Pambazuka News 465: French nuclear energy: Powered by Niger / Haiti in crisis
Pambazuka News 465: French nuclear energy: Powered by Niger / Haiti in crisis
The Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD/AFARD) is looking for a suitable candidate to fill the position of the Gender and Economic Justice Program Manager for a fixed term contract. This position offers possibility of gaining experience working for a leading Africa women regional organization in a stimulating, multicultural and dynamic environment. This position will involve travel within Africa and other part of the world.
This call for proposals set out the conditions for accessing the sixth edition (2010) of ERNWACA Research Grants Programme.
The Refugee Law Project announces the following vacancies: Karamoja Research and Advocacy Officer, Transitional Justice Lawyer, ATJRN Research and Advocacy Officer Deportation Researcher, Administration & Human Resource Assistant, Pool Research Assistant,Functional Adult Literacy - Volunteer English Teacher, and Video Advocacy Volunteer.
Interested candidates must submit an application letter, curriculum vitae, copies of relevant academic documents to:
The Head of Finance, Administration & Human Resources
Refugee Law Project, Faculty of Law, MUK
Plot No. 9 Perryman Gardens (Opp. Old Kampala Primary School) Old Kampala
P. O. Box 33903,Kampala
Email applications should be sent to: [email][email protected]
Deadline for receipt of applications is 22nd January 2010 at 5.00pm
Addis Ababa is selling vast fertile swaths to international companies in effort to introduce large-scale commercial agriculture.
Sub-Saharan focused private equity fund Agri-Vie will reach its $100 million target for investment in agricultural projects by March, and could triple this amount in a second fund, a top official has said. Agri-Vie funds food and agricultural projects in Africa seeking to make equity investments across the agribusiness spectrum, including processing and product distribution.
Ethiopia's first and biggest hydroelectric power generating plant that does not have its own dam was inaugurated by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and a senior official from the project financier, Italy. The 281 million euro (US$ 407 million) plant, Gilgel-Gibe II (GII), uses water from another dam constructed more than 26 kilometres from GII for an earlier comm i ssioned power plant, called Gilgel-Gibe I (GI), has an installed capacity of 420
Egyptian experts have completed a mission in Kinshas a aimed at evaluating the construction of an ultra-modern hospital and hydro-electric power in DR Congo by Egypt.These projects are efforts to contribute to the accessibility of quality care and provision of electric power supply in DR Congo.
Two months after being re-elected for a fifth five-year term, president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has reshuffled his cabinet with the departure of several known figures.
Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga appeared headed for a fresh round of wrangling after the President pulled out of a tree-planting exercise in Mau Forest.
Gambia's Assistant Superintendent of Police Yahya Fadera has declared there will be zero tolerance for gender-based violence, in particular rape and sexual assault against women and girls, warning that perpetrators will have no place to hide.
Grasslands have vast untapped potential to mitigate climate change by absorbing and storing Carbon Dioxide (CO2), according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Namibia's national broadcaster's Director-General (DG) Mathew Gowaseb has quit his job, becoming the third DG to leave the public broadcaster in one year. Media reports said that Gowaseb, who was appointed in acting capacity at the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) last year, had thrown in the towel citing political interference.
There is only one year left for Sudanese parties to salvage a 2005 peace agreement that ended more than 20 years of war and requires a pivotal referendum next January on unity or secession for Southern Sudan.
Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, Guinea’s wounded junta leader, feels he was tricked into taking a flight to Burkina Faso instead of going back to Guinea and is determined to get home, officials have said.
South Sudan leader Salva Kiir is to seek re-election in that post rather than tackling Omar al-Bashir for the national presidency, his party says. The SPLM will instead field a northern Muslim, Yassir Arman, in the national elections due in April.
Cote d'Ivoire's government has ordered an investigation into allegations of fraud by the electoral commission. Last weekend, President Laurent Gbagbo accused the commission of trying to register hundreds of thousands of ineligible people.
Six Sudanese men have been executed for their part in a riot at a refugee camp in Khartoum in 2005. The men were held responsible for killing 13 policemen during the riots in which five civilians also died.
A UN programme to combat child deaths from disease in West Africa has failed, a Johns Hopkins University study says. Unicef spent $27m (£17m) rolling out vaccinations, vitamin A pills and bed nets to protect against malaria from 2001 to 2005 in areas of 11 countries.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has distanced himself from a bill proposing execution for some gay people. He stressed that the MP who proposed the bill, who is a member of the ruling party, did so as an individual and was not following government policy.
