is here that global trade in commodities is valued and undertaken together with other commodities markets. It is also here that all commodities, including food commodities, are ‘financialised’ in dollar financial instruments Wheat, oats, corn, rice and soybean are all agricultural products traded on various commodities exchanges, including the CBOT. Here the exchanges also trade the financial ‘products,’ as well as futures and options contracts on these and several derivative products such as bean oil. Coffee, cocoa, sugar, cotton and orange juice are all 'soft' commodities, many of which are traded on the CSCE (Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange). Interestingly, since 80% of the oranges grown in the U.S. are turned into frozen orange juice concentrate, it's the juice that is traded as a commodity, not the fruit.

An article that appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail of 31st May 2008 argued that it was the deregulation of financial markets and the systematic exploitation of US regulatory loopholes that had led to the upsurge of speculative investments in food commodity markets, much of it by institutional investors such as the managers of pension funds. "These funds", wrote the authors, "have ploughed tens of billions of dollars into agricultural commodities as a way of diversifying their assets and improve returns for their investors.”

According to the authors, the amount of fund money invested in commodity indexes had climbed from just $13-billion in 2003 to a staggering $260-billion in March 2008, according to calculations based on regulatory filings. There were warnings that this amount could easily quadruple to $1-trillion, if pension fund managers allocated a greater portion of their portfolio to commodities, as some consultants suggested they were poised to do. Thus, it was the progressive loosening of regulatory requirements, which made possible the enormous influx of money, much of it fleeing the meltdown in the market for mortgage-backed securities and the wider fallout, including big leveraged buyouts in banks.

Because agricultural markets are small - relative to stock markets - the amount of cash pouring into these markets gives these funds substantial clout. The authors observed that these big institutional investors controlled enough wheat in futures instruments, which could supply the needs of American consumers for the next two years. They blamed the "demand shock" from these recent entrants to the commodities markets as the primary factor behind the sudden soaring of food prices. They noted that if no immediate action was taken, food and energy prices were bound to rise still further leading to the catastrophic economic effects on millions of already stressed U.S. consumers and the possible starvation of millions of the worlds poor.

For instance, the Ontario Teachers' Pension fund, which began with a modest investment in food commodities in 1997, had by 2008 invested some 3 billion dollars in this market. With rising investor activity and increasing demand, prices began to rise. Between 2000 and 2007, the price of wheat increased 147 per cent on the Chicago Board of Trade. Over the same period, corn increased by 79 per cent and soybeans by 72 per cent. As more funds moved in to invest, speculators began clamour for more flexibility with trading limits and since there were no controls, the food commodity prices kept on rising.

It has been estimated that for every one percent increase in the price of food, there is an additional 16 million people who go hungry. In its briefing paper for the World Food Summit, the FAO Secretariat devoted two whole paragraphs to the influence of financial markets in pushing upwards the cost of staple food commodities in its assessment of recent developments. However, it had nothing to say about the matter when it came to recommending "policy options" for dealing with the problem. This was not accidental, but a reflection of the positions of the States.

This is why it was correct to conclude, as we have done above, that for the financial oligarchy who wield power in the States, the demand is that the State must guarantee them ‘communism’ (which can assure them their needs) while for the producing and middle classes the attitude of the State is only to guarantee them the conditions for ’free competition’ for the little the financial oligarchy is able to leave aside for the ‘markets’ (to compete over according to their abilities and devices). Financial markets in the global capitalist system, as well as global inter-governmental organisations such as FAO, it seems, have no ‘policy options’ to attend to the needs of the starving masses. There always are, however, ‘options’ for ‘bailing out’ the financial oligarchy while the masses are left to the devices of ‘the markets.’

THE WAY OUT OF THE CRISIS FOR AFRICA

It is clear from the above that agricultural production has become a victim of late capitalist crisis. This is as it has been because from its birth capitalism had always profited from agriculture as an ‘old industry’ in which this ‘industry’ provided the raw materials for its expanded reproduction at low cost. Capitalist crisis has therefore contributed greatly to the exploitation of agricultural workers and ultimately to its collapse. It did so first, by plundering the European peasantry and converting them into paupers through the enclosure system by using the proceeds for its ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital as one of the sources of its birth.

