Even though the documents presented by the Indian firm to prove its acquisition of the Nigerian Steel Company was overlooked on Tuesday by the arbitrators that made up the London panel, the Nigerian government is furious at the Indian company over its possession of what is considered a classified document. According to Chief Michael Aondoakaa, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, "The Federal Government’s dispute with Global Steel over Ajaokuta had to do with what the government felt that the contract was entered not in conformity with our laws here.

Not long ago, 20,000 textile and garment factories were bustling here, crowded with workers knitting and sewing for six, and sometimes seven, days a week to produce the wares sold at big American retailers like Gap and Wal-Mart. Now, demand is waning in the United States, and Shaoxing, a coastal city that is one of the world’s biggest textile centers, has fallen victim to the global downturn.

Don't look now, but capitalism - maligned in these bailout-ridden recessionary days - is reshaping Africa inexorably. What is different today is that it is emanating from China and India, rather than from the conventional bastions of capitalist prowess. Devi Shetty, a celebrated cardiac surgeon in Bangalore, brings health relief to India's masses through his Narayana group of hospitals. Some years ago, I witnessed his early experiments with rural telemedicine, especially in the Indian states of Karnataka and West Bengal.

"Trade between South Africa and India is projected to reach $12 billion by 2012 and South Africa is seeking cooperation with the Indian private sector to achieve this target", said South African Deputy Minister, Trade and Industry. While highlighting that the bilateral trade between both countries had risen exponentially from a negligible $ 45 million in 1993 to $ 6 billion mark in 2007-08, Elizabeth Thabethe, at an exclusive interaction and conference on South Africa: Trade and Investment Opportunities, organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with the Department of Trade and Industry, South Africa, Friday in Mumbai, remarked that various initiatives including establishment of the India-South Africa Joint Ministerial Commission had already been implemented.

India has launched a hi-tech project it says will provide medical education and better health care in Africa. Launched by Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi, the project will at first connect 11 African countries with India. The services will include virtual classes for medical staff and online medical consultations.

The 105th Canton Fair, to be held between April and May 2009, has been formally introduced to South Africans in Johannesburg on Thursday by Zhang Zhigang, deputy director of the Committee for Economic Affairs of National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Zhang, also vice president of China Import and Export Fair and chairman of the Council of China Foreign Trade Center, told the meeting that China Import and Export Fair, also renowned as the Canton Fair, is held biannually in Guangzhou every spring and autumn.

The emergence of China as a force to be reckoned with on the African mining scene has altered the way contractors in the industry operate, with greater flexibility now required. Roger Dixon, a director and corporate consultant of SRK Consulting, says this was one of the observations that emerged at the Mining Indaba, which was held in Cape Town earlier this month.

Taiwan's trade promotion body has recently set up an office in Burkina Faso, the first in West Africa, in an effort to facilitate business exchanges with the African country as well as the nearby region, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official has said.

In Guadeloupe and Martinique Africans have been protesting the colonial conditions imposed on them by the French government. These protests turned into rebellions in response to the French military occupation and deployment of troops to contain the people's struggle. The resistance involving more then 2.5 million people, which has been going on for over a month, has not stopped.

China is not pushing to expand overseas farming and Chinese companies are less active in their investment abroad because of concerns of potential political risks, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said on Wednesday. To meet a perennial shortfall in soybean supply, China, the world's largest soy importer, will continue to import from major growing countries such as the United States, the largest exporter, rather than seeking to buy up farmland outside China, said Qian Keming, market economics director at the ministry.

International NGO Journal (INGOJ) publishes high-quality solicited and unsolicited articles, in English, in all areas of Non Governmental Organization (NGO) activities. INGOJ is founded to publish proposals, appraisals and reports of NGO projects. The aim is to have centralized information for NGO activities where stakeholders including beneficiaries of NGO services can find useful information about ongoing projects and where to obtain particular assistance. Also prospective donors will easily find information about different NGOs and decide which to fund on specific projects.

The pursuit of international justice for perpetrators of atrocity crimes necessarily has political implications – from shifting the balance of power within a country, to requiring other states to cooperate when doing so may adversely affect their own interests, to confronting both international and domestic actors with the undesirable task of weighing the benefits of peace against the costs of impunity.

cc The DRC’s desire to choose its own mining trading partners, whether Chinese investors or Western corporations, calls the bluff of global financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, writes Antoine Roger Lokongo. Negotiations the country has conducted reveal how these institutions are putting pressure on the DRC government to ditch the Socomin deal with China – a Beijing-based, joint-venture between the DRC’s Gécamines and a group of Chinese state-owned enterprises – as a condition to get its debt forgiven. That is clearly blackmail, Lokongo maintains, and is inconsistent with the spirit of free trade and globalisation.

This paper makes the case that attending to fundamental issues such as social exclusion and gender inequity is crucial to the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The challenge is to inspire the public and professionals alike to step up efforts - not by focusing solely on the goals themselves, but, rather, by broadening the perspective through linking the MDGs to leading global development debates.

The leading mobile telecommunications provider, Zain Tuesday announced plans to bring mobile banking to over 100 million people in Africa with the launch of its new service, Zap. Providing the most comprehensive and accessible package of mobile banking features currently available on the African continent, Zap will be initially available in Kenya and Tanzania prior to the launch in Uganda.

When United Villages took the web to rural India, its vision was to liberate the poor by giving them tools from the digital age. The communications group set up Internet terminals in remote villages and watched for a transformation. Almost three years later, technology is indeed enriching rural lives — but not quite how they expected. Rather than paying to send emails and surf the web villagers prefer to email their questions to someone who will do the surfing for them and return the answers in a pdf (portable document format) file.

Despite the global air cargo turmoil, carriers are confident that the westbound Asia-Africa trade will continue to offer good prospects. Correspondent Phil Hastings looks at the airlines focusing on the African continent. Chinese investment in African infrastructure has provided a significant boost to air cargo traffic between Asia and Africa over the past two or three years.

India and Mozambique on Thursday signed two agreements for promotion of trade and Investment and strengthening the cooperation in economic, cultural, scientific and technical areas. The agreements were signed by Union Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma and Mozambique Foreign Minister Oldemiro Baloi at Hyderabad House.

China has extended a total of $100m (about sh197b) loans and grants to Uganda in the last five years. The Chinese government has provided Uganda interest free loans and grants to set up different projects in the country totalling $100m since November 2003 to date, the former industry state minister, Prof. Ephraim Kamuntu, said

Zambia expects foreign direct investment to reach $2.7 billion in 2009 despite the global economic downturn as investors rush to take up tax breaks, the government's trade minister said. Zambia has in the last five years liberalised its investment policies, awarding tax incentives to foreign companies in a bid to grow the economy and create wealth and employment.