The celebration of one thousand years of the existence of famous Kanem-Borno Dynasty coincides with the one hundred years of the establishment of the city of Yerwa, the capital of modern Borno State of Nigeria. The Organising Committee of the Celebrations is convening an international conference of scholars, both from within and outside, scheduled for August 2007 at Maiduguri.

The Department of Politics and International Relations proposes to appoint a University Lecturer in Comparative Politics with special reference to the African Politics. The post is tenable from 1st September 2007 or as soon as possible thereafter and will be held in conjunction with a Tutorial Fellowship at St Peter’s College for which further information is given in Section 8. The closing date for applications is 12:00 NOON (UK time) on Tuesday 6th March 2007. The post-holder will be provided with support facilities and office space in St Peter’s College.

Almost every African country today bears the stamp of China’s emerging presence, from oil fields in the east and west, to farms in the south, to mines in the centre of the continent. China has cultural agreements with 42 African countries. US$30 billion will change between Chinese and African hands this year. And China’s trade and economic assistance to Africa has grown by geometric proportions.

In this week’s issue of Pambazuka News, we bring you an audio broadcast produced to coincide with the launch of a an unprecedented text: African Perspectives on China in Africa, a collection of essays from the prize-winning weekly electronic newsletter Pambazuka News, published by Fahamu.

The contributors to the book - including Horace Campbell, Michelle Chan-Fishel, Daniel Large, Stephen Marks and Kwesi Kwaa Prah - present social, historical and cross-continental perspectives on Chinese involvement in Africa. They argue that although there is no single view about China in Africa within or outside the continent, Africans must organise their side of the story: together, in their own interests, and in the interest of social justice for all.

The book was launched at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007. During the launch, Robtel Pailey of Pambauzka News spoke to participants about the book, and about China’s contemporary role on the continent. She explores China’s historical legacy in Africa, cultural exchange, economic assistance, trade, mining, oil and questions of human rights, notably in Sudan. The interviews are available for downloading, listening on the web, or for access as a podcast at:

For further information or enquiries about the book, please visit the Fahamu books page (http://www.fahamu.org/pzbook.php) or email [email][email protected]

Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has given South Africa the assurance that its court challenge of India's Patent Act will not affect access to cheaper generic drugs. However, South African Aids and health care activists believe a successful challenge will limit competition and increase prices.

China's President Hu Jintao has pledged to increase imports from Africa to narrow a trade gap with the continent and allay concern that China was developing a colonial relationship with the world's poorest continent. China also planned to increase investments in agriculture, infrastructure, manufacturing and public welfare projects in Africa, Hu said in a speech in Pretoria yesterday.

Chinese President Hu Jintao signed economic and agricultural deals in South Africa on Tuesday as part of his tour of Africa, where there are concerns such agreements will only hurt the continent's poor countries. According to a report by Reuters, after the agreements were signed Hu and South African President Thabo Mbeki said they would boost economic ties between the Asian giant and Africa's biggest economy.

Publicising a self-styled crusade against corruption, the World Bank says it is successfully stepping up its campaign against graft, probing more than 400 cases over the last two years alone and barring dozens of companies and individuals from future World Bank contracts. But critics doubt the scope of the claims.

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) programmes remain under-funded and available only to a lucky few. However, a holistic view of child development is slowly growing as innovative policymakers in some developing countries come to recognise links between educational achievement and health and nutrition.

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM) refers to several types of deeply rooted traditional cutting operations performed on women and girls. Often part of fertility or coming-of-age rituals, FGM is sometimes justified as a way to ensure chastity and genital "purity." It is estimated that more than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, mainly in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries, and two million girls a year are at risk of mutilation.

This paper argues that the reduction of Horizontal Inequalities (HIs), or inequalities between culturally defined groups, should inform aid policy in heterogeneous countries with severe HIs. It shows how this would change aid allocation across countries, leading to more aid to heterogeneous countries relative to homogeneous ones, the opposite of the existing bias in aid distribution.

The South South relationships seem to be growing, with frequent visits and conferences. Brazil is an merging power politically, a part of the move to the "left" in South America yet also playing with the big boys economically. They call their approach to Africa "soft imperialism"'. The author concludes: "Brazil wants to be a representative of African interests in the international arena. So far, Africans are taking the offer somewhat reluctantly."

