The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the release of Tunisian journalist and human rights activist Slim Boukhdir. Boukhdir, who has been the frequent target of harassment by Tunisian authorities, on Monday was released early from a one-year prison sentence.

South Africa’s award-winning multilingual software developer, Translate.org.za, has been awarded a grant by the Mozilla Corporation to extend its translation tools. The US-based Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, co-ordinates the development of popular Internet software projects such as the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client.

The Batsirai Group is a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation working to strengthen community responses to HIV and AIDS. Following a successful one and half year placement focussing on community mobilisation, organisational learning as well as participatory monitoring and evaluation, the organisation is currently seeking to consolidate its work in promoting community participation in HIV and AIDS interventions among its target beneficiary communities. The Programme Adviser will therefore assist in strengthening systems documentation, knowledge management, Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials production and dissemination.

In the republic of innovation, life is unfair. A relatively small number of places — all in wealthy countries or in China and India — create nearly every important technological advance. Consider Wilfred Mworia, a 22-year-old engineering student and freelance code writer in Nairobi, Kenya. In the four weeks leading up to Apple’s much-anticipated release of a new iPhone on July 11, Mr. Mworia created an application for the phone that shows where events in Nairobi are happening and allows people to add details about them.

The debate is no longer whether to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in education in Africa but how to do so, and how to ensure equitable access for teachers and learners, whether in urban or rural settings. This is a book about how Africans adopt and adapt ICT. It is also about how ICT shape African schools and classrooms.

Black History Month is also celebrated each October in the United Kingdom, which has had a substantial black population since the 16th century. In this interview Contact FM talks to Dan Lyndon, history teacher and member of the British and Asian Studies Association.

This one-day conference will address those aspects of China’s intervention in Africa that are related to media and other cultural exchanges. Aimed at allowing journalists, academics and politicians from Africa, China and elsewhere to share experiences that are relevant to understanding the contemporary role of China in relation to the media

The history of African American science is still today an area not widely known about. Contact FM take a brief plunge into this history talking with writer Patricia Sluby, author of The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity.

Freelance journalist Frank Chikowore and the 13 alleged Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters, charged with inciting public violence and burning a bus, were on 14 July 2008 removed from remand. The presiding Magistrate, Margaret Rusinahama granted the application for removal of remand made by the defence lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, on the condition that it would not prejudice the state in anyway.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that the pending Mass Media and Freedom of Information Proclamation, passed by the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives on July 1, does not fully incorporate public input, including that of local journalists and legal experts.

ICTs provide a window of opportunity for developing countries to harness and utilise indigenous knowledge and help fight persistent poverty and low agricultural growth, Professor Patrick Ngulube of the University of South Africa has said.

In July 2005, approximately four-fifths of Botswana’s population did not have access to electricity. However, enterprising village entrepreneurs have utilised the opportunity created by the lack of electricity to fill the resultant niche in the market for the recharging of cell phone batteries.

Journalists in Botswana are up in arms over the draft Media Practitioners Bill. Quietly published in the Government Gazette on June 27, the Bill would give the government greater control over the media. Botswana’s media bodies say the news media are already regulating themselves through the Press Council, which was established six years ago, and that the government is seeking to impose itself on the media sector.

Amid mounting fears of phone surveillance by state security agents, Botswana Telecommunications Authority (BTA) remains adamant with going ahead with the registration of all prepaid mobile phone sim-cards on 15 September 2008.

Computer literacy is a prerequisite for many jobs today, but students in Sierra Leone often have to seek out computer schools to gain the necessary skills. There are many issues that can inhibit the opening of a computer center in a school here, not the least of which is funding.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s decision on 8 July to suspend independent Radio Despertar’s broadcasts for 180 days on the grounds that their current range, 400 km, is much more the 50 km stipulated in its licence. The suspension comes just one month before an election campaign is due to begin on 5 August.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) supporters of Khwezi*, slammed the recent call by the African National Congress (ANC) leadership, requesting Khwezi to apologise for her rape allegations against the ruling party president, Jacob Zuma.

African Lens,The Story of Priya Ramrakha commemorates the work of a remarkable photographer who defined his career by embracing the people and events of Africa as a personal subject. One of Africa's first international photojournalists, Ramrakha traveled the continent, documenting the lives of ordinary people for the world press.

On July 7, 2008 Chief Ebrima Manneh, a Gambian journalist, will be spending 730 days in detention in an undisclosed location in Gambia. The continued detention demands that his family, colleagues and human rights advocates continue to pressure the Gambian authorities about his whereabouts. The disappearance of the 30 year-old journalist has left his mother and father in a state of hopeless devastation and continues to put fear in journalists and other citizens of the Gambia.

His Excellency Abdoulaye Wade
President of the Republic of Senegal
c/o Embassy of the Republic of Senegal to the United States
2112 Wyoming Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Dear Mr. President,

Following the brutal beating of two Senegalese journalists by police after a soccer match on Saturday, we are writing to express our alarm at an increasing pattern of physical attacks and threats against independent journalists in the line of duty in recent weeks and months. Thorough, transparent police investigations or prosecutions of these abuses have seldom taken place. We are deeply concerned about an ongoing culture of impunity for crimes against journalists. Sports editor Babacar Kambel Dieng of Radio Futurs Médias (RFM) ad reporter Kara Thioune of bilingual station West Africa Democracy Radio, are still recovering from injuries inflicted by policemen following a World Cup soccer qualifier match against Liberia on Saturday evening.

Plainclothes officers from the police’s Multipurpose Intervention Brigade attacked Dieng and Thioune while they were interviewing Senegal defender Pape Malikou Diakhaté, according to local news reports. The journalists told CPJ the officers used tasers on them, then punched, kicked and handcuffed them after they refused to obey an order to immediately leave the area and proceed to a post-game conference hall. They were dragged to a secluded room, and further beaten while handcuffed, they told CPJ. Dieng’s voice recorder accidentally captured the sounds of the beating, which was later broadcast on a local radio station.