When an aid vehicle is stolen in the eastern Chad town of Abéché, some people cheer and say the aid organization got what it deserved, according to the French think-tank Emergency Rehabilitation Development (URD), which is preparing a report on the impact of international aid groups on Abéché residents.

China is continuing to show an interest in developing African research capacity with the announcement of a cooperation programme in science and technology.

Mauritanian authorities detained three top businessmen charged with embezzling millions of euros of public funds late on Wednesday in a case that has sparked new political tensions in the desert state.

In the last three decades, changes in the global economy have led to debt and balance of payments crises in many African countries. They desperately needed foreign exchange which they could only get from the World Bank and the IMF. These institutions used this opportunity to expand their influence over the recipients' national policies. This paper discusses country ownership which is a central issue of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

Some 36 million people have been cured of tuberculosis (TB) over the past 15 years through a rigorous approach to treatment, according to the World Health Organisation. However, last year 1.8 million people died from TB including half a million deaths associated with HIV - many of them because they did not access antiretrovirals.

Several participants attending a forum on migration in the Arab and African regions have deplored the conditions in which migrants who are either in transit or in residence are treated.

Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ found a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of 11 from the 2008 tally.

The UN has warned that the recent kidnapping of two aid workers in the northeastern town of Birao in Central African Republic will have a highly damaging impact on humanitarian activities in the remote, impoverished Vakaga region.

Twenty-two developing countries have agreed to cut tariffs on manufactured goods in a bid to boost South-South trade in the absence of progress in the Doha Round.

In this week's emerging powers news roundup, South Korea pledged to double aid to African nations over the next three years, China and the World Bank plan to set up low-cost factories in new industrial zones in Africa, China turns to Egypt for production of ready-made garments.

The IIE Scholar Rescue Fund is pleased to announce a call for applications for the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund (SRF). Fellowships support temporary academic positions at safe universities and colleges anywhere in the world for threatened academics whose lives and work are in danger in their home countries. Applications are due January 15 2009.

On 18 November 2009 Jan Egeland gave the tenth annual Harrell-Bond lecture. Mr Egeland is the former UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and currently director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. The lecture was entitled 'Beyond Blankets: in search of political deals and durable solutions for the displaced.'

For the first time at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, at CHOGM in Trinidad & Tobago, there was significant representation of GLBTQ (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer) activists among civil society participants, and a concerted effort to highlight issues of sexual citizenship and rights.

In this week's emerging powers in Africa watch, Stephen Marks reviews the work of researchers Yoon Park and Barry Sautman who have teamed up to explore the seldom- researched topic of anti-Chinese feeling - and the distinct but interrelated phenomenon of anti-China sentiment - in Southern Africa.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Lamido Sanusi's financial reform, writes Kola Ibrahim, will do nothing more than re-assert the dominance of a rapacious capitalist class in Nigeria. While public ownership of services rooted in the welfare of Nigeria's people remains most desirable, Ibrahim contends, Sanusi and his ilk can be counted on to simply support the entrenched political class.

Chinese civil society differs from its African counterpart in that its constituent organisations commonly enjoy the direct support of the government in a way that those in Africa do not, writes Yazini April. Greater collaboration between these two parties should at the very least encourage African civil society to follow the Chinese example in becoming genuinely productive, April concludes.

"We are the children of an illusion that consisted in believing that the independences of our countries signified the end of colonization." -- Interview with Houria Bouteldja, spokesperson of the decolonial movement in France known as the "Mouvement des Indigènes de la République"

The Africa Group took the lead in Barcelona in demanding that there be progress in the Kyoto Protocol group on the numbers for emission reduction by developed countries. They insisted that this group focus first on the "numbers", and then only after that deal with other issues.

This year the fourth internet governance forum was playing it safe – perhaps because next year could be its last – but we still saw real progress. Privacy no longer plays second fiddle to security, people’s rights online are recognised as central by all sides. Social networking was the new star centre stage.

A new report by the UN has said almost a quarter of the global population, or 1.5 billion people, live without electricity, and that 80 per cent of those people live in the least developed countries (LDCs) of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.