A critical examination of the WSF highlights the imbalances between on the one hand the NGOs and CSO and on the other, the people's movements. The conclusion is that the former must now begin to listen to the latter in order for globalisation to occur from below and for the masses to speak to power.

The World Social Forum (WSF) has carved its space as an assembly of movement of movements. The latest forum was held in Nairobi between 20th and 25th January 2007.

This discussion paper is part of the broader project by the author aimed at examining the role and place of human rights discourse in shaping the global social justice and human rights movement within the context of the WSF. At the outset, the paper explores two items based on the author’s observations and experience at the forum.

First the paper reviews the extent to which the Nairobi session stimulated or accelerated the vertical and horizontal linkage(s) between the various movements. In so doing, it attempts to appraise the counter force by the citizenry against the onslaught of capital-led globalization. Second, the paper attempts to review the utility of the human rights discourse and language in shaping the character and principal issues around which these movements do organize. The analysis reveals that although the connectivity of the movements seems to have been realized, the Nairobi session failed to emerge focused as a counter force to the Davos-led and capital-centered globalization.

Ultimately, it is only by defining the contours and ethical values as seen and experienced by the poor and marginalized themselves that real globalization will be promoted from below and the WSF made a strong, relevant and viable force.

Introduction

The 7th session of the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Nairobi from the 20th to 25th January 2007. The Forum demonstrated the coming of age of what started as a resistance session against economic-centered globalization. The first session of the WSF was held in Porto Allegre Brazil in 2001, as a response to the World Economic Forum (WEF) -an annual meeting of top business leaders, journalists, national political leaders (presidents, prime ministers and others), and selected intellectuals and renowned personalities- usually held in Davos, Switzerland.

The main aim of the Davos forum that was founded in 1971 is to define the trajectory and architecture for more capital-led globalization. The thinkers behind the WSF intended to counterweight or shape the agenda of the Davos economic moguls. This greatly explains why part of the success criteria for the WSF has always been in demonstrating that it is made of large, visible and devoted international community. No doubt one of the indicators has been the rapid growth in the number of participants who attend the WSF. It is reported that the first WSF in 2001 had a participation of about 12,000 people, while the one held in 2005 had an approximate participation of about 150,000.

The Character and Message

Despite a decision that was made in 2003 to halt the monopoly of Porte Allegre in hosting the forum, the WSF has maintained its initial character guided by its ‘Porto Allegre’ charter of principles as an open forum. Additionally, the WSF has witnessed diverse initiatives from social movements, non-governmental organizations, activists and people committed to a better world founded on justice and human dignity converge for some sort of carnivore of resistance, especially against imperial globalization.

Despite the dwindling number of participants at the Nairobi session (estimated at about 40,000 from the initially projected 150,000) the Nairobi assembly still provided the much required moment and opportunity to define another world. In almost all sessions, the agenda was clear: that the current of globalization must change. This is more so because it has produced and continues to support a system where too few share in its benefits. It is characterized with deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically and economically unsustainable.

Through the various informal sessions at the WSF 2007 in workshops, art, theatre, processions and mute courts, the various grassroots movements were able to complete the picture of the nature and intensity of the unjust global system. It worked in linking residents of slums with landless squatters, the indigenous and the minority with the disabled and the excluded and the various other networks of men and women in the resistance movement. From the Forum, it was further clear that this movement is becoming stronger and bigger than the NGOs and CSOs which may have played a role in facilitating some of the community-based movements and organizations in attending the forum. It is however a shame that some of the CSOs are unable to let go beyond the facilitation.

A key message that one could carry from the Forum is that the middle class-based CSOs need to let go the space for the social movements. The CSOs must allow the movements to radicalize and define their claims within their own space. Truly, a time has come when the CSOs and NGOs, both local and international, must agree to be led by people’s movements.

In any case, as it did emerge during the Nairobi session, the WSF has now become bigger than the organizers, and this is why I say the WSF has come of age. A case in point is when community groups at the WSF 2007 protested vehemently against the local organizing committee that was adulterating the environment of the WSF.

The community groups fought back against the exploitative price of drinking water, the domination of food supply by the middle-class hotels, the arrogance and some of the unethical practices allegedly conducted and perpetuated by the organizers, and so on. In fact the protest march to the offices of the organizers seemed to state that the participants in the WSF and its organizers were no longer comrades. While some chose to see this as being disrespectful, such efforts are commendable as it did demonstrate that globalization from below shall be about clarification of value from within the movement and connection of the grassroots resistance. Indeed, the poor and the marginalized people struggles must protect the egalitarian nature of the WSF and safeguard it.

