A court in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Wednesday sent the country's most erudite and vocal editor to six months in prison for writing a story on the health of President Hosni Mubarak. Ibrahim Eissa - Chief Editor of 'Al-Dustur' daily - was found guilty of spreading false information on the state of Mr Mubarak, which according to prosecutors, could threaten national stability as well as damaged the country's economy.

Malawi Information and Civic Education Minister Patricia Kaliati has said that the country will have a booming information and communication technology services after successfully piloting ICT telecentres in some districts of the country. To be regulated by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA), the telecentres will be run by women as a way of involving them in ICT activities, the minister said.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/broadcasts/Arts_Azimuts.jpgBetween the 25th of January and the 2nd of Feb 2008, the town of Butare, Rwanda, hosted its first International Arts Festival organized by the University Centre for Arts. Entitled ‘Arts Azimuts’, this festival focused on theatre, music and dance, bringing together artists from Rwanda, Western Africa, Belgium and the United States
Du 25 janvier au 2 fevrier 2008,la ville de Butare au Rwanda a abrite son premier Festival International des Arts organise par le Centre Universitaire des arts. Intitule "Arts Azimuts", le festival incluait theatre,musique et dance et a rassemble des artistes du Rwanda, de l'afrique de l'ouest de laBelgique et des USA.

We, over 125 members of the global access to information community from 40 countries, representing governments, civil society organizations, international bodies and financial institutions, donor agencies and foundations, private sector companies, media outlets and scholars, gathered in Atlanta, Georgia from February 27-29, 2008, under the auspices of the Carter Center and hereby adopt the following Declaration and Plan of Action to advance the passage, implementation, enforcement, and exercise of the right of access to information:

The International Federation of Journalists has welcomed the formation of the Association of Journalists Unions in the North of Africa, which will act as the regional body of journalists’ trade unions in the media industry in the region.

The fate of Fatou Jaw Manneh, a US-based Gambian journalist accused of sedition, is not certain, as her case file has gone missing. On March 17, 2008, when the case was called, the trial magistrate, Buba Jawo, said there was no file before him pertaining to the case. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported the case has since been adjourned indefinitely.

Christian Aid currently has an exciting opportunity in our Africa Division: As the Angola Programme Officer – Information and Documentation, you will be responsible for facilitating conditions for Angolan civil society to strengthen, through: promoting the access to information; developing documentation systems; and supporting relevant communication and media. You will link Christian Aid’s Information and Communication work in the UK and abroad, with the Angola partners and programme. Closing date for applications: 7 April 2008

The Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) has learned with dismay the adoption by the Transitional Parliament of Somalia of a new press bill which blatantly violates press freedom and freedom of expression. The new law contravenes international legal instruments which guarantee press freedom, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Atizar Mendes Pereira, journalist and director of Última Hora, a privately-owned Bissau-based newspaper was on March 11, 2008 arrested and detained by the Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Interior of Guinea Bissau. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that Pereira was interrogated for nearly six hours, before being released.

In January 2008, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN released a report on how criminal defamation legislation is used in Africa to silence print journalists who report on corruption, mismanagement and other abuses of power. The report looked at cases of defamation-related persecution in the 17 months to November 2007.

Demands by youths in Mazabuka for Government to increase the allocation of the youth empowerment fund has riled Mazabuka District Commissioner who has demanded the Mazabuka Community Radio Management to fire a Journalist Innocent Chinyemba.

If the Kenyan lawmakers had debated and approved the recent ICT Bill put before parliament, some of the communications issues raised by the recent political crisis in that country would have been more easily dealt with, argues KICTANeT's Alice Wanjira.

