Sino-African relations have aroused a lot of attention from around the world. Some are critical and some see more positive changes. Thus how to look at Sino-African relations depends on how one understands such relations. At a seminar in Stockholm last week, Dr. Henning Melber, Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskyöld Foundation in Uppsala in Sweden gave an overview on Sino-African relations and some changes in the current situation.

China has expressed “serious concern” to Sudan’s government about the expulsion of aid workers from Darfur, yet won’t back United Nations Security Council pressure to reverse the decision, China’s envoy said. “We have openly expressed our concern,” China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Yesui, said in an interview in New York. “We have advised the Sudanese government to be restrained. We told them we do not want the humanitarian situation to worsen.”

During six days at the end of January, citizens, movements and organizations from 142 countries gathered in the city of Belem for the IX World Social Forum. More than 2300 activities involved 113 thousands participants in panels, debates, seminars, cultural events, marches, demonstrations, and open spaces for direct interactions in this edition of the event in the heart of the Amazon region.

On the weekend of May 22-24, African organizers from across the U.S. and Canada will converge on Washington, D.C. for a conference recognizing African Liberation Day (ALD) with the theme, “One Africa, One Nation: Separated by Colonial Slavery, Reunited by Revolutionary Resistance!” The event, organized by the African People’s Socialist Party, will serve to formally establish the North American Region of the African Socialist International (ASI), a worldwide party uniting African workers to liberate Africa and its people wherever they have been dispersed.

Constitutive on the "International Day of Action against the Commercialization of Education" on Nov.5th 2008, the International Students Movement is calling for a Global Week of Action in April 2009 (20/04 – 29/04). We are a loose network of various progressive (student) groups from close to 30 countries on 5 continents. What unites us is the struggle against the increasing commercialization of education and for emancipating public education accessible to all members of society.

Black activists around the country will hold simultaneous press conferences on Saturday, March 21, 2009, also the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racism. The December 12th Movement International Secretariat will hold a Press Conference in New York City to protest President Barack Obama’s threat to boycott the United Nations World Conference against Racism - Durban Review being held in Geneva Switzerland next month.

In a reaction to the alarming data released in the 2009 State of the World's Forests report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Friends of the Earth International and the Global Forest Coalition, two leading networks of environmental and Indigenous Peoples' Organisations, called on world governments to take immediate action to halt deforestation and forest degradation.

Rights & Democracy (International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development) presents the John Humphrey Award each year to an organization or individual from any region of the world, including Canada, for outstanding achievement in the promotion of human rights and democratic development. The Award consists of a grant of $30,000, and a speaking tour of Canadian cities to help increase awareness of the recipient’s human rights work. It is named in honour of the late John Peters Humphrey, the Canadian human rights law professor who prepared the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The global financial and economic system is in crisis. Existing economic policies and institutions have overseen an economic system scarred by high levels of poverty and inequality, which is contributing to an environmental catastrophe. Blind faith in the virtues of markets, and inadequate public control, regulation and accountability of finance are at the heart of the financial crisis. Before the financial crisis, people across the world and in Britain were already suffering from the effects of rising food prices, inadequate essential services and the threat of climate chaos. There can be no return to business as usual. Fundamental change is needed.

cc As the international financial crisis points to the collapse of laissez faire economics and discredits market fundamentalism, Africa and the global South should break free from failed neoliberal policies and the institutions that have promoted them and define their own paths to development, writes Demba Moussa Dembele, director of the Forum for African Alternatives.

The crisis provides fundamental lessons, says Dembele, the first being that markets do not have self-correcting mechanisms, and that market failures are not less costly than state failures. Secondly, "the collapse of the neoliberal dogma is a major blow to the international financial institutions. What is even more devastating to them is the reversal of most of the policies they had advocated for decades in Africa and in other ‘poor’ countries under the now discredited SAPs (structural adjustment programmes). The IMF and the World Bank are supporting fiscal stimulus – expansionary fiscal policies – in the United States, Europe and Asia."

