PAMBAZUKA NEWS 69
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 69
The military continued to surround key government buildings on the main Comoros island of Grande Comore on Monday as a power struggle for control of key ministries continued.
Amnesty International has called on authorities in Equatorial Guinea to retry fairly within a reasonable period of time or release the nearly 70 people who received unfair and heavy sentences last Sunday. The accused were sentenced on the sole basis of statements extracted under torture during detention while they were deprived of communication.
Obstruction of union work, intimidation, arrests and even deaths of strikers again characterised the very sombre picture of anti-union repression in Africa in 2001. Zimbabwe alone accounted for the three dead workers on the continent and for 223 of the 282 cases of injured trade unionists throughout the 37 African countries covered by the new ICFTU Survey.
Apartheid victims are to take legal steps against justice minister Penuell Maduna in a last-ditch effort to get access to the state's draft reparations policy. Shirley Gunn, chairperson of the Khulumani Victims Support Group's Western Cape branch said the action was decided on after several attempts to see the draft legislation, and to become involved in discussions on reparations, failed.
Heavy fighting broke out Monday between rival militiamen in the very fertile Middle Shabelle region of southern Somalia. The fighting is between the supporters of the interior minister of the transitional national government Dahir Dayah and those of warlord Mohamed Dhere controlling Jowhar town, the capital city of Middle Shabelle region.
Justice ministers and Supreme Court presidents from the Economic Community of Central African States have signed the "Yaounde Declaration", in which they pledge to promote human rights in their respective countries. Signed at the end of a two-day meeting in Yaounde, Cameroon, the declaration calls on each country to prioritise the promotion and respect for human rights.
Two global human rights watchdogs, Amnesty International (AI) and Survival have protested the arrest of four activists of the Mbororo ethnic group in Cameroon's North West province, and launched a campaign for their release. All the four suffered various types of torture, AI and Survival said, adding that the arrests were part of human rights abuses against the Mbororo Fulani of the North West Province.
The Gambian government has described as "untrue and unfounded" reports by Guinea-Bissau's president, Kumba Yala, that the Gambia was involved in two reported plots to overthrow the Bissau government.
Nestled among lush fields of bananas and cooing wood pigeons, Ntarama's church bears witness to a horrific past that Rwanda will confront afresh in the months and years to come. In the hope of emptying overflowing cells, the government on Tuesday announced the relaunch of a traditional form of justice, aimed at letting ordinary Rwandans decide the fate of those who frenziedly shed blood throughout the land.
African leaders plan to propose a convention to the international community under which money stolen by corrupt leaders is returned to the continent, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. "We are working to get an international convention by which money stolen by corrupt African leaders and stashed abroad is repatriated," Obasanjo told members of civil society organisations gathered in Addis Ababa for a conference under the aegis of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
The United States will assist Angola's national reconciliation process, but the oil-rich African country must do more to reform its economy and fight corruption, a senior US official says. "As Angola faces the simultaneous transitions from war to peace and from a war-constrained polity to a more open political system, it will have to address pressing economic and social issues," Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner told a congressional panel.
Tunisia's recent crackdown on cyber-dissidents has taken an ominous turn with the arrest and detention of journalist Zouhair Yahyaoui, founder and editor of the online news site TUNeZINE.
Somali Telecom's Ed Resor has an interesting story to tell. He helped the Eritreans get international connectivity at the end of the war with Ethiopia and created similar telecomms links for Somalia. He's also recently invested in the Congo (DRC). It sounds like he always invests in former war zones but he assured us in this interview in New York that he's looking for places where people think it can't be done because they are either too small or too difficult.
UN officials warn many of the world's poorest countries will remain economically backward unless they are "wired" for information and communication technology. Digital experts, communications specialists and government representatives gathered in New York Monday to discuss ways of bridging the digital gap between rich and developing nations.
The issue of control over the .za domain space may be hogging the limelight, but the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Bill which triggered the dispute contains other provisions more worrying to many IT experts.
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the African superplume - a massive, hot upwelling of rock beneath southern Africa - has edges that are sharp and distinct, not diffuse and blurred as previously thought. Such sharp, lateral boundaries have never been found in the Earth's mantle before, and they challenge scientists' understanding of the interior. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has agreed to give Zanzibar 385,000 US dollars to finance a good governance programme in the Isles which will also involve provision of expert advice on the campaign against corruption.
