Johncom’s new website — www.reporter.co.za — highlights the potential and limitations of the new craze for citizen journalism, begins this column posted on www.journalism.co.za and written by journalism professor Anton Harber. "Think of the potential problems. How do you verify stories e-mailed into you? How do you prevent commercial interests from placing their public relations material? Or planting stories for fun or to harm their competition?"

Wireless networking holds huge potential for developing nations to overcome their communication infrastructure challenges. But, without access to good information, building reliable wireless networks in often hostile conditions and without resources can be all but impossible. Now a new, free manual focused on assisting developing-nation wireless practitioners hopes to overcome some of these challenges and limitations.

Lawyers who advocate on free expression and media freedom issues anywhere in the world are encouraged to apply for the 5th Media Law Advocates Training Programme, an intensive three-week seminar which aims to build skills and knowledge in litigation and advocacy. Taking place from 9-28 July 2006, the programme is hosted by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University, in collaboration with the Open Society Justice Initiative and other organisations. Email: [email protected].

Faced with impending competition, both Senegal and Gambia's incumbents are preparing the ground for "triple-play" (voice, Internet and "television") services. The sceptics will wonder whether "triple-play" in Gambia is not simply some far-fetched strategic "pipe-dream". But it has a stronger logic than might at first appear to be the case.

In an attempt to silence one of Zimbabwe’s last independent news outlets, six board members of the Harare-based Voice of the People radio station were charged last week with broadcasting without a license. They 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 scheduled to appear in court in Harare on February 10. They will be represented by Beatrice Mtetwa, a renowned Zimbabwean human rights lawyer. The Voice of the People is one of a handful of independent news outlets in Zimbabwe, where the government exercises near-total control over the media. “Such a brazen assault on media freedom shows the bankruptcy of the Mugabe regime,” said Tawanda Mutasah, director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, part of the Soros foundations network. One of the board members facing charges, Isabella Matambanadzo, is OSISA’s coordinator for Zimbabwe.

The EPA negotiations in different regions will, or are likely to, include liberalisation of trade and investment in services. Liberalisation of services can have far reaching consequences. Since Article 5 in the GATS requires that regional agreements have to have "substantial sectoral coverage" and eliminate "substantially all discrimination", many services sectors will be included in EPAs that liberalise services, even if Art.5 allows developing countries to liberalise less than developed countries in a free trade agreement. As this is done at the end of the EPA negotiation period, this is a dangerous process because experience has shown that if liberalisation of services is done too swiftly without the necessary assessments and regulations, there might be many negative consequences.

A few days ago, the Uganda government "revised" the accreditation for Will Ross, the BBC's correspondent in Kampala, from 12 months down to four. Freelance journalist Blake Lambert, who has reported from Uganda for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Economist, and other news outlets, has been checking the mailbox for his accreditation, but the authorities have not posted it. Information Minister James Buturo said the step was taken because foreign journalists had become a "security threat". For good measure, no foreign journalists can now travel more than 100 kilometres outside the capital without some kind of special permission.

The African Mentoring Project was created as a way of encouraging and supporting Africans who want to start blogging. Initially there will be a pilot project limited to Nigerian women. The idea for the project came from Nigerian blogger Ore who is presently working with a group of young women from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia on the Young Caucacus Women Project. Visit the URL provided to find out more.

A new campaign has been launched that aims to end the portrayal of tribal people in the press as 'primitive' and 'Stone Age'. It is being supported by prominent journalists such as BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson, the BBC's Caroline Hawley, George Monbiot, John Pilger, Sandy Gall and Christopher Booker.

While 80% of Uganda’s population lives in rural areas, 70% of communication services are in urban areas. Only 2% of rural people access mobile telecommunications unlike 16.6% of their urban counterparts. Only 4% of Ugandans access grid power. “It’s rather unfortunate because rural areas produce more than 80% of Uganda’s wealth,” Dr. Fredrick Tusubira of Makerere University ICT support center says in a paper titled 'Uganda: Challenges of the digital divide and telecommunications sector'.

On 29 January 2006, the director of Radiotélévision LA COLOMBE (RTC) stationed in Rutshuru, North Kivu province, decided to suspend broadcasting for security reasons. On the evening of 24 January 2006, unidentified soldiers entered the RTC offices and confiscated a Pentium 2 computer, two Nokia cell phones and four dictaphones. Shortly afterwards, the same officers entered the guest house where four journalists from Goma were staying and took away their kitchen implements and luggage. Fearing for their lives, the journalists sought initial refuge in Rutshuru parish before making their way back to Goma.

David Madie is on an unusual mission: He is filming a documentary
about the African free and open source software movement and the
inspiration for the film is well-know African free software advocate
James Wire from Uganda.

For most Nigerians, the electronic media are more accessible and affordable than print, according to available statistics. Radio is cheap and available everywhere in local languages. It takes precedence over the television because of the country’s epileptic power supply, the readership culture, literacy level, and the cost. World Press Review reports: "Given the literacy awareness skewed in favor of the South, most Northerners clutch a portable radio wherever they go to keep informed. After all, information is power."

For the vast majority of Tanzanians, it is the radio that reigns supreme in providing their news. For 35 years, they have been listening to the government-owned Radio Tanzania and getting a steady diet of mostly government propaganda and anti-apartheid sermons. The coming of economic liberalization has brought the liberalization of the press, which has resulted in dozens of FM stations, 350 registered newspapers, and a dozen TV stations, reports World Press Review.

Five directors of an independent radio station in Zimbabwe were charged on Tuesday with breaching the country's controversial broadcasting laws, a media watchdog told Agence France-Presse. "Members of the board of directors for the Voice of the People (VOP) radio station appeared in court today on charges of contravening the Broadcasting Services Act," said Nyasha Nyakunu, spokesperson for the Media Institute of Southern Africa.

This UNDP paper explores transaction costs (TCs) in the Tanzanian education sector. It looks at the different kinds of transaction costs, including administrative, tying and fiscal, to see how they play out through different funding instruments such as projects, pooled fund support to the education sector, sector support, and examines their likely implications in the context of moves towards increased budget support.

Hundreds of Nigerians are still sleeping out in the open nearly nine months after bulldozers and armed police arrived in the Makoko community of Lagos, demolishing homes, churches, a mosque and a medical clinic. After three days of destruction, the community was obliterated, leaving about 3,000 residents - many already destitute - homeless. A report by Amnesty International, in collaboration with Lagos-based Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), reveals how residents were given no prior notice of the demolition of their homes and property, which took place from 27 - 29 April 2005.

This report investigates what role new information and communication technologies play in small enterprise development in Africa. Drawing on field research in Botswana, the project analyses the information and communication needs of these enterprises and assesses opportunities for ICT application.

The Zambian media has largely ignored the drought that has left more than a million rural Zambians in need of food aid, according to report on irinnews.com. Despite President Levy Mwanawasa's declaration of a national food crisis last year, when harvests failed in parts of southern, eastern and northern Zambia, the national broadcaster, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC), has not carried any reports on the drought or the starvation it has caused.

"What exactly is going on at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN)? Is academic freedom really under threat, as has been argued recently?" asks Jane Duncan from the Freedom of Expression Institute. She writes: "At the heart of the problems brewing at the university is a looming contradiction between the university as an organ of state and its stated objectives of being 'critically engaged with society' and '[supporting] social transformation and redress'. This contradiction has found concrete expression in conflict between an increasingly embattled eThekwini municipality and a number of radical-activist scholars located in the university's sociology department and the Centre for Civil Society (CCS)."