Since its founding 60 years ago, the People's Republic of China has been transformed from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. The journey has been fraught with twists and turns on a road paved with hardship, upheavals and reversals. It's been an important process, however, as any search for direction in the course of human development. And it's taught us valuable lessons about the entire process of a planned-to-market economy transformation.

This report, the first of its kind, provides a snapshot of working conditions in Katanga in Chinese-run enterprises. It synthesizes the views, experiences, concerns and recommendations of Chinese and Congolese workers interviewed. The report is based on a survey carried out in 2008 by Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) into working conditions in Chinese private mining companies in Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

A newly-formed Black coalition has announced a rally and march on the White House to take place November 7, 2009 beginning in Washington, D.C.’s historic Malcolm X Park. The Rally and March are to protest the expanding U.S. wars and other policy initiatives that unfairly target African and other oppressed people around the world. Known as the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, the coalition formed on September 12, 2009 during a meeting in Washington, D.C. of more than fifteen activists from various Black organizations, institutions and communities.

The resource-based corruption and international greed that has typified so much of the West's interactions with African countries has now arrived in the tiny and impoverished West African country of Gabon. Only this time, the external predator, working in tandem with a venal, autocratic local ruler, isn't the West - it's China.

The Kibaki administration is ruffled by the United States Government latest actions on Kenya and it has nothing to do with travel bans. Money is at stake and the soft underbelly of the regime is exposed. Although it touts itself as financially self-reliant, in truth the Grand Coalition Government of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga cannot afford to ignore the International Community and especially the United States’ stated intention of scrutinising all loans and financial programmes for Kenya by the International Financial Institutions.

Slum Dwellers International (SDI) echoes the outrage that has been widely expressed in response to the violent attacks perpetrated against AbM in Kennedy Road over the weekend. These attacks come as no surprise. They mirror similar acts of violence that are regularly perpetrated against slum dwellers throughout the world. Only last month shack dwellers in Old Fadama, Accra, Ghana, also had to deal with an outward manifestation of ethnic violence, which was in fact an attack launched by vested political and property interests against organized communities of the urban poor. Almost two years ago SDI members were seriously affected by the violence against the urban poor that ripped through Kenya's informal settlements. At this very moment SDI linked groups in Gauteng and Cape Town face similar threats. SDI groups in Zimbabwe had to deal with devastating evictions in 2005. The list goes on and on.

Ramakrishna Karuturi does not feature on any international power list. Perhaps he should. A new UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development) report names Karuturi Global Ltd as one of the top 25 agri transnational corporations in the world. Another report, by the International Food Policy Research Institute, says he owns one of the world's largest landbanks — over 3,000 sq km. In a conversation with The Times of India, he claimed, "I'm the largest landbank holder in the world."

The Zimbabwe Social Forum (ZSF) will be hosting the 5th edition of its annual commemoration in Harare, on the 2nd of October 2009. The theme for this year’s activities is, “Reclaiming the Political Transition for People-Centered Governance; and Sustainable Social and Economic Reform.”

Willy Jackson

Pierre Calame

In Africa, the argument goes, the information and communications technology (ICT) market has not grown as fast as it could have because of the lack of a conducive policy and regulatory environment. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), by 2007 only 34 African countries had ICT policies, 12 were in the process of drafting one, while seven had not even launched the policy development process.

Multiple partnerships may not be as common in South Africa as previously thought, according to a study presented at the recent AIDS Research Symposium at the University the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg. Saul Johnson, managing director of Health & Development Africa (HDA), a health consultancy which conducted the research, said findings from four sites across the country showed about 26 percent of men and 5 percent of women reported having had more than one partner in the past year.

V. R. Raghavan highlights that the growing output of studies and books on the implications of the power-shift to Asia has generally been based on the need to protect the interests of developed countries, but the latest edited volume by N.S. Sisodia, V. Krishnappa provides a refreshing contribution to the discourse by examining an Asian perspective on the global power shifts.

Among the stories covered in this week’s Emerging powers news roundup, Russia’s influence as an investment partner grows, China signs deals in Ethiopia, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau and African nations lure Indian businessmen.

The refugees are arriving at an overwhelming average rate of 6,400 a month, adding more pressure on the already overstretched facilities and resources in Dadaab camps in northern Kenya, which currently host three times the population they were designed to hold.

A comprehensive land audit to establish who owns what after almost a decade of often chaotic land transfers in Zimbabwe is being stalled by a lack of money. President Robert Mugabe launched the fast-track land reform programme in 2000 to redistribute white-owned commercial farms to landless blacks.

Kenya's older citizens are not safe from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to the final report of the 2007 Kenya AIDS Indicator Survey. The survey, released on 24 September, also showed that the country's epidemic varies greatly from region to region, while HIV testing remains low due to low risk perception among the population.

In latest report from the SAIIA China in Africa project, Chris Alden and Cristina and Alves argues that China’s energy policy, particularly continues remains a strategic focus in Beijing’s foreign policy making and underpins China’s economic foray into Africa’s natural resources.

The World Food Programme says that, for the first time, the number of people facing hunger worldwide has topped one billion, but who is to blame for this and what can be done to stem the flow of starvation? Inside Story speaks to Bettina Luescher, Christina Schiavoni, and Pambazuka's Firoze Manji.

Reporters Without Borders reiterates its call for the release of Rodrigo Angue Nguema, the Malabo correspondent of Agence France-Presse and Radio France Internationale, who has been held in the capital’s Black Beach prison for the past 100 days. He was tried on a defamation charge on 1 September but the court has yet to issue a verdict.

A six-year clinical trial in Thailand has yielded the first ever evidence that an AIDS vaccine can provide some protection against HIV infection. The trial team in Bangkok, Thailand's capital announced on 24 September that rates of HIV infection were 31 percent lower in trial participants who got the vaccine than in those who received a placebo.