In so doing, it turned the peasants into workers and in its imperialist phase turned to the colonies for agricultural raw materials where the colonial peasant producers were paid prices below subsistence subsidised by female and child free labour working on land. Only after decolonisation and the establishment of the European Common Market did Europe develop a common agricultural policy to avoid being starved in case of wars in the post-colonial States.

Secondly, with the increasing securitisation of commodities, in which the central banks relied on a variety of commodities to give value to paper debt instruments, capitalists fell to agriculture in the post-colonial States of Africa to save their currencies from collapse. This as we saw above is what led to the escalation in the prices of food products leading to their destruction as commodities. The collapse of the dollar and other ‘hard currencies’ has meant a doom for those agricultural food products as their prices begun to plummet with the collapsing currencies.

This is what the economists are calling a ‘recession.’ But nobody knows when the recession will end although many of them now agree that it is already on in all the developed capitalist countries. So those who believed that with high food prices the peasant producers would earn high incomes had better rethink their arithmetic because they need to revise their knowledge of how capitalism operates in its old age. African agricultural and food production based on exports to the markets of the developed countries can no longer be assured and so the African farmer has to find a way out of this mess as quickly as possible.

What we have said above must already alert us as to what we have to do to get out of the mess. First, we have to look at how we can survive in terms of food availability. For the first time, we have to wake up to the reality that African countries need a food security policy as a matter of urgency about which leaders can no longer dilly-dally. That means African countries have first to focus on the home market followed by the regional market and finally the global market. With the home market becoming the focus for our production, we can create regional currencies because in that case we shall have no alternative but to create them to serve the regional markets, but operating under completely new conditions and principles. But we cannot develop a food security based on food crops of which people have very little knowledge, especially since with the currency crisis; we shall not have sufficient dollars to buy foreign food products with in the short and medium terms.

This means we have to rely more on indigenous food products as the basis of our food security, which we must quickly encourage the farmers to revive. Although many of our indigenous food crops were abandoned in favour of exotic products that could also be sold on the market, there is still a reservoir of knowledge about these crops in the rural communities. So reviving these crops would not be an uphill task if we have a policy that is driven with the same zeal as that of the current production for export. The African elites will have to content themselves with consuming indigenous crops since they can no longer depend on exotic foreign products.

Secondly, we have to consider the strategy of encouraging cooperative production because with the increasing population driven by poverty and the great fragmentation of land holding, it will not be possible to sustain families on the small farm-holdings. A cooperative policy also presupposes a sound credit policy that can enable farmers to borrow for their production and hence the need to hasten the creation of a regional currency that can inform the creation of new local credit systems drawing on the experiences of the ‘informal sector.’ We should learn what the people of Somaliland have done in this respect because they have managed to create a very strong local currency that is not pegged to any global currency.

The collapse of the global capitalist system will not mean the end of the world! On the contrary, it will release the bottled up energies of the people that have been suffocated by the collapsing capitalist system. We shall survive by burying the old system and creating a new one. Such a new system will have to be socialist-oriented since even the most developed capitalist countries have no alternative but to do so as we can already see with the whole sale nationalisation of banks throughout Europe and the US. Some countries such as Iceland have already gone bankrupt.

This means that even the political system has to change. The key to political rejuvenation will lie in the ‘deepening of democracy’ right from the family level, to the clan and to the traditional institutions level since the post-colonial state would have collapsed along with the dollar. New forms of political power will emerge at a local level unless new warlords try to occupy the political space. But the warlords are already doomed as the Somali situation already demonstrates. The local power structures will need a wider cooperative basis on the model of confederal or federal regional states and we should consider Southern, Eastern African or the Great Lakes region for such a partnership.