Talking to Davos

But, perhaps, it would also be vital to expound on two of the glaring limitations about politicizing and focusing our message and the challenge of using the rights language. As has been stated in the background, the WSF emerged as a counter force to capital organizing under the WEF. Over the years, the WSF sessions were designed to delegitimize Davos and define the agenda of another world that is guided by the principles of individual and collective responsibility, and that requires economic development based on the respect for human rights. Ironically, it is unfortunate that in the multiplicity of activities, the Nairobi session ended completely unfocused and with no message or rallying point to respond to or mitigate the negative consequences and dimensions of globalization.

As one of the usual white-wash mechanisms, the theme for the Davos session of the WEF this year was “the shifting power equitation”. In their discussion, the over 2,400 participants were focusing on the threats of power concentration due to the emergence of China and Asia in general. This theme was, in my opinion, very well-curved for reaction by the WSF. Unfortunately very few of the participants in the Nairobi session at any time knew that the WEF was going on. This serves to give ammunition to those who think that the WSF is a simple anarchist and CSO empty talk.

For WSF to maintain its relevance and significance the en mass must be able to talk to power and organize the social capital to some visible influencing strength that can tilt power to the common citizens.

Human Rights and People’s Struggles

The second decision point is on a major lesson that I leant at the WSF 2007. Having expended most of the time at the Human Rights Dignity and Caucus tent, I did notice the major contradictions between the people’s angle of human rights and the angle to rights taken by the NGOs. It has already been noted that the design of the tent was within the conventional power of a heavy podium vs audience arrangement. This attests that there seem to have been no discussion on how our values would guide how we organize the tent; who speaks; what we eat; in what language and how we communicate, and so on.

Nevertheless perhaps the most salient was the interpretation of the struggles as presented and seen by the communities, and the way it was presented and viewed by the CSOs. First and foremost, the sessions were led by renowned CSOs, locally and globally, and in most occasions the approach was that of articulating rights issues from the point of universal human rights law and regime. Obsessed by these views of rights, which were significantly middle-class, a number of CSO representatives shocked the audience when they, on occasions, attempted to respond even to the opinions of the various communities in the struggle purportedly to put it within the international human rights context.

Testimonies from the communities and presentations on the other hand demonstrated a belief and stand-point that human rights must be defined by the people’s struggle. For instance, the way communities see the struggle of land is what must inform the codification of claim in terms of the rights language. One classical example was the case of the cost of living and survival tactics in Kibera in Nairobi, as testified by a community member. The community representative illustrated very well the struggle for subsistence and dignity in Kibera. Nonetheless, it was such a shame when one of the so-called human rights NGO scholars attempted to engage her later, purportedly to educate her on which of her rights were being violated. In fact, the middle-class discourse, as was popularly the case at the Human Rights tent, has a potential of limiting the space and drive for community straggles. Amidst the communities in the struggle, expectations have run ahead of opportunities and hope clouded by resentments.

About Leadership and Human Rights

Judging from the various sessions at the WSF, the poor and marginalized communities recognize the reality of globalization. What they want is a freer cross-borders exchange of ideas, knowledge, goods and services; what men and women seek is respect for their dignity and cultural identity; they ask for opportunities to earn decent living; they expect globalization to bring tangible benefits to their daily lives and ensure a better future for their children; they also wish to voice in the governance of the process, including extent and nature of the integration of their economies and communities into the global market and to participate more fairly in its outcomes. This means that the human rights worker and activist must realize that social change that we are all struggling for must be informed by the needs of the poor and vulnerable masses, the way they see them and in the direction that they feel to be appropriate for them at any particular time. The only role that CSOs and human rights workers have here is when the poor and vulnerable choose to draw sustenance for their struggle from universal human ideas, and/or the practical experience of other struggles; but they must start from the full acceptance that this is their own struggle and belief that even when they do invite support from other struggles or partners like CSOs, they shall lead the struggle.

The relevance of human rights, therefore, is as far as it expands the space for community struggles; reinforces the realization of their capabilities or serves to legitimize wider horizons of claims for the communities. Otherwise, the attempts to impose the rights language to communities who are already organized in a more radical discourse can serve to limit the energy and organic nature of such struggles.

