From The Local To The Global: Key Issues in Development Studies
2nd edition
Edited by Gerard McCann and Stephen McCloskey
Released October 4th 2009
PB / £ 17.99 / 9780745328423 / 215mm x 135mm / 320pp

ICLR was founded in 2002 with the mission of supporting workers? and trade union rights internationally. Our resolution was to develop a network of lawyers who could provide quickly respond to the needs of labor movements, no matter where. Today, there are more than 300 Network members spanning more than 75 countries. And we continue to expand into new areas all the time. This is a model that we believe in and are recommitting to as we move forward with our work.

Guy Mvelle

Rodrigue Kpogli

Uganda was one of the first countries in Africa to develop a policy on universal access to telecommunications. Despite several blunders relating to the liberalisation of its telecoms sector, the country is held in high esteem by many for what is seen to be a far-reaching and proactive approach to providing access to information and communications technology (ICT) for the poor.

Mini hydro plants could be the answer to a lack of power in rural Africa, especially as larger power projects are put on hold due to limited cash and abundant red tape, industry officials say. Analysts say the continent could generate as much as 330,000 megawatts (MW) from its hydro reserves, yet only some 7 percent of that potential has been exploited so far.

Security forces in Madagascar fired tear gas on Friday to try and disperse hundreds of opposition supporters gathering for a rally in the capital of the Indian Ocean island. Backers of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana massed in a park near a central square, but security forces moved in saying the demonstration had not been authorised.

The African Union condemned Madagascar's Andry Rajoelina's decision to appoint a new government and said it may impose sanctions on the authorities and their supporters. The country has been rocked by turmoil since Rajoelina toppled former President Marc Ravalomanana from power in March this year.

With two new United Nations reports detailing human rights abuses – including possible war crimes – carried out by both Government forces and rebels in the volatile far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the world body’s top rights official has stressed the urgent need for reforming the country’s security and judicial systems.

Gabon has barred opposition leaders from leaving the country following recent riots over claims of fraud in last month's presidential election. One defeated candidate said he had been prevented from flying to Ivory Coast. A minister said the ban would last while the violence was investigated.

Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika has defended his decision to deport four senior foreign tobacco buyers for flouting minimum-price rules. "For a long time I've been warning these exploitative colonialists to pay fair prices to farmers," he said.

Thousands of MDC supporters will on Sunday converge at the White City Stadium in Bulawayo to celebrate the party’s 10th Anniversary. Morgan Tsvangirai, who will be accompanied by the entire MDC’s national leadership will give a key note address at the rally.

President Robert Mugabe has lashed out at Western sanctions against him, condemning "bloody whites" for meddling in Zimbabwe's affairs, on the eve of a landmark European Union visit. "Who said the British and the Americans should rule over others? That's why we say down with you. We have not invited these bloody whites. They want to poke their nose into our own affairs. Refuse that," he said.

The Gambian parliament has ratified a Supplementary Loan Agreement amounting to about US$ 5 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the financing of Artisanal Fisheries Development Project, according to official sources. The repayment period of the loan has been spread over 20 years after a seven-year grace period starting from the date the agreement was signed.

The ECOWAS Parliament has called on ECOWAS and the African Union to "intervene immediately" for the restoration of constitutionalism in Niger, where President Mamadou Tandja has changed the country's constitution to allow him to run again when his second term runs out in December. The call was contained in a resolution of the ECOWAS Parliament, adopted Wednesday at the current 2009 Second Ordinary Session held in Abuja, the seat of the parliament.

The UN is helping Kenya prepare to mitigate the impact of potentially-lethal torrential rains anticipated in the last three months of the year due to the El Nino weather pattern. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) made this known in a statement issued on Thursday in New York, US.

A group of European Union (EU) diplomats was due in Zimbabwe Friday for a series of high-level talks with the country's leaders on easing longstanding frosty relations between the two. The diplomats, led by Swedish International Development Co-operation Minister Gunilla Carlsson, were billed to meet President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Aurther Mutambara at the weekend.

Following the election of Ali Ben Bongo to the Gabonese presidency, Tidiane Kassé considers the reaction of commentators in the African press to the victory. With the death of his father and long-time dictator Omar Bongo in June, many regard Ali Ben Bongo's election as the mere continuation of the Bongo dynasty, Kassé notes, a continuation decidedly in the interests of the French former colonial power.

People leave sub-Saharan Africa in search of opportunities for personal growth and happiness, Sabella Abidde tells Pambazuka News, but whether self-imposed or forced upon you, life in exile can be ‘one of the most painful of all human experiences’. Ultimately most exiles, says Abidde, ‘would rather be home: Helping their own people and helping to advance their own countries.’ But, he cautions, ‘several years of exile have a way of making one a stranger in one’s village or community.’

People with albinism have been ‘shunned, ridiculed, tormented, tortured and killed in cold blood’ all over Africa, simply 'on account of the skin colour', Phitalis Were Masakhwe tells Pambazuka News. The biggest threat to persons with albinism, says Masakhwe, is ‘misleading and negative belief systems about the condition’. And when ‘these negative beliefs combine with illiteracy and limited knowledge and facts about the situation, the net result can be calamitous.’

Moroccan security agents abducted and tortured a 19 year-old Sahrawi woman on 27 August for being a human rights activist, Konstantina Isidoros tells Pambazuka News. Nguia El Haouassi’s ordeal is just ‘one of many episodes of Moroccan police brutality’ that occur every year’, says Isidoros, but thanks to ‘an increasing number of Sahrawi student-led internet blogs’, records of human rights abuses against Sahrawi in the Occupied Territories are breaking through Morocco’s ‘propaganda wall’ to reach a global audience.