Hospitals in rural Tanzania have designed ways to communicate with doctors in referral hospitals using the Internet. The Bugando Referral Hospital in Mwanza has a telemedicine unit that connects Rubya and Kibondo hospitals. The remote hospitals are supplied with a computer, a scanner and a digital camera

A Moroccan who was jailed for creating a Facebook profile of a prince has been released from prison. Fouad Mourtada, a 26-year-old IT engineer, was freed on Tuesday after being pardoned by the king. Fouad Mourtada had been given a three-year prison term and fined 10,000 dirhams (US$1,320) in February for creating a profile of Morocco's Prince Moulay Rachid on Facebook. He was convicted after a trial in Casablanca.

On the eve of the March 29, 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, with Robert Mugabe in power since 28 years and seeking another term as President, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), is publishing a report entitled ZIMBABWE: Run up to the March 29 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections - A Highly Repressive Environment for Human Rights Defenders.

John Samuel cautions Africa that technology should not come at the expense of Africa's "a shared sense of community, mutual support, trust and a culture of collective approach."

Growth and technological innovations are the two key drivers of change. Technology and economic growth feed in to each other. Access to economic growth and technology is supposed to make life more comfortable. But the key paradox of economic and technological growth is that both of them tend to increase comfort and decrease the level of happiness. While rapid economic growth can create access to income, it can also create the paradox of abundance - wherein quantity of money and comforts subvert and undermine the quality of time, life, living and environment.

When growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not produce a parallel growth in Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), the purpose of economic growth and the use and misuse of technology are put into question. Economic growth is not a bad idea. But abundance can also create perpetual tension between the zest for freedoms and entrenched fears within and without. Such tensions can wake up the demons within the self and society - ceasing to trust each other, with increasing insecurity, paranoia and violence.

While embracing neo-liberal economic growth and new technologies, it is important for Africa to understand and appreciate the pros and cons of economic and technological growth. Africa's biggest resource, apart from its natural resources, is a shared sense of community, mutual support, trust and a culture of collective approach. However, bulldozing capitalism and economic growth of few elites superimposed on rather traditional societies can create new inequalities, individuation, paranoia and consequent violence. If only a minuscule minority get access to the fruits of economic growth and technology, it can indeed create an Economics of Violence. A shared sense of inequality and injustice become breeding grounds for alienation and reactionary violence. This is evident on the streets of Johannesburg to Nairobi.

Hence, it will be worthwhile to look at the experience of some of the fast growing economies in Asia. Most of the Asian countries too have a strong sense of community and collective ethics. But in the new flood of economic growth and technological invasion, new challenges are emerging.

Technology is both the beauty and the beast at the same time. Technology is a double edged sword. Every tool's validity depends on who uses it for what. Tool itself may not be political- but the use of tool is always an exercise of Power.

Technology has been the main protagonist in the drama of economic growth in the modern and post-modern times. Technology did make a difference to human condition, comforts and lives. Technology has almost acquired God-like- power to create, sustain and destruct; and at the same time a means for the search for perfection; conquering stars and cloning life. The ground zero in New York, the blazing guns and exploding young men on a busy street symbolize the frightening dance of technology.

It is the unequal and asymmetric access to technology that also propelled various kinds of dominations. In fact, technology, as means of domination- as means to travel great distance, communicate and as a means to confront an "enemy' with more "productive" killing power( weapons of mass destruction- played a very important role in all conquests. Those who had access to horse breeding, gun powder, steam energy, ship technology, missiles, space technology used all these to create muscle power to dominate. This power play and technology are still being played out across the world. The origin of this very technology- Internet- too is in the defense labs of the US.

There is a clear connection between patterns of conquests, colonialisation, technology and natural resources. Colony went where there was coal, timber, iron, and food. Hence, in the 18nth or 19th century the so called “middle east” did not exist in the imperialist scheme of things. Railway lines happened wherever there were some resources to be ripped off. The printing press created new politics of knowledge, and new rules for domination. Of course, printing press also unleashed a linguistic revolution- through hundreds of new grammar, new dictionaries, new Bibles and new books. Translations translated and transformed lives and times. Shipping technology helped us to cross the sea to hold hands as well as to capture lands. The moment technology shifted from Steam based mechanics to Oil one could see the shift in focus of imperialism. There is a direct connection between the discovery of oil in the early twentieth century and the shift of imperial interests to the so called “Middle East"(erstwhile Persia and Arabia).

