Zimbabweans view the country's banking industry as being very corrupt according to a recent survey of the sector. Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ), a subsidiary of the international anti-corruption movement, commissioned the survey in collaboration with the Mass Public Opinion Institute.

Africa's development partners have been urged to help repatriate all ill-gotten wealth stashed in their countries' banks. This call was made in Lagos by the United Nation's Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa, Professor Ibrahim Gambari.

The number of school-aged children had outpaced the growth in the number of teachers worldwide in the 1990s, packing classrooms in some developing countries with as many as 100 students per teacher, says a recent study. The Statistical Profile of the Teaching Profession is based on the most extensive set of data ever gathered on teachers. It looks at how many teachers there are, who they are and what training they have received, their working conditions and how much their governments invest in them.

People in the developing world receive too many injections, and one in three of the injections is administered with an unsterile needle, increasing the risk of HIV transmission, according to a study published in the November 8 issue of the British Medical Journal.

It is possible to control TB. In contrast to some other modern plagues, with TB we know what must be done, we know how to do it, and we know how much it will cost, states a paper by the Stop TB Partnership. "If we effectively apply proven, cost-effective strategies for TB control, adapting and improving them to meet the challenges described in this document over the next five years, we will have taken a giant step towards eliminating tuberculosis as a threat to future generations."

To date, public awareness of the role of the WTO has largely focussed on the protests surrounding its biannual ministerial meetings, most notably in Seattle in November 1999. However both in Seattle, and subsequently, a less visible process of dialogue between civil society and trade policy makers has been developing at national level. These stakeholders include non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with poor and marginalised communities. A number of governments from both developing and developed countries included NGO representatives on their official delegations to the Seattle and Doha (2001) Ministerials. The aim of the exercise is twofold: involving a wide group of stakeholders in policy design should lead to trade policies that better reflect the needs and interests of the public, and should also encourage more widespread ‘ownership’ of national trade policies, helping to avoid damaging splits between governments and the organisations of the poor. This paper looks at two examples of stakeholder involvement from East Africa - Uganda and Kenya.

This paper assesses the impact that the Global Gag Rule has had on Zambia's reproductive health situation. The Global Gag Rule prohibits US assistance to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to fund abortions in cases other than exceptional.

Globalization is one of the most charged political battlegrounds of our age. Its advocates say it is an engine for universal prosperity, while its critics see it as a race to the bottom for poor people and poor countries. Both sides either don’t or won’t understand what the other is saying. Worlds Apart bridges this divide by interpreting both sets of arguments and getting behind the polemics. It is not, however, a search for a middle ground. It unashamedly looks at the issues through a poverty lens and highlights the injustices of widening inequalities and stacked odds in world trade and finance.

Last week African National Congress provincial structures wrapped up their selection of candidates for next year's general elections. The names of the candidates they chose will be sent to a meeting of the organisation's national list committee - scheduled for November 21 and 22 - where they will be vetted to make sure that they meet the ANC's criteria for holding public office. The committee will also have to make sure that every third candidate is a woman.

There has been an increase in human rights violations associated with the return of DRC government (FAC) troops to the territory of Malemba Nkulu on 5 September 2003, reports Action Against Hunger. Malemba Nkulu Territory has been the centre of a power struggle between FAC and the MayiMayi local militia since early 2002 attributing to a precarious humanitarian situation for much of the 230,000 civilians living in this area.

Recently corruption has entered the stage of international policy discussion in a major way. On average the poorer countries are also the more corrupt. In this context, an important issue of international corruption is whether multinational enterprises and national and international aid organisations with origins in richer countries are important suppliers of bribes to public administrations and politicians in poor countries. A paper from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs looks at corruption in the context of the debate on ‘globalisation’.

Africa has taken the lead position as a host for corporate fraudsters. A report released last week by accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers says the level of economic crime was highest in Africa at 51 percent followed by North America with 41 percent.

More than 1 billion children worldwide suffer from the debilitating effects of poverty, according to a landmark UNICEF study launched in London. One in three of the world's children lives in a dwelling with either a mud floor or more than five people per room, the study says, and one in five does not have access to safe water.

Like many aid workers and activists trying to improve the lives of women in developing countries, Inonge Mbikusita-Lewanika has long viewed education as the key to solving many of her countrywomen's problems. But 30 years after gender equality began to be promoted in programs, those like Mbikusita-Lewanika, have learned that relieving the burdens of poor women is more complex than once thought.

Globalization, trade and investment designs and structures reinforce a model of development -centred on free trade, hyper economic growth, and export-oriented production- which is inherently unsustainable in ecological and social terms. They also destroy viable localized and regional systems that may have the greatest long-term promise for future sustainability. Consequently, there is increasing global concern about the broader issue of corporate accountability and pressures seem to be mounting from diverse political and intellectual quarters for greater corporate responsibility. The Global Compact is the United Nations' response to this demand.

Global Focus is a fortnightly briefing concentrating on global decision-making. It is produced for Parliamentarians, NGOs, journalists, policy makers and interested individuals and provides up-to-date information about what decisions are being taken, who is taking them and where.

This is an account of the challenges posed by globalisation on the management of common property resources in Zimbabwe, a developing country whose experiences are relevant to other countries in the southern African region and beyond.

The world’s largest study of the potential impact of genetically modified crops on the environment has produced an ambiguous set of results, according to a SciDev.net editorial. While both sides in the GM debate have sought to interpret the UK trials to suit their agendas - environmentalists argue that they demonstrate once again that GM crops are dangerous, industry that they are “flexible” - the real lesson for the protagonists seems to be different. For environmentalists, the lesson must be that even though such crops can be dangerous for the environment, they can also enhance it; for industry there is an equally important lesson, namely than blanket assertions that GM crops and the new farming practices they encourage will not damage natural processes - at least no more than conventional crops - are no longer credible.

A growing "workforce crisis" is a serious obstacle to achieving targets for global tuberculosis control set for 2005 by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Faster and more effective recruitment and training of TB health workers is needed to ensure vacancies in developing countries are filled quickly, says a draft report written by TB experts. Of the 22 high burden countries (HBCs) which account for 80% of the world's TB cases, 17 reported that their efforts to reach the 2005 targets are being hampered by staffing problems.

International aid and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups on Monday called on the world's richest countries to contribute the funds needed to sustain the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In its first two rounds of grants, the fund has committed $1.5 billion in funding to support 154 programs in 93 countries worldwide.