The development of local markets will need the backing of regional markets for wider exchange of commodities. Therefore, new forms of agricultural and industrial production will have to be tailored to local needs and tastes. Similarly, new local markets will emerge in other parts of the world calling for global exchanges of commodities with those consumers. Eventually a new global currency or currencies based on a basket of commodities will have to be created to facilitate these exchanges on a completely new basis not based on capitalist super-profits run by transnational corporations.

At a political level, we shall increasingly see the emergence of a global civil society along side the new global market. Hence, we can already envisage the emergence of a GLOCAL SOCIETY (a Global society based on local nationalities and global citizenship). Along side with these developments will eventually emerge a federated global State, which will be developed by the local powers. We can no longer return to the caves, we can only move forward to a new world. Yes, a New World is possible and it can now be said with certainty: A NEW WORLD IS INEVITABLE!

* Professor Dani W. Nabudere is the Executive Director of the Afrika Study Centre

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

The Regional Peace Initiative chaired by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni held a summit on Burundi’s peace process, which has included over twenty summits resulting the surrender of six of the country’s seven former rebel movements. Future meetings are expected to take drastic measures should the PALIPEHUTU-FNL, the one armed group that has yet to join the regional peace initiative, should they not meet the 31 December deadline to implement the comprehensive ceasefire accord. Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) observer mission to the Ghanaian presidential and parliamentary elections has praised the country’s political maturity and advised political parties to exercise restraint while waiting for the electoral commission to announce official results. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called on the chairperson of the AU, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, to oust President Robert Mugabe and end the humanitarian catastrophe, political stalemate and economic meltdown perpetrated against the Zimbabwean people.

The AU, worried about gender disparity in its member States, is planning to adopt a new gender policy that aims to promote women’s access to and control over resources, knowledge, information, land and business ownership and to achieve the enforcement of human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment at international, continental and national level. A new report released by the International Labour Organisation concludes that African women are not benefiting from the continent’s economic boom because of low-wages and a lack of social protection. “Women have little choice but to work...but nonetheless, poverty persists, implying a grave malfunction of the labour market”, says the report. In other economic news, the AU vice president called on African governments to allow farmers to engage in viable business ventures without interference, thus avoiding over-regulation, and announced that the organisation has a comprehensive agricultural policy to ensure food security in Africa. Further, it is suggested that Africa could be the breadbasket for the Gulf Cooperation Council providing valuable water and food supplies to the entire region as it is already suffering from rising food prices, caused by inflation in exporting countries.

In other news, kings, princes, dignitaries and traditional chiefs of Africa called on African leaders to establish a Union Government to help lift the continent from poverty, disease and hunger. AU chairperson Jean Ping, in an interview with NEWSWEEK’s Jason McLure, also stated his belief in the United States of Africa, be it a confederation, a federation, or a centralised government, to help establish peace and stability in the continent. Finally, members of parliament from the Southern Africa Development Community member States, during their plenary assembly, called for the forum to be turned into a fully functional regional parliament with legislative powers.

On the 60th anniversary of the UN Genocide convention, Henning Melber looks back at the progress that has been made to safeguard against the occurrence of genocide. In 1998, the International Criminal Court was formed and since then there have been significant advances and mechanisms set in place to prevent genocide as well as bring perpetrators to justice. What is required is the political will to act against genocide and those who perpetrate it, while safeguarding the rights of those at risk.

The new website is open.

From the publisher of Pambazuka News, Fahamu Books is a list of progressive books that stimulate debate, discussion, analysis and engagement on human rights and social justice in Africa and the global South. They are aimed primarily at activists and a wider audience of academics, students and policy makers.

The website allows you to buy the books and CD-ROMs – and much more. You can look inside the books, read reviews, join online discussions and sign-up for updates.

As a publisher committed to social justice, Fahamu Books is committed to publishing books that address contemporary issues of importance in the building of a progressive pan-African movement. If you would like to submit a proposal for a book, please see our guidelines, or send an email to [email][email protected].

