In this week's news on cooperation, visits and exchanges, Chinese special envoy visits Senegal, Nigeria's commerce minister set to visit India, and Liberia cooperates with China to improve its law system.

The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria on Friday granted Zimbabwe $37.9 million, resuming support after getting assurances from the new unity government that the money would not be misused. The fund said last year Zimbabwe's central bank had confiscated $7.3 million in 2007 meant for health programmes. The central bank has since returned the money, Global Fund officials said.

High-profile websites including Google, Facebook and Twitter have been targeted by hackers in what is described as a "massively co-ordinated attack". Reports suggest the strike may have been aimed at a single user, pro-Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu. Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours whilst Facebook's service was "degraded", according to the firms.

The governing body of AI, the International Executive Committee (IEC) seeks applications for the next Secretary General, who will be a leader in progressing this work, strengthening AI’s position in the international human rights movement, developing partnerships outside AI and building stronger links with AI’s national Sections.

The Tech Awards program inspires global engagement in applying technology to humanity's most pressing problems by recognizing the best of those who are utilizing innovative technology solutions to address the most urgent critical issues facing our planet. People all over the world are profoundly improving the human condition in the areas of education, equality, environment, health, and economic development through the use of technology.

International media attention is focused this week on the visit of the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to seven countries in Africa. But what is the significance of Clinton’s visit? Does it really hold out hope for Africa? There are three dimensions to this visit: AGOA, oil and natural resource exploitation, and security. And in each case, it is US corporate interests, not the interests of Africans, that are being pushed, argues Firoze Manji from Pambazuka News.

‘In Africa, political power is often used as a “get out of jail free” card, immunising the venal political elite through various mechanisms,’ Khadija Sharife tells Pambazuka News. But, says Sharife, while corruption may be ‘rampant’ in Africa, this is ‘only half the story’: Corrupt government leaders get away with graft much more easily and more frequently, thanks to international financial enablers, based in ‘transparent’ locations from London to New York. The key to addressing corruption, Sharife suggests, is to scrutinise unchecked and unregulated shadow economies 'in developed and developing countries alike'.

A private oil company in Angola, given permission by the state oil company Sonangol to bid for potentially lucrative oil rights, has shareholders with the same names as Sonangol's chairman and other top officials, Global Witness has learned. Angola is one of the two top oil-producing countries in sub-Saharan Africa but most of its people still live in dire poverty.

Four African Heads of State have drawn the attention of President Barack Obama's Administration to the fact that Africa as a continent was seeking partnership and not patronage. A release from the World Bank Office in Accra on Wednesday said President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia; President Paul Kagame of Rwanda; President Seretse Khama Ian Khama of Botswana and President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said this in a joint statement.

In the third quarterly report on the Macau Forum, Lucy Corkin provides a roundup of the latest political and economic developments in the countries that constitute the Macau Hub. From the recent appointment of a new chief executive in Macau to the Bank of China using Macau as a platform to promote greater ties between China and the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa and Brazil, Corkin astutely explores the interconnectedness between these issues.

Proceedings of the Fifth Southern African Forum on Trade (SAFT) held in Pretoria, South Africa, on 6–7 August 2008. Hosted by the Institute of Global Dialogue and the Friedrich Erbert Stiftung (FES) Namibia. The publication has a collection of articles from the workshop that explores, inter alia, issues relating regional integration process in the SADC region, questions of the North-South Corridor and the role of China and India in southern Africa.

The main focus of this publication by Peter Kagwanja is the link between South Africa’s grand pan-African ambitions, especially in the area of peace, security and governance, and its own capacity to pursue these objectives. Specifically, the paper examines Pretoria’s involvement in Africa, and internal capacity to support its mediation, peacekeeping and strengthening the abilities of African institutions for peacemaking.

This increasing interest in Africa demonstrated by rising Chinese FDI to the continent, presents opportunities and challenges to the development prospects of sub-Saharan African countries. There is therefore a need to carefully identify and analyse these developments if sub-Saharan African countries are to maximize the positive effects of the opportunities and ameliorate the adverse effects of the challenges. This paper by Olu Ajakaiye, Raphael Kaplinsky, Mike Morris and Felix F. N’Zue, focuses on China–Africa investment relations drawing insights from the AERC scoping studies.

In the context of widespread interest in the impact of Chinese investment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this paper focuses on SSA’s engagement with large state-owned Chinese firms investing in SSA’s resource and infrastructure sectors. Evidence is provided on the extent of different types of Chinese investment, before focusing on the distinctive character of large-scale state-owned Chinese investors whose investments are closely bundled with aid and trade. The paper concludes that SSA countries should maximise the opportunities opened to them by their resource-base by adopting a similarly integrated and focused response to Chinese (and other large) investors who seek to draw on the continent’s natural resources.

A 2006 study by several Chinese research institutions showed that almost 90 percent of the country's top leaders in sectors encompassing finance, foreign trade, property development, construction, and stock trading were princelings, and China's ambitious $124 billion effort to provide basic health coverage for the vast majority of its 1.3 billion citizens by 2011 is a brimming opportunity for large global drugmakers.

A global trade deal at the WTO would lead to significant cuts in China’s already-low agricultural tariffs, new research shows, and Beijing and Washington continue to butt heads over a five-year-old US ban on imports of chicken from China.

China Development Bank plans Brazil, Russia, Egypt Offices, increasing its economic and political footprint in Latin America and elsewhere, and Beijing courts the Middle East with Arabic TV channel.

This week, the International Finance Corporation expects closer future cooperation with China to provide funding in Africa's growing oil and gas sector, China provides assistance to Ethiopia for Expo 2010, and FOCAC Media Seminar 2009 opens in Beijing.

Nearly 150 CSOs write to IFC urging consultations with individuals and communities directly impacted by its projects as it reviews three years of implementation of the Performance Standards. BIC was among a coalition of 150 organizations who signed onto a letter urging the International Financial Corporation (IFC) to ensure consultations with individuals and communities directly impacted by its projects in the review process of its Policy on Disclosure of Information and its Performance Standards on Social and Environmental Sustainability Policy (Policy & Performance Standards).

This report has been compiled by a group of African and international civil society organisations concerned about the lack of transparency in mining contracts, as well as the revenue that national budgets forego because of excessive mining tax concessions as well as multinational mining companies avoiding and evading tax.