In this week's emerging powers news roundup, are Chinese investments in Africa a ploy for the Asian nation to take away Africa's natural resources? India steps up to challenge China's primacy in Africa, and South African companies aim to become the continent's corporate captain.

Even though the global economy appeared to start growing again during the closing months of 2009, labour markets showed little sign of improving. The number of unemployed persons is estimated at 212 million in 2009, representing an increase of almost 34 million over the number of unemployed in 2007, with the bulk of this increase occurred in 2009. This issue of Global Employment Trends analyses the impact of the global economic crisis on labour markets worldwide.

Arriving at the airport in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, you have a fair chance that the newish-looking taxi taking you into town will not be the usual French or Japanese model, but Iranian. And it will not have been imported, as most cars in Africa are, but assembled in nearby Thiès.

Comparative African Perspectives on China and other emerging powers in Africa is a research project initiated by FAHAMU, the network for social justice issues. China’s deepening engagement with Africa is receiving increased attention from the global media, public- and private sectors as well as academic research. This should however not overshadow the activities of other emerging powers in Africa, including India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa. This call therefore seeks to develop an African perspective by strengthening the civil society voice in the discourse surrounding the engagement between Africa and these emerging powers.

Mourad Bencheikh looks at why the Middle East question – with the Palestinian problem at its core – is in deadlock, as Western “silence” on Israeli policy towards the occupied territories engenders mistrust and suspicion in the Muslim world. The wisest approach, says Bencheikh, would be ‘for Israel to build bridges and not walls’ between the Jewish and Palestinian communities. ‘They both know what suffering means, they are gifted, well-educated, hard working and should work hand in hand towards the stability, development and integration of the whole region.’

In this article, Richard Lapper asserts that South African companies are making up for lost time in their own continent. Links with other emerging markets - themselves interested in Africa's resources and high-growth consumer markets - are growing quickly. The economic momentum is also giving substance to a foreign policy that since the end of apartheid has favoured links with Asia, Latin America and Africa in an effort to reduce a historical dependence on Europe and the US.

Global apartheid refers to the divergence in the economic and social development of a white North, industrialised world and a brown South in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The author concludes that the same kind of worldwide solidarity that helped bring down apartheid is necessary to free the global South from economic domination.

South Africans are inclined to moan about so much…the fact that things don’t seem to function, the corruption, the crude avarice of the new elite, the poor performance of Bafana Bafana, the crime. Add to this Julius Malema, Jacob Zuma's polygamy and the scandal of the mismanagement of our parastatals and you have a picture that evokes images of imminent collapse for the chattering classes.

While economic growth in developed markets is only now starting to slowly recover from the battering it took during the global financial crisis (GFC), emerging markets have been powering ahead, writes Janice Mace.

India has stepped up its efforts to gain an economic foothold in Africa in a new scramble with China for the continent's resources, signing energy deals with top oil producers Angola and Nigeria, writes Louise Redvers.

As Macau marks the 10-year anniversary of its return to Chinese rule, Lucy Corkin discusses the 'special administrative region's' role in promoting stronger economic ties between Portuguese-speaking countries.

As business, government and private sector leaders gather in the Swiss town of Davos this week for the World Economic Forum, global food security and poverty will be among the key challenges they will need to tackle.

At least 1,570 individuals were removed from the EU's territory in 31 flights coordinated by the bloc's external borders agency Frontex between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15 last year. This represented a tripling in joint expulsions - involving authorities from two or more EU states - since 2007. Some 428 migrants were flown out in such operations that year, with the figure rising to over 800 in 2008.

The book Urgency Required focuses on urgent issues of gay and lesbian liberation, taking a historical perspective and reflecting worldwide geographic diversity. Employing the term ‘LGBT-persons’, the acronym used for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender, it explores concepts and strategies for taking steps towards decriminalization and equal rights and treatment regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

The WTO Secretariat has launched a new programme of support for teaching, research and outreach activities at 14 universities in the developing world. The WTO Chairs Programme (WCP) will assist national academic institutions in providing students with a deeper understanding of trade policy issues. Through analytical input into the formulation and implementation of trade policy, the WCP will help strengthen the participation of the beneficiary countries in international trade.

An echo that turns itself into many voices, into a network of voices that, before the deafness of power, opts to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many, acknowledging itself to be equal in its desire to listen and be listened to, recognizing itself as different in the tonalities and levels of voices forming it. A network of voices that resist the war that power wages on them. – Words of the Zapatistas at the “First Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism.”

In this week's emerging powers news, south-south cooperation is cemented in new partnerships, Africa seeks frameworks for managing new resource-driven weatlh, BRIC and South Africa commit to mitigating climate change, and the AU keen to forge closer ties with China.

Activists and researchers in the United States are raising the alarm on what they call the “land grab” in Africa. Outside governments and foreign corporations have been turning increasingly to African countries to purchase large areas of land, to the dismay of activists, who say economic mistakes of the past should not be repeated.

The same kind of worldwide solidarity that helped bring down apartheid is necessary to free the global South from economic domination. "Global solidarity has proved to be the only sustainable mode of confronting global apartheid, as exemplified by the liberation struggles that were fought in the 20th century," says Dakarayi Matanga.

OLPCorps is OLPC’s official field volunteer program. It is a worldwide community dedicated to transforming education for children who have had little or no access to modern information technology. OLPCorps gives young people the opportunity to contribute their minds, bodies, time and skills to delivering better education for children living in some of the world’s most disadvantaged communities.