The financial and political corruption at the heart of the French state is being unravelled by a trial whose daily revelations are gripping Paris and terrifying its political class with fear of exposure. Veiled reference has been made to President Jacques Chirac in the trial, whose ghost hovers over decades of oil deals in West Africa, where he has close ties to leaders such as Omar Bongo of Gabon.

South Africa and Nigeria were the main architects, protagonists and stakeholders in the process resulting in NEPAD and advocating it as the blue print for Africa's development. Their combined economic and political relevance gave weight to their initiative, which was actively supported by Algeria, Egypt and Senegal as other core countries in the initiative. Critical observers question if this is once again old wine in new bottles. And indeed, its catalogue of socio-economic proposals offers hardly any new conceptual approach. It is largely reflecting in a rather uncritical way the dominant neo-liberal paradigm and discourse of the international financial institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund). It hence offers no alternatives to the current trends of economic globalisation but instead adheres to the underlying concept of liberalised trade regimes and the dogma of the private economy.

Appreciate the platform you provide for Civil Society Organisations.

Akin Olaniyan
African Media Support Initiative, Lagos, Nigeria

Nigeria is a riddle. With its 125 million inhabitants, it is Africa's most populous nation, and given its abundant human and natural resources, it seemed destined to become a regional colossus. It didn't happen. Seen from abroad, indeed, few countries have become so famous for all the wrong reasons. Television viewers know Nigeria as the country where some 200 people died last November in riots protesting their country's hosting a Miss World competition (the pageant moved to London). In news columns, Nigeria is known as the land ranked for three successive years as the world's second most corrupt country by Transparency International, a German-based monitoring group. On the World Wide Web, Nigeria is notoriously associated with spam e-mails headed "Urgent Reply" or "Confidential," promising riches beyond belief to those gullible enough to supply confidential banking information, a scam garnering an estimated $100 million annually from mostly elderly Americans.

I like your editorial about cancelling Africa's debt. I cannot agree with you more that all the strategies designed to alleviate the debt burden of poorer countries have been aimed at protecting the lenders and ensuring that the debtors do not reach the point where they will refuse to pay on account of inability.

Being an African myself I am always angry at the gullibility of some of our leaders in believing that the developed countries have genuine concern about our plight. I have always believed that they do just enough to keep us from going overboard and adopting policies that will be detrimental to their economic interests.

What our leaders should be doing is to form a united front as you stated in your conclusion - not only to lobby but more importantly to develop a formidable economic unit that can dictate terms. If we keep to the status quo where our economic interests are inextricably subject to the former colonial rulers’ dictates, no amount of talking, lobbying or pleading will change anything. After all, the developed countries are not in business for our own health but theirs.

Topics include International Approaches to Post-Conflict Justice in Rwanda, Domestic Approaches: Gacaca and the Domestic Courts and Conflict and Compromise between the different models of justice.

When the US State Department's Walter Kansteiner visits the region this week he needs to press President Thabo Mbeki on what the South African leader means by democracy. Does it mean a representative government accountable to voters? Or is having millions of enrolled voters put crosses on ballot papers just the modern equivalent of a mediaeval coronation? Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, of course, is firmly in the mediaeval coronation camp. He began justifying plans for a one-party state right after winning power in 1980, says this commentary for ZWnews.com.

DemocracyNews is an electronic mailing list moderated by the National Endowment for Democracy as the Secretariat of the World Movement for Democracy. To subscribe to DemocracyNews, send an e-mail to demnews-on@free.ned.org

The Government has re-affirmed its commitment to rid the country of corruption. Corruption distorts policy making and derails priorities setting, the Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics, John Githongo said. The new reform initiatives by Government were geared towards rekindling donor trust, Githongo said.

The UN Security Council is exploring "all options" to see how it can best respond to the crisis in Bunia, UN News reported on Monday following consultations between members of the 15-nation body at UN headquarters in New York.