Stephen Marks looks at the latest rush by China and countries in the middle east to sign lease agreements in poor countries for agricultural production, and what this trend means in terms of food security and access to arable land for local populations.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) has been caught up in conflict for more than a decade, with devastating effects on its civilian population especially women and children. Rebel militias led by General Laurent Nkunda and Congolese army troops are fighting for control of the mineral-rich Eastern Province. Proceeds from the sale of minerals are being used to fund the activities which prolong the conflict. Thousands women and children have been displaced from their homes as a result of the recurrent war in Congo.

As the war in Congo drags on, African women are grappling to find ways of stopping sexual violence in the war zone. The AWID international Conference held from 11th to 14th November 2008 provided an opportunity and space for women in the great lakes region to meet and find ways of address Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Congo. The discussion spearheaded by Eastern African sub Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI) under the theme "The role of women in Peace process in the Great Lakes Region." The outcome of this meeting was the formation of a working group tasked with visiting the DRC. The aim of the visit will be to highlight the situation in the DRC with special emphasis on issues relating to abuse of women. The working group comprises Women's NGOs in the Great Lakes Regions namely: African women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), Urgent Action Fund, Women and Law in Development, EASSI and individuals committed fight SGBV in Congo.

Malawi is a land-locked country in southern Africa. With a population of between 11.5 to 12.5 million and is among the poorest countries in the world. Like many other sub Saharan countries, Malawi is grappling with the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Women are most affected by the pandemic - out of 809, 833 persons living with HIV in the country, 473, 000 are women.

The civil service is the worst hit sector in the country. The Malawi police service has a high HIV prevalence rate among its service women; an update on the Malawi National Response to HIV/AIDS indicates that 32 percent of female police officers are currently infected with HIV.

There has been marked success within development organizations that are able to design HIV/AIDS mainstreaming strategies in an effort to prevent, and mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS. These lessons along with the strategies employed by a handful of dedicated individuals have the potential to make real change in ho Malawi and other African countries address HIV/AIDS.

As the world commemorates World AIDS Day, The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) celebrates the role of dedicated women in Africa who work tirelessly to fight HIV/AIDS. Eluby Jere, a policewoman based in Malawi’s commercial capital Blantyre, is one such person who has worked hard, with little recognition.

With examples of the considerable risk of sexual violence faced by Somali women from a range of military organisations including the Somali Transitional Government, Ethiopian troops, and local militias, Nada Ali argues that much more needs to be done to ensure that those vulnerable within some of the African continent’s most conflict-torn areas receive adequate protection from abuse. The UN Security Council’s formation of an international commission of inquiry focussing on sexual violence, Ali argues, represents a key step if perpetrators are to begin to be effectively held to account.

Emphasising the centrality of consolidating links within the women’s movement in Africa, Carlyn Hambuba underlines the importance of involving grassroots women to ensure their voices be heard. With grassroots women increasingly sensitive to their own needs for representation, the author urges NGOs to refrain from simply speaking on behalf of others and to work towards the effective incorporation of local women into development debates.

International lust for the enormous mineral and resource riches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) abetted by international indifference has turned much of country into a colossal "rape mine" where more than 300,000 women and girls have been brutalised, say activists.

The Confédération Paysanne du Congo (Peasant Confederation of Congo), COPACO-PRP, member of La Via Campesina in Africa, launches an appeal for international solidarity, given the armed conflict and insecurity situation that has intensified in the last weeks in the Northern province of Kivu, on the border with Rwanda.

Until the mid-20th century, many European countries grew rich on the resources of their colonies. Now, countries including China, Kuwait and Sweden are snapping up vast tracts of agricultural land in poorer nations, especially in Africa, to grow biofuels and food for themselves. The land grabs have sparked accusations of neocolonialism and fears that the practice could worsen poverty. Yet some organisations think this could be a chance for poor countries to trade land and labour for the technology and investment vital for developing their own food and energy production.

The Green Belt Movement, founded by Nobel prize-winner Wangari Maathai, has a partnership with the Basque government for community-based tree planting and natural resource management initiatives in southern Mt.Kenya.