South Africa will be unable to overcome the obstacles restricting foreign investment into the country if it does not acknowledge their existence, consultant and former special investigating unit head Willem Heath says. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Institute of Directors' Western Cape branch, Heath said there was a lack of political will to tackle issues such as corruption, which he estimated to involve about R10bn a year in SA.
A new opposition political party was launched Sunday in Malawi, and its founders - a group of businessmen, intellectuals, and civil rights activists - said it aimed to squash corruption in this southern African country. The new party, Malawi Forum for Unity and Development, was formed to combat what party spokesman Levsion Ganzia described as government corruption, food insecurity, and political intimidation.
Economic pressures and sophisticated criminals have been responsible for the increase in cases of fraud in East Africa, a new survey indicates.
When talking about information and communication technologies (ICTs) being used to achieve sustainable development in African countries, what normally comes to mind is the telecommunications and utility service sectors. Charlotte Kawesa describes how the Ugandan government, with support from IICD, is incorporating ICTs in teacher training.
The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2002 is the fourth in a series of conferences designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. Presenters are leaders in their respective fields, representing industrial, academic and government communities. Leading researchers present their current work, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today's technology fields.
A group of five leading global public health organisations have launched a nationwide anti-measles campaign in Kenya, to be conducted from 17 to 23 June, through vaccinations targeting some 14 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years, who constitute up to 40 percent of the country's population.
Anti-rape volunteers in Mpumalanga gave health MEC Sibongile Manana a pat on the back this week for the first time in two tense years. The MEC announced on Thursday that the department was finally preparing to dispense antiretroviral drugs to all of the province's 27 hospitals, and that care rooms would be set aside for emergency help for rape survivors.
In most of the mud-brick houses perched above the starkly beautiful gorges of the Tugela River, someone is dying. In one house, a truck driver stretches his bony legs on a mattress; he has come home from Johannesburg to die. Just down the dirt road, a thin young man lives with his mother and sister in a single room. They own nothing, not even a chicken. The young man has not yet told his sister that he has AIDS. This is the province of KwaZulu-Natal, epicenter of South Africa's epidemic, where HIV positive rates are estimated at more than 30 percent.
Reduction of provider downtime (time absent from the clinic, time spent unoccupied, or time not otherwise used productively) at family planning clinics in the developing world could increase capacity to provide services with a minimal rise in costs. Poorly paid providers, however, may require financial incentives to increase their workload.
UNICEF and Uganda are expanding a project under which pregnant women with HIV receive drugs preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus, New Vision reports. The project is to become part of routine prenatal care across Uganda, with all women attending prenatal clinics receiving counseling, testing and, if they are found to have HIV, free drug doses.
Of 1,851 women interviewed in three Nigerian hospitals, 45% were circumcised. Circumcised women had significantly higher risks of tearing and stillbirths when all pregnancies were analyzed.
The news that young people in the Western Cape are not practising safe sex, sending infection rates spiralling in their age group, is a challenge a group of young men in Gugulethu are preparing to face head-on. The group believes their best hope of contributing to an end to the HIV pandemic is for men to stand together as examples of how "real men" behave in a healthy community.
Nearly half of the estimated 32 million adults living with HIV worldwide are women of childbearing age. Mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) during pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding is the primary source of HIV infection among young children. 1600 new infections occur each day, mostly in developing countries. What is the best way to reduce MTCT in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where breastfeeding is central to infant health?
Governments in developing countries should ensure access to reproductive health supplies and strengthen policies to facilitate access to such supplies, a statement from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Thursday.
The East African region joined the rest of the world in marking World Day Against Child Labour for the first time last Wednesday, but the region remains far from meeting targets aimed at reducing child labour and exploitation, and at ensuring that all its children have access to education.
At least 5,7-million children in South Africa, roughly a third of those under 18, would have lost one or both parents from Aids by 2015 unless there were major interventions, the Medical Research Council (MRC) has warned.
The head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has said that the continent is still "failing" its children. African governments had "not lived up to our undertakings" after setting up a continent-wide charter to protect children, OAU Secretary-General Amara Essy said on Sunday.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has urged the Nigerian government to take steps to domesticate international conventions on children's rights and create the proper environment to protect those rights.
