Heavily armed soldiers wearing military fatigues on Wednesday launched a lunchtime raid on Green Valley farm in Chipinge East, in an operation in which they took away MDC officials. One of those ‘abducted’ by the soldiers, who were brandishing AK47 rifles, is Solomon Mazvokwadi, an MDC-T ward youth chairman for the area. The soldiers were deployed in Chipinge East three months ago and have been patrolling the area, allegedly intimidating MDC supporters.

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.

AWID is currently seeking an activist/researcher with a strong background in economics and development to work with our Influencing Development Actors and Practices for Women’s Rights (IDeA) strategic initiative. IDeA is engaged in an exciting action-research agenda that is attempting to connect theoretical debates on development and the need for alternative models with concrete experiences, lessons learned and analysis from a women’s rights perspective.

This South Centre report argues that the G20 agenda misses some of the key issues that need to be dealt with in order to effectively reform the international monetary system so as to avert future global financial crises. The missing issues include enforceable exchange rate and adjustment obligations, orderly sovereign debt workout mechanisms and the reform of the international reserves system. The paper also points out that there are no effective rules to control the unstable global financial market, no multilateral discipline over misguided monetary and exchange rate policies, and national policy makers are preoccupied with resolving crises by supporting those responsible for these crises rather than introducing measures to prevent future crises.

As nearly 25 years of development of a malaria vaccine come to fruition, health authorities across Africa will need to come to grips with how to effectively introduce it. Phase III testing of a malaria vaccine involving up to 16,000 infants in seven African countries has begun; success could see a vaccine ready for use by 2013.

The gender unit of Third World Network-Africa is hosting a round-table on gender and regional economic integration in Africa on 18-19 November 2010, in Accra, Ghana. The meeting will bring together scholars, feminist economists and gender experts, as well as policy-makers, to discuss issues of gender equity and Africa’s economic integration.

World leaders have an historic opportunity to reform the global economy to ensure that the one in six people who live in extreme poverty benefit from economic recovery, international agency Oxfam said today ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul. Oxfam is calling on the G20 to forge a new Seoul Development Consensus to replace the failed Washington Consensus of the past. The new consensus should combine financial support for health, education and poor farmers in developing countries with action to make the global economy work in the interests of poor countries.

Tunisia is becoming the number one medical haven for its Algerian and Libyan neighbours. The Health Ministry reported that Tunisian health institutions received more than 140,000 Libyan and Algerian patients last year. 'In Libya, we suffer from the bad treatment of medical professionals and from their indifference to the health problems that worry us,' frequent visitor of Tunisian clinics Bouajila Fakhri told Magharebia.

Fifteen years ago Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists who led protests against Shell Oil company were hanged by the Nigerian government after a sham trial on trumped up charges. Justice in Nigeria Now remembers Ken Saro Wiwa and his colleagues, noting new revelations about Shell’s PR strategy after the deaths of the Ogoni activists.

'We, the undersigned civil society organisations from 23 countries, urge G-20 leaders to make concrete progress towards the introduction of an internationally coordinated financial transactions tax (FTT) at the upcoming summit in Seoul. Our organisations have long advocated that such taxes are a practical way to generate revenues needed to fill domestic and international financing gaps, discourage the type of short-term financial speculation that has little social value but poses high risks to the economy and serve as a desperately-needed and sustainable source of financing for health and development. In recent months, the case for an FTT has been strengthened with new inputs from sometimes unexpected sources.'

ALISON, the online learning website, has officially announced the release of a new free online course on how to create your very own Podcasts. The course is ideal for anyone looking to record and share audio and video podcasts with others over the web.

The Endorois community is seeking the intervention of the African Commission to compel the Government to implement a ruling delivered early this year. The community has dispatched a delegation of 10 members to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) meeting in Banjul. Gambia, to express displeasure over Government's failure to honour its ruling. In the landmark ruling, the African Commission found the Government guilty of violating the human rights of the Endorois, by evicting them from their land to pave way for creation of Lake Bogoria Game Reserve, between 1974 and 1979.

The Fahamu Emerging Powers in Africa Programme is pleased to announce a call for applications for its Journalist Study Tour to India. Four successful applicants will be chosen to participate in a 6 day study tour. African media professionals in print, broadcast, radio and online fora throughout Africa are encouraged to apply for this study tour. African lecturers from journalism schools and media programmes on the continent may also apply.

Although responsible for about 80 per cent of the agricultural production for the supply of households and markets, women own less than two per cent of arable lands in West and Central Africa. This was the finding of a study conducted by the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (WECARD), published in Dakar, Senegal.

After years of armed conflict, women in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo are playing a leading role in its economic recovery with the help of vocational training centres which keep them fed while they learn new skills. Famiya Omari, a 50-year-old mother of five, once trudged for miles each day to ply fresh cassava. Now, she sells the bread and soap that she has learnt to make at a vocational centre run by a local NGO, the Reflection Committee For Development and Social Promotion (CORDPS).

Delegates drawn from African governments, international organisations, parliaments and civil society agreed on Friday, 5 November 2010 in Tunis that the time had come for African countries to rely more on their internal resources, such as taxation, the capital markets and better prices for their valuable commodities, and less on international aid for development. The second Regional Meeting on Aid Effectiveness, jointly organised by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union and NEPAD, convened on 4 and 5 February 2010, in preparation for the fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, to be held in Busan, Korea, in November 2011.

Dominicano Mulenga, national coordinator of Zambia's Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, goes through his to-do list as the rainy season sets in: Industrial pumps to suck water out of the roads serviced. Tick. Enough stocks of tents and mosquito nets. Tick. Mobile phones delivered to communities living along the upper catchment areas of the River Zambezi. Check. 'We do not want a repeat of the situation from last year, when 1,000 people were displaced in Lusaka [the Zambian capital] alone because of poor drainage,' said Mulenga. Mulenga is one of several officials in Southern Africa gearing up for the rainy season which normally goes on until the end of March 2011.

Software piracy is becoming unnecessary. Open source software packages are becoming as user-friendly and adding as many features as proprietary packages - even in scientific circles. Africa should embrace open source scientific software, argues this article.

Will Africa give birth to a new nation in 2011? Southern Sudan will hold an a referendum on whether or not it should remain as a part of Sudan on 9 January 2011 as part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Khartoum central government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement. A simultaneous referendum will be held in Abyei on whether to become part of Southern Sudan. Global Voices carries a roundup of posts that discuss Sudan.

France's highest appeals court has authorised judges to proceed with an investigation into assets held in the country by three African leaders. The anti-corruption group Transparency International has accused the three of using African public funds to buy luxury homes and cars in France. The three leaders, one of whom is now dead, had denied wrongdoing. They are Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, as well as the late Gabonese leader, Omar Bongo.