The WSIS process was born in 1998 at an ITU plenipotentiary meeting where it was nodded through as the last item on the agenda. Few can have imagined that it would result in a meeting of the kind that has just taken place, writes Russell Southwood from http://www.balancingact-africa.com/. And, says Southwood, ever since the whole process started he has been asking what on earth it was meant to achieve. " It doesn’t matter whether they came from Government, the private sector or civil society, all would privately admit that it was probably going to be something that would achieve very little. The last time I saw someone pitch it publicly the best the speaker could do was to say that the 'trade show' would be an excellent event."

Africa needs to log on immediately if it wants to connect to the rest of the world - a formidable task in a region where vast areas do not have electricity, telephones or computers. Although all the capitals of the 54 countries in the world's poorest continent now have Internet access compared to a mere 11 in 1997, its reach is still fractional and the way forward is marred by a slew of problems and setbacks.

Message de vie Radiotelevision (RTMV), a Kinshasa-based religious broadcaster owned by Pastor Fernando Kutino's Army of Victory Church (Église Armée de Victoire), resumed its broadcasts on 14 December 2003 after six months of forced silence. RTMV spokesperson Dede Kubiala told said that "those in charge of RTMV chose to resume broadcasting of their own volition since no official act prohibited them from doing so. The station had been forced to close after it was ransacked and its television equipment was confiscated by the Congolese National Police (PNC)" on 10 June.

Since 2000, when Zimbabwe took a plunge both economically and politically, freedom of expression has become a victim as the government intensifies efforts to control and influence the flow of information, says the The State of the Media Report, an assessment of the media environment carried out by the Media Institute of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe Chapter (MISA-Zimbabwe). The report looks at the operational environment of media practitioners and media organisations. Particular attention is paid to media and freedom of expression violations as these demonstrate the extent to which the media is free or otherwise in a given state. "The repressive media environment currently prevailing in Zimbabwe reflects on government's attitude and policy towards the media, a negative attitude that has been buttressed by the promulgation of repressive laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA)," says the report.

"We, women and men from different continents, cultural backgrounds, perspectives, experience and expertise, acting as members of different constituencies of an emerging global civil society, considering civil society participation as fundamental to the first ever held UN Summit on Information and Communication issues, the World Summit on the Information Society, have been working for two years inside the process, devoting our efforts to shaping people-centred, inclusive and equitable concept of information and communication societies. Working together both on-line and off-line as civil society entities, practising an inclusive and participatory use of information and communication technologies, has allowed us to share views and shape common positions, and to collectively develop a vision of information and communication societies."

Delegates from 176 countries and as many as 10,000 representatives of civil society and the private sector attended the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva last week. They dispersed having filled dozens of web sites with documentation of the vast digital divide between rich and poor, declarations of good intentions, examples of promising initiatives, and decisions to postpone controversial decisions on internet governance and a proposed Digital Solidarity Fund, reports the AfricaFocus Bulletin. Two postings this week from the AfricaFocus Bulletin contain a selection of news stories on the Summit from the Highway Africa News Agency. Among the many sites with additional coverage are: http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/about/wsis.htm; http://www.worldsummit2003.org and the official conference website:
http://www.itu.int/wsis/.

The Foundation Centre has posted on it's website "The Ten Immutable Laws of the (Fundraising) Universe" by Carl Richardson. For the complete text, see http://fdncenter.org/pnd/tsn/tsn.jhtml?id=47800041. He writes: "In my years of working with a wide range of nonprofit organisations, I've learned that the universe of fundraising can be described by certain "laws," much like the physical universe is described by certain provable statements. Tested by experience, observation, and results, these laws of fundraising determine to a large extent the success of our efforts. If your capital campaign has stalled, your funding proposals routinely go unfunded, or your board has stopped working effectively, the laws described below may point you toward a solution."

Develop an effective fundraising strategy that fits perfectly with your organisation’s mission, with the help of two fundraising books available from AFP. The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success: A Mission-based Guide to Achieving Your Goals shows nonprofits how to set fundraising goals based on the organisation’s mission and how to select, implement and stay with the right strategies to meet those goals. A companion workbook called Ten Steps to Fundraising Success: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Organisation, is also available.

