Long-serving Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is keeping his country and the world guessing about whether he will bid for re-election in 2012 in Africa's No. 2 oil producer. Speculation over Dos Santos' intentions - under the country's new 2010 constitution he could remain in power until 2022 - has reached fever pitch among analysts, investors and oil companies watching one of Africa's fastest-growing economies.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

It would be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than Eskinder Nega. The veteran Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven times by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's government over the past two decades, and was put back in jail on 14 September 2011, after he published a column calling for the government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end torture in prisons. Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if convicted could face the death sentence. He's not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over the past decade than any other country in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

WACSI on behalf of African Security and Governance Project Members, supported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Open Society Institute (OSI), is conducting a survey to collate views on the need and practicality of a Pan-African Capacity Building Network of CSOs, Networks and Research Institutions working in security sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. The information from the survey will be used to decide whether there is a need and relevance for the creation of a Pan-African Capacity Building Network of CSOs working in the security sector. Kindly see the link to the survey in English and French. Complete all columns of the questionnaire to support the initiative.

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There is now substantial evidence of the role of financial liberalisation in triggering financial crises, and on how these crises particularly affect the poor. Latin America is a clear example of a region that in the 1980s and 1990s, under the conditionality and advice of the World Bank and the IMF, embraced financial liberalisation, suffered several financial crises and is now increasingly relying on different forms of regulation of inflows and outflows. Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica are among the countries that have recently implemented capital account regulations. This report reviews the evidence available on the impact of the measures implemented in these countries.

Senegal's Appeals Court has on a technicality rejected a request by Belgium to extradite former Chadian ex-President Hissene Habré. Handing down its ruling following days of interrogation of the request, the court Wednesday said that there were 'technicalities in the format', further arguing that there was no annex of the original application for arrest and detention by Belgium. Belgium has sought to extradite Mr Habré after it charged him with crimes against humanity and torture during his term in power.

Two of the seven men arrested last Thursday, following skirmishes between police and vendors in central Harare the day before, were allegedly tortured to confess their roles in attacking a police officer. Barnabas Mwanaka and Kudakwashe Usavi were among the first group of three to be picked up by the police in a morning raid at Harvest House on Thursday. The MDC-T said Mwanaka is their Youth Assembly secretary for Mbare district.

The Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU), the Mawubuye Land Rights Forum, the Trust for Community Outreach and Education, and the Democratic Left Front (DLF) launched the Speak-Out Campaign on the 27th of November 2011 at a mass meeting in Robertson (some 2 hours from Cape Town). Farm workers and farm dwellers spoke of the inhumane living and working conditions that they face each and every day. They do backbreaking work to produce food for everybody yet they are forced to work under unsafe and unhealthy conditions, to drink dirty water, live without electricity, live with threats of evictions, to live on poverty wages and to suffer abuse at the hands of the bosses. The Speak-Out Campaign aims to bring an end to the oppression and exploitation of farm workers and farm dwellers by coming together to build solidarity, strength and hope amongst the rural working class.

Africa saw good economic results in 2011 with average growth of between 5.5 per cent and 6 per cent, African Union (AU) commission chairperson Jean Ping said on a visit to Libya. 'Africa progressed on average between five and a half and 6 per cent. We are nearly at 6 per cent, and seven countries are between seven and 11 per cent,' he said on his first trip to Tripoli since Muammar Gaddafi's fall.

Lecturers in Malawi have resolved to return to work to end nearly a year of academic freedom protests during a long-running impasse with the government. But with tensions and mistrust persisting, lecturers have been firm about setting out the conditions under which they will resume classes. In an exclusive interview with University World News, the spokesperson of the Chancellor College Academic Staff Union, Jessie Kabwila, 'We are in talks with lawyers of opponents of academic freedom. They are still trying to intimidate and silence us but we are reminding them every day that this is a principle [and that] we have no problem reverting to the academic freedom impasse mode at any time and for longer than 260 days.'

