The April 2004 issue of the International Rivers Network's bimonthly magazine, World Rivers Review, is now available online. The issue's special focus is on the legacy of past World Bank projects. It contains several references to Africa, including an article on a proposed new dam on the Nile that will drown cultural treasures and communities.

Dozens of nations and international organisations have endorsed a 10-year blueprint for a global climate watch system that would let governments share information about the Earth to assess climate change, forecast natural disasters and fight disease. The Earth Observation Summit assembled 47 nations and more than two dozen international scientific and humanitarian organisations in Tokyo to discuss forming a monitoring system by 2005. Details aren't expected to emerge until next year, but the plan through 2015 seeks to save billions of U.S. dollars and lives lost due to drought or diseases such as malaria.

African leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for a conference on the receding waters of the Niger River, the continent's third-longest river and a lifeline that sustains 100 million people. Representatives of nine African countries are trying to come up with an action plan to encourage better management of the water and prevent its levels from dropping further. "The basin is today threatened with becoming a place of desolation and misery," said Niger President Mamadou Tandja, who is head of the Niger Basin Authority.

Parliament unanimously approved a resolution ratifying the Kyoto protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, saying Mozambique must play its part in seeking to avert global warming. "Although Mozambique makes a negligible contribution to greenhouse gases, we must think and act globally," Deputy Environment Minister Francisco Mabjaia said. The resolution now goes to President Joachim Chissano for his signature. The 1997 agreement seeks to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which are widely seen as a key factor behind global warming.

A historic agreement to adopt a unified global response to tackling HIV/AIDS was reached by the international community this week. Despite stepped up resources and the best intentions, the AIDS epidemic continues to be one of the greatest crises of the century, with 40 million people currently infected and over 25 million deaths to date. A major step was taken at a meeting in Washington D.C., co-chaired by UNAIDS, the UK and the US, where donors and developing countries agreed to three core principles to better coordinate the scale-up of national AIDS responses.

Brushing off fears of Zimbabwe-style farm invasions, President Sam Nujoma assured Namibians on Wednesday that a land expropriation program would be conducted in a legal and orderly manner. Most of Namibia's productive farmland is owned by whites who make up less than 5 percent of the country's people. The government is in the process of identifying a number of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

The British government is commissioning a report on the impact of climate change in Africa, UK Environment minister Margaret Beckett has announced. Addressing a sustainable development conference on Wednesday, she said: "A two degree change in climate here, would mean a four degree change in central Africa. The economic and humanitarian consequences in a continent already suffering the burden of Aids and malaria are potentially catastrophic. We need to understand the impact on Africa and on the world's ability to deliver the Millennium Development Goals and commitments made at other major UN summits."

Crop losses due to heavy rains has jeopardised the food security of more than 300,000 families in the central Angolan province of Huambo, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network has reported.

Nigeria's state-run oil company is reported to have sacked seven senior managers in connection with a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme. The dismissals have been approved by President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) told the French AFP news agency.

A Ghanaian lawyer and human rights campaigner has won recognition for his work to stop water being privatised. Rudolf Amenga-Etego, who is campaigning against a privatisation scheme being backed by the World Bank, has won a 2004 Goldman environmental prize. Rudolf Amenga-Etego founded Ghana's National Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water, an attempt to halt a $400m project which would have meant water being sold at full market rates.

Members of the Landless People's Movement (LPM) arrested on election day in Thembelihle informal settlement near Lenasia, south of Johannesburg, were granted bail in the Protea magistrate's court last Thursday. LPM spokesperson Mangaliso Kubheka said 60 activists were granted R300 bail after spending a night in the holding cells. They were charged with contravening electoral laws. Kubheka said some LPM members were "subjected to interrogation, harassment and physical violence last night while in prison".

There is no law in Tanzania specifically addressing air pollution control, according to Leandri Kinabo, the Head of Process Technology Standards Department with the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS). Instead the country has several pieces of legislations targeting hazards posed by various forms of air pollution. These include the Mining Act and the Standards Act.

