Like most of the female residents of Awere Internally Displaced Persons camp in northern Uganda, the girls rose at dawn that morning in 2002. They set out on foot, with their mother, to harvest crops several kilometers away. The two sisters, both teens, had called the camp home for most their lives. Along with about a million and a half of their neighbors, they were moved from their village to the camp by the Ugandan government in the mid-1990s to protect them from a murderous rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army.

The Corruption Fighters' Tool Kit is a compendium of practical civil society anti-corruption experiences described in concrete and accessible language. It presents innovative anti-corruption tools developed and implemented by TI National Chapters and other civil society organizations from around the world.

The Dutch timber merchant Guus van Kouwenhoven has been sentenced to eight years in prison for breaking a United Nations arms embargo on Liberia. A Dutch court found that Kouwenhoven had sold weapons to the former Liberian president Charles Taylor in return for timber rights. But he was acquitted of war crimes charges based on allegations that private militias formed by his two timber companies had carried out atrocities.

Concerns about possible legal action resulted in the SABC's decision not to air a documentary about President Thabo Mbeki, according to Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, writes Wendy Jasson da Costa in The Star, as posted on In a written response to questions by DA MP Dene Smuts, the minister denied that the SABC board or any of its members had stopped the "production" of the documentary.

The International Journalists' Network (IJNet) is the world’s premier resource for the media assistance community. It is an online service for journalists, media managers, media assistance professionals, journalism trainers and educators, or anyone else with an interest in news media around the world.

AFRODAD has designed a “Macroeconomic Training course” for civil society organizations in the economic and social justice movement and is inviting applications from interested persons to participate in this week-long exercise. The course will be covered under four different modules whose outline will be sent to candidates expressing interest.

CHIMURENGA is an advertising-free and self-funded quarterly of arts.cultures.politics from Africa for Africa. Visit the website to find out more and to subscribe.

reports that: "Surprisingly, no-one seems to have told Microsoft that it is not good marketing strategy to treat your customers as if they are stupid. Which is exactly what the company is doing with the release in Africa of the stripped-down operating system it calls Windows XP Starter Edition."

Located at the Congo-Uganda border 500 kilometres south west of Kampala, the Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) Bwindi Impenetrable National Park telecentre - a combination of conservation and technology, is making a whole lot of a difference to the endangered mountain gorillas, eco-tourists, tourist stakeholders and locals who live in and around the park. The telecentre has been nominated as one of the 14 finalists in the "environment" category in the world's best Information and Communication Technology (ICT) projects that competed in the Stockholm Challenge 2006.

Essential drugs are now available in public health institutions, even those in remote areas, a government agency has said. The Kenya Medical Supplies Agency chairman said it had stocked Kenya's 2,800 dispensaries and other health institutions with enough drugs and medical equipment. He said the agency was taking the drugs directly to the health institutions after doing away with an earlier system "since it is causing artificial shortages of drugs and it is time-consuming".

Rwanda has been selected to house the headquarters of the multi-million dollar Eastern Africa Submarine Cable Project (EASSy). The project, which has of recent been dogged by controversy over its ownership, has a membership of 23 countries in the region. The EASSy cable system is a 9900km project expected to run from Durban, South Africa to Djibouti and is supported by the African Development Bank, the World Bank and telecommunications operators.

East African countries are leading Africa in the growth of Internet penetration. Tanzania has had a 150% increase in users in the past year while Kenya has increased by 200%, with the number of users having reached 1.5 million. African Internet penetration overall is 4%, up from 2.6% in 2005.

Acting Chief Justice Jacobus Annandale said the right of the public to information could not be undermined at the behest of an individual. He was referring to the alleged serial killer, David Simelane, who applied for a ban on media coverage of the case. Annandale said the right to freedom of the media and the public's right to receive information were enshrined in the country's constitution

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled that two journalists are to go on trial in Uganda, charged with "promoting sectarianism" in an article criticizing government persecution of opposition leader Kizza Besigye. Editor James Tumusiime and reporter Semujju Ibrahim Nganda of the independent Weekly Observer face up to five years in jail if convicted.

The Summit is intended as a four-day critical discussion of issues relating to the proper and adequate dissemination of information about the the new and emerging Africa.

Lagos, Nigeria, is to host the third annual African VoIP Forum from 31 July to 3 August. Key topics at the conference will include: The impact of VoIP as a driving force behind the African telecommunications sector; VoIP: A bridge for the communication gap; A case for African VoIP networks; Regulatory battles: Users are the losers; and Africa's VoIP regulatory mix.

Offered by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the WFP Award for Humanitarian Journalism aims to recognise journalists' efforts to deliver consistent, in-depth coverage of humanitarian issues relating to people and communities affected by poverty, food insecurity and HIV/AIDS in Swaziland.

This course handbook was produced to accompany the Uganda Radio Network Advanced Radio Journalism Course, which was run throughout Uganda for freelance radio journalists. The Handbook, which follows the day-by-day course programme, contains transcripts of PowerPoint presentations plus additional supporting material.

Women are the missing voices in radio talk shows - as hosts, guests and callers. To the extent that gender issues are raised in chat shows, they often reinforce stereotypes about the role of women and men in society and these go unchallenged by the predominantly male hosts of the shows. These are among the key findings of a survey of eleven radio talk shows in four Southern African countries (Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe).

Satellite images captured under a pioneering program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) provide powerful evidence that the government of Zimbabwe has destroyed an entire settlement and relocated thousands of residents as part of a campaign against political opponents. The images, analyzed by the AAAS staff, show two views of the settlement of Porta Farm, located just west of the Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The first, an archived image from June 2002, shows an intact settlement with more than 850 homes and other buildings; an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived in Porta Farm at the time. The second photo, taken by satellite on 6 April this year, shows that the settlement has been leveled.