A campaign to vaccinate some 3.9 million Burundian children against measles and polio has been launched, with UN agencies appealing to parties at war in the country to observe "days of tranquillity" to ensure health workers can conduct their work in safety, UNICEF announced.
Almost half of Africans have no access to clean running water, an international conference in Addis Ababa heard last week. Some 300 million people on the continent also have no access to sanitation facilities, a conference held by the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) was told. It means that millions of people are at risk from serious diseases and infections such as cholera and dysentery.
An Ethiopian health official has disclosed that about 250,000 Ethiopian children are living with the HIV/AIDS due to mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the virus.
Refugees International (RI) is sending a mission to the United Nations mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) to gain an understanding of why it "succeeded and analyze the implications of its success for other missions", RI reported on Monday. "RI embarked on this mission because of its concern about the refugee outflow from Liberia and the lack of stability in the region. These countries are most affected by the refugee outflow. Liberia was not chosen because of the security situation and difficulties in access," an official of RI in Washington told IRIN.
The UN agency for refugees, UNHCR, has planned a series of activities in Sierra Leone to celebrate this year's world refugee day, the agency reported in a statement. The activities are scheduled for 20-27 June, it said.
Thousands of Somali refugees will be moved from camps in north eastern Kenya to Kakuma, near the Sudanese border. The movement of 11,860 refugees from Ifo, Dagahley and Hagardera camps on the border with Somalia will be the largest movement of refugees inside Kenya in a decade. The camps are run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The worldwide campaign for the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana, received a publicity boost on the sidelines of an international diamond conference in Canada on Monday. Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG) demonstrated outside the World Diamond Conference because they believe the real reason the Basarwa are being removed is because of the government's mining interest in the reserve.
Angola's peace process has spurred preparations for the eventual return of 470,000 Angolan refugees sheltering in neighbouring countries. The UN refugee agency's (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane, toured Angola and Zambia last week to assess the conditions for the repatriation of people forced from their homes by close to three decades of civil war.
More than 85,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been resettled in their home villages in Nigeria's central region in the past two months, Red Cross officials said on Tuesday. The IDPs, mostly of the Tiv ethnic group, had fled ethnic and communal clashes that wracked the states of Nasarawa, Plateau, Taraba and Benue between June and November 2001.
A behind the scenes deal between senators has derailed an opposition attempt to force President Olusegun Obasanjo to give details of the whereabouts of millions of dollars of public funds.
Kenya's political opposition has reacted furiously to a proposal by the country's ruling party to extend the term of President Daniel arap Moi and the current parliament by up a year. Opposition leaders threatened to call for mass protests if the government party tried to push through the change.
Nelson Mandela has met a controversial South African poet and song writer whose latest song has been branded "racism and hate speech". After meeting the former president, Mbongeni Ngema said the debate he had hoped to raise had gone the wrong way and he would not object if the song was banned from sale.
About 2.3 million Zambians are in need of food aid, a Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) joint assessment has found.
Scientists in Australia and Canada say that pollution from western countries may have caused the droughts which ravaged Africa's Sahel region in the 1970s and 1980s. Other Sahelian countries, from Senegal in the west stretching east to the Red Sea, were also devastated by the lack of rain and the southwards spread of the Sahara desert. The research says that sulphur dioxide from factories in Europe and the United States has cooled the Northern Hemisphere, driving the tropical rain belt south away from the Sahel.
The controversy over genetically engineered crops is disrupting U.S. efforts to provide food aid to starving people. The government of Zimbabwe and citizens groups in Bolivia, Guatemala and Nicaragua are resisting U.S. supplied foods that contain transgenic corn, or maize.
A three-day conference on the protection and development of the coastal and marine environment in sub-Saharan Africa opened in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Monday.
Over the next 20 years some 60 million people in northern Africa are expected to leave the Sahelian region if desertification there is not halted, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said. June 17 is the day set aside each year by the UN as World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, twin problems that must be solved if world hunger is to be relieved, Annan said.
The South African presidency has dismissed reports that Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi believed President Thabo Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development was a project of former colonialists and racists. Rumours that South Africa is involved in talks about a possible arms deal with Libya have also been played down.
"What are we going to do about the United States?" It's a blunt question for a UN diplomat, but it was on the minds, the lips, and in some cases the T-shirts, of many of the thousands of delegates who recently gathered in Bali for last preparatory meeting before the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Johannesburg in late August. Kenny Bruno was at the Bali "Prepcom" and says despite the many roadblocks erected by Washington, many delegates are still optimistic that "another UN is possible."
