Alfonso Pene, an information technology student at Eduardo Mondlane University, spends a lot of time on the Internet researching computer programming languages. But the university's slow connection speed makes doing his homework an exercise in frustration. That is about to change as a result of an effort by six major US foundations - including the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation - to boost Internet bandwidth at African universities.

The Food Security Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSAU), implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and funded by the European Commission and USAID, launches it’s vast Digital Library (DILI) online. While previously accessible only from the FSAU Resource Center in the Nairobi office, DILI is now accessible anywhere in the world via the FSAU web site.

BarCampCapeTown is an idea is to bring the South African tech/geek/creative community together under one roof in the informal "un-conference" environment. Think of it as Open-Source conferencing, this is your conference, you present, you discuss, you attend, you spread the word.

This intensive 3 week training programme in human rights and media law with a focus on litigation and advocacy skills is run by PCMLP in collaboration with the Open Society Justice Initiative and other organisations.

This program is a unique gathering of journalists, photographers, marketing and public relations students who will gather in Uganda to address the misconceptions about Africa in the media. The Immersion will facilitate discussion; promote the exchange of ideas and solutions; and interact with key decision makers in Uganda about the challenges and creative solutions facing Uganda.

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organisation Journaliste en Danger (JED) have written to the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor asking him to carry out more thorough enquiries into the June 2003 disappearance of Agence France-Presse assistant Acquitté Kisembo. Militia chief Thomas Lubanga, who was arrested on war crimes charges and transferred to the ICC on 17 March 2006, is suspected of ordering his murder.

The Zimbabwean government has drafted a bill that would permit the surveillance of telephone and e-mail communications while making it compulsory for service providers to install the enabling equipment on behalf of the state, according to a statement from Misa. The proposed law, the Interception of Communications Bill 2006, seeks to empower the chief of defence intelligence, the director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the Commissioner of Police and the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority to intercept telephonic, e-mail and cellphone messages.

The Association for Progressive Communications has launched a new website to promote East Africa's dire need for an international submarine cable that could provide affordable broadband Internet access. This web site, FibreForAfrica.net, has been put together to provide basic information about international Internet bandwidth in Africa, its costs and the existence of monopoly access to it.

Peddlers of pirated software now hold sway on the very streets where drug dealers and prostitutes plied their wares a decade ago in Nigeria's biggest city. Every building in the Ikeja district is now packed with computer and cellphone ware. Business is done on the streets.

The Panos Global AIDS Programme invites print journalists from Eastern Africa; Western Africa; the Caribbean; South Asia to participate in a small grants programme aimed at raising debate at country level on the progress made by their countries in the attainment of the goals of the Declaration of Commitment agreed upon during the United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions (UNGASS) on HIV/AIDS held in June 2001.

Local online diarists are treading where professional journalists won't dare to shape public opinion on everything from politics, economics to sex. Is this the birth of new media in Africa as faceless authors take on hot subjects? Ben Singer reports on Kenyan blogs in this article from The Nation newspaper.

The Poverty Eradication Network (PEN) is introducing training courses for the not for profit sector. PEN has a wide range of proven interventions to strengthen your organisation: participatory organisational assessment; organisational development; governance strengthening; leadership and management training and mentoring; systems development for information technology, human resources, finance, administration and operational procedures; resource mobilisation and fund raising; and strategic planning.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety "is alive," celebrated the delegates to the Third Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol (MOP3), although there were complaints about and criticism of modifications to the final agreement reached Friday night (March 17). "We made important concessions to accommodate legitimate concerns," Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva said in her closing speech.

East African countries will suffer job losses and an increase in poverty under the most plausible outcomes of the current world trade negotiations, a Washington-based think tank warns in a new report. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace bases its conclusions on sophisticated statistical modelling of likely agreements resulting from the Doha Round of trade talks, which have been underway for the past five years. The central scenario projected in the Carnegie report involves an ambitious expansion of market access for manufactured goods and a more modest expansion of world trade in farm products, accompanied by elimination of subsidies for agricultural exports.

Police in Uganda raided Open Gate FM Radio, arrested two presenters and picked up computers, two days after two ministers nearly fought outside the radio studios. The minister for the presidency, and the state minister for energy confronted Budadiri West MP Mafabi at the radio station on Saturday accusing him of defaming them. Mafabi had been on a talk show on the radio. Non-uniformed policemen arrived at the radio station at 1pm and attempted to take the on-air computer too.

The Ugandan government's expulsion of a foreign journalist is the latest example of a crackdown on independent media that predates recent elections, Human Rights Watch said. At least three local journalists also face serious criminal charges on account of their work. President Yoweri Museveni, in power in Uganda since 1986, won re-election last month, giving him another five-year term. The ruling National Resistance Movement won a majority of seats in parliament in the presidential and parliamentary elections of February 23, the first multiparty poll in two decades.

The workshop will be held July 10-11, 2006 in Iringa, Tanzania and TEDC 2006 seeks high quality submissions of original unpublished research on all aspects of technology for education in developing countries. Researchers and educators with new perspectives on applications of technology in this context are strongly encouraged to submit their work.

In light of the state's unjustified ignorance of the President's promise to annul prison sentences in publication cases, on Tuesday 7 March 2006 the Giza Criminal Court issued a one-year imprisonment verdict against Amira Malash, a journalist for Al-Fagr newspaper, in case 1381 [2006]. In his testimony to the representative of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), Nashaat Agha, the journalist's lawyer, declared that the session in court had not exceeded seven minutes when the verdict was issued.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is very troubled by the recent harassment of journalists at the independent radio station Choice FM in the town of Gulu, in Uganda's war-scarred north. Police accused the station of being a security threat after a talk show last Wednesday featuring opposition and ruling party candidates in Ugandan municipal elections, according to local journalists.

Nearly four months after Ethiopian authorities launched a crackdown on the country's press following post-electoral street protests, there has been an alarming deterioration in press freedom conditions, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Self-censorship is rife, critical newspapers are shrinking in number and 14 journalists face charges that could bring the death penalty.