This book traces the economic debates in the ANC from the Freedom Charter, to Morogoro, to the RDP and to the present. It shows that the shift to macro-economic stabilisation in thetransition to democracy in 1994 was due to international pressure and how it changed the trajectory of ANC policies.

In recent years developing countries have expanded their government education systems in an attempt to meet the Millennium Development Goals on education by 2015. One consequence has been a dramatic growth in low-cost private education institutions, which are increasingly being seen as a popular alternative to the public education system. Using independent first-hand research, this study investigates the low-cost private education sector in India, Nigeria and Uganda.

The Wanjiru Kihoro Fellowship's broad goal is to contribute to the development of a new generation of African women leaders who are dedicated to utilising their voices and experience to futher women's central role in peace building and development work in their country, region and continent. The Fellowship aims to attract applicants who have substantial experience in local community work and who wish to gain international experience to enrich and enhance their skills.

We, the undersigned members of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks (NASCON) Campaign, working with Bunge La Mwananchi, the Goro Goro Campaign (Hosted by the Citizens Coalition for Constitutional Culture – 4Cs) and other Civil Society networks throughout Kenya, Concerned that the current crises facing the Kenyan nation have resulted from a leadership crisis and have caused much suffering to the citizens of this country...

In my undergraduate course (Human Rights and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa) at Barnard College, Columbia University, I required students to subscribe to and to read Pambazuka weekly. Occasionally we would discuss the readings in class. It was a real success. I was surprised by the number of students who chose the topics of their research papers on the basis of articles they had read through Pambazuka. My main suggestion would be to try to include more news from West Africa. Best wishes and thanks for making Africa so visible to my students.

A leading Zimbabwean human rights activist was seized yesterday by suspected secret police, in the most high level abduction operation yet by President Mugabe’s government. Fifteen armed men in civilian clothing burst into the home of Jestina Mukoko, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, in the small town of Norton 40km west of Harare at 5am, lawyers said.

From 26-28 November 2008, the Centre for the Study of Violence of Reconciliation (CSVR) hosted the ‘South African Domestic Violence Act (DVA) Lessons from a Decade of Legislation and Implementation’ conference in Johannesburg. Attended by approximately 120 delegates came together to review the implementation of the DVA over the past 10 years.

Sokari Ekine review blogs from:

My Nigeria
Moot Box
Africa is a country
Kenya Environment & Political News
Black Looks
Timbuktu Chronicles
Tales from the loo

The second edition of Climate Change and supporting website feature a range of articles that encourage the sharing of best practice and the development of new technologies. These initiatives, illustrates the opportunities for business and governments to reduce costs and increase profits while tackling climate change. Separated into four sections, the first three mirrors the thematic building blocks laid out by the Bali Action Plan in 2007, which will be discussed in detail during COP 14 - The United Nations Climate Conference in Poznon, Poland, and in the lead up to COP 15 in Copenhagen.

The International Coalition on the Detention of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants has launched the first international newsletter with a focus on global trends in migration-related detention and resources for groups working with detainees. To sign up for the newsletter email: [email][email protected], or visit: http://www.idcoalition.org

We, the undersigned organizations, register our serious distress and concern on the news received this morning concerning the abduction of Zimbabwe Peace Project Director, Jestina Mukoko. Ms Mukoko was reported as having been forcefully taken from her home in Norton Harare, at 5am, this morning still wearing her nightdress. Her abductors are suspected CIO and police agents.

"Slavery is the reality of modern day life. It has evolved in many parts of the world into many diverse and cruel forms", says, new UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery its causes and consequences, Ms. Gulnara Shahinian. "Last year, the world celebrated 200 years of the abolition of the slave trade. However, slavery is not history," warns the UN expert. "Despite significant progress in the fight against slavery in many parts of the world, these efforts seem to be insufficient."

Botswana's government said Wednesday it would give 370,000 dollars to neighbouring Zimbabwe for cholera and food relief, but that the money was not intended for President Robert Mugabe's regime. "We have no quarrel with the people of Zimbabwe. They are in this because their leadership has failed to form a government. The money is intended for the people and not authorities," said Clifford Maribe, a foreign affairs official.

