Synergos is looking to recruit an innovative and entrepreneurial leader to be its Regional Director for its Southern African region to champion Synergos’ efforts to change the systems that perpetuate poverty and social injustice. Synergos supports leaders, leadership networks and partnerships that promote equitable access to basic human rights and needs – with particular emphasis on health and nutrition, the wellbeing of children and women, and education.

Google announced Wednesday it has awarded $2.7 million to the International Press Institute to foster innovation in journalism. The Institute, based in Vienna, will use the grant for its IPI News Innovation Contest, which will fund both non-profit and for-profit projects related to the development of digital news platforms, new business models for journalism and training in digital reporting throughout Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

The mission of Fahamu's Tuliwaza Program is to generate and share knowledge towards a liberated Africa based on the needs and input of African social movements using progressive, feminist and people-centred approaches and methods.

MENA WATCH has been put together to provide people with broad coverage of up-dates and events from nonviolent actions and people’s movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Each day MENA WATCH will collect articles, reports, analysis and links to blogs and video blogs. Visit

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

This International Land Coalition report analyses the illegal/irregular acquisition of land by Kenya’s elites to ascertain the types of land affected, the processes used to acquire land, and the profiles of the perpetrators, as well as to identify the victims and the impacts of land grabbing.

After a year of fragile and uneven recovery, global economic growth started to decelerate on a broad front in mid-2010, says this UN publication. The slowdown is expected to continue into 2011 and 2012 as weaknesses in major developed economies continue to provide a drag on the global recovery and pose risks for world economic stability in the coming years.

Members of the gay community are taking the government to court to challenge the constitutionality of its anti-sodomy laws. In 2005 gays attempted to register their association, the Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO), with the Registrar of Societies, but their application was turned down in 2007 on the grounds that the republican Constitution does not recognise homosexuals.

The head of a parliamentary science committee has expressed dismay at drastic cuts planned for Nigeria's capital development budget for science. The cuts were highlighted last week (9 February) during a hearing by the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology. The government will slash the budget, which funds buildings and equipment but not salaries, from 53 billion naira (US$350 million) in 2010 to US$33 million in 2011.

Museveni blazes ahead of the opposition...

This guide will show you how social media offer researchers an opportunity to improve the way they work. One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offer a range of tools which can facilitate these activities.

The UN refugee agency has said it welcomes the positive indications it has received over the past two days from Tunisia and Egypt that they will maintain open borders for people fleeing the continuing violence in Libya. 'Given the continued reports of violence and human rights abuses inside Libya, it is imperative that people fleeing the country are able to reach safety,' the refugee agency added in a press release. Several hundred people have been killed in the violence that followed anti-government protests last week.

This research report from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) describes and analyses 12 programmes and interventions from around the world that have sought to alter the sexual attitudes and behaviours of men. It is intended for use by programme managers, service providers, and researchers who are part of IPPF Member Associations and other organisations seeking to develop more effective ways of engaging men and boys and addressing their health needs. In all areas - sexuality and sexual and reproductive health, violence and healthy relationships - the interventions led to behaviour change.

South Africa’s poor ‘are steadily getting angrier and they are preparing for something.' They have little to lose, except the hope that drives their movements, informed by desire for justice for those 'systematically dehumanised in our country today', writes Pedro Alexis Tabensky.

If only silencing social media was as easy as putting political opponents in prison!

Global food prices continue to rise, though not uniformly for all grains. The World Bank’s food price index rose by 15 per cent between October 2010 and January 2011, is 29 per cent above its level a year earlier, and only 3 per cent below its June 2008 peak. A breakdown of the index shows that the grain price index remains 16 per cent below its peak mainly due to relatively stable rice prices, which are significantly lower than in 2008. The increase over the last quarter is driven largely by increases in the price of sugar (20 per cent), fats and oils (22 per cent), wheat (20 per cent), and maize (12 per cent).

Imagine a green wall - 15 kilometres wide, and up to 8,000 kilometres long. Imagine it just south of the Sahara, from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa in the east, all the way across the continent to Dakar, Senegal, in the west. The building of this pan-African Great Green African Wall (GGW) was just approved by an international summit taking place this week in the former German capital Bonn.

Join New Tactics and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation's Women Peacemakers Program (IFOR/WPP) for an online dialogue on the topic 'Joining Forces: Engaging men as allies in gender-sensitive peacebuilding' from 30 March to 5 April 2011. For more information on the dialogue and how to participate, click on the URL provided.

Gaddafi's efforts to seek a host outside of Libya prove fruitless.

Activists gathered at the World Social Forum's Assembly on the Right to Communication issued the following declaration on 11 February.