Charles Taylor, for six years the warlord president of Liberia, stole or diverted nearly $100 million of his country's wealth, leaving it the poorest nation on earth, a close review of government records and interviews with senior government officials and UN investigators shows. New York Times, quoting senior members of his government, said Taylor stole millions to buy houses, cars and sexual partners.

I am a teacher and very interested in agriculture and forestry - to know and discuss these matters with my students and think about globalisation and the South-North relations.

The Editorial Board of the above journal welcomes sound academic, original and empirically based research and development efforts focusing on all aspects of farm child, youth development and urban and rural youth in agricultural occupations. The publication is devoted to the rapid all-round development of farm children and capacitating rural youth into becoming sensitive and active for future food security and sustainable self-reliance.

A word of warning from a loyal reader! I have noticed that there is an increasing tendency for commercial sites to start charging for access to their pages. The latest - and most annoying for me, sitting in London wanting to keep abreast of South African affairs - is the Mail & Guardian. In the last week or so they have switched to 100% paid access by what they call the Kudu Club that you have to subscribe to (even the London "Financial Times" has a site which has a high proportion of items/pages which are free but not the "M&G"). The result is that some of your links involve putting us through to paid sites, which is time consuming and annoying. I just wonder whether you could put up a warning to readers. Or better still persuade these sites to let us get access for free somehow (I'm not a techie but there must be a way to file pages in a way that allows us access).
What do you think?
PZ Replies: Thanks for pointing this out - it is a worrying trend. We make a point of not linking to paid sites or those that require a difficult or tedious registration, but sometimes they manage to sneak through. We're very aware that many of our readers have limited web access and don't want to spend their time online negotiating paid-for sites. If a story of importance comes up on a paid site, then we do our best to source something similar elsewhere.

Just a minor correction - If I am right. Pambazuka News 124: Cancun to Dubai should read Cancun to Doha instead. Thanks.
PZ Replies: Yes, Doha could just as easily have been used in the context of the WTO meetings, but the use of Dubai was in reference to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings currently being held there.

As World Bank representatives gathered in Dubai for the 2003 World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings, Environmental Defence, Friends of the Earth, and International Rivers Network released a report in response to the World Bank's new "high risk/high reward" strategy in the water, forestry, and extractive industries sectors. The report, Gambling With People's Lives, analyzes the World Bank's ability to manage social and environmental risks in high-risk projects and to learn from its past mistakes. The report is available at www.irn.org.

When Kenyan and Ugandan delegations walked out of the World Trade Organisation's meeting on Sunday afternoon and Kenya's delegate George Odour Ong'wen declared to reporters that "the talks have collapsed and there is no agreement," United States Deputy Trade Representative Josette Shiner was startled; she shouldn't have been. Africans in particular have long chafed at the power of the U.S., EU, Japan and Canada within the WTO.
Related Link:
* Africa tears into draft WTO text http://allafrica.com/stories/200309140112.html

Africa peoples’ impact at the WTO Ministerial in Cancun was out of all proportion to the numbers present. While we were lacking in numbers of activists who could get to Mexico, the African Peoples Caucus made up for this with our political convictions about our needs and aims, our political experience in mass actions, our strategic sense and tactical skills, and the dynamism of our political expression.

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), required by the IMF and the World Bank for access to debt relief and concessional assistance are loaded with a number of myths that should be debunked. According to these two institutions, PRSPs are country-driven and reflect the priorities of each country in its fight against poverty. But 'national ownership' is more theoretical than real. In many cases, CSOs have been frustrated by the process and democratically-elected parliaments have been bypassed. And the fact is that African governments put in PRSPs what the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) would like to see, rather than what the poor really want.

Former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konare spoke of the enormous task ahead on Tuesday as he took over the reins of power at the African Union (AU) for the next four years. The 57-year-old professor of history and archaeology admitted that financial backing and international support for the year-old AU were vital for its success.

Tensions ahead of four critical by-elections in Zambia have seen sporadic violence erupt between ruling party and opposition supporters in the run-up to the polls. The ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) is hoping to gain an outright majority in parliament, while the opposition is desperate to bolster its numbers after losing some of its legislators through floor-crossing and a court ruling stripping an MP of his seat.

