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....

South Africa’s recently-awarded tender for antiretroviral drugs halved drug costs for the world’s largest ARV programme. Driven by a better-prepared and more aggressive government, the deal may stand up to criticism better than initially thought. In a country with an estimated HIV prevalence rate of about 18 per cent, more than a million South Africans are currently on ARVs. South Africa will save an estimated 685 million dollars over the two-year life of the new tender.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s state visit to South Africa shows that he is already looking ahead to next month’s national election, which he is expected to win comfortably. With Uganda’s first oil exports expected to start flowing next year, as well as a growing service sector and significant agricultural potential, opportunities for economic cooperation between South Africa and Uganda is likely to dominate discussions during the two day state visit, says the South African Institute of International Affairs.

In early 2011 the World Bank will approve a new education sector strategy amid trends that mean that international goals on education will not be met. Zoe Godolphin of the University of Bristol argues that the Bank’s proposed approach fails conceptually because it does not accept that education is a human right. It also fails pragmatically because it continues to advocate a template approach instead of supporting genuinely country-driven priorities in education planning.

What is going to happen in Egypt on 25 January? People are calling for demonstrations and sit-ins everywhere. Who is going to participate, and where? What are their demands? Isn't it possible that some people are against the whole thing? Global Voices wraps up the Egyptian blogosphere to find out answers to these questions.

Kenya has secured the support of the African Union Commission and Ethiopia in its bid to have the International Criminal Court defer the case against six Kenyans at the International Criminal Court and have them tried locally. AU Commission chair Jean Ping endorsed Kenya’s request, saying it is within the realm of the rights of all ICC member states. Kenya’s Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka has been on a tour of African states that the government wants to back the country’s request.

Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognised president of the Cote d'Ivoire, has called for a month-long ban on cocoa exports, in an attempt to oust Laurent Gbagbo, who remains president despite being widely considered to have lost the disputed November poll. Anyone contravening the ban will be liable to sanctions, according to a statement issued on Sunday by the government nominated by Ouattara, who is holed up in a hotel guarded by UN troops.

Uganda has approved the setting up of an international university that will partner with institutions from around the world to deliver accredited courses and degree programmes to students in Uganda and other East African countries as well as Southern Sudan and Nigeria. The five member countries of the East African Community, EAC, are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

Nigeria's foreign minister on Monday called on the United Nations Security Council to authorise force in Côte d'Ivoire as West African nations seek to further pressure strongman Laurent Gbagbo to quit power. Odein Ajumogobia, in an editorial published in Nigerian newspapers, said the crisis 'single handedly precipitated by Mr Laurent Gbagbo ... will inevitably lead to anarchy and chaos, or worse, a full-blown civil war' if not resolved.

Building on his acclaimed book Limits to Change, Marais examines South Africa's most pressing issues – from the real reasons behind President Jacob Zuma's rise and the purging of his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, and how the African National Congress replenishes its power, to a devastating critique of the country's continuing AIDS crisis, its economic path and its approach to the rights and entitlements of citizens. South Africa Pushed to the Limit presents a riveting, benchmark analysis of the incomplete journey beyond apartheid.

How can non-governmental organisations (NGOs) tackle social issues such as HIV, gender equality and violence in rural African communities? A number of them, including South African Sonke Gender Justice network, Ubuntu Institute, CARE International and Zambian Women for Change (WFC) are working with traditional leaders as a gateway to reach the people in communities they are targeting.

Botswana’s government has green-lighted a massive $3bn mine in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve – in the middle of the Kalahari Bushmen’s appeal against the Botswana authorities’ refusal to allow them access to water there. Gem Diamonds announced that its application to open a huge diamond mine near the Bushman community of Gope in the reserve has been approved.

The dirty downside of the ICT industry is that computers have to go somewhere when they die and because they are full of potentially toxic materials they cannot simply be dumped in landfills. Uganda’s Government has sought to tackle part of the problem by banning the import of secondhand computers and sparked the law of unintended consequences. Russell Southwood talked to Shakeel Padamsey of Camara and Kyle Spencer of the Uganda Linux Group about what’s happened.

A councillor in a remote district of Binga has revealed that state security agents are compiling a visual database of MDC officials that they suspect are potential candidates in the next elections. The CIOs have already taken photographs of some councilors in Binga, but others have refused to be photographed, saying they know that their images will be used to identify them when violence is unleashed during elections. SW Radio Africa spoke to Councillor Temba Toonse Kunjulu, popularly known as TTK in his Jabuba ward in Binga, who described how he was recently approached by CIOs who asked him if he would be running for a position during the next elections.

Poor countries that borrow from the International Monetary Fund are spending just one cent in every dollar received in health aid on improving the medical care of their populations, according to new Oxford University-led research. The study, published in the International Journal of Health Services, said there were signs that the tough loan conditions imposed by the IMF were leading to health aid being diverted for other uses, reports the London Guardian.

Policemen were on Wednesday caught on camera executing three men in cold blood on a busy Nairobi street, reports the Daily Nation. A motorist who happened upon the confrontation between plainclothes policemen and alleged criminals in the morning traffic pulled out his camera and took photographs. All the three men had already surrendered and were lying on the tarmac on Langata Road near Wilson Airport. As they lay on the tarmac, a policeman in plain clothes was pointing a gun to their heads.

'The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), strongly condemns the continuing detention of at least fourteen human rights defenders and call upon the Government of Sudan to release them immediately as their detention is arbitrary.'

According to the World Bank's Global Economic Prospects 2011, released on 13 January, the GDP growth rate for Sub-Saharan Africa is projected at 4.7 per cent for 2010, from a 1.7 per cent low in 2009, increasing to 5.3 per cent in 2011 and 5.5 per cent in 2012. This compares to negative growth for the United States in 2009 (-2.6 per cent) and weak recovery in 2010-2012 (2.8 per cent, 2.8 per cent, and 2.9 per cent). The World Bank notes that the recovery is due in large part to trends in commodity prices, particularly for metals and minerals as well as for oil. But it also stresses the significance of domestic demand and of expanding investment in the region, including in manufacturing and telecommunications service. This edition of AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the report's regional annex on Sub-Saharan Africa.

The new school year opened with hope - and hunger - in Swaziland this week: an estimated 140,000 orphans and vulnerable children are among the small, eager faces in the mountain kingdom's classrooms. Poverty and the AIDS pandemic threaten to make an early mark on the next generation.

Niger's 10 presidential rivals have asked the ruling military junta to delay elections by three weeks to 20 February and to replace the electoral commission after problems with local polls held earlier this month. The presidential elections are meant to restore civilian rule after a military coup in February 2010 toppled the former president, Mamadou Tandja.