With only 69 days to go before the start of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, concern is mounting over whether heads of state from several key industrialised nations will attend the event.
Traditional healers and South African hunter-gatherers have long known that the root of the plant Pelargonium reniforme can cure stomach ailments. But the unsustainable and indiscriminate removal of indigenous plants, such as Pelargonium, and the export of these plants abroad, is threatening their survival. New laws are needed to protect traditional knowledge and indigenous plants in South Africa — and to allow Africa to harness its biodiversity for Africa.
The recent warning that six million Zimbabweans face hunger could be the final straw for the country, already reeling from high inflation, daily food shortages and political instability. A regional food assessment puts almost half of Zimbabwe's population at risk of having no food mainly because of a drought and the country's land reform programme.
Prepared by legal scholars under the auspices of the International Programme on Reproductive and Sexual Health Law at the University of Toronto, this 193-page manual aims to facilitate use of Africa's human rights system to promote and protect reproductive and sexual health.
Activists from developing countries are seeking 1 million signatures for a petition affirming a globalization that puts people over profits to be given to world leaders at the Johannesburg Summit in August.
The transfer of small arms from developed to developing countries fuels conflict, undermines democracy, worsens human rights, and hinders development, says this sign-on letter urging the G-8 to control arms peddlars.
Chapter 2 will soon provide a useful information pack on Advocacy and Lobbying Strategies for Campaigns to assist civil society with their activities.
Visit http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide for a virtual exhibition of artwork by the Ghanian sculptor Kofi Setordji. Accra based Setordji worked two and half years on this work of art, which consists of about 300 pieces. Setordji made a travelling monument from wood, metal, clay, waste materials and paint, that consists of a number of sculpture groups and objects. The artwork, that weighs more than a ton, depicts the victims, refugees, politicians, judges and eyewitnesses. The directness of the imagery speaks to the conscience of the viewer. Rows of numbered terracotta faces painfully depict the anonymity of the thousands of victims: the monument was created in memory of the more than 800,000 direct and indirect victims.
Losing control in the media arena as a result of activist pressure has become a public relations nightmare for the modern multinational enterprise. Shell's Brent Spar fiasco is one well-known example, when the Greenpeace campaign against sinking that former drill platform achieved its goals. Monsanto's gross underestimation of the European resistance against the introduction of genetically engineered products is another. Today, as more companies shift to being all about brand meaning and image, the more vulnerable they are to attacks on that image. At the same time, corporations are becoming as powerful as governments. Battling Big Business reveals how corporate giants attempt to control their 'enemies' and how groups and individuals can fight back.
WOUGNET has obtained two spots in a web design course to be conducted July
15-21, 2002 in Kampala. The training is to be conducted by OneWorld Africa - the OneWorld center in Africa. OneWorld is an international non-governmental, non profit making media NGO whose mission is to harness the democratic potential of the internet to promote human rights and sustainable development.
SciDev.Net is holding a four-day workshop in Entebbe, Uganda on 29 September to 3 October on Science Communication for Sustainable Development. It will bring together a group of scientists, public relations officers, print and radio/TV journalists along with professionals from academies of science, government departments, science and technology policy institutions and non-governmental organisations. Participants will be mostly from the eastern African region and will explore how capacity for science communication can be enhanced in the region.
Talks aimed at finding a lasting solution to the 19-year conflict between the Sudan government and rebels opened in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Monday with both parties expressing commitment to a ceasefire agreement. The talks are being held under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional body which groups Kenya, Uganda, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.
Madagascar's Marc Ravalomanana formed a new government on Tuesday but excluded allies of his arch rival only days after saying he planned a national unity administration. There was no immediate explanation for the apparent about-turn and Ravalomanana's officials gave reporters in the capital Antananarivo the new list of ministers without comment.
Liberian rebels Tuesday raided a town close to the country's capital Monrovia and killed some civilians, according to reports reaching here. The reports said the fighting cropped up in the market town of Gba, some 40 kilometers northwest of the capital, when rebel fighters from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) encountered the government troops there.
The government of Sudan has agreed to an extension of the local ceasefire agreement in the Nuba Mountains region of south-central Sudan from Thursday, and the rebel SPLM/A is set to follow suit, but there are still problems with its scope and implementation.