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has arrested former president Chiluba's former economic advisor Donald Chanda for theft of K20 million. The ACC also arrested former Public Service Pensions Fund (PSPF) managing director Offman Gondwe for abuse of office.

The United Nations has launched an initiative to deal with the threat that HIV/Aids poses to African states, where 70% of the world's HIV positive people live. The 20 commissioners, mostly drawn from Africans in leadership positions, are over the next two years supposed to devise policies to help African governments cope with the impact of the virus.

A government report into Zimbabwe's controversial land reform programme has opened a can of worms, throwing the spotlight on corruption surrounding the ownership of multiple farms by senior government officials and others close to the establishment. To date only one politician has publicly surrendered his extra farms to the state, a month after the expiry of a two-week deadline set by President Robert Mugabe.

Dr. Kenneth Kaunda has got a point. All is not well in the fight against corruption. This fight is certainly not being executed in an objective, effective and efficient way. The high hopes and expectations that were raised by a seemingly dedicated and resolved President are being called into question - and this not unfairly. The momentum and steam that was generated is being lost to what appears to be incompetence and a lazy approach to a matter that requires both skill and dedicated interest.

"The newspaper is banned." With these words the Zimbabwean Government closed the country's leading and most popular newspaper, the independent Daily News, on 12 September 2003. The ban follows a Supreme Court ruling on 11 September that the paper was operating illegally. Plainclothes security police, accompanied by about 20 paramilitary police armed with automatic rifles, burst into the newspaper's offices in central Harare at about 5pm, ordered staff to leave and arrested Nqobile Nyathi, the Editor, and Simon Ngena, the production manager. Please click on the link below to read a host of protest statements from the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), MISA-Zambia, Article 19, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and World Association of Newspapers (WAN). MISA-Zimbabwe has condemned the action as a serious violation of media freedom and are calling for letters to be sent to Zimbabwe's embassies and high commissions, Members of Parliament in Zimbabwe, the police and relevant ministries, calling upon them to allow the Daily News to continue operating, reminding them that the newspaper is a legally registered company, calling upon them to uphold the rights of the paper to the enjoyment of freedom of expression and desist from harassing media houses on the basis of repressive laws.
Send appeals to:
President Robert Mugabe
Office of the President
Munhumutapa Building
Samora Machel Avenue/ 3rd Street
Harare, Zimbabwe
facsimile: 263-4-708-820

Minister of Information and Publicity
Professor Jonathan Moyo
Office of The President
Munhumutapa Building
Box 777
Causeway
Harare
Phone 00 263 4 706 894, 707 091 –7, 707098

The Chairman
Dr Tafataona Mahoso
Media and Information Commission
P O Box CY 7700
Causeway
Harare
Tel 703 416

The Attorney General
Mr Andrew Chigovera
2ND Floor Corner House
Samora Machel Ave
Box CY 880
Causeway
Harare
Zimbabwe
Phone 00 263 4 77 32 47

Please copy all correspondence to editor@pambazuka.org

Nigerian authorities have uncovered a huge deficit in the state pension fund, confirming what many unpaid former state workers have feared for years. Retired civil servants have long complained of non-payment of their pensions, with many forced to queue for days to claim what they are owed. The revelation is likely to stir suspicions that some of the money may have been misappropriated.

Hardly nine months into the new government no one really expected that the Republic of Kenya would be corruption-free territory. But given the commendable anti-corruption laws enacted by the government and the rhetoric of its top leadership on corruption, reasonable people must have expected lesser impunity. Yet the new face of NARC corruption is as ugly and shameless as ever, says this editorial in the East African Standard.

Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama on Monday lauded the creation of an Anti-Corruption Unit within the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). The unit will investigate and prosecute public office holders and institute civil proceedings to recover money embezzled or diverted.

These days there is a buzz in the upper storeys of Nigeria's finance ministry, a palpable feeling that at last Africa's most populous country could be on the verge of meaningful economic reform. Much is at stake as the new finance minister, former World Bank vice-president Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, prepares to take a machete to the corrupt and inefficient thickets of Nigeria's overgrown public sector.