The controversial Copenhagen Accord, secretly drafted by countries of the Global North with the approval of a few handpicked emerging economies, including South Africa, is green washed capitalism with thinly veiled energy security at its heart, writes Michael Pressend.
Malawi's government should drop all criminal charges against a same-sex couple who are facing up to 14 years in prison, Human Rights Watch has said in a letter to high-level justice and home affairs officials.
Kenya’s government faces internal wrangling over the allocation of 1.4 billion shillings ($19 million) to buy land for IDPs. The Standard newspaper has reported that government officials have taken millions of shillings meant for resettling IDPs and then claimed that they had been disbursed to beneficiaries.
Fighting between pro-government militias and the Al-Shabaab rebel group has caused continuing death and displacement in central Somalia. Clashes concentrated in the areas of Wabho, Warhole, and Beladweyne killed 27 civilians and displaced some 250 pastoralist families, according to rights groups in Somalia cited by Reuters on 12 January.
An Egyptian court has sentenced two journalists to one year in prison after finding them guilty of printing a report in their newspaper about the alleged homosexuality of three celebrities.
The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), is calling on the Zambian authorities to immediately end attacks on Zambian media as they work to establish self-regulatory mechanism.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the unlawful, arbitrary and unjustified detention of Hannevy Ould Dehah, Director of Taqadoumy website in Dar Nahim prison in Nouakchott, after he had served his term.
A massive influx of 125,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into neighbouring Republic of Congo (ROC) and Central African Republic (CAR) after deadly ethnic clashes is severely stretching the meagre resources of the impoverished region, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.
The United Nations refugee agency has warned that many parts of central Somalia are witnessing a surge in fighting, sparking growing displacement and worsening the plight of an already beleaguered population.
Leaders from the southern African region have urged the international community to reject plans by Madagascar's military-backed Andry Rajoelina to ignore power-sharing talks and hold an election.
More than 107,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have fled to the Republic of Congo since early November of last year. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, another 17,000 refugees have crossed into the Central African Republic (CAR).
Twenty-five students were arrested at Bindura University on Thursday, after a demonstration over exorbitant tuition fees which have resulted in at least 40 percent of students being denied access to write their exams.
The SADC Troika on Politics, Defence and Security held a summit in Maputo on Thursday to consider, among other issues, reports on developments in Zimbabwe’s inclusive government.
This report presents the findings of preliminary quantitative and qualitative surveys of workers on commercial farms in the wake of the catastrophic "Land Reform" policy in Zimbabwe. Whilst the companion reports produced from this series of projects have received some attention, this report is the first to deal solely with data gathered from the farm workers themselves.
In the weeks immediately following the June 2008 presidential elections in Zimbabwe, AIDS-Free World received an urgent call from a Harare-based organization working on behalf of women and girls. They believed that hundreds and possibly thousands of women had been raped by members of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party as a strategy to influence the election, and sought help from AIDS-Free World in documenting these crimes.
Former Congolese warlord Laurent Nkunda is ready to face trial for alleged war crimes or go into exile to end his detention without charge in Rwanda, his lawyer said.
Seychelles has said it had agreed with creditors to swap old debt worth $283 million, representing 89 percent of the debt it sought to restructure in an exchange offer.
A Ugandan preacher with close ties to U.S. evangelicals and President Yoweri Museveni's family said on Friday he planned to organise a "million-man" march in February to support a proposed anti-gay law in parliament.
Kenyan security forces shot in the air and fired tear gas at hundreds of people protesting in the capital on Friday against the detention of Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal. The protesters, chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and some holding the flag of Somali rebel group al Shabaab, were blocked by police with dogs as they tried to march through the heart of Nairobi after prayers at the downtown mosque.
Fighting in central Somalia has killed at least 138 people and displaced 63,000 others in the last two weeks, a rights group said on Friday. Hizbul Islam and its rival, al Shabaab -- branded by Washington as an al Qaeda proxy in the region -- want to impose a strict version of Islamic sharia law in the Horn of Africa nation that has had no functional central government since 1991.
Thousands of people injured in Haiti's massive earthquake spent a third night twisted in pain, lying on sidewalks and waiting for help as their despair turned to anger.
