Pambazuka News 521: African awakenings: The spread of resistance

On 3 March 2011, hundreds of women gathered to protest peacefully in Cote d’Ivoire to end the political stalemate and the worsening security situation. The Ivorian women took to the streets of Abidjan to put pressure on their leaders to end the stalemate and allow peace to prevail. Seven unarmed women protestors were killed in the process by forces loyal to former president Laurent Koudou Gbagbo.

Armed with a few Kodak Zi8 cameras, 6 HTC Wildfire mobile phones, energy, expertise in training citizen journalists, Small World News is working to share stories from Libya with the larger world. Small World News is on the ground in Benghazi training Libyans to capture and tell video stories of events in this volatile region. Along the way, the team has also captured footage that no other main stream media outlet has been able to get.

Publishing US diplomatic cables helped shape uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has said. The computer expert, who infuriated the US government by publishing thousands of the secret cables, said the leaks may have persuaded some authoritarian regimes that they could not rely on US support if military force was used on protesters.

President Kibaki told the United States Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Fraser at the height of post election violence that he won the disputed 2007 elections squarely. Kibaki maintained he had won the December 2007 elections fairly and since the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya had declared him winner of the presidential elections, only the courts could make him relinquish power in case they ruled otherwise. According to a diplomatic cable dated 29 January 2008 and now released by ...read more

Heavy fighting between rebels and the south Sudanese army in the oil-producing states of Unity and Upper Nile, has left at least 70 people dead, according to an army spokesman. At least 30 soldiers and 11 rebels died in clashes that broke out on Thursday morning in Mayom county, in Unity state, Philip Aguer, a spokesman for the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), said.

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