The government of Uganda and the rebel Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF-II) signed a formal ceasefire agreement in Kuru sub-county, Yumbe District, northwestern Uganda on Saturday, with the aim of paving the way for political dialogue in the West Nile region.
Corruption has been blamed for the Nairobi City Council's Sh20 billion debt. Mayor Dick Waweru said the worst hit departments were the water and rates sections, where the council was losing millions of shillings monthly due to non-payment of bills by the public, who collude with council staff.
Concerns about lack of financial transparency are resurfacing in Nigeria. The senate yesterday voted to debate in secret allegations that the government mismanaged finances, including almost $100m (ý68.4m) of stolen money recovered from the family of General Sani Abacha, the late dictator.
The South African government has relented, and some say completely reversed itself, with an unexpected April announcement that it would make anti-retroviral drugs available for rape survivors. The government's U-turn on drugs has been widely applauded inside and outside of South Africa. But the Director-General of Health, Dr. Ayanda Ntsaluba, says the government isn't so much changing course as moving to where the evidence takes it.
The incoming leader of the world's most powerful trade body wants to introduce tough rules to clamp down on any lobbying by multinationals aimed at influencing the world trading system. The proposal from the World Trade Organisation's director-general designate, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, has shocked international governments and multinational firms, which have mounted a campaign against the plans.
The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is a product of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations (1986-94). The AoA provides the rules governing international agricultural trade and, by extension, production. It bans the use of border measures other than tariffs, and it puts tariffs on a schedule of phased reduction. Under the AoA, domestic support programs are categorized as either acceptable or unacceptable, with the latter also scheduled for reduction, and export subsidies, while effectively legalized by the agreement, have also been disciplined and slated for reduction. The content of the AoA reflects the shared agenda of the U.S. negotiating team and the non-European Union (EU) grain exporting countries (known as the Cairns Group) to push for as much liberalization of agriculture as possible.
HEALTH, AGRICULTURE, ENVIRONMENT, DEMOCRACY, EDUCATION...All of these topics can be found in the current issue of DEC Express - a free e-publication that provides access to 60 to 100 of the latest USAID Reports, free Document Downloads and Email Delivery every 2 weeks.
While many Tanzanians marked World Environment Day on 5 June with localised tree-planting and cleanups, environmental activists have drawn attention to what they say is a weak legal and institutional framework for environmental management and protection in the country.
Stuart Williams is a leading British conservationist spearheading the fight to save two of Ethiopia's rarest animals, the Ethiopian Wolf and the Grevy Zebra, both of which face imminent extinction. Williams, who lives in the Bale Mountains, speaks of the importance of Ethiopia's wildlife, the role of its national and protected parks, and how sustainable development within the country is intertwined with conservation efforts.
Kenya launched a countrywide measles vaccination campaign on Monday in what is considered the first major step towards eradicating the highly contagious childhood disease, which kills an estimated 18,000 children a year in the country.
Emerging from three decades of civil war, Angola is up against an HIV/AIDS crisis largely exacerbated by the conflict, health experts and aids agencies point out. "The pandemic is spreading fast, and in some cases threatens whole communities in all regions of Angola," says Haturo Silva, emergency and humanitarian director of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The National Federation of People with Disabilities is an umbrella organisation working to support and strengthen local disability organisations. We are looking to recruit a candidate from the Southern Africa region. The adviser will work with building and developing the management and organisational capacity of the Secretariat to work effectively as an effective national support organisation, and provide advice on strengthening its fundraising capabilities. You should be experienced in an organisational development role, and have skills in training, personnel management, fundraising and strategy development. The ability to transfer and adapt skills and knowledge to the context is essential. Due to the nature of this post CIIR is looking to recruit a person from the Southern Africa region who has gained a range of international development experience in the region or beyond.
VSO is a leading international development charity that works through volunteers. We are looking for a suitably qualified person to co-ordinate and strengthen the financial information systems used in VSO's overseas programme management.
The Ministry of Education has allocated over Sh 540 million for the school bursary scheme, with a strong focus on promoting girl-child education. The Permanent Secretary, Mr Japheth Kiptoon, said a policy has been adopted to ensure that all girls attend school. "All Provincial and District Education Officers have strict instructions to have all disadvantaged girls taken to classrooms," said Kiptoon.
