Reporters Without Borders has noted the release of Hamadi Jebali, editor of the weekly Al Fajr, on 25 February 2006, after 15 years in prison. The Tunisian authorities have also freed the "Zarzis Internet-users" who were jailed in April 2004. Jebali and the group of six so-called "Zarzis Internet-users" were among the 1,600 prisoners who received a presidential pardon, on 25 February 2006. Jebali, whose publication Al Fajr, is the organ of the Islamist movement An Nahda, has been in jail since 1991. He was sentenced to one year in prison for defamation after publishing an article by lawyer Mohammed Nuri calling for the military courts to be abolished.

The 93.3KFM signal, a subsidiary of the Monitor Publications, has been restored after being off-air for two days reportedly for relaying results from last Thursday’s poll without the authority of the Electoral Commission. The Monitor managing director, Conrad Nkutu, who claimed that the station and the newspaper’s websites were blocked by the Government, said the internal affairs minister, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, told him on Friday that security agencies had jammed KFM and blocked the paper’s website.

The Gilbert Center professional briefings are intended for the professional staff of nonprofit organizations, specifically those working in communication, fundraising, or technology. Packages tend to be tightly focused on a particular professional field and online workshops deliver lessons that can be immediately applied within a particular professional's field of authority.

Free software developers and advocates from across the African continent will be heading for Nairobi in Kenya this week as they gather for the second Fossfa African Conference on the Digital Commons. The Idlelo2 conference will run from Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 February. Key issues that will be hammered out during the conference include free and open source software in government, health services, education and entrepreneurship.

The Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) is a programme to improve management and access to African scholarly work. Theses and dissertations represent a significant proportion of Africa’s research activity. However, access to this research output is not easy, even within the institutions where they are submitted.

Over the last few years free/open source software (FOSS) has emerged as an alternative to proprietary software and touted as a solution to Africa's digital divide. The bridges.org report, "Free/open source software (FOSS) policy in Africa: A toolkit for policy-makers and practitioners" is targeted at governments that are investigating whether and how they can integrate FOSS into their strategies for social and economic development.

Since July 2005, hundreds of families have been made homeless after being forcibly evicted from their homes in several neighbourhoods in Luanda, the capital. Their homes were demolished and other property was either destroyed or stolen by the police and municipal fiscal agents that carried out the forced evictions. Most of the forced evictions were carried out violently. Forced evictions - those which are not carried out in accordance with the law – are human rights violations clearly prohibited by international law. They almost invariably affect the poor and most vulnerable members of society; they increase social inequality and poverty and frequently give rise to social conflict. Yet, the Angolan government continues to forcibly evict people from their homes.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has welcomed the release of newspaper director Ibrahim Manzo, who spent 18 days in preventive detention awaiting the outcome of a defamation case. A court in Niamey, capital of Niger, handed Manzo a suspended one-month prison sentence on Monday and ordered his release, local journalists told CPJ.

Reporters Without Borders has strongly condemned a brutal attack against freelance journalist Gift Phiri, former reporter for the weekly "Zimbabwe Independent", who was beaten up by men accusing him of working for media hostile to the government, according to a RSF release as reported on the www.journalism.co.za website. The attack came three weeks after threats were issued against those who contribute to foreign media by the minister in charge of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). "Forced into unemployment, threatened with prison and now beaten up: the fate Robert Mugabe reserves for independent journalists is more and more vicious," said Reporters Without Borders.

How to manage a hairdressing salon or a welding shop? What are the basic rights of a worker in the informal economy? Armed only with their teaching materials, the educators trained by the Programme for the Reinforcement of Trade Union Action in the Informal Economy (PRASEI) have reached a total of over 70,000 workers in Burkina Faso. The fact that in Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulasso, Koudougou and Tenkodogo, the workers within the informal economy can now take part in May Day celebrations or convene collective action is the result of successful trade union awareness-raising. All this is the fruit of an intensive grassroots campaign carried out in 14 provinces of the country and led by the 554 resource persons trained by PRASEI.

Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) has announced the launch of its new website. In Zimbabwe where freedom of expression is seriously restricted through repressive legislation and other means and where an unofficial ban exists on lesbian and gay people speaking for themselves using the government-controlled media, the GALZ Information and Communications Department plays an important role in countering state-instigated propaganda.

Where ICT makes available critical information, financial services, and reduces the maze of bureaucracy, people benefit in terms of reduced time and resources that need to be expended. Where ICT facilitates access to information about new economic opportunities and helps avail of them, small and medium sized enterprises and cooperatives demonstrate interest. But it is not just a question of facilitating economic and social development, community radio and related technologies are, for example, also proving useful in facilitating participation and strengthening the voice of communities.

