http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/516/Maurice-Fahe_tmb.jpgIn the following presentation, attempts to answer the question, how do Ivorians understand what is happening in their country today? [mp3] The media and other international actors have failed to correctly analyse the situation in the country, according to Fahe. He says the country has remained a semi-colony since the government of Houphouet-Boigny, and that the form of democracy that has since prevailed has not and will not lead to the transformation of society. Now is not the time to support or follow Outtara or Gbagbo, but to let Ivorians themselves decide and shape their own destiny.

The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, has recommended a drastic restructuring of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in order to ensure greater transparency and credibility of certain oil sector payments and receipts in the national oil and gas behemoth. NEITI's recommendation was made in its latest reconciliation report, which covered the period of 2006 to 2008 and published on the website of the extractive industries watch-dog.

Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara refused to resign, defying a directive from his party to step down and accept a ministerial position after he lost the party’s leadership. Mutambara was replaced by Industry Minister Welshman Ncube as head of the faction of the Movement for Democratic Change at its congress in January, after which the party said he would move to the Minister of International Co-operation and Regional Integration.

Apart from the looming job losses in Swaziland’s public sector, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have also warned of retrenchments following the government’s decision to suspend procurement from small businesses. The government of the southern African autocratic monarchy has been forced to cut expenditure after its receipts from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) shrunk with 60 per cent.

The chairperson of West Africa's regional bloc on Tuesday (08 February) criticised South Africa for sending a warship to the region amid Côte d'Ivoire's political crisis, but the South African government maintained it had sent the vessel as a negotiating venue. The dispute comes amid a growing rift between African nations on how to resolve the political stalemate in Côte d'Ivoire. Incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo has refused to cede power more than two months after the UN said he lost the election.

A Libyan writer and political commentator arrested and accused of a driving offence appears to have been targeted for calling for peaceful protests in the country, Amnesty International has said. Jamal al-Hajji, a former prisoner of conscience who has dual Libyan and Danish nationality, was detained on 1 February in Tripoli by plain clothes security officers. They accused him of hitting a man with his car, which he denies.

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor snubbed his war crimes trial for a second day on Wednesday (09 February), prompting judges to adjourn the case as they consider whether to allow a defence appeal over key documentation. Taylor, the first African ruler to stand trial for war crimes, has denied 11 charges of instigating murder, rape, mutilation, sexual slavery and conscription of child soldiers during a civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

In the wake of the Tunisian revolution, the country's once repressed music and cultural scene is flourishing. Rappers whose songs were once banned under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali held their first public concert on Saturday (29 January) in Tunis. 'I now started to breathe freedom and the field has now become mine,' rapper Mohamed Ben Hamada said after ascending to the stage and raising the Tunisian flag to enthusiastic applause.

From the grassroots to the global, communities and movements are imagining and creating a world where people and planet come before profit, and democracy trumps corporate power. 6 Billion Ways is a day that explores this resistance through discussion, ideas, action and the arts. With speakers and practical workshops for all ages, debates, films, music and art, 6 Billion Ways is your chance to inspire and be inspired, and to make connections with others who want to challenge injustice and inequality, both in the UK and globally.

Fahamu events at 6 Billion Ways include:

- Africa: Empire and Resistance

Africa is still portrayed as a hopeless, famine-struck continent in need of rescue. In this session, leading thinkers will paint a more positive picture, and assess the hopes and prospects for African resistance in the twenty-first century.

Speakers

Samir Amin, Third World Forum, Senegal
Firoze Manji, Pambazuka News
Patrick Bond, Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal

- Film: Tin Town

Promised housing by the South African government, more than a hundred Cape Town families found community through their struggle as squatters on a sandy road known as Symphony Way. Recently moved by court order to an indefinitely temporary relocation area dubbed ‘Tin Town’ or ‘Blikkiesdorp’ in Afrikaans, community members reflect on that road in their past and on the road ahead.

This is a short film followed by a discussion with Firoze Manji, Editor-in-chief at Pambazuka News.

The book 'No Land! No House! No Vote! Voices from Symphony Way' will also be launched at the screening.

In the following presentation,

Female genital mutilation/cutting has been illegal in Senegal since 1999. But that didn’t stop Dialyma Cisse‘s paternal grandmother from having her cut, against the wishes of the young girl and her parents. Once a social norm is established, even if it is a harmful one, it can be hard for individuals to opt out. Parents fear their daughters may be socially marginalised or face reduced marriage prospects. But in Senegal, and in many countries across Africa and the Arab States, communities are questioning the traditional ways and taking collective action in response.

Two Rwandan journalists with the Umurabyo newspaper have been sentenced to long jail terms after being found guilty of stirring up ethnic divisions. Editor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years, while reporter Saidath Mukakibibi was imprisoned for seven.

Pro-democracy protesters are continuing their sit-in in Cairo's Tahrir (Liberation) Square for the fourteenth consecutive day, showing no signs of being appeased by talks held a day earlier between the government and opposition groups. People were still camped out in the square on Monday while life was slowly getting back to normal in other parts of the Egyptian capital. An Al Jazeera correspondent said traffic in the streets was increasing while businesses were beginning to reopen.

As the final results of South Sudan's referendum for independence are confirmed, 22,000 southerners are stranded on the side of the road in and around Khartoum still waiting for transportation to the South. After Sudan splits, they are afraid they will become refugees in a foreign land and that their rights will not be protected.

Information released by the American Cancer Society (ACS) on the eve of World Cancer Day last Friday warns that lifestyle cancers of the lung, breast and colon – which are in turn related to economic development - will continue to rise in developing countries if preventative measures are not widely applied. The findings are contained in the ACS reports - Global Cancer Facts & Figures and Global Cancer Statistics - and include a special section on cancer in Africa, where according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) about 681,000 new cancer cases and 512,400 cancer deaths occurred in 2008.

This UNHCR paper examines the mixed movement of people that is currently taking place between the East and Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region to the southern part of the continent. Stretching all the way from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to South Africa?s Atlantic coast, growing numbers of people are travelling the whole or part of this complex 4,500 kilometre route, travelling overland, by sea and (much less commonly) by air.

Government has launched the Gender Responsive Budget Programme which seeks to ensure equality in the budgetary process. The project, which is in conjunction with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) will incorporate four main areas of activities. The activities are gender citizen report cards, budget tracking from the gender perspective, budget statements and gender-aware policy appraisals.

Ayman Mohyeldin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Cairo who was held by the military outside Tahrir (Liberation) Square, has spoken to the network about the experience following his release. Mohyeldin describes how he was taken to a separate holding area, where he was handcuffed with plastic strips, had his equipment taken off him and was interrogated.

Oxfam has added its voice to a growing chorus of concern about Britain’s system for deciding on asylum claims, and the suffering it causes, in a report on destitute asylum seekers, who are forbidden to work but cannot claim state benefits. These men and women, who told their stories anonymously in 'Coping with Destitution: Survival strategies of asylum seekers in the UK', live in the shadows, penniless and dependent on the charity of others.

Google executive Wael Ghonim said after his release that he was kept blindfolded for two weeks while being detained by Egyptian state security. Activists said Ghonim had been involved in founding 'We are all Khaled Said', an anti-torture Facebook group named after an activist who rights groups said was beaten to death by police in the port city of Alexandria.