A pilot drugs supply management project called "SMS for Life" has Tanzania authorities excited over its potential. The project, which brings together IBM, Novartis, Vodafone and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, taps into a combination of smart technologies to track and manage the supply of anti-malarial drugs.
Algeria's Ministry of Education, faced with a worrisome drop-out rate, has begun fining parents who do not send their children to school.
An Amazigh-language TV channel first proposed three years ago finally hit Moroccan airwaves on January 6th, satisfying a long-awaited demand by a significant percentage of the country’s citizens.
Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam, speaking at the opening of a three-day conference on “Doing Business 2010 in Africa: Sharing Reform Experiences” in Balaclava, Mauritius, has said that Africa is poised for what may be the most buoyant years in its economic history, provided it facilitates doing business despite the worst global economic recession in decades.
Four of the world’s largest and fastest-growing carbon emitters will meet in New Delhi this month ahead of a January 31 deadline for countries to submit their action plans to combat climate change.
Survival has launched an ad campaign exposing the Botswana government’s malicious treatment of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen, the country’s oldest inhabitants. An advertisement depicting an inverted Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), the Bushmen’s ancestral home, has appeared in a series of popular magazines, including Condé Nast Traveller, The World of Interiors, and Red Bulletin which is distributed with the UK’s Independent newspaper.
A harmonised draft constitution has now been handed over to Kenya's Parliamentary Select Committee. Influential Christian leaders are warning that the question of abortion could derail the constitutional review process.
Detaining someone without cause is against the law in Zambia. But the country’s police continue to do this, specifically targeting the female relatives of a suspect, in an attempt to gather information or force the suspect out into the open.
Preparations for presidential elections scheduled for the end of February or the beginning of March - elections which have already been postponed numerous times since 2005 - have again reached an impasse in Côte d'Ivoire.
Let the rains fail, even for several successive seasons, and Malawi should still be able to produce enough to feed itself.? This is the motivation for the country's green belt concept. It is strengthened by painful memories of the severe drought beginning early 2002 which triggered three years of hunger.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) has accused the media and the public of ‘trying and convicting’ Thulani Rudd, accused of murdering the woman she was engaged to, before the investigation has even been completed.
A Nigerian court has ruled that Goodluck Jonathan, the vice-president, can take over the duties of the president, who has been sick, without a formal transfer of power.
Reporters Without Borders has written, on the third anniversary of Eritrean journalist Fessehaye “Joshua” Yohannes’ death in detention, to Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, asking him to do everything possible to obtain an improvement in the conditions of journalists imprisoned in Eritrea.
A court in the capital N’Djamena has found the privately owned weekly La Voix “not guilty” of charges against it and lifted a provisional order for automatic seizure of all copies of the paper made on 3 December 2009. An appeal will be heard on 13 January
A study on African Large-Scale Wind Turbine Market, has found that the market earned revenues of over $148.4 million in 2008 and estimates this to reach $424.3 million in 2015, according to a new analysis from Frost & Sullivan.
Tens of thousands of displaced people around the world will get micro-loans to set up their own businesses and become self-sufficient thanks to a new agreement between the UN refugee agency and a microfinance services organisation set up by Bangladeshi Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Angolan legislators are expected to endorse the new constitution that will strengthen the three decades-long rule of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The vote comes earlier than expected as the nation reels from a deadly rebel attack last week. The vote was expected in March.
Assurances from authorities in Kinshasa that peace had been restored to their home areas in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo carry little weight with thousands of refugees across the Ubangi River in the Central African Republic (CAR): they are in no hurry to return home.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “accelerated child survival programme” in 11 West African countries did not save significantly more lives than in areas that were not targeted, says an evaluation published in The Lancet this week - but analysts say this does not mean UNICEF was doing the wrong things.
Kenya has launched an ambitious strategy to fight HIV/AIDS that aims to reduce new infections by at least 50 percent over the next four years and focus more on most at-risk populations (MARPs).
A study finding that foreigners are about half as likely to fail antiretroviral (ARV) treatment as South African citizens attending the same Johannesburg clinic has challenged widely held assumptions about migrants' ability to adhere to HIV/AIDS drug regimens.
A campaign by the Rwandan government aims to significantly increase the use of both male and female condoms in the country, where it is estimated that sexually active people use an average of just three condoms per year.
The Centre for African Studies Basel calls for applications for two doctoral positions funded by the Humer Foundation (Humer-Stiftung zur Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses). The research is to be carried out within the framework of the interdisciplinary programme "Living the City", which addresses processes of invention and intervention in the dynamics of urbanisation in Africa.