WOUGNET in Uganda was one of the organisers of a conference in mid-December, on a post-World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) consolidation for Uganda. Held on December 14, 2005, the conference was co-organised by the Uganda Communication Commission, I-network, Collegium for Development Studies and Uppsala University of Sweden. Overall, the Uganda conference aimed at strengthening what happened at WSIS and finding a concrete way forward to meet the WSIS targets at the national level. Specially, by way of establishing national priorities and benchmarks.

On 10 February 2006, a Harare magistrate relaxed the reporting conditions against Voice of the People (VOP) radio board members when they appeared in court for a remand hearing. David Masunda, VOP chairman, his deputy Arnold Tsunga, and board members Lawrence Chibwe, Nhlanhla Ngwenya, and Millie Phiri, all of whom are accused of operating a radio station without a licence in terms of the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA), are on Z$4 million (approx. US$40) bail each.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the continued detention of the managing editor of a private weekly newspaper in Niger on a defamation charge. Ibrahim Manzo, director of L'Autre Observateur, was placed in "preventive detention" on February 2 in the capital, Niamey, local journalists told CPJ. He faces a criminal charge of defaming a local businessman. The prosecutor has asked for a two-month prison sentence and 50,000 CFA franc fine (US$91).

The CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards are the longest running, most prestigious Pan African Awards for journalists in Africa. Over the past eleven years, the competition has grown in size and status. In 2005 it attracted over 1,500 entries from 40 African countries.

Hundreds of Muslim protesters in Garissa town gave the Government of Kenya a two-week ultimatum to cut diplomatic ties with Denmark. They were protesting the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist. They also asked the Government to close the Danish Embassy in Nairobi. One person died in Nairobi on Friday during similar demonstrations. The protesters asked President Kibaki to recall all diplomatic officials from Denmark and ban imports from the country.

Extensive data on Education for All is now easily accessible with the new search tool on the Global Monitoring Report website. This tool, developed by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics in partnership with the EFA Global Monitoring Report team, is based on the data contained in the 2006 statistical annex tables. It enables you to search by table, theme, indicator, country and region, and to export results into an Excel format.

As quoted in January, Zimbabwe's security minister Didymus Mutasa warned that "the net will soon close" on critical journalists who threatened nation’s security. The statement came together with a new offensive against the remaining independent journalists in the country and just after the arrest of employees and directors of Voice of the People (VOP), a radio station that transmitted into Zimbabwe via a shortwave transmitter in Madagascar. The significance of the crackdown lies in the fact that VOP is one of the few alternatives to the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

This Friday in Harare, six trustees of Voice of the People (VOP), a privately-owned radio station, are due to appear in court on criminal charges, according to a Human Rights Watch press release (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/02/08/zimbab12632.htm). On January 24, the authorities brought charges of broadcasting without a license against six of the station’s trustees. VOP was one of the few alternatives to the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, the only broadcaster with a license to operate legally in the country.

“The Zimbabwean government is using criminal charges to muzzle independent reporting and criticism,” said Paul Simo, Africa advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “This crackdown targets media that criticize government institutions, officials and the ruling party.”

The VOP trustees could face up to two years in jail. The charges came after police raided the Harare home of one of the board members, Arthur Tsunga, and kidnapped two of his household staff. The two were detained without charge for four days in an effort to coerce the executive director of VOP, John Masuku to turn himself into the police. Masuku was charged with broadcasting without a license on December 23.

The board members? David Masunda, Isabella Matambanadzo, Millicent Phiri, Lawrence Chibwe, Nhlahla Ngwenya and Tsunga?are will be represented by Beatrice Mtetwa, a renowned Zimbabwean human rights lawyer.

VOP was not the only target, however. Independent journalist Sydney Saize was arrested for filing a Voice of America report saying that the ruling ZANU-PF party had beaten teachers in the city. Meanwhile, the Media and Information Commission (MIC) threatened in early January to cancel the license of the Financial Gazette, a privately-owned newspaper, and refused to renew the accreditation of fifteen journalists working for the Zimbabwe Independent, another privately-owned newspaper.

Three laws have tightened the screws on Zimbabwe’s media over the last five years. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act of 2002 forces media ventures to register with a Media and Information Commission or face prison. It also makes it an offence for journalists to work without accreditation.

The Broadcasting Services Act of 2001 ensures that the government has control of the airwaves by giving the Minister of State for Information and Publicity the power to decide who can broadcast. Lastly, the Public Order and Security Act of 2002 has a number of aspects which potentially limit the right to freedom of expression and covers the publishing of false statements against the state, the organizing of public gatherings and grants extensive powers to the police.

Sierra Leone's attorney general has confirmed that he will not pursue charges of manslaughter against a member of parliament and two others accused of assaulting journalist Harry Yansaneh in May 2005. At the time, Yansaneh was acting editor of the private newspaper For Di People. A judicial inquest found that the attack contributed to Yansaneh's death from kidney failure more than two months later.