Developing countries led by India, China, Brazil are now taking the lead in setting global standards in the rapidly transforming telecommunications sector due to convergence of hitherto separate communications and entertainment services, says Hamadoun Toure, the new secretary general of the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union.

As troops loyal to the transitional federal government took control of almost all of Somalia today (29 December 2006), Reporters Without Borders and its partner organisation in Somalia, the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), called on the government and all other parties to the conflict to respect the work of journalists.

Government has gazetted application fees for the registration of mass media services and accreditation of journalists. Application for registration of mass media service and a news agency would be $600 000.

"People wonder why Africa is portrayed badly in the media, and the conclusion always comes to, in my own opinion, the combination of our own handiwork and the dominating power of the western media that be," writes Ademola Ariyo in Nigeria's Daily Champion newspaper in response to an article by Raymond Tarek Belleh of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, on nigeriaworld.com. Ariyo recommends Belleh's article to all interested in the exploitation of Africa by the Western media.

New Year celebrations tend to start early in South Africa. Fireworks were going off in the neighbourhood where we were living on the night of December 30, 2006. On New Year's Day we were at lunch at Nigerian journalist Dele Olojede's home in Johannesburg.

Reporters Without Borders has repeated an appeal for the release of blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman - known as Kareem Amer - who has been held in custody for six weeks after posting articles critical of Islam on his blog

The 3 November 2006 edition of the "Government Gazette Extraordinary" indicates that the Government of Botswana plans to bring a bill to Parliament on intelligence and security services. According to the draft, "The bill is to establish a Directorate of Intelligence and Security, a Central Intelligence Committee, a National Intelligence Community and an Intelligence and Security Council for the reason that the regional and global environment has changed necessitating a review in Botswana's approach to national security concerns."

When floods in August 2005 made some of Dakar’s most impoverished suburbs uninhabitable, Senegal’s long-standing plan to transform its slums into modern housing took on a new urgency.

The National University of Rwanda is to become the core Internet service provider, a reliable source from the Rwanda Information and Technology, (RITA) has revealed.

A Zimbabwean-OWNED software company, Afrosoft Corporation Limited, has entered into a lucrative partnership deal with Microsoft Corporation. Sources this week said the two firms recently signed the deal that would see the local company developing software for the world's largest software company.

In the shadow of one of the world's most iconic mountains, several hundred people will gather in Tanzania this June in a global version of the annual gathering in Monterey, California known as the TED conferences. Programme director for the Africa event, Emeka Okafor, says change is afoot in Africa, which is confronting the challenges of development, and the conference will bring together "creative, resourceful types who roll up their sleeves and get it done."

Despite Swaziland's humanitarian crisis, local newspapers are largely ignoring issues such as poverty, food shortages and HIV/AIDS in favour of reports about crime and bickering amongst political personalities, according to The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

When Peter Ulanga was invited to visit Brazil, last year, he knew that something was going to change in the management of dot Tz country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD). Ulanga, and a colleague, Peter Shilla, benefited from training offered by the Brazilian government on management of domain name registries using open source software.

SADC specialists in the field of statistics analysed on Tuesday (5 December 2006), in Luanda, the problem of the dependence of this activity on international technical assistance, concerning the new and not so frequently used technologies.

EQUINET, the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa, is a network of professionals, civil society members, policy makers, state officials and others within the region who have come together as an equity catalyst, to promote and realise shared values of equity and social justice in health.

To stop deadly strains of bird flu from mutating and infecting humans, millions of infected poultry will have to be culled as soon as an outbreak is reported and farmers must be compensated, agriculture specialists said on Wednesday (6 December 2006).

Journalists in Chad have begun a strike to protest state censorship under a six-month state of emergency imposed by the government of Idriss Deby, the president. Six private newspapers will not publish over the next two weeks, while several private radio stations will observe a three-day period of "silence".

ReConnect Africa is a unique online publication, network and portal with essential information about careers, enterprise and jobs for African professionals around the world. Offering a range of careers services for job seekers in Africa and in the Diaspora, recruitment specialists and people managers, ReConnect Africa brings together the best of Africa.

The executive arm of the Senegalese journalist union, Bureau Executive National (BEN), was forced to convene an emergency extra-ordinary session today to shame and condemn waves of death threats against their members in the country.

Broadcasters from across Africa will gather in Rwandan capital Kigali this week to propose new plans to bring digital sound to their hundreds of millions of listeners. The first-ever Pan-African Conference on Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), and the system they have developed to bring digital radio to the world, will open Wednesday and continue until the end of the week.