Women’s Day is a day when we commemorate a day on which 56 000 ordinary South African women set out on an extraordinary mission. They rose up and challenged the then Apartheid government on the issue of pass laws. Yes, their collective story was heard but what about the stories of those ordinary South African women who were willing to sacrifice their own freedom for the freedom of our country. As part of our Women’s day celebrations, the Southern African Media and Gender Institute intends to publish a newsletter entitled ‘Celebrating Herstory.”

Investors in farmland are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, according to the draft of a report by the World Bank. “Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.

This report on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria is part of a broader project on Modelling Success : Governance and Institution Building in West Africa, being implemented by the Consortium for Development Partnerships (CDP), a community of institutions dedicated to collaborative policy-oriented research and capacity-building in North America, Europe and West Africa. The first phase of the project was jointly coordinated by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Programme of African Studies (PAS), Northwestern University, USA (2004-2008).

Second Storymoja Writing for Children Workshop will start on 31st July, 2010. We will meet for 3 hours on Saturdays, 10am-1pm, and for 2 hours on Mondays from 6pm – 8pm. Although the skill acquired will apply to all fiction-writing, the workshop will concentrate on developing series-books for the 10-14 year age range.

Since the second half of the 1970s, and in particular since the first major world conference on water (organized in 1977 by the United Nations at Mar del Plata, Argentina), world leaders have been aware of the scale of the problems concerning access to water of sufficient quantity and quality, and of the risks associated with growing shortages and degradation of the supply. The Mar del Plata conference set out the basic facts and made water one of the top issues on the international political agenda. And yet the ‘water crisis’ has continued to worsen

117 African Health, Social Development, Gender Based, Human Rights Organisations, and Trade Unions have written to the July 2010 15th African Union Summit of Heads of State holding in Uganda - urging governments to uphold, improve and urgently implement African and global health and social development financing commitments.

Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition joins Women First (the Ugandan Women’s Rights Coalition to welcome and congratulate the Republic of Uganda for depositing its instrument of ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa at the opening of the 17th Ordinary Session of the Executive Council of the African Union, at Munyonyo, Uganda, 22 July 2010. Uganda becomes the 28th member state of the African Union and the third East African Community Member to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women after Rwanda and Tanzania.

At a local maternity clinic in one of Bulawayo’s high density suburbs, midwives are at pains to explain to a pregnant 15-year-old girl why she must be tested for HIV before she gives birth. But the teenager, who lightly beats her chest in an effort to pacify what seems like a painful cough, will not hear of it. She is afraid that her worst fears will be confirmed as she already suspects she could be HIV-positive.

"Africa is the only continent where the majority of children start school using a foreign language. Across Africa the idea persists that the international languages of wider communication (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish) are the only means for upward economic mobility. .. [But] New research findings are increasingly pointing to the negative consequences of these policies ... We recommend that policy and practice in Africa nurture multilingualism; primarily a mother-tongue-based one with an appropriate and required space for international languages of wider communication." - Adama Ouane, Director, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning

Suddenly, after 20 years of relative neglect, African agriculture is a hot topic, with a substantial growth in production and a new interest among major donors in funding the sector. That is the message emerging from a series of seminars now taking place in London looking at the constraints and opportunities facing Africa’s farmers.

On 21 July 2010 Swazi traditional authorities threatened Swazi journalists with death if they continued to write stories considered by the authorities as undermining the country's leadership and system of government. The death warning came from Prince Mahlaba, brother to King Mswati III and also a member of the King's advisory council, the Swazi National Council Standing Committee (SNC), which is a highly influential body in Swazi politics.

MS Action Aid Denmark
Volunteer opportunity
Application deadline: August 30 2010

High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has been in Kinshasa as part of a three-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo to draw attention to the plight of Congo's displaced people and the need to ensure humanitarian access to them. Guterres who travelled to Equateur province in western DRC, said that his agency was getting ready to re-establish a presence in the region to help the internally displaced as well as prepare for the return of refugees.

In just ten years the HIV/Aids infection rate in South Africa has jumped from one per cent of the population to one-third. Seventy per cent of HIV patients are also infected with tuberculosis, which is now the biggest cause of natural death in the country. But doctors say better treatment and education could wipe out the completely curable infection altogether. Al Jazeera's Rosie Garthwaite reports from Khayelitsha township.

In Niger 90% of the population depend on Agriculture. But with last year’s rain failure, the country is facing a catastrophic food crisis. Concern Worldwide, an international aid agency, is tackling the crisis by providing drought resistant seeds, distributing cash through mobile phone technology and using local food markets to provide aid. All this makes for a unique approach towards humanitarian aid.

With women having achieved little in terms of representation in decision-making positions in Zambia, a national women’s lobby group is hoping to change this in the 2011 general elections. While Zambia's electoral process may have built-in obstacles that hinder the meaningful participation of women as candidates, the Zambia National Women’s Lobby Group (ZNWL) wants to change this through a campaign dubbed "50 percent of women and men in leadership for equitable development."

The third National internet Governance forum was held in Kampala on 14th/July/2010 at Imperial Royale Hotel. It was organized by I-network, CIPESSA and WOUGNET in collaboration with Uganda Communications Commission(UCC) and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoICT). Its purpose was to prepare for the forthcoming East African Internet Governance forum scheduled for 11th to 13th August 2010.

It is both preventable and treatable, but obstetric fistula plagues the lives of thousands of women in Kenya every year, leaving them incontinent and ostracized. Here are some reasons why: Information deficit
Lack of reproductive health education means there is widespread ignorance of the basic facts about fistula - a tear in the birth canal caused by prolonged obstructed labour, or by sexual abuse, surgical trauma, gynaecological cancers and related radiotherapy treatment. According to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), there are 3,000 new cases per year in Kenya, with about one to two fistulas per 1,000 deliveries.

Colleagues of a radio journalist who was attacked by unknown assailants on 16 July 2010 are suspecting the military of being behind the attack. "Mansaré must have been a victim of an action carried out by persons hostile to his reports possibly, it is a settlement of scores," according to a colleague of Mansaré who spoke to the Media Foundation for West Africa's (MFWA) correspondent in Guinea on condition of anonymity.

From 17 to 19 July 2010 in Uganda, more than 120 delegates from across the continent, joined by President of Uganda Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and other participants, attended the African Youth Forum (AYF) in the city of Entebbe, near Kampala, the capital. The Forum is the first-ever official gathering of young people in conjunction with the 15th African Union Summit, taking place 25–27 July in the capital.