The two companies are resisting calls from the Congolese government to change the terms of their contracts. This deadlock is threatening the entire renegotiation process. Faced with the refusal to negotiate these two contracts, the Congolese government is unable to conclude the renegotiation process. There is a risk of other companies, which have already renegotiated their contracts, to not honour commitments they have already made

On the eve of the upcoming upcoming fourth Ministerial Conference on Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Yves Niyiragira argues that it is in both Africa and China’s interests that African politics and governance remain stable and predictable over long periods of time so that all the Southern powers find it attractive to invest across the continent.

As global economic downturn staunches the flow of investment from China and the West, African interest in India as an alternative source of funding is growing. Renu Modi reports back to Pambazuka News on a recent conference aimed at fostering partnerships between India and Africa. African delegates at the conference highlighted the need to consider direct budget support for investments in development sectors such as health, capacity development and poverty alleviation, rather than simply focusing on high level project finance opportunities.

The Skoll Foundation is accepting applications for the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. The Foundation seeks social entrepreneurs whose work has the potential for large-scale positive change in the areas of tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity. Within these issues, we are particularly interested in applications from social entrepreneurs working in five critical subissue areas that threaten the survival of humanity—climate change, nuclear proliferation, global pandemics, conflict in the Middle East and water scarcity.

The links between the realisation of human rights and the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity are receiving increasing attention worldwide. Experience has demonstrated that exclusionary approaches to conservation can undermine those same rights of affected communities and can undermine conservation objectives. The ‘rights-based approaches’ (RBAs) to conservation presented in this document offer a number of positive ways forward, but they also raise a range of new challenges and questions.

Aid workers are finding it increasingly difficult to gain access and provide assistance to residents of the Somali capital because of the worsening conflict there, the United Nations refugee agency has reported. This week’s scheduled distribution of 4,000 aid kits in Mogadishu and surrounding areas had to be postponed because of security concerns, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists in Geneva.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the country’s largest refiner, and CNOOC Ltd. agreed to buy a 20 percent stake in Angola’s offshore deepwater Block 32 for $1.3 billion from Marathon Oil Corp. Marathon, the fourth-largest U.S. oil company, will keep a 10 percent interest in the block, site of 12 announced petroleum discoveries, after the sale, which is expected to close by year- end, the companies said today in separate statements.

Any other group of activists might be in a mood to celebrate. The HIV-AIDS lobby has been among the most successful in the world, winning an impressive $10-billion in new annual funds and tripling the level of global support for AIDS programs since 2003. But instead, the AIDS advocacy groups are in a state of anxiety. Their future is looking increasingly difficult, despite all their recent gains.

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) was formed in 1997 to collaborate with civil society organizations in developing and transition countries to analyze, monitor, and influence government budget processes, institutions, and outcomes. The aim of the Partnership is to make budget systems more responsive to the needs of poor and low-income people in society and, accordingly, to make these systems more transparent and accountable to the public.

Only 20 percent of the world’s governments are providing adequate information for their citizens to begin to hold them accountable for managing the public’s money. This finding comes from the Open Budget Survey 2008, an extensive new survey of government budget transparency in 85 countries issued on February 1, 2009, by the International Budget Partnership (IBP). The Survey also found that nearly 50 percent of the 85 countries evaluated provide such minimal information that they are able to hide unpopular, wasteful, and corrupt spending.

China has seen its fair share of anti-foreigner protests, from the Boxer Rebellion to the May Fourth movement, and, in more recent decades, more generically termed demonstrations against Americans, Africans, Japanese and the French. Yet for all the expat grumbling about living in China, public protests by foreign residents are virtually unknown, perhaps tempered by the awareness that we are here by choice, live in relative comfort, and would likely achieve little more than a swift deportation.

China is not the only power to begin to engage with Africa in recent years. The number of such emerging powers has increased to include Brazil, India, the Arab states and others, notwithstanding South Africa as a strategic African actor and Russia’s resurgence in this analysis. For this reason we have modified the name of the China–Africa Watch section of Pambazuka News to include analyses on the range of emerging powers. China–Africa Watch will now be called . Articles and news items previously published in China–Africa Watch will still be found in the section, while news summaries from other sites on the actions of emerging powers in Africa will be found in a new section, Emerging powers news.

The expansion of capitalism is destroying the planet and placing the future of people in the South in jeopardy, writes Samir Amin in this week’s edition of Pambazuka News. Consumption levels in Europe, North America and Japan are four times higher than the per capita global average, a figure which already outstrips the earth’s ecological carrying capacity. If this pattern continues, says Amin, its logical conclusion is ‘either the actual genocide of the peoples of the South – as "over-population" – or at least keeping them in ever increasing poverty.’

Samir Amin's 'The contours of an aid alternative' is a chapter from Pambazuka Press's new book is available to Pambazuka News readers at 20% off the recommended retail price of £12.95 and comes with a free ebook copy – simply enter 95641284 as the discount code

Stephen Marks reflects on the recent detention of four Shanghai-based executives of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto on spying charges earlier this month. Whereas Western governments and business leaders feared the possible implications of the incident for Western firms doing business in China, Marks argues that the incident may well signal a shift of gear in China’s economic strategy.

Madonna's ability to adopt a Malawian child in spite of an original court verdict against her is deeply worrying, writes Ama Biney. Madonna's action belongs in an established neocolonial tradition, Biney argues, one in which Malawi's Supreme Court judges have played a role not dissimilar to that of slavery-era African chiefs as the facilitators of human transfer. Recalling the forewarnings of Kwame Nkrumah around the shadow of neocolonialism, Biney contends that retaining Africans' self-respect will depend on challenging dehumanisation and putting such subjugation to an end.

New research has again confirmed the importance of viral load testing, which measures the amount of HI virus in the blood, to determine whether someone on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment is experiencing treatment failure and needs to be switched to a second-line drug regimen. Regular viral load testing is standard practice in developed countries (an increased viral load indicates that a patient has developed resistance to one or more ARV drugs) but such tests are often unavailable in resource-limited settings because of their cost and a lack of laboratory capacity.

Many commentators and development professionals echoed this refrain during the G8 2009 summit held in Italy from July 8 - 10. The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, added his voice to the veritable cascade of dissension by declaring that the G8 “will have to update their politics to grapple with problems that none of them can solve alone: financial panic, rising food and oil prices, climate shocks, a flu pandemic, and more. Political co-operation to address these problems is …a global necessity.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and subsequent instruments of international human rights law and international humanitarian law play a vital role in providing protection for refugees and IDPs. Yet the claim to universality has been disputed and not all states have acceded to these legal instruments. It seems that a particular point of controversy or dispute in the Islamic world is their compatibility with sharia. This publication aims to enhance debate and understanding of the concepts and instruments of international human rights in the Islamic world.

The IDRC Internship awards provide exposure to research for international development through a program of training in research management and grant administration under the guidance of IDRC program staff. The internship is designed to provide hands-on learning experiences in research program management - in the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge from an international perspective.