Thirdly, its clear that the state remains a central player in solving crises caused by markets, and is not the sole cause of economic and social problems in Africa that neoliberal policy has categorised it as. Dembele notes that many development agencies do not have Africa’s best interests at heart, citing failures to cancel debt and to dedicate 0.7 per cent of GDP to official development assistance budgets, along with restricting the access of African exports to Western markets. In contrast, US$4 trillion was made available in matter of weeks to tackle the international financial crisis, 45 times the total aid budget of the European Union and the USA for 2007.

Dembele calls for Africa and Africans to forget neoliberal capitalism and explore new paths to ‘an endogenous development for and by its people’, recommending that Africa should restore capital controls and reject unfavourable trade liberalisation policies, as well as reversing the privatisation of key sectors and natural resources. Likewise, the author calls for African governments to restore the role of the state in the development process, reclaim the debate on African development while learning from the experiences of other countries in the global South, and to build an alternative means for financing development including South–South co-operation and the integration of diaspora remittances into a coherent strategy.

Aid groups in eastern Chad are on alert for an eventual flooding of people into the area, after the government of Sudan sent out NGOs providing water, food and health care to millions of people in Darfur. The Sudanese government had expelled 13 aid groups from Darfur after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for its president, Omar el-Bashir.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he is deeply concerned at the recent kidnapping of humanitarian workers in Darfur, and once again called on the Sudanese Government to reverse its decision last week to expel 13 major aid groups. Last night five staff members of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Médecins Sans Frontières/Belgium – three internationals and two Sudanese nationals – were abducted by armed men from their office in North Darfur.

A cross-party row has broken out over a controversial finding by a committee of MPs that Britain should continue to supply aid to China. Hugh Bayley, a former government minister, has dissented from the main finding of a report by the international development committee that the government should provide up to £10m a year to keep an aid presence in China after aid ceases in 2011.

Australia ended a long-standing ban on non-humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe Wednesday, saying it wanted to help Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai relieve the suffering of his nation's people. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Australia would provide 10 million dollars (6.5 million US) for the Zimbabwe government to restore basic water, sanitation and health services.

The mass expulsion of humanitarian aid organizations from Darfur is having immediate and alarming consequences, with thousands of people already being denied critical health services. The government of Sudan terminated work licenses of the International Rescue Committee and 12 other international aid groups in Darfur yesterday and today, decimating the relief effort in a region where more than two million people remain displaced and dependent on foreign assistance.

As a leading UN economist argued that China could lead the world out of slump, all the signs last week were that Chinese investment in Africa was continuing unabated. So was concern by campaigners at the possible environmental and social impact of some Chinese deals and debate over the impact of Chinese traders and migrants. But there were also signs of continuing efforts by larger Chinese corporations to attend to their image. Meanwhile, the annual meeting of China’s parliament provided an occasion for an insight into future policy trends and thinking by China’s rulers.

Angola has secured another billion-dollar (783 million euros) loan from China, state media said Thursday, to be spent on developing its agricultural sector. The southern African country has already received at least five billion dollars in credit from China to pay for its post-war reconstruction, but the World Bank believes up to eight billion dollars more has not been publicised.

United States President Barack Obama is eager to promote good relations between his country and the East African Community (EAC), according to a letter he has written to EAC Secretary General Amb. Juma Mwapachu. In his letter, Obama expresses confidence of working together with the EAC in a spirit of peace and friendship in order to build a more secure world.

Former Mintek CEO and one-time Department of Trade and Industry DDG, Dr Paul Jourdan, played a role in making the South African government the custodian of mineral rights in South Africa. Until the new regime was enforced, mineral rights were the preserve of the private sector in South Africa, which was out of kilter with what pertained elsewhere in the Western world.

Nigeria and other developing countries face a financing shortfall of $270-700 billion to pay for their imports and service their debts this year, as the global economy falters and foreign investors withdraw, the World Bank has said. In a report published yesterday ahead of a March 14 meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers, the World Bank also said only one quarter of the most vulnerable countries have the resources to prevent a rise in poverty.