AITEC WEST AFRICA 2003 is a highly interactive event for senior executives in government and the private sector who are seeking new insights into important strategic issues. Participants will exchange views, network and compare experiences with other key decision-makers and with expert speakers from the Information and Technology industry.

By dawn, the convoy is ploughing through the bush, rolling east into a rising sun with 58 tonnes of emergency food for a settlement camp cut off without aid deep in Angola's famine territory. If these vehicles cannot make it, there is little chance of feeding the tens of thousands of people stranded in the province of Cuando Cubango, a wilderness so desolate it is known as "the land at the end of the earth".

The EU has launched an initiative to break the current WTO deadlock on developing countries' access to affordable medicines. WTO members failed to meet the end of a 2002 deadline to find a solution for developing countries without manufacturing capacities, namely given the disagreement over the disease coverage. In a letter addressed to all WTO Trade Ministers, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy proposes a multilateral solution which is workable, sustainable and legally secure, based both on the Doha mandate and on the chair's compromise text of 16 December 2002.

The lives of tens of millions of people around the world are threatened by conflict, ethnic violence, drought and natural disaster. But the response to those needs varies tremendously. For example, Toby Porter, an independent consultant, has calculated that in 1999 the United Nations spent $207 for each person in need in Kosovo, but only $16 per person in Sierra Leone and $8 per person in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Refugees International (RI), a DC-based refugee and IDP advocacy organisation, has launched a new initiative entitled "Forgotten People" about humanitarian emergencies around the world.

How can the world's bioresources be managed so that the social groups most dependent upon them benefit from conservation efforts, or are compensated for negative effects? How can ecological concerns be included in rural development initiatives where conservation is not the primary aim?

Families living outside of their original national boundaries have had, and continue to have, a profound influence over the flow of people, goods, money and information. More in-depth perspectives reveal how immigrants face troubling issues of cultural identity, economic change, political uncertainty and social welfare. From an examination of 19th century transnational families emigrating from Europe, to the Ghanaian Pentecostal diaspora in Europe today, this book combines broadly based analysis with more unusual case studies to reveal the complexities that immigrants and refugees must contend with in their daily lives. This book, wide-ranging in its geographical and thematic scope, is a highly important and timely addition to debates on transnational families, immigrants and refugees.

Deborah Fahy Bryceson (editor)

Bureaucrats are blocking attempts to dispense food relief urgently needed for thousands of poverty-stricken rural people, according to an NGO activist. This accusation follows the discovery of a horrifying statistic - 150 000 South African families are starving. The audit may be just the tip of the iceberg because the study covers only 13 areas that have been identified as economically depressed.

European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy has got a hold of your future and is doing all he can to hand it over to the transnational corporations. The vehicle for Lamy's villainy is an obscure trade agreement called GATS, or the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The agreement itself may be a less-than-riveting read, but its significance is relatively easy to grasp. All human activities are to become, in the fullness of time, profit-oriented commodities that can be invested in and traded, says this article on the web site of the Trans-National Institute.

Although the global community may not be making much progress on the daunting environmental and social problems humanity faces, local and grassroots initiatives are providing cause for optimism, according to the Worldwatch Institute's annual State of the World report.

World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks held late last year failed to resolve the issue of access to generic medicines in developing countries after the United States blocked an agreement on granting easier access to the drugs. "Its a tragedy that there is no solution after one year of talks ... millions of people have died from [infectious] diseases this year. The rich countries don't realise how much this has affected poor countries," head of international affairs for treatment lobby group Act-Up Paris, Gaëlle Krikorian, told PlusNews.

The worm has finally turned. In mid-December Kenya Telkom's monopoly, international internet connection company Jambonet decided to block a number of its ports claiming they "were being used to transmit VOIP traffic." The net result was a near two-day shutdown of internet services in Kenya a week before the elections. Private sector lobby groups TESPOK and the Cyber Cafe Operators Association of Kenya first protested and then decided to fight back.

This book, edited by John Feffer, tells an untold story - the life-affirming response of ordinary people around the world to the 'irreversible' juggernaut of the global economy. Many books contain cogent intellectual critiques. Here, in contrast, we see the modest attempts to create alternatives by those for whom globalization has no need. There is no single response but many different ones, all sharing important common features: meeting basic needs, making sustainable, culturally appropriate improvements to people's lives, and on the basis of active civic participation, solidarity and learning one from another.

The British Embassy has announced a further £30 million (R430m) contribution for emergency assistance in Africa. Half the contribution, R215m, will be put to humanitarian assistance and recovery programmes across Southern Africa and the other half will go to Ethiopia.

Three Million US dollars will be granted by the French government in the months of March and April, to support demining programmes and the resettlement of displaced people in Angola.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, military peacekeeping forces have increasingly intervened in countries in conflict, forcing a more direct engagement than ever before between the military, local populations and humanitarian agencies. Military movement into what has traditionally been 'humanitarian space', raises significant issues of principle, as well as policy and operational questions, for the entire international community, including governments, the military, humanitarian agencies and the UN. It is essential that these two roles - impartial humanitarian assistance as a response to an urgent and inalienable right, and peace operations with their inevitably partial and political mandates - are kept separate, argues a paper by the The Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN).

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and foreign direct investment (FDI) are very much like identical twins in the government's economic policy. President Kufuor has made the development of ICT one of the cornerstones of his vision for Ghana's development. He has established a high-powered commission to oversee its development. The first two years of his administration have seen him also making first hand contacts around the world to interest investors in Ghana.

Aidspan is pleased to announce the launch of "GLOBAL FUND OBSERVER" (GFO), a free email-based newsletter and related discussion forum. GFO provides an independent platform for news, analysis and commentary about the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The Lesotho National Insurance Group (LNIG) is suing the weekly tabloid "Mohahlaula", for publishing a news item that the company has deemed to be damaging to its business activities. In its 15 November 2002 edition, the publication reported that the company was facing possible bankruptcy due to alleged mismanagement of funds.

Over the past 50 years, forced displacement has been a major obstacle to development and the fight against poverty. Despite the efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and others to find 'durable solutions' for those who are forced to flee their homes, attitudes have, if anything, hardened towards refugees and asylum-seekers.

Three months ago the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it had adopted a new set of lending guidelines that would permit borrowing countries to take control of their economies like never before. But over the past week, the Fund flexed its muscles over two of the world's poorest countries and imposed conditions that critics predict will be disastrous for the poor in those nations -- and that signified business as usual for the Washington-based institution. The IMF told Zambia -- an African country ravaged by debt, mismanagement, and disease -- that it will delay one billion dollars in debt relief until the poor nation sells its state-owned commercial bank, the Zambia National Commercial Bank.