Authorities in Zimbabwe have declared a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 550 people to be a national emergency, state media reports. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said hospitals were in urgent need of medicine, food and equipment and were suffering a critical staff shortage.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has warned the UN Security Council not to shield Sudan's president if the court issues an arrest warrant. Luis Moreno-Ocampo accused President Omar al-Bashir in July of genocide in Darfur - a charge he denies.

Kenya's parliament has set up a committee to review MPs' generous salaries and allowances. This follows a widespread public outcry over a decision by the country's legislators to drop a proposal to tax their allowances.

Kenya's anti-corruption watchdog is suing seven current and former members of parliament for taking illegal allowances worth $250,000 (£166,000). Information Minister Samuel Poghisio has denied taking 2.8m shillings ($35,000, £23,000) in 2006 and 2007. Similar allegations have been filed against the assistant defence minister and five former members of parliament.

The Burundian National Assembly adopted important human rights advances in a penal code voted in on November 22, 2008, including abolishing the death penalty and making torture, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity punishable under Burundian law, Human Rights Watch has said.

How can human rights principles help to focus climate change policymaking? This report from the International Council on Human Rights Policy discusses the human rights impacts of climate change and maps research agendas. It includes Forewords by Mary Robinson and Romina Picolotti.

This Development Dialogue is published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9th December 1948. On the basis of the normative framework created and more recently also applied in a few cases, the contributions seek to explore further the socio-historical and -political contexts of genocide and mass violence and test the common approaches against analyses of social realities as well as theories. The historical dimension is of significance to many of the chapters, which have a main focus on African cases and contexts. The contributions, which are based on two conferences held in Uppsala in December 2006 and Oslo in November 2007, present scholarly as well as politically and morally guided forms of engagement. This blend seeks to acknowledge the need to unite differently posed concerns and appeals in their common efforts to examine further the notion of genocide (as well as its limitations), with the aim of reducing the risks of history repeating itself. The volume is accessible also for download at the Foundation’s web site:
Revisiting the heart of darkness – Explorations into genocide and otther forms of mass violence. 60 years after the UN Convention. Edited by Henning Melber. Uppsala: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (development dialogue, no. 50, December 2008), 302 pp.

As Zimbabwe’s ministry of home affairs has become the centre of political attention in the tug of war between Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC and Mugabe’s ZANU PF, what has become of the countries health and education? Silence Chihuri reflects on why the police today matter more than doctors in a country grappling with a cholera epidemic and massive economic meltdown and why home affairs remain the gate keepers of Zimbabwe.

For years Microsoft denied that open source software was a competitor to its business. And then suddenly a year or so ago it began to talk “standards”, “interoperability” and other good things. It even went so far as to give money to open source projects. But, just as we were starting to think that the company was ready for a new course it comes out with a piece of PR that sounds as if Steve Ballmer could have written it himself.

Suspected cumulative cholera cases continue to rise in the nine out of ten Provinces of Zimbabwe. The increase of the outbreak is attributed inter–alia to poor water and sanitation supply, collapsed health system and limited government capacity to respond to the emergency. Trans–border outbreaks are also reported and mainly at the Beitbridge border post in the Matabeleland South of Zimbabwe and Plumtree in Botswana border post.

Without an effective response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia, the population there could face "total destitution", said Mark Bowden, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, warning that "this is now a make or break year for Somalia".

In an article exploring the history of socio-economic inequality, Jacques Depelchin calls for an interpretation of the current food crisis over the historical longue durée. As a direct consequence of an entrenched, centuries-old capitalist system, the author argues, the market as a ‘modernising’ force has consistently enriched the lives of a few while impoverishing a poor majority. Understanding the food crisis, Depelchin contends, rests first and foremost on re-considering humanity’s relationship to nature and championing historical narratives true to the voices and experiences of the global poorest of the poor.