* Steve Ouma is the Programmes Coordinator and Deputy Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. Contact address Valley Arcade, Gitanga Road, P.O. Box 41079, 00100 Nairobi – GPO, Kenya Tel. 254-2-3874998/9, 3876065, 0733-629034, 0722-264497, Fax: 254-2-3874997

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

At the heart of the Commons movement is a simple yet powerful concept of sharing information and art for the enjoyment and the betterment of everyone’s lives. Much of this sharing is the result of widespread internet access and broadband availability, resources which many people do not have. At the grassroots is a unique youth-led organization called Five Minutes to Midnight (FMM).

President Hu Jintao has embarked on his second trip to the continent in less than a year and on his itinerary are seven countries earmarked as strategic trade and investment allies. Jintao will be visiting Cameroon, Liberia, Mozambique, South Africa, Sudan, the Seychelles and Zambia. What these countries have in common is their ability to provide China with vital resources, strategic positioning and trade opportunities for its ever-expanding economy.

China’s engagement with Africa is increasingly becoming the biggest topic of debate in as far as global economics is concerned. Accelerated growth in the Asian nation’s economy has increased pressure to obtain resources. Africa is turning out to be the perfect partner for China in a relationship that is viewed by some as mutually beneficial while others see it as another opportunity for massive exploitation, with few long-term benefits accruing to the vast majority of the continent’s population.

The arguments for the Sino-African rapprochement are from the perspective of South-South cooperation and a welcome change from the kind of relationship with the west (read Europe and the US). Most of Africa continues to reel under the burden of debt, further exacerbated by the inability to find equal footing on the global economic platform.

There has however, been a growing sense of suspicion about just how much the continent will benefit from unfolding events. China’s record on issues of social justice, political freedom, human rights, environment does not pass muster. Africa’s bilateral relations with the EU, the US and the International funding agencies over the last two decades have focused on broad political and economic reforms. China seeks to access the continent’s resources, mainly oil and minerals in exchange for infrastructural development and monetary aid, both of which its new partners desperately need.

The key question is whether this new relationship will derail efforts towards political change. China is also seeking new markets for its huge cheap goods manufacturing sector. Chinese imports have had a detrimental effect on the local manufacturing sectors in Africa, and this continues to be a sore point, as evidenced by the huge trade imbalances that China enjoys with most countries on the continent.

At a global level, the West has always enjoyed a dominant position vis-à-vis Africa, dating back from colonial times. The rise of the East, namely China and to a slightly lesser degree, India, as investment and trade partners threatens their position of influence on many fronts. The finite nature of Africa’s resources means there is a likelihood of a zero-sum game where China’s gain is the West’s loss. Needless to say, the effects of China’s new move into global geo-politics will be felt for a long time to come, both on the continent and elsewhere.

Further reading:
New Yorker in DC
Beijing Action Plan http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/zflt/eng/zyzl/hywj/t280369.htm
International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/01/opinion/edecon.php
ISN Security Watch

In cities around the world, but especially in Western Europe, Australia, the Persian Gulf, and North America, immigrants play a fundamental role in the labor force and the social life of cities. For North American and Australian cities, the numbers of immigrants are reminiscent of the early-20th century, although the diversity is far greater. In Western Europe and the Persian Gulf, unprecedented numbers of newcomers have arrived in the past two decades.

The Global Investigative Journalism Conference will present the "Global Shining Light Award" for investigative journalism in a developing country or country in transition. The US$1000 award will be granted to a journalist, journalism team or media outlet whose independent, investigative reporting was broadcast or published between January 1 and December 31 2006, and which originated in and affected a developing or emerging country.

The Tech Museum Awards is a programme that aims to honour and award innovators from around the world who use technology to benefit humanity in the categories of: Education, Equality, Economic Development, Environment, Health. Five Laureates in each category are honoured and one Laureate per category receives US$50,000.

The United Nations Office of Drug Control claimed in 2006 that 'Drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained'. Yet the scale and diversity of the illicit global drug trade has increased in the last decade, as have rates of drug use in most countries.

Learning begins before a child walks through the classroom door. Early childhood care and education (ECCE) supports children’s survival and cognitive, social, physical and emotional development. ECCE guarantees children’s rights, opens the way for the Education for All (EFA) goals and contributes to reducing poverty. Why, then, is it so low on the education agenda?

International aid allocations are increasingly linked with assessments of performance in developing countries. Donors have become concerned with how to work with a group of countries that have been labelled as ‘poor performers’. But does a group of poorly performing countries really exist?