This 10 week Creative Writing course will look at various techniques and exercises to open up & improve writing writing skills, work with metaphor and imagery, create texts and narratives to given themes and word counts as well as free writing. The end goal will be to write a 1000 word short story. There is no criteria other than a willingness to open up one's writing; the course is designed that people of varying writing experience can participate and each draw their individual benefits.

Oxfam America’s endorsement of biotechnology sets a very dangerous precedent of being used by the industry in their struggle to force the adoption of GM crops in spite of strong global resistance. The shocking endorsement of transgenic crops in the face of diverse and voluminous literature countering their stance, threatens to damage Oxfam’s relationship with longtime allies and its reputation as an independent organisation.

On April 14, 2010 during the ongoing Parliament meeting in Dodoma, Hon. Damas P. Nakei, MP for Babati Rural asked a question in the House wanting to know the limitations on an MP to access public information held by Government and what type of information an MP might be denied. A Coalition comprising eleven Civil Society organisations (two from outside Tanzania) organized and held meetings and public hearings countrywide to collect people’s views. All along, it emerged that the public was not only interested in the freedom to access information but wanted this to be pronounced as a basic right – hence the notion of Right to Information in the discourse of the Coalition’s work.

Funding for the first phase of an initiative to connect African research centres and link them to an existing European network has been approved by the European Commission. The approval follows a report that identified sufficient IT infrastructure in Africa to support the AfricaConnect Initiative, which aims to improve research collaborations and access to information.

"Estimates [for the period 1970-2008] show that over the 39-year period Africa lost an astonishing US$854 billion in cumulative capital flight--enough to not only wipe out the region's total external debt outstanding of around US$250 billion (at end-December, 2008) but potentially leave US$600 billion for poverty alleviation and economic growth. Instead, cumulative illicit flows from the continent increased from about US$57 billion in the decade of the 1970s to US$437 billion over the nine years 2000-2008." - report by Global Financial Integrity.

Moroccan journalists, activists and university professors have launched a new organisation to defend free speech for the press and the public. The Freedom of Press and Speech Organisation will also work to influence the development of laws affecting the media, the group’s founders said at its inaugural press conference Saturday (April 10th) in Rabat.

Each constituency in Kenya will by the end of the year boast of at least five digital centres complete with computers and Internet connectivity in a government plan to bridge the IT gap.

Kenya's government should halt the proposed eviction of more than 50,000 people living alongside the country's railway lines until guidelines that conform with international human rights standards have been adopted, Amnesty International said on Thursday. On 21 March Kenya Railways published a notice giving residents 30 days to pull down their structures and leave, or risk prosecution. Most of those affected are slum dwellers in parts of Nairobi.

UNHCR is shocked by the further loss of civilian lives we've seen from fighting in Mogadishu earlier this week. More than 30 people are reported killed, many of them civilians including children. From local sources we understand that medical facilities are having difficulties coping with the many wounded. Residents have described this week's shelling as among the worst in months.

The Gambian government has given reasons why investigation into the murder of journalist Deyda Hydara has not been concluded. According to the Interior Minister, Ousman Sonko, two key witnesses in the case are outside the government jurisdiction and attempts to reach them have been unsuccessful.

Applications are now open for the RVI’s first Great Lakes field course, to be held from Saturday 17 to Friday 23 July 2010 in Bujumbura, Burundi. The course is a fast-track, graduate-level introduction to the history, political economy and culture of Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Taught in English and French by a distinguished faculty of international and regional specialists, the course follows in the tracks of the acclaimed annual RVI courses on Sudan and the Horn of Africa. For more information please see Courses or download a prospectus here. The application deadline is 7 May 2010.

The proposed media law is a monster, says Dr George Lugalambi, chair of a coalition fighting to preserve press freedom in Uganda. Publishers and journalists would have to apply annually for a licence, which could be revoked at will in the interests of "national security, stability and unity," or if coverage was deemed to be "economic sabotage."?

Civil society organisations in Angola gave a lesson of citizenship, courageously marching to say “Don’t Push Down My House”.The demonstration finally and peacefully took place in the coastal city of Benguela. Despite of the ban announced by the provincial government, the march managed to break the silence and voice the protest against the brutal house demolitions and forced land evictions that have become a regular occurrence in Angola in the last years.

As a range of interest groups clamour for amendments to Kenya’s draft constitution on the basis of claims that it ‘legalises abortion’, Mary Wandia asks them to consider the ‘sobering facts on abortion, women’s rights and the status of women’. Voluntary abortion ‘happens irrespective of whether laws making it legal or illegal exist’, writes Wandia, and Kenya’s current legislation simply ‘makes safe abortion “illegal” and unsafe abortion “legal”, sentencing poor women and girls to unnecessary and preventable suffering and death.’

Tidiane Kassé

Jean-Claude Péclet

Bamba Youssouf

In meetings with media stakeholders, Niger's transitional Prime Minister Mahamadou Danda is promising full press freedom. Already, prison sentences for journalists are repelled and the Niamey House of the Media is reopened.

Experts have called on the government to establish an agency that will coordinate and manage ICT activities so as to enhance the sector's growth. The call was made during at an ICT summit, which was held in Dar es Salaam to take stock of digital development in Tanzania and explore ways to catapult the sector to a new level. The experts and other stakeholders said the proposed body will also assume regulatory functions in order to create a level playing field in the fast growing industry.

A Nigerian civil rights group said Wednesday it would appeal an Islamic court order to shut down its chat forums on Facebook and Twitter which criticize the practice of Islamic law in northern states.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on Ethiopia to lift all restrictions on Voice of America (VOA) broadcasts after the government summarily jammed the network's broadcasts in Amharic, amid accusations of peddling "destabilising propaganda".

The second continental congress of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has been concluded Sunday in Harare, Zimbabwe, on a call for a stronger and more united journalist movement in the Africa.