In this week's roundup of emerging powers news Stephen Marks looks at China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi's just-concluded six-nation tour of Africa.
Over 800 members of Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise took to the streets of Bulawayo on 13 January to peacefully protest about the state of education in Zimbabwe. Five groups started separately and converged on Mhlahlandlela Government complex to hand over the WOZA report on the education system in Zimbabwe entitled 'Looking Back to look Forward'.
China is now the world's largest producer of, hydropower, with Chinese firms now building 19 of the 24 largest hydropower plants currently under construction worldwide, and roughly half of all the world's large dams are within its borders, writes Jacqui Dixon.
The geopolitics of African countries such as Algeria, a country in North Africa that has traditionally enjoyed strong relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and whose strategic importance and regional profile have increased markedly of late, is key to grasping the dynamics that shape contemporary Sino-Algerian ties and China’s Africa strategy overall, writes Chris Zambelis.
Namibia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) is gravely appalled by what appears to be an escalating spate of misguided and, sometimes, punitive attacks on the independence of judges in the country.
The Namibian Police and or the Office of Prosecutor General as well as the Lower Criminal Division of the Namibian Judiciary are making themselves vulnerable to charges of discrimination and political bias, owing to the inconsistency with which they are handling certain criminal cases.
is an authoritative analytical web site which assesses, analyzes and documents conflict situations so as to keep up Africa regional issues in focus internationally. It's goals are to improve overall availability of political, security and defense related information in policy circles and the public domain through research, analysis and development of policy options.
Some elements within the Kenyan government are not sincere on the constitutional review process and are using the media gagging law, and some politicians, to scuttle the just released Harmonised Draft Constitution. The Release Political Prisoners (RPP) castigates such a move and implores upon the two principals (His Excellency Mwai Kibaki and the Honourable Raila Odinga) to show leadership on the constitutional review process.
‘If we want to turn around black education in South Africa, we must start by changing prevailing anti-learning attitudes’, argues William Gumede. ‘Anti-learning attitudes’, says Gumede, are compounded by a ‘lack of political will from leaders to do something beyond mouthing off rhetoric, wrong official priorities and absentee black parents’.
Dale McKinley looks at what the new decade holds for South Africa, as politicians, corporate mandarins and the media attempt to gloss over the “dirty” realities of the country's ‘grinding poverty, homelessness and mass inequality’ ahead of the World Cup.
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill would, if enacted into law, violate international human rights law and lead to further human rights violations, a report from Amnesty International has said. This extract from the report offers a human rights analysis of the bill.
Isaac Newton Kinity asks if a ‘political, secret shadow examination board’ is ‘still alive in Kenya’.
Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between the peoples of Africa and the Americas for over fifty years, died peacefully on the evening of 2 January 2010. He was 91.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki shares anecdotes from a friend working for a UN mission in a post-conflict African country. While the stories are amusing, says Wanyeki, what they really show is how hard it is ‘to re-construct even a semblance of normalcy following a war’.
Ugandan-born lecturer John Otim recounts his experience of an attempt to assassinate him at his home on the campus of Nigeria’s Ahmadu Bello University in December.
Niger exports enough uranium to France to generate 50 per cent of the latter’s electricity supply, writes Khadija Sharife. But ordinary Nigeriens reap little benefit from France’s control of their country’s uranium resources, with over three-fifths of the population living below the poverty line and reports of radioactive contamination of water, air and soil by multinational mining operations.
Muslim marriages have no legal recognition in South Africa, writes Waheeda Amien, but the use of written marriage contracts – the terms of which are enforceable in a secular court – offers a form of protection for parties, both within marriage and upon divorce.
Challenging Ugandan MP David Bahati’s assertion that homosexuality poses a grave threat to the ‘traditional African family’, Sylvia Tamale looks at the social meaning and legal implications of the country’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill.
The ‘Nigerian bomber’, the attacks on the Togolese football team, LGBTI politics in Africa, the mafia and migrant workers in Italy and a murder in London are among the topics in Sokari Ekine’s roundup of the African blogosphere.
‘Our deepest sympathies to the entire Haitian population’, writes Jacques Depelchin, ’and in particular to those who, prior to the earthquake were already suffering too much, simply because they were continuing a struggle started more than two centuries ago.’
