Michael Maren shows that the international aid industry is a big business more concerned with winning its next big government contract than helping needy people. The problem isn't a lack of charity missions in the Third World, but that the best intentions of these idealists are often inadvertently destructive, thanks to a deadly combination of their naiveté and the willingness of native elites to exploit them. Maren spent many years in Africa living this life. This is a splendid, literate, muckraking memoir of his experiences.

Gavin Hayman, campaigner with Global Witness, considers some of the lessons from the organisation's report on the exploitation of the Angolan civil war to loot state revenues from the oil industry. The missing money appears to be more than the entire international humanitarian relief effort and he argues that in countries such as Angola, transparency is necessary if international relief efforts are not to be endlessly undermined.

Human activities are threatening to wipe out as many as one-half of the Earth's plant species, a new study suggests, with the demand for new farm land to feed a growing population in tropical countries being the biggest cause of global plant species extinction. "The natural forest is being cut down and burned and the land converted into pastures and fields for crops," said Peter M. Jorgensen of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

The abortive "Earth Summit" in Johannesburg is already fading from our overtaxed memories. Indeed, as we write this, the conference of the week is COP8, the Eighth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We have few chances to change the terrain in truly decisive ways. The climate negotiations, however, offer one, says this commentary by Foreign Policy in Focus.

The South African government has pledged medical equipment worth R80m to assist Angola, after an appeal from President Eduardo Dos Santos's government. Pretoria also donated R500 000 in cash to Luanda, as well as 6 000kg of maize seeds and 50 tons of maize meal. One hundred tons of clothing and food, worth R3 million, have also been donated.

In Turkey, the apartment buildings that collapse during earthquakes are known as "bribe buildings." In Africa, bridges dot the landscape with no roads to connect them. There's no doubt that corruption, endemic in emerging economies around the world, throws economic development into chaos. It affects decisions made by bureaucrats, degrades the quality of those in power, and discourages foreign investment. It's also an increasingly hot business topic, with a growing number of influential business and political leaders from around the globe regularly pinpointing corruption as one of the greatest threats to global economic development.

The Namibian government has apologised for delays in distributing drought aid but says the task is time-consuming and cannot easily be fast-tracked. The distribution of food aid to an estimated 345 000 people in need has been delayed by official bureaucracy and the allocation of tenders to firms that do not have the capacity to deliver.

The year 2002 is the year of the mountains. However, a new report from Panos argues that mountain people must have a stronger voice and role in the development of their regions. Experts in their own environments have a large part to play in tackling poverty and conserving resources – investing in people is the most effective way to protect the mountains for future generations, says the report.

US President George Bush plans to make his first visit to Africa at the end of January. He will not go empty handed, but a fear is that Bush will propose only a modest new Aids initiative without new funding.

Walden Bello believes the world requires a radical shift towards a decentralised, pluralistic system of economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies appropriate to their needs and circumstances. This 'deglobalization' means radically reducing the powers and roles of the existing TNC-driven WTO and Bretton Woods institutions. And requires the formation of new institutions helping to devolve the greater part of production, trade and economic decisionmaking to national and local level.

Between 21-23 October, over 90 trade unionists took part in consultative meetings with the IMF/World Bank to discuss issues including privatisation, poverty reduction and reforms of the international financial architecture. The scale and scope of the meetings was unprecedented, and the unionists confronted these institutions with evidence of the continuing damage wrought by their policies throughout the developing world.

Senegal President Abdoulaye Wade announced the dismissal of Latif Gueye, a Senegalese citizen and head of the humanitarian organisation Africa Helps Africa, on national television, accusing him of committing "extremely serious errors" for his alleged role in trafficking AIDS drugs that were meant for Africa but were sold in Europe.

The external debt of developing countries should not just be cancelled but the debtors compensated, civil society activists told a meeting of international officials, business leaders, scientists and NGO members in Prague Saturday.

This is a unique opportunity to work alongside the South African National Parks Board (SANP) to help in the conservation and management of their 18 National Parks, which encompasses much of the country's unique fauna, flora and cultural sites.

The Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University has released a report on an expert workshop it held in December 2001 to discuss human rights NGO capacity building. The report includes principles and assumptions guiding human rights capacity building work, critical issues in program design and implementation, and examines questions related to hierarchy and power dynamics the emerge in the context of capacity building.

This is a wonderful and very informative magazine - thank you!

The Emergency Management Unit has to deliver food assistance to over 345 000 drought-affected Namibians despite pledging to start the humanitarian exercise early this week.

The private sector, largely perceived as ethical in its business dealings, is as corrupt as the public sector, a new report says. The report by the Centre for Law and Research, accuses the sector of devising cunning strategies to evade the payment of tax.

A report was sent to President Thabo Mbeki and members of his cabinet on Tuesday calling on government to hold corporates accountable for damage done to the environment. The report, released by groundWork, a non-governmental organisation, stated that government had consistently failed to use the law, licences or sanctions to hold accountable corporate companies implicated in damaging the environment.

South Africa's financial contributions to international relief programmes in Africa had halved during the past three years from R12,1-million to R6-million, according to the foreign affairs department's annual report for the year ending March 2002.