On April 14, 2010 during the ongoing Parliament meeting in Dodoma, Hon. Damas P. Nakei, MP for Babati Rural asked a question in the House wanting to know the limitations on an MP to access public information held by Government and what type of information an MP might be denied. A Coalition comprising eleven Civil Society organisations (two from outside Tanzania) organized and held meetings and public hearings countrywide to collect people’s views. All along, it emerged that the public was not only interested in the freedom to access information but wanted this to be pronounced as a basic right – hence the notion of Right to Information in the discourse of the Coalition’s work.

In his Independence Day address, President Robert Mugabe spoke of the need for Zimbabweans to “foster an environment of tolerance and treating each other with dignity and respect irrespective of age, gender, race, ethnicity, tribe, political or religious affiliation." At the same time, four WOZA activists, Jenni Williams, Magodonga Mahlangu, Clara Manjengwa and Celina Madukani were spending their fourth day in the cold, dark, filthy cells of Harare Central Police Station.

The Katiba Sasa! Campaign is a civil society initiative aimed at ensuring that Kenya gets a new constitution. The National Civil Society Congress (NCSC) declares 2010 the Year of Transformation. The campaign was launched to ensure that Kenyans enact a new constitution to begin the process of transformation.

Application is open to all professional visual artists from all over the world who have been professionally active for at least the past 3 years (your resume/CV should reflect professional activities since 2007 or earlier).

The first-ever African Grandmothers' Gathering takes place on Mother's Day weekend in Manzini, Swaziland - and forty-three Canadian grandmothers will be there, representing thousands of women who form the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Since 2006, the campaign has raised more than seven million dollars to support African grandmothers who are parenting their orphaned grandchildren in the most challenging of circumstances.

This is a communiqué issued by members of civil society Participating in ‘Civil Society Experts Consultation on Maternal, Child and Infant Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Africa’ Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 17-18, 2010, organised by Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition (SOAWR), IPPF-Africa Region, Ipas Africa Alliance, Save the Children International, Abantu for Development, and the UN Millennium Campaign in collaboration with the AU Commission to assess progress in reducing maternal, child and infant mortality and implementation of the Continental Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health (Maputo Plan of Action 2007-10):

Almost four weeks have already passed since the six of the seven Saharawi human right activists, held at the Moroccan prison of Sale, began their open hunger strike. Their were arrested and detained, on 8 October 2010, on their return from a family visit to the Saharawi refugees camps in south West of Algeria. The Moroccan government intends to bring them before a military court on account of that trip.

The Zanzibar International Film Festival is the largest multi disciplinary art and cultural festival in Africa. Dedicated to the exhibition of films, music and Panorama, each year over 150 films made in Africa, Middle East, Europe, Latin America, USA and Asia are exhibited. Currently ZIFF is accepting applications for all African films and films from the Dhow Countries region - South East Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, The Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and the Indian Ocean Islands.

This 10 week Creative Writing course will look at various techniques and exercises to open up & improve writing writing skills, work with metaphor and imagery, create texts and narratives to given themes and word counts as well as free writing. The end goal will be to write a 1000 word short story. There is no criteria other than a willingness to open up one's writing; the course is designed that people of varying writing experience can participate and each draw their individual benefits.

Sweet sixteen and already showing signs of strain: that is the mood that hangs over South Africa as the 27 April celebration of the first democratic elections approaches, writes Colleen Lowe Morna. The political shenanigans of the far right who still dream of a separate homeland for white people and far left who insist on singing the song “kill the Boer” even after the High Court ruled that this is hate speech have led the Mail and Guardian to coin the term “idiotocracy” to describe our national politics.

Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.

A shadow has fallen over Zambia's long history of generously hosting refugees from troubled countries since 36 foreigners were deported to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the government says it is only trying to ensure security and order in camps that still shelter some 57,000 people. "We are hoping that [deportations] will stop," said James Lynch, country representative for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Zambia. The organization communicated its alarm at the expulsions to the Zambian authorities on 13 April.

A new piece of kit in the form of a backpack could help small farmers in Kenya increase yields, profits and agricultural know-how in a sustainable way. The backpacks, weighing 15-42 kg, contain things which help farmers bring a crop to harvest, including tools, a training manual and, in some versions, a collapsible water tank. They are designed for small plots of land and are currently being used in the Mau Forest region.

A gay rights activist in Kenya is receiving death threats and has been attacked on several occasions by random people who have seen and read about him in an anti-gay website that publishes and puts up posters of suspected homosexuals in different cities of Kenya, as ‘NOT WANTEDs’. The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) revealed this week, as it denounced the website , stating that it is a violation of rights and that it victimises people, in the name of religion.

A so-called Vulture Funds bill - to stop finance companies using British courts to extort excessive debt repayments from some of the world's poorest countries - was passed in the frantic scramble to finish outstanding parliamentary business before Britain's general election in May.

As the case of Millicent Gaika (30), a Cape Town lesbian who was beaten up and raped by a man known to her, is presently being heard at Wynberg Court, government has condemned the ongoing acts of “corrective rape” in the country and has vowed to put an end to them. After the man was arrested, the case was first heard at the Wynberg Court on Tuesday, 6 April but was postponed to today, Tuesday 13 April. Speaking outside the court where people are marching in support of Gaika, Ndumi Funda of Lulek’isisizwe LBT Women’s Project said, “We are strongly opposing bail for the perpetrator and we want to see justice being done for Gaika."

The effects of climate change - such as drought, livestock deaths and resource conflict - may be all too apparent for the pastoralists of northern Kenya, but there is much to be done to explain the true causes. "We were warned about the current situation by our elders and spiritual leaders when I was very young. This was about 50 years ago when the Ngishili age groups were born,” Lemeteki Lerinagato, 70, told IRIN in the Samburu district.

The Malawi government will soon draft a law that will outlaw polygamy. Minister of Gender, Women and Children Development Patricia Kaliati said the move intends to help stop growing rates in HIV and AIDS cases.

Asylum seekers are being thrown out of some countries because of a rise in xenophobia and political campaigns that use foreigners as scapegoats, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) chief said. Asylum and immigration are sensitive issues in many countries, such as Italy and Greece, which say they cannot cope with hundreds of thousands of people arriving as potential illegal migrants, often on rickety boats from Africa.

2010 is not shaping up to be a good year for satellite operators and resellers in Africa. There have been rumours that for the first time one operators’ sales in the continent have slipped down several percentage points. This year sees the arrival of four more international fibre cables: Glo One, Main One, EASSy and LION. Balancing Act’s latest report – African Fibre and Satellite Markets – takes the temperature of the current market and seeks to predict where things will be in three years time.