The outgoing Nigerian parliament last Thursday passed a controversial law that substantially reduces the powers of the country's anti-corruption agency, overturning a presidential veto on the law. The law limiting the powers of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) was approved by both houses of the National Assembly in March but President Olusegun Obasanjo refused his assent.

A former Transnet official is facing prosecution after he allegedly accepted bribes worth more than R1-million from a company that was part of a Siemens-led consortium which won a major contract from the parastatal. Anver Hendricks, former national maintenance and support manager for the National Port Authority, a division of Transnet, has been formally charged with corruption in the Cape Town Regional Court for accepting bribes from the parastatal's suppliers.

The column scheduled for this week would have given a breakdown of the actual financial loss to the poorest of the poor despite more widespread and increased government grants and other assistance. It was also to have given details of the possible effects of a R73 million contract awarded to a British think-tank to "provide technical assistance for restructuring public services in South Africa". But that can wait. The macro view has given way to the micro. Only because I quite literally bumped into Thembinkosi earlier this week. Over two days, we established a rapport. His story comes from the increasingly crowded margins of the labour movement; from the ranks of the non-unionised and often frightened workers who live a hand-to-mouth existence, selling their skills and all too frequently their lives in a viciously competitive and grossly exploitative market. It summed up the effects of a brutally competitive market and mass unemployment at a human level.

Real spending on poverty reduction is falling, too little money goes to the poor north, and officials lie in their reports, a government report on Mozambique's implementation of its anti-poverty programme posted on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) web site says. In particular it notes that the government promised to increase poverty spending as a share of GDP, yet the government's own figures show that spending fell from 19.1% of GDP in 2001 to 18.4% of GDP in 2002. The biggest cut was in education. Read more about this report, about women and cashew nut production in Mozambique and about new revelations regarding the assassination of former Mozambican President Samora Machel.

The year 2002 was a year obscured by the questioned integrity of presidential and parliamentary elections of the preceding year, according to The Afronet Zambia Human Rights Report which looks at the realities of human rights promotion, protection and enforcement, as monitored and verified in the year 2002. Most events either directly related to the elections and events at that time or are an indirect offshoot of the electoral contentions still abounding. For information on the Report contact Afronet - Research and Fact Finding, on the email e-mail: research@afronet.org.zm

We request you to include us in the next publication. We are a community based youth organisation dealing with youths from the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, known as Kibera. We are involved in the fight against AIDS and also deal in youth empowerment and advocacy, amongst other issues. We are currently depending on members’ good will for our day to day work and this has slowed our impact in the community despite our promising work. We hereby wish to request any support from concerned readers and organisations to come to our aid.

Fredrick Ouko
Kibera Community Youth Programme

Oil services giant Halliburton, already under fire over accusations that its White House ties helped win a major Iraqi oil contract, has admitted that a subsidiary paid a multi-million dollar bribe to a Nigerian tax official. Halliburton, once run by US Vice President Richard Cheney, revealed the illicit payments, worth US$2.4 million, in a filing last Thursday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

ExxonMobil and other leading oil companies are to face an investigation into how up to $500m (£310m) came to be paid into a private US bank account, said to be solely controlled by the President of Equatorial Guinea. Global Witness, a London-based anti-corruption campaign group, has written to John Ashcroft, the US Attorney General, asking him to look into allegations that Equatorial Guinea's ruler, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has between $300m and $500m deposited in the Dupont Circle branch of Riggs Bank in Washington, DC.

I would like to express my anger at the ruling government, the police and Dr.Ignatius Chombo for showing gross incompetence on everything in this state. Starting with Dr.Chombo, why are you tampering with the Honourable Engineer Mudzuri's high profile post? To remove an elected figure like Mudzuri from office is unfair, an unwelcome move, based on nothing but flimsy political grounds. It's really a disgrace.

This article reviews major issues involved in achieving the objectives of the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Using a simple framework for evaluation, the analysis highlights considerations relevant to policymakers in the areas of poverty reduction, macroeconomic policies, trade promotion, attracting capital flows, and governance and institutional reforms.