In a metro-line in Tokyo, most of the young people are glued to their mobile, playing games, browsing Internet, chatting with someone on line and they hardly even notice the person sitting next. While people are connecting with some in the distance, they are alienated from the person sitting or living next door. The cyber world, social networking on the net etc creates different sort of virtual and imagined communities, while subverting and undermining human communities in real lives.

In counties like Japan, young people seem to be too busy to fall in or rise in love. Thirty thousand people commit suicide every year- one of the highest in the world. An aggressive economic growth and an invading technology seem to have created more people using Internet to find a "mate' to sleep with or to do "love- networking, and young people using technology to get a high kick to make "suicide- pact" on the net. When even love, passion and feeling get automated and orderly with sense of perfect routine, life becomes a boring burden: where life cease to give any excitement, people may search excitement in death! It has become a case of an economic society superimposed on a very traditional socio-cultural society , with pervading sense of new individuation and depoliticisation.

Everyone seems to be so pre-occupied with his or her own economic survival, at the cost of emotional security, resulting social/community disintegration. Every young person seems to be busy finding a job, proving his or her sense of self-worth as a "hardworking" professional with “sincerity" to the job. There is no time to hold hands, to walk in a park or to sing a song. When life is so automated and orderly without a possibility of anarchic thinking and life, creativity takes a back seat and productivity takes a front seat. Livelihood takes precedence over living and living takes precedence over life. Efficiency of our work goes up and the effectiveness of life gets discounted.

So when human beings cease to be social and creative and tend to be productive workforce, preoccupied with survival of the self, the seeds of alienation bloom in to a cancer of social disintegration and depolitisation. One ceases to be a part of a community but a loner in the midst of an anonymous crowd. This sense of erosion of aesthetics from human relations and society tend dehumanize the society and the world.

Sudden economic growth can induce more demands in some sectors, pushing up the cost of price and living. The increased income of a miniscule minority also propelled new consumerism with consequent increase in cost of living. In rapid growing economies of Asia, the sky rocketing real estate prices, smashed the housing dreams and rights of the majority of urban middle class. This in turn reduces the real purchasing capacity and increase the discontent of those who did not get much out of economic growth; making the recipe for an economics of violence.

Economic growth and technology may increase the access to comforts, but may also induce new individuation (transforming people from "social animal" to "economic animal" driven by economic compulsions), social disintegration, new paranoia and consequent loss of time or mindset for poetry, politics, love, companionship or community.

This paranoia, emotional insecurity and loss of community also create a new market for spiritualism and new adapted form of market-driven religious denominations. Brand new spiritual shops and “gurus” are thriving as a result of the market induced emotional and social insecurity among people who have becomes the villains and victims of the mega-markets!

*John Samuel is a social activist and the International Director of Actionaid.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The Tanzanian Government has arrested two online editors without charge. The two were detained and interrogated for 24 hours in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on February 18, in what observers of the case say was a politically motivated attempt to shut down the site. The two young editors, Maxence Mello and Mike Mushi, aged 21 and 18 respectively, host the extremely popular Jambo Forums, a public discussion site with more than 2,000 members and 6 million hits in February alone.

Tunisian journalist and press freedom advocate Sihem Bensedrine and husband Omar Mestiri were allegedly assaulted by police early this month when entering Tunisia from Europe. The government denies the claims, but human rights groups are persisting in their accusations.

Is the Uganda government set to become an efficient deliverer of services to the 28 million Ugandans out there? At least this is what the nationals are supposed to believe if the benefits that accrue from the completion of the first phase of the National Data Backbone is anything to go by.

The International Center for Journalists seeks nominations for the 2008 Knight International Journalism Awards. The Awards recognize outstanding international journalists who demonstrate an extraordinary devotion to the craft by upholding and promoting the highest journalistic standards, despite overwhelming challenges.