The Community Education Computer Society (CECS), an ICT training NGO established in 1985 in South Africa, is conducting two-day workshops on free and open source software (FOSS) in five Southern African countries. Workshops will build awareness of FOSS and build capacities to conduct OpenOffice Writer courses in Lesotho, Malawi, and Namibia; and build partnerships with organisations and individuals in Angola and the Democractic Republic of Congo, to translate the FOSS portal to Portuguese and French.

ITU’s African Region Preparatory Meeting for the World Telecommunication Development Conference 2010 (WTDC) concluded last week in Kampala, Uganda with delegates reaching consensus on regional strategies to foster the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) throughout Africa. The agreed strategies and priorities will serve as inputs to next year’s WTDC.

Facebook and Twitter, the latest Web 2.0 tools to captivate Moroccans, are winning new users among everyone from chatty teens to dedicated cyberactivists. The growing popularity of the two tools indicates that Morocco's Web users, who now number 9 million, are moving beyond blogging to share information with each other and the world.

"Why is it not possible to allocate sufficient money for every aspect of global health, of which AIDS is but a part, and in so doing, meet the Millennium Development Goals - money which is but a fraction, a miniscule fraction of all the public dollars that have found their way, in one short year, into the bottomless pits of greed and avarice?" - Stephen Lewis, speaking at the opening of the International AIDS Society conference in Cape Town. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains, among other things, excerpts from that speech.

The President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina has reportedly boycotted the consultative meeting with SADC mediators. The meeting convened by the Special envoys from SADC), the United Nations and the African Union amongst others, is to seek a lasting solution in the Madagascar political crisis.

A meta-analysis of data on vaginal practices and HIV infection from ten African cohorts has found that both vaginal washing with soap and wiping the vagina with cloths, tissues or paper were associated with an increased risk of acquiring HIV, researchers reported at the Fifth International AIDS Society conference in Cape Town last week. The use of products to dry or tighten the vagina, often referred to as ‘dry sex’, did not however have a statistically significant association with HIV infection.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) could further raise its growth forecast for Africa next year to reflect an elevation in demand in China and some industrialised nations where signs of recovery are beginning to show. According to Antoinette Sayeh, Director of the IMF’s African Department, the end of the global recession is still some way off and African economies are feeling the dramatic decline in demand, investment, and commodity prices.

Reporters Without Borders deplores physical attacks on journalists by supporters of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) at Lusaka international airport. The facts of incident were not disputed by President Ruphia Banda, who condemned the assault. “The president’s comments are reassuring, but apologies are not enough and concrete measures are now needed,” Reporters Without Borders said.

At the community centre in Mukuru, a slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, teenagers spend hours engrossed in a video game, but they are not battling other-worldly forces with super-human weapons; instead, they are finding their way through a familiar-looking city, trying to negotiate real-life situations and learn how to avoid HIV infection.

African first ladies have vowed to raise awareness on cervical cancer, one of the leading causes of death among women on the continent. Taking the lead, Tobeka Madiba-Zuma, one of South Africa’s first ladies appealed to everyone attending the 3rd Stop Cervical Cancer in Africa conference in Cape Town to join her in paying tribute to millions of women who lost their lives to the illness.

Patients over the age of 50 on antiretroviral treatment in West Africa are at increased risk for death compared to younger age groups, Didier Koumani Ekouevi presenting on behalf of A Lokossoue and colleagues reported in a study presented at the 5th IAS Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Cape Town, South Africa.

Six Kalahari Bushmen in Botswana have been arrested and jailed, charged with hunting inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The Molepolole court is expected to rule on the charges on Monday. The case relates to two incidents, one earlier this year and the other in 2007.

Thetha – a Nguni word for debate – bring together a wide range of national, regional and international stakeholders on the expected ICT challenges and opportunities that the Southern African region will face in the next ten years are being organised by APC member SANGONeT. Pre-Thetha reports on Zimbabwe and Mozambique make useful contextual reading.

Less than 7 percent of HIV-positive children in Mozambique are receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, according to a new study. A 2009 HIV/AIDS Demographic Impact Study by the National Statistics Institute (with the Portuguese acronym INE), found that about 150,000 children between 0 and 14 were living with the virus, but only 10,477 were on medication.

Three varieties of Monsanto’s genetically modified maize failed to produce crops during the 2008/9 growing season, leaving up to 200 000 hectares of fields barren of cobs and crop losses across several provinces in South Africa. According the GRAIN SA, the varieties are: MON 810, NK 603 and MON 810 x NK 603. These seeds were sold to commercial maize farmers and provided to resource-poor farmers in South Africa.

The leader of an Islamist sect at the centre of five days of fighting in northern Nigeria that has claimed hundreds of lives died in police custody last night. Mohammed Yusuf was killed hours after he was captured, according to police officials quoted by news agencies. Mr Yusuf’s death followed an assault on a mosque housing followers of the radical preacher, who demanded stricter imposition of sharia, or Islamic law, across northern Nigeria and the abandonment of secular education.

East African leaders have emphasized the need to push further the regional integration to prepare the five-member East African Community (EAC) for opportunities to attract larger portions of the foreign direct investments. The leaders, attending an investment conference which ended here Thursday, called for more focus on financial stability, political unity and Africa’s exclusion from the global economy in order to rectify the region’s failure to attract investments.

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has attended the first national security council meeting to be held since he and President Robert Mugabe formed a unity government in February. Tsvangirai, who had not pushed for an earlier meeting to avoid alienating a military crucial to Mugabe's hold on power, sat with generals who had previously vowed not to work with him at the meeting chaired by Mugabe.

Large parts of West Africa are struggling to get back online following damage to an undersea cable. The fault has caused severe problems in Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria. The blackout is thought to have been caused by damage to the SAT-3 cable which runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa, via West Africa.

An April 2009 law that criminalizes homosexual conduct threatens to exacerbate the deplorable treatment of gays and lesbians in Burundi, Human Rights Watch said in a newly publishedmultimedia project. The project, "Forbidden: Institutionalizing Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians in Burundi," consists of printed and online narratives, photos, and voice-recorded testimonies of Burundian gays and lesbians that bring to life the daily struggles faced by the small lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in Burundi.