Rural women produce more than three-quarters of the world's food and play a crucial role in fighting the 'evil twins' of poverty and hunger, says Mpumalanga premier Ndaweni Mahlangu. Speaking at a conference to promote women's access to land in the province, Mahlangu said land redistribution urgently needed to be fast tracked so that women could participate in mainstream farming.
LOCAL governments have been urged to ensure integration of gender concerns into their budgeting and planning, for effective utilisation of the Local Government Development Program (LGDP) funds.
With women contributing 55 per cent of HIV positive adults, gender inequality has become a key variable in the incidence of HIV and AIDS.
The World Food Summit: Five Years Later held from June 10 to 13 in Rome, Italy has been criticized for giving the same speeches as five years ago. Most wealthy nations sent low-level delegations. Marked by calls from the United States to support biotech research, activists feared that the Summit took a leap backward in the fight against hunger. In spite of shortcomings, however, side event discussions were noteworthy for continually recognizing women's contributions and strategic importance in world food production and security.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has developed strategies to be implemented in its campaign for the protection of the rights and privileges of the West African child.
Universities have been told to do research on the low number of girls at all levels of education and recommend remedies to the government. It was not enough to sit back and complain that only a small percentage of female students managed to make it beyond secondary school, says educationist Eddah Gachukia.
Governments in East Africa have been told to facilitate the inclusion of more women in politics to enhance their participation in governance. An MP in the East Africa Assembly, MP Betty Amongi of Uganda, said her country was ahead of Kenya and Tanzania in that respect. It had embraced a scheme that ensured many women made it to Parliament.
NO fewer than 18 persons have been killed in a violent clash between members of two rival secret cults in the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka. People believed to be secret cult members stormed the university in three vehicles including a Mercedes Benz car and started shooting sporadically at students within the Faculty of Engineering complex.
Nigeria is among five countries in the world with the largest number of children not in school, a World Bank statement, released in Abidjan, has said. The statement said that the five countries accounted for 50 million of the estimated worldwide total of 113 million children out of school and that the World Bank and donors would collaborate with them to address areas that needed to be resolved for them to be eligible for Education For All (EFA) grant financing support.
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You are invited to visit a new online exhibition entitled: Women Emerging: A Tribute to Uganda. East African fine artists present works having significance to the topic of Women's Empowerment, specifically, the Uganda Women's Movement. Accompanying each image, participating artists explain and interpret visual elements within their work relating to impacts, changes, and developments for women, both personal and societal, in East Africa and beyond. Over a dozen new original artworks were created specifically for this event by such artists as Lilian Nabulime (Uganda), Yvonne Muinde (Kenya), David Kibuuka (Uganda), and Stella Atai (Uganda). Visiting this page will place you among the first to view them.
Will conduct rapid assessments in 4 states in Nigeria (in the NW, NE, SW, and SE zones), interacting with consumers, government and its regulatory agencies, the food industry, and key informers at the grassroots.
Will serve as Regional Advisor for developing, planning and coordination of the regional emergency preparedness and emergency relief programme.
Nakuru, the fast growing capital of the Rift Valley Province, Kenya, is a good example of a town which serves as an urban centre for a predominantly rural area. It demonstrates rural-urban linkages and shows the need for ecological protection of its own natural environment. The Localising Agenda 21 programme promotes practical measures to improve urban governance, combining the use of strategic structure plans with urban pacts to create a process of vision, action and communication.
The Kumasi peri-urban area is characterised by high rates of conversion of agricultural land to private housing. Kumasi, Ghana, is also situated across a major drainage divide, resulting in a range of water quality and supply problems. Collaborative DFID-funded research by Royal Holloway, University of London, with government and NGO partners in Ghana, aims to develop and pilot a sustainable co-management approach to peri-urban watersheds.
Peri-urban areas in Southern and East Africa are characterised by: rapid change and spiraling socio-economic polarisation; divergent claims, competing interests and identities; and conflicts, disputes and tensions concerning the access, control and use of land resources. Research by South Bank University and African partners in the Urban and Peri-Urban Research Network (Peri-NET), shows that land resource based conflicts are critically important in peri-urban transformations – whether in Kampala, Lusaka, Nairobi, Durban or Johannesburg.
President Levy Mwanawasa's decision to scrap cost sharing in Zambian schools and re-introduce free education has run into controversy over whether the government can afford adequate levels of funding to the country's neglected schools.