Sanusha Naidu rounds up this week's Sino-African news.

Aid analysts applaud the “courage” of the UK government’s just-released development policy paper, which detailed plans to allocate at least half of all new bilateral funding to fragile states, but question how the government can do the job well without shrinking other aid commitments.

Members of the Ghana Reparation and Repatriation Foundation (GRARF), a local NGO operating in the north, have appealed to the government to take a strong stand and asked for compensation from Britain and America for their involvement in the Trans Atlantic Chattel slavery in Ghana. The members reminded government that the United Nations Human Rights Commission has classified the Trans Atlantic Chattel Slavery as crime against humanity and that must be pursued to its logical conclusion without any favour.

A new joint initiative of ESCR-Net and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law seeks to provide advocacy and educational resource of first-hand human rights documentation on the impacts businesses have on human rights around the world. Send your contributions.

Ahead of the G8 summit in L’Aquila that takes place from 8-10 June 2009, Italy, members of civil society movements gathered in Sardinia in the alternative G8 summit called "Gsott8".

Leaders of eight African countries -- Angola, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Egypt, Algeria and Libya -- will take part in the G-8 Summit that opened Wednesday in l'Aquilla, Italy, a European spokesperso n announced in Brussels. The African leaders will Friday participate in a working session on food security. According to a report of the European NGO Action Aid, countries should devote at least US$ 23 billion per year by 2012 to food crisis in order to reduce by half, hunger in the world by 2015.

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2009 Human Rights Defenders Tulip award. Anyone can submit a nomination. The nomination form can be found on this page. Nominations must be received by 23 August 2009. Established in 2008, the Human Rights Defenders Tulip Award is an initiative of the Dutch government. It is awarded to acknowledge “persons who have shown exceptional moral courage in protecting and promoting the rights of fellow human beings.”

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practicing both colonialism and apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The interim report, which will form part of a discussion at an upcoming HSRC conference on the subject, titled Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine, on 13 and 14 June in Cape Town, serves as a document to be finalised later this year.

Francis Kornegay fears for the future of South-South co-operation, following South Africa's exclusion from June's of major emerging economic powers, Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa may be a smallish middle-income country by comparison, says Kornegay, but it is still the strategic gateway to and dominant player in Africa's economy, which all four BRIC countries are interested in accessing. South Africa's marginalisation raises issues about how the continent is managing a ‘new scramble’ for Africa, says Kornegay, and suggests that President Zuma will have to readjust his foreign policy to focus as much attention on North-South bridging as on the global South.

cc Ugandan human rights activist Vincent Nuwagaba responds to Presidential Standards Task Force, apparently signed by President Museveni. Nuwagaba received the letter after submitting comments on issues from corruption to unemployment to the Ugandan government's web-based service for engaging with citizens.

Portrait artist and social justice activist, Gabrielle Le Roux is seeking an intern / volunteer to coordinate as well as assist with fundraising for the Living Ancestors exhibition to travel further internationally. The Living Ancestors exhibition is a tribute in portraits and stories to the world’s oldest woman, Ma Pampo, 126 years old and nine other women over the age of 100 in the Caribbean Island of Dominica. Living Ancestors has been exhibited in the Caribbean, South Africa, Uganda, Amsterdam and is currently at the Museum of London Docklands [http://tinyurl.com/lbbb65]

With the 2009 Forum for China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit approaching, Pambazuka News's China–Africa Watch editorial team invites views and opinions on the event from readers.

At the closing of the UN Conference on the Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, governments adopted an outcome document reflecting months of negotiations. The Global Social Economy Group -a coalition of social groups and networks- looked at 7 key issues that civil society deemed crucial for the success of the conference. Although some progress was made on a few issues, the overwhelming majority of outcomes falls far below what is necessary to provide developing countries with the resources and tools they need to deal with the crisis.

Zimbabwe will re-evaluate all mining contracts and introduce a "use it or lose it" policy for its mining industry under a proposed law, Finance Minister Tendai Biti has said. The vetting of mining contracts by Zimbabwe's unity government of President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is likely to surprise investors at a time Harare is wooing them to help repair a battered economy.

In a ruling Thursday, the Delhi High Court overturned a 148-year-old colonial law criminalizing consensual homosexual acts saying that it was a violation of fundamental human rights protected under India’s Constitution. In so holding, the court reasoned that “the criminalization of homosexuality condemns in perpetuity a sizable section of society and forces them to live their lives in the shadow of harassment, exploitation, humiliation, cruel and degrading treatment at the hands of the law enforcement machinery … A provision of law branding one section of people as criminal based wholly on the State's moral disapproval of that class goes counter to the equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 under any standard of review.”

Sanusha Naidu does a roundup of the week's Sino-African news.

Africa-China relations have gained worldwide attention, writes Adams Bodomo, and constitute the topic of much academic and diplomatic discourse. In this paper, Bodomo explores two important issues within this topic – whether the relationship between the two parts of the world is symmetrical or asymmetrical, and the exact role of soft power in this constellation. Bodomo argues that prominent economies on the African continent such as South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria have an important role to play in ensuring a symmetrical relationship with China, in which Africa can also take part in a symmetrical cultural diplomacy with China, for example through setting up African cultural institutes around the country.

cc Awaiting execution on death row in the US state of Georgia, Troy Davis is an innocent victim of entrenched racial discrimination within the US judicial system, writes Keith Jennings. With his legal representatives not 'claim[ing] his innocence in a timely fashion', Davis faces the prospect of being murdered by Georgia's authorities simply for not submitting his papers on time. If the US is to practise what it preaches and show the world that it is genuinely tackling domestic racial discrimination, such a flagrant human rights violation must be put right immediately, Jennings concludes.

Lost in the recent debate in Congress over expanded funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was the key question of how that money should best be spent in order to promote a global economic recovery. Here in the United States, our own economic stimulus included unprecedented levels of funding, over $100 billion, in new education spending.

As government officials from around the world descend on New York for a UN conference on the economic crisis and its impact on development, the main issue up for debate is how the poorest countries can influence the way the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank operate.