The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that are being negotiated by the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries on one hand and the European Union on the other are essentially Free Trade Areas covering trade in goods, services, trade related areas and other non trade issues. This report looks into the effects EPAs will have on the countries in Southern Africa, focussing on the effects on the production and value chain of three products; sugar, grapes and cotton.

A new Institute of Development Studies short film examines how the British media portray poverty in developing countries. 'Famine, War and Corruption: The British Media’s Portrayal of the Global South' features interviews with journalists and filmmakers, including Jon Snow (journalist and news presenter, ITN), Caroline Nursey (director, BBC Media Action) and Richard Kavuma (journalist, The Observer, Uganda).

The first day of trial for the two explosives suspects, Maxwell Thanduk’khanya Dlamini and Musa Ngubeni began 12 January amid much drama. This was after police and political activists were engaged in a showdown after the latter were ordered out of the courtroom for being inappropriately dressed. President of the banned People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) Mario Masuku, and political activist Mphandlana Shongwe then gave over 10 police officers a tongue-lashing at the Magistrates Court.

On 8 January 1912, South African intellectuals - including pioneering black newspaper publishers Pixley ka Isaka Seme, editor of Abantu-Batho, and John Langalibalele Dube, editor of Ilanga lase Natal - formed Africa's oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), in the Wesleyan Church in Bloemfontein. During centennial commemorations of this event, twitter users made the #ANC100 hash tag a global trend. The lively social media debate illustrated both the discomfort many Africans feel toward criticism of their leaders, and the role as scapegoat that the media is currently playing as the ANC struggles to hold onto a decisively positive legacy, says this Committee to Protect Journalists post.

Nigeria's president has announced that the government will subsidise fuel prices to immediately reduce the price to about $2.75 a gallon, amid a crippling nationwide strike over fuel prices in Africa's most populous country. Protests have seen tens of thousands march in cities across the nation. Soldiers barricaded the country's commercial capital of Lagos and the entrances to protest venues in the second-largest city of Kano. Jonathan's speech comes after his attempt to negotiate with labour unions failed late on Sunday night to avert the strike entering a sixth day.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take drastic action against governments of the most dangerous countries for media after it published its annual list of 106 journalists and media personnel killed in 2011. The Federation says 2011 was another bloody year for media and blames governments' failure to uphold their international obligations for the ongoing violence targeting media. In a letter to the UN Secretary General, the IFJ calls for effective implementation of international legal instruments to combat the prevailing culture of impunity for crimes against journalists.

Several events in the last two months have shown that Zimbabwe’s coalition government exists in name only and that Mugabe and his ZANU PF party are now blatantly running a parallel government. Towards the end of December Mugabe unilaterally promoted Three Infantry Brigade Commander Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba, to Major-General. Not only did Mugabe snub Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in making the promotions, but in June last year Nyikayaramba had told the ZANU PF controlled Herald newspaper that Tsvangirai was a 'national security threat rather than a political one', and suggested the military should step in to deal with him.

Zimbabwean exporters must scramble to find new markets or risk commercial peril after South Africa slapped an effective import ban on a raft of products in a bid to protect local producers. South Africa is Zimbabwe’s leading market, accounting for about 56 per cent of all exports with China and the United Arab Emirates coming a distant second at 6 per cent. However, under a deal agreed between the government, labour and business organisations, at least 75 per cent of all procurement in Africa’s largest economy must now come from local companies.

The Auditor-General’s audited results of government and provincial departments and public entities have painted a picture of huge amounts of public funds being misused by departments and public entities. More than R20 billion spent by national and provincial departments has been found to have been unauthorised, irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure.

Brazil, for decades a source of migrants to the United States and Europe, is now facing its own humanitarian challenge: applying the international solidarity it trumpets to the Haitians who are arriving in the thousands, in search of a better life. Drawn by the economic boom in Brazil, now the world's sixth largest economy, and the major infrastructure works in preparation for the 2014 football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games to be hosted by Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 Haitians have flocked to this country since the earthquake, according to the Institute of Migration and Human Rights.