Like many of its neighbours in the region, Tunisia has long approached the internet as a force to be censored. Tunisians are barred from accessing a wide variety of sites, from the seemingly innocuous YouTube to sites providing information on human rights in their country. Yet, in a surprising speech in which Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, announced that he will not run again for office, he also promised something long hoped-for by Tunisian netizens: Internet freedom.

The International Organisation for Migration has confirmed that millions of Zimbabweans who left home and settled in foreign countries were economic refugees. 'The assessment we have done so far confirms that many Zimbabweans chose to move in pursuit of better economic opportunities, and with things improving in the country we expect an improvement in the returning of those immigrants,' IOM Deputy Chief of Mission to Zimbabwe, Katie Kerr told journalists on the sidelines of her organisation’s boat donation to the department of Civil Protection in Harare.

In its push to expand participation in tertiary education, the government announced last week that opportunities for South Africans who passed school-leaving examinations in December would grow by 56 per cent this year. And under political pressure to provide free higher education, President Jacob Zuma promised students on state loans a free final year if they graduate.

Some Muslim women in western Uganda are demanding that a new HIV prevention programme for Muslims include condom promotion, going against calls by local religious leaders for the programme to be limited to messages on faithfulness and abstinence. 'The holy Koran allows Muslim men to marry four wives, but men still go out of wedlock and have extra-marital relationships,' Jazira Mugisa told IRIN/PlusNews.

Several Cabinet Minister have left Kenya on a mission to countries around Africa to lobby support ahead of the tabling of a Motion before the African Union (AU), to push for Kenya's withdrawal from the International Criminal Court statute. The AU meeting will take place between 30 and 31 January in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Union has already urged for a deferment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's indictment by the ICC and could undoubtedly back Kenya's bid.

APSA and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) University of Nairobi, are pleased to announce a call for applications from individuals who would like to participate in a workshop on 'Representation Reconsidered: Ethnic Politics and Africa's Governance Institutions in Comparative Perspective' from 23 July to 6 August 2011, in Nairobi, Kenya. The 2011 APSA Africa Workshop will be led by Todd Eisenstadt and Carl LeVan, both of American University in Washington, DC, along with Josephine Ahikire from Makerere University in Uganda , and Karuti Kanyinga from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Relative calm returned to western Zambia Saturday though under heavy police patrols after Friday’s bloody protests left two people killed and nine wounded as activists pressed for secession of the region. Police shot dead two youths in an effort to crush Barotseland activists who wanted to hold a rally at Limulunga royal village in Mongu – about 600 kilometres west of the capital Lusaka – to discuss secession of the province.

The political crisis in Côte d'Ivoire is hitting an already broken education system, with gunfire disrupting classes, teachers staying home for political reasons and families increasingly desperate about their children's schooling. Under-investment and instability in recent decades have weakened education in Côte d'Ivoire and many development projects - now suspended - called for strengthening basic services such as health and education.

A new initiative to support production of renewable energy in Mauritius may provide a model for other countries to follow suit. 'We have got so much sunshine here,' says Andrea Gungadin, rector of the Hindu Girls College, a private educational institution in Curepipe, southern Mauritius. 'Why allow it to go waste when we can use it to produce electricity at a time when fossil fuel is becoming scarcer and more expensive?' The college, which has 1,400 students, is producing 14 KWh of clean electricity daily from a three kilowatt solar system mounted on its roof. This represents about a fifth of the school’s energy needs.

Sex work has increasingly become a popular means of making money for young girls in the urban areas in Malawi. This article makes reference to an intervention project in Malawi that was implemented in 2004 and sought to empower sex workers and to encourage them to insist on consistent use of condoms. The messages were also designed to encourage the young sex workers to modify their behaviour and withdraw from the practice.

The South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) plans to picket a Massmart shareholders meeting to show opposition to the group's impending deal with Walmart, reports South Africa's Daily Times. Massmart's shareholders are expected to vote for the global retail giant's offer to acquire 51 per cent of Massmart's shares at the meeting. The anti-Walmart coalition includes the Congress of South African Trade Unions, social movements and civil-society organisations.

State security agents ransacked Teranga FM last week, a community radio station located outside the capital, and ordered its closure, Reporters Without Borders has learned from various sources. Launched in 2009, Teranga FM is based in Sinju Alajie, about 20 km west of Banjul, the capital. It is funded by donations from the local population and advertising.

As slain land rights activist Moses Mpoe was laid to rest on 11 December, thousands of community members gathered to mourn and remember him, reports The Press Institute. During the funeral, murmurs circulated suggesting that senior government officials and their families were responsible for Mpoe’s assassination, as Mpoe played a major role in a court case that aimed to return more than 30,000 acres of land in the area known as Mau Narok to the Maasai community, a semi-nomadic people indigenous to East Africa who are known for their distinctive dress and customs.

The Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA) is highly concerned about the safety of nine Oromo refugees from Ethiopia whose whereabouts are not known since they were extra-judicially arrested and taken away by members of the Djibouti force in Djibouti on different occasions in the months of November and December 2010, and January 2011. HRLHA has a profound belief that the two countries – Djibouti and Ethiopia – are acting jointly in hunting, arresting and punishing alleged members and/or supporters of opposition political organisations and human rights activists.

President Jacob Zuma told party leaders this week to implement the government's new growth plan immediately, insisting it could be refined as they went along. With unemployment officially above 25 per cent of those actively looking for work, South Africa lost more than a million jobs in the recent global downturn. School-leavers and unskilled young men and women are the hardest hit by joblessness.

Sex workers operating in East Africa are generally aware of the HIV risks of unprotected sex, but for many of them, the extra cash incentive clients often offer for sex without a condom is worth the risk. According to Basilisa Ndayisaba, coordinator of local NGO Society for Women against AIDS in Africa (SWAA-Burundi), which raises awareness among sex workers on condom use and HIV risk, despite their best efforts, many sex workers in Bujumbura remain apathetic about condom use.

This position provides the opportunity to support existing advocacy coalitions and campaigns on women's human rights in a stimulating, multicultural and dynamic environment.

Pambazuka Press is pleased to announce the release of its new titles for 2011, available at www.pambazukapress.org.

The Municipal Service Project (MSP) has undertaken in-depth examinations of the gendered effects of privatization of public services, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which privatization creates additional burdens for women and exacerbates the power imbalance caused by the gendered divisions of labour. A new briefing note available on their website covers this issue and also includes an extended bibliography broken down by sector (water, health and electricity/energy) and thematic areas of interest.

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.