In response to the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Africa, the African Professional Sex Work Union® APSWU has initiated a permanent project called “Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy in Africa, CATPA” and calls on all those who care about the well being of the African Child to support this campaign with at least one dollar. The caption "one dollar" is borrowed from the famous “less-than-a-dollar-a-day” classification of vulnerable members of society.

Nearly ten years ago, the government of Uganda established the Universal Primary Education Program, designed to boost classroom attendance and increase literacy and education rates throughout the country. In less than a decade, the policy generated dramatic results, more than doubling the number of students enrolled in primary schools from 2.9 million to 6.3 million children.

The handover of the names of the suspects behind Kenya’s post-elections violence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) opens an uncertain chapter in the country’s history of political violence. This development has generated a vibrant debate among Kenyans: What should accountable politics look like? Oxford Transitional Justice Research is working in partnership with Moi University and Pambazuka News to offer a space in which concerned Kenyans can come together with a range of experts, scholars, practitioners, and commentators to discuss fundamental questions about how we got here, and the strategies necessary to move the country forward.

The Partnership for Change is of the considered view that over the last 17 months the citizens of Kenya have exhausted the mechanisms available to us under the national Accord Agreement to cause the Grand Coalition Government to implement the National Accord. This government acting together with Parliament has no vision, no morals and no desire or intent to uphold the constitution of the Republic of Kenya.

The Senegalese Prime minister, Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, said on Thursday that he would soon hold nationwide talks with the local media, urging actors in the sector to have a daily dialogue with the government. Speaking in Dakar he expressed regret about recent misunderstandings in the relations between the government and some privately-owned media.

The World Bank has given Congo a US$20-million loan to finance two projects in the health and education sectors. The Minister of Economy, Finance and Budget, Pacifique Issoibeka, and the World Bank operations director Marie Françoise Marie-Nelly signed two agreements - US$15 million to support basic education (PRAE BASE) and US$5 million for the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Fewer Zimbabweans are getting infected with AIDS, and researchers speculate it's due in part to a battered economy that's leaving men short of money to be sugar daddies and keep mistresses. Presenting a study of the infection rate among pregnant women at a major international AIDS conference in South Africa this week, Dr. Michael Silverman said the prevalence of the virus that causes AIDS fell from 23 percent in 2001 to 11 percent at the end of 2008.

Police in Khartoum began a crackdown on Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees in the past few days. The Amharic service's Tizita Belachew interviewed leaders of the refugee community in Khartoum on Thursday and Friday who said the raids began on July 5 and each day since then truckloads of police and other Sudanese government security have raided the homes and business of Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees, confiscating the contents of their restaurants and homes and beating and raping women and children.

Only 20 percent of the world’s governments are providing adequate information for their citizens to begin to hold them accountable for managing the public’s money. This finding comes from the Open Budget Survey 2008, an extensive new survey of government budget transparency in 85 countries issued on February 1, 2009, by the International Budget Partnership (IBP). The Survey also found that nearly 50 percent of the 85 countries evaluated provide such minimal information that they are able to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending.

Burkina Faso was one of several countries that where a rapid rise in food prices led to rioting in the streets in 2008. Policy-makers had sensed a crisis developing, but the country was not able to build up sufficient reserves of imported commodities such as rice, wheat and oil to avoid it. There is now an emphasis on achieving food security. Bonou tells IPS that Burkina Faso is one of the handful of countries respecting the Maputo commitment to spending at least ten percent of its budget on agriculture.

President Mamadou Tandja of Niger, operating under his emergency powers on July 8, 2009 gave sweeping powers to Daouda Diallo, chairman of the Conseil Supérieur de la Communication (CSC), the media regulatory body, to unilaterally deal decisively with the country's media.

Coup leader-turned-politician General Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz has been declared winner of Saturday's presidential elections by Mauritania’s Interior Ministry. His main rivals, former parliamentary speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir and veteran opposition figure Ahmed Ould Daddah have rejected the results as "prefabricated, meant to legitimise the coup that brought General Aziz to power."

The president of Mauritania's Independent National Electoral Committee (INEC), Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Dey, has resigned his position. Dey is a member of the opposition Rally of Democratic Forces (RFD). No reason has been given for the resignation which comes 5 days after the holding of the presidential poll won in the first round by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of the Union for the Republic (UPR), Several opposition figures have criticised the result saying there was "fraud a nd manipulation" of the voters' register.

Renowned diplomat and peace maker, Ambassador Bethuel Ki plagat, has been selected to chair Kenya's Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. Nairobi lawyer Betty Murungi was named vice-chairperson of the nine-member commission in the appointments made by President Mwai Kibaki.

Two scarcely noticed events occurred in Nigeria and Botswana at the end of last week that signal the growing speed and strength of a new "scramble for Africa" among the world's big powers, who are tapping into the continent for its oil, iron ore, timber, gold, diamonds and other natural resources. At Nigeria's Defence Intelligence School in Karu, near the capital Abuja, 30 military officers from seven African countries graduated from a training course designed to meet the "rapidly changing security complexities" of their nations "and the continent at large".

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) was formed in 1997 to collaborate with civil society organizations in developing and transition countries to analyze, monitor, and influence government budget processes, institutions, and outcomes. The aim of the Partnership is to make budget systems more responsive to the needs of poor and low-income people in society and, accordingly, to make these systems more transparent and accountable to the public.

The Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) is seeking a competent, experienced and self motivated individual for the position of Receptionist/Secretary. ZWRCN is an information-based organization with a focus on research, collection, analysis, processing and dissemination of information on gender and development. The organization’s strategic interventions aim to empower women, strengthen inter-organizational networking of gender and development agencies and promote the women’s movement in Zimbabwe.

The Secretariat for the International Conference on African Culture and Development (ICACD) invites you to submit abstracts / presentation ideas for ICACD 2009 – . Academics, artists, cultural and development workers, Government agencies and policy makers and all people committed to working to see Culture included on all development agendas are encouraged to submit their abstracts or ideas. ICACD 2009 will be held in Accra, Ghana November 15th to 18th 2009.

The construction of a two billion dollar dam in Metolong, some 35 kilometres outside of Lesotho’s capital Maseru, is being welcomed by people in and around the city who will gain access to clean and safe drinking water when construction is completed in 2013. But for 250 rural families who will lose access to land and natural resources - some will be forced to relocate to make way for roads, power lines and other infrastructural development during construction - the dam is bad news.

Kenya's private sector-backed SEACOM fibre optic cable has gone ‘live’ in five of the 11 countries that it is to connect. The 17,000-kilometre cable, linking South and East Africa to global networks through India and Europe, was commissioned in Kenya, South Africa, India, Tanzania and Mozambique simultaneously. It went live in the port city of Mombasa.