IRIN is working to move beyond news reporting to include more in-depth analysis of important humanitarian issues. This is being done through the increased production of thematic/global stories, special reports, features and web specials. The Nairobi-based Focal Point for Information Analysis provides IRIN's regional desks in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia with the guidance, advice and materials needed to boost their output of analytical and feature-type reporting, and also contributes directly in researching and writing his/her own articles.

Scientific diasporas - networks of expatriate scientists -are no substitute for direct capacity building in developing countries. Nevertheless they have an important contribution to make, and their activities need more support.

The University of Sienna and the African Medical and Research Foundation-Italy got together recently for a critical reflection on the quality of information offered by the media and non governmental organisations on Africa. Jean Leonard Touadi, a journalist born in Congo but who works in TV and radio in Italy urged non-African journalists to develop the capacity to listen to Africans.

Carlos Cardoso, Mozambique's most famous journalist, was gunned down on a Maputo street on 22 November 2000. Three years later, the identity of all the persons involved in his death is still unknown, even though six people were convicted in an exemplary trial. At least one of the instigators behind the contract killing is still at large. This is the main conclusion of a report issued by Reporters sans frontières (RSF) on 21 November 2003.

Shadreck Pongo, a photojournalist with the Standard newspaper, was severely assaulted and injured by the police on 18 November in Harare while covering a nationwide demonstration organised by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). Riot police apprehended him while he was shooting photographs of demonstrators and pulled him into a police truck where they severely assaulted him.

South Africa and Namibia are the only two southern African countries included in the ‘medium access' list of the world's first Digital Access Index, which measures an economy's access to information and communications technology.

The Soul Beat is the bi-monthly e-newsletter from Soul Beat Africa, focussing on sharing information about communication for change and development in Africa. It is a space to share experiences, materials, strategic thinking and events, and to engage in discussion and debate. Soul Beat Africa is collaboration between The Communication Initiative and Soul City, with SANGONeT as editorial and network partner.

Africa is widely perceived as a hotbed of cyber-crime based on the proliferation of 419 scam e-mails but the reality is not as it might appear. Mark Davies of BusyInternet goes through the available figures and talks about his own experience of crime as a cyber-café owner.

In a country where Mugabe's regime ruthlessly controls all radio and television output, and where the only independent newspaper has recently been shut down, SW Radio Africa is the only independent voice. It broadcasts not from Zimbabwe but from the third floor of an office block in a grimy suburb of north-west London. And it is run not by hardened political hacks or opposition party activists, but by a group of DJs turned journalists, most of whom made their names playing pop songs on Zimbabwean state radio in the 1980s and 1990s.

Can World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, particularly the technology related provisions, enlarge the capabilities of African countries to procure and develop modern technologies? This paper from the African Technology Policy Studies Network attempts to analyse the extent to which this might occur and proposes a research agenda to study the resulting empirical implications, ultimately to identify specific technology policy issues that African countries should emphasise in the continuing debate on the effect of global market integration.

The world is ageing faster today than at any other time in history. Research has shown that as this continues to happen, women are the survivors. They outlive their male counterparts who are more likely to suffer from deadly conditions such as lung and prostate cancers, heart disease or strokes. The older woman faces double discrimination, says Help Age International. First as an older person and then as a woman. Throughout Africa, she is denied opportunities by virtue of her gender – she is denied property rights, excluded from the decision making process and is denied opportunities to education and employment.

A call has gone out to the Nigerian Federal government to endorse and adopt the African Charter on Broadcasting. The Charter proposes a three-tier structure of broadcasting for African countries, comprising a state radio sector, a private commercial sector, and a community radio segment. The charter was passed in 2001 by stakeholders in African broadcasting and endorsed by the African Union at its Maputo Summit in July this year.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has condemned the government's shutdown of Radio Veritas, a station founded and run by Cardinal Christian Tumi, a leading critic of President Paul Biya. "We do not understand how, in the space of a few weeks, some stations have been allotted frequencies while this one has been closed down," said the organisation's secretary-general, Robert Ménard.

The Freedom of Expression Institute has signalled its deep alarm at the rising number of cases affecting media freedom as well as the increasing inroads into media freedom in South Africa in the recent past. In a statement, the FXI stated that in the last few months, the media had come under increasing strain from both state and non-state sources, a situation that raised serious concerns regarding the conditions under which the media was able to operate and fulfil its constitutional mandate of informing the public.

The action to ban the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA) is a reprisal and retribution for the justifiable criticism made by the organisation of the government's new Draconian press law, which, among other things, requires newspapers to pay tax on press releases and gives government officials thirty days to reply to questions raised by the press, according to an organisation, the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF).

Independent journalist Rodrigo Angue Nguema was released this week after spending eight days in police custody in Equatorial Guinea's capital, Malabo. Angue Nguema works as a correspondent for the wire service Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as several other foreign news organisations, and is one of the only independent journalists in the country.

"Through our observation of the process we have identified two main problem areas that impede progress in the WSIS: 1. How to correct imbalances in riches, imbalances of rights, imbalances of power, or imbalances of access. In particular, governments do not agree on even the principle of a financial effort to overcome the so-called Digital Divide; this is all the more difficult to accept given that the summit process was started two years ago with precisely that objective. 2. The struggle over human rights. Not even the basis of human life in dignity and equality, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights finds support as the basis for the Information Society. Governments are not able to agree on a commitment to basic human right standards as the basis for the Information Society, most prominent in this case being the freedom of expression.”

IRIN is working to move beyond news reporting to include more in-depth analysis of important humanitarian issues. This is being done through the increased production of thematic/global stories, special reports, features and web specials. The Nairobi-based Focal Point for Information Analysis provides IRIN's regional desks in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia with the guidance, advice and materials needed to boost their output of analytical and feature-type reporting, and also contributes directly in researching and writing his/her own articles.

This study is based on the Building Digital Opportunities programme (BDO), which aims to identify and help remove some of the key barriers to poverty-focused ICTs for development. The information gathered will enable BDO funding and implementing partners to improve their understanding of the role of ICTs in poverty reduction and to adapt or target their programmes accordingly.

The Civil Society Content and Themes group for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) recently released a list of essential "benchmarks", stating that "principles and priorities should be embedded throughout the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Action Plan." These include human rights, poverty reduction, sustainable development, gender equality, disability issues, labour rights, indigenous peoples, education, and other important issues areas.