Since the onset of violence in Casamance back in 1982, the Senegalese government and the Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC) have not been able to negotiate a lasting peace. Periods of relative calm have been regularly punctuated by violent flare-ups that lead to fresh negotiations. In recent months, the region has once again been plunged into violent conflict. The women of Casamance make this call for an immediate end to the violence.
A recent outbreak of violence between migrant workers from Africa and the townspeople of Rosarno in southern Italy higlights the country's uneasy relationship with illegal immigrants, many of whom are trafficked into Italy by the mafia to provide cheap labour during the fruit-picking season, writes Annar Cassam.
As famine and hunger envelop Ethiopia, Alemayehu G. Mariam asks why the alarm is not being sounded. Instead, with Ethiopia’s leaders flatly denying the existence of famine and the international community hiding behind the jargon of ‘food insecurity’, Mariam sees a predictable pattern to Ethiopia’s history of responses over the last four decades: ‘Always too little, too late’.
Haiti is caught in tragedy once again. The country has been hit by its strongest earthquake for two centuries. While world leaders, institutions, NGOs, and individuals make their pledges, thousands are trapped beneath the rubble and unknown death tolls mount. The struggle to save lives is hampered by an obliterated infrastructure.
Pambazuka News 464: Angola: Public office, private business
Pambazuka News 464: Angola: Public office, private business
Uganda is making global headlines again, this time with a proposed law to execute citizens found guilty of ‘aggravated homosexuality.’Nick young explores the broader gender implications.
Somali prominent journalists in Mogadishu have for the first time officially launched a new Press Freedom Group.Somali Foreign Correspondents Association (SOFCA), after meeting at Nasahablod hotel in Mogadishu.
Gender Links, a dynamic Southern African NGO based in Johannesburg that promotes gender equality in and through the media, seeks to fill the post of Gender and Media Programme Manager on an initial two year contract basis. All applications must be received by close of business on Friday 15 January 2009. Late applications will not be considered. Candidates from within the SADC region are welcome to apply. GL is an equal opportunity employer.
Gender Links, a Southern African NGO based in Johannesburg specialising in gender, media, women’s rights and governance, seeks the services of an experienced individual to serve as a field officer for its gender justice and local government programme in South Africa. The main task of the incumbent, who will be based in Johannesburg, will be to work with local councils, partners and stakeholders to develop gender and gender violence (GBV) action plans for local councils as well as providing backstopping and support to these councils.
This book attempts to scrutinize the relationship between criminal justice system and those of non-punitive approaches based on the principle of complementarity and discuss future ways in order to build a bridge across them. Dealing with atrocities many countries in the world have started to look more for mechanisms which deal with acknowledgment, forgiveness and reparation or/and reconciliation.
In this week's roundup of emerging powers news, Chinese banks spur global economic recovery, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi tours Africa, and South Africa looks at ways of cutting carbon emissions.
The World Bank, the IMF and the Ethiopian regime annual development reports have highlighted on Ethiopia’s higher GDP growth rate over the past 10 years, yet the UN development index and other indices [Misery Index] that measure the well-being of people have declined both absolutely and relative to many other African countries. The paradox of acute poverty and declining well-being of Ethiopians is found in various parts of the country and is pervasive across demographic groups.
MA in international labour and trade union studies
Start: October 2010
Full-time (12 months) OR
Part-time (24 months)
Limited scholarships available
Medhine is an Ethiopian Asylum seeker; she spent more than a year in the Egyptian Prison for illegal entry to Egypt. During her one year of detention, she lost her young daughter, who was suffering from severe diarrhea and vomiting. EFRR handled this case and tried to release her through submitting several cases to the office of the High General Prosecutor and National Council for Human Rights asking for her release.
Index on Censorship is the UK’s leading organisation dedicated to the promotion of free expression worldwide. In March 2010, we will be holding our 10th Annual Freedom of Expression Awards and would like to invite you to submit nominations for the categories below. Please note that the deadline for nominations is 15th January 2010.
The 2009 was a year of darkness, death, displacement, detention and violence against journalists and the entire media fraternity in Somalia, according to the annual report unveiled by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).
The International Criminal Law Review invites submissions for its 2010 special issue entitled “Women and International Criminal Law,” to be guest-edited by Diane Marie Amann, University of California, Davis, School of Law; Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Temple University Beasley School of Law; and Beth Van Schaack, University of Santa Clara School of Law.