Four young gorillas captured illegally and kept in a Malaysian zoo have been sent to South Africa, despite Cameroon's insistence they were caught there and should be returned, a newspaper reported on Friday. Cameroon says it has proof that poachers illegally captured the western lowland gorillas in the country's south-west, transferring them to neighbouring Nigeria and then northern Malaysia's government-run Taiping Zoo about two years ago.

Twenty years after images of starving Ethiopian children shocked the world, famine and drought continue to stalk this African nation. Now, a new strategy to address poverty is prompting experts and farmers to ask whether it will substantially alleviate hunger. Since 1984’s much-photographed famine, Ethiopia has experienced more than seven famines - with far less world attention. However, successive governments have quietly tried different ways to improve agricultural output in a bid to resolve the root problem. Still, the latest drought in 2003 left 13.2 million people in need of food aid.

Water is a critical enabling resource for poverty reduction. And people use water from multiple sources and in multiple ways to improve their livelihoods. But sub-sector planners (domestic and irrigation) seldom recognize this, leading to the provision of services that frequently only address some of the needs of their users. However, times are changing and there is increasing interest from all sectors in finding more appropriate, sustainable, and demand-responsive ways to provide multiple use services that really impact poverty.

Your newsletter deserves great commendation. It's been useful as a good tracker of events on social justice in Africa. The multifaceted approach adopted on social issues, in addition to the plurality of views, gives it a rich blend of highlights on key social issues.

My comment takes root in the concept of sustainable development in Africa, especially with concern to our natural resources.

African leaders are apt to ratify international conventions and treaties without a proper conceptualisation of underlined ideologies; one tends to ponder on our subjugated position. From experience it is apparent that the concept of sustainability must be redefined for instance by the AU through the organ of NEPAD and other African initiatives to accommodate African traditional institutions and structures. Sustainability for us would include the active involvement of our indigenous local actors and stakeholders.

The question we must answer therefore is what is obtainable for Africa in the sustainable development paradigm?

Take for instance the conspiracy and cartel within the oil sector in Nigeria. Nigeria earns annually about $8.5billion, only 5% of this is earned by the indigenes and a mere 2% of the total sum in earnings remain in the country. Something obviously needs to be done if we are to gain control of our own resources.

I am afraid the message of sustainability will be lost in African economics if its denotations and connotations are not clearly defined within the African context. Local content for me is beyond using a few paid indigenous people collaborating with the west in managing our own resources. Africa has come of age to begin taking responsibility for its spatial domain.

It is my hope and dreams that African natural resource specialists and contributors will emerge from their hibernation to take charge of their natural resources for the continuity of the African Continent.

International agencies have warned that many governments are failing in their commitment to help improve access to drinking water. A global campaign launched two years ago brought pledges to halve the number of people who do not have access to clean water by 2015. But the six agencies, including Water Aid, Green Cross International and Oxfam, say the global situation is getting worse rather than better.

The Nile Perch, popularly known here as ‘sabulenya’, is one of Uganda’s most consumed fish species after tilapia. It was introduced to Lake Victoria, the world’s largest inland fresh water lake, in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the Nile Perch constitutes up to 50 percent of the catch in Uganda, some of which is exported as fillet to Europe, Asia and the United States. The Nile Perch has become a cheap source of protein, often referred to as ‘aquatic chicken’. Yet statistics show that the majority of Ugandans go hungry.

At the rate land redistribution is going, it will take 40 years before half of Namibia's commercial farmland can land in the hands of black people. Present policies of land redistribution, described as transfer of commercial farmland from whites and foreigners to blacks, have led to only one percent of commercial land being redistributed every year. The above assumptions are contained in a research paper written by Robin Sherbourne, Director of Public Policy and Research at the Institute of Public Policy and Research (IPPR).

Slightly more than a year after the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) took power on a “popular wave”, the Front for Popular Change has been launched in Kenya. The move follows the launching early this year of “Masikini Liberation Front” and “Chama cha Wananchi”, two ambiguous formations which were launched without political programs, profiles or funfair. The emergence of new “popular” fronts and Movements in Kenya is a direct reaction to the political vacuum that currently exists in the opposition after Narc came to power, failure of the government to honour basic election promises and mass disillusionment with the Kibaki administration due to internal wrangling, power struggles and personality clashes.