This distance learning course introduces staff members of (international) development agencies and NGOs to rights-based programming. A rights-based approach is a conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights. Essentially, a rights-based approach integrates the norms, standards and principles of the international human rights system into the plans, policies and processes of programme development.

On 11 December 2003, Oluwole Adeboye, a reporter with "P.M. News", an afternoon daily newspaper in Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos, fled his Agege home and has since been in hiding. This follows the publication of a story with the reporter's by-line about the alleged unprofessional conduct of Bamidele Adeola, a police constable.

Martin Chimenya, a journalist for the Voice of the People Communications Trust (VOP), was arrested on 8 December 2003 in the city of Masvingo, 293 kilometres south of the capital, Harare. He was charged under Section 79 (1) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for allegedly practicing as a journalist without accreditation. Under this section, journalists are not allowed to work without a licence from the Media and Information Commission.

The Taraba state chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) has accused police commissioner Egbechukwu Nwachukwu of masterminding a campaign to intimidate and harass journalists in the state. According to the Media Foundation for West Africa-Nigeria, a statement signed by the local union secretary, Pojo Nafinji, complained that, following a series of uncomplimentary media reports about the police commissioner, Nwachukwu publicly threatened to "get even" with journalists who "might be involved in any matter brought before the police."

e-CIVICUS 215: In this issue – ethical consumerism; child labour in West African cocoa; fair trade in tourism; and a brief overview of global trade. e-CIVICUS is distributed twice monthly in MS Word, plain text, or PDF format, and is also available in Spanish. To subscribe or unsubscribe please email [email protected]

The Zimbabwe government is planning to introduce new measures to police all broadcast and Internet based information circulation in a bid to control the flow of information in the country, The Daily Mirror reported on 9 December 2003. The paper says that this move, if successfully completed means that the government will be able to monitor individual information, messages and letters leading to the arrest of all those involved in circulating information that the government says undermines the sovereignty of the country.

Amidst growing criticism of the human rights record of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration in recent months, the government has denied that there is any restriction on freedom of expression and personal liberties in the country. Meanwhile, Media in Nigeria reports that reporters and cameramen were brutalised at a protest meeting against the just concluded Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, in Abuja.

More than 1 000 Zimbabwean readers of the Daily News and its sister weekly, Daily News on Sunday, will next week petition the High Court under the Class Action Act to order the reopening of the two newspapers shut down by the government two months ago. At least 1 017 people from various parts of the country had by Tuesday this week appended their signatures to the petition that is being handled by human rights advocacy group, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR).

Disappointed that initial promises of equal partnerships between governments and civil societies in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) processes have been empty ones, over 300 Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) gathered in Geneva have decided to come up with their own separate Civil Society Declaration to WSIS.

In a bid to empower the people of the Niger Delta with tools for effective communication and social change, Ford Foundation in collaboration with four other partners have begun the training of Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) on Information Technology in the region. Under the scheme, 11 NGOs have already completed two months training on Information Technology in the Bayelsa State Capital, Yenagoa.

The size of the digital divide may have been overestimated, according to the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) development report for 2003. "A close link exists between the digital and statistical divide", says Michael Minges, head of the ITU's Market, Economics and Finance Unit and lead author of the report. According to the report, while some developed nations are comfortable conducting information society measurement - tracking factors such as infrastructure, access and usage - many developing nations are struggling to produce even basic indicators. "The number of Internet users in most developing countries is usually based purely on government guesstimates or vague estimates", says ITU telecom analyst Vanessa Gray, co-author of the report.

If the World Summit on the Information Society does not acknowledge existing gender divides in its Plan of Action, a truly equitable Information Society will not occur. Gender activists, women and men, from different regions of the world are in Geneva at this UN Summit to urge the International Community to ensure that women enjoy the huge potential for social and economic empowerment offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and participate effectively in all aspects of the Information Society. Achievement of this goal will help promote gender equality and further eradication of poverty, promotion of peace and security and the enjoyment of human rights.