Professor Adebayo Williams, popular columnist and author of The Remains of the Last Emperor was home recently from his base in the United States. He spoke about his new work and issues concerning the state of Nigerian literature, publishing and the reading culture.

South Africa has set up a national chapter of one of the biggest philanthropic foundations in the world. The Laureus Sport for Good Foundation uses sporting legends to promote sport as a tool for social change and raise funds for social upliftment programmes worldwide.

For years, she wrote a column called The Secret Diary of Christina, about a young, single woman living in Kampala, which ran in Uganda's The New Vision. Then she started writing a series of children's stories, The Adventures of Tema, which were published in the Sunday Vision for several years, and proved to be very popular. Now all that writing has come to fruition. Last week, Susan Mugizi Kajura was announced the winner of the $3,000 (Sh 240,000) Most Promising New Children's Writer Award at the Macmillan Children's Literature Awards, 2002.

The end of apartheid did not change the basic conditions of life for the majority of oppressed South Africans. New forms of resistance have emerged in communities that have discovered a common oppression and solidarity and forged new and dynamic political identities. Ashwin Desai's book follows the growth of the most unexpected of these community movements, describing from the inside the process through which the downtrodden regain their dignity and defend the most basic conditions of life. As the Chatsworth community begins to organize and discover leaders among its ranks, so their example spreads to other communities in Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal region, and their struggles build links with those in other parts of the new South Africa.

No day passes without Nesta Koffi sending her children to the post-office for news from her husband, who migrated to America to work on an anonymous cruise ship; no news comes; and so Nesta awaits report of his death. Told from the perspectives of the wife and children left behind, this work of fiction reflects upon the common, but at times devastating conditions of our global but unequal world, where a husband leaves his family and home in search of wealth and opportunity. David Omowale is a budding and versatile novelist and poet of the mobile African diaspora. Born in Grenada he lives and works in Kenya.

A Nigerian grandmother is among the winners of the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa.
Ms Rosina Umelo won in the first category for her book Who Are You. The winner for the second category was Sierra Leonian Osman Conteh for Unanswered Cries. Other winners were Ms Susan Kajurah from Uganda and Yvonne Vera from Zimbabwe with for Daudi's Dream and Stone Virgins, respectively.

Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to
join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who
died in the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon last September 11th.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of
silence for all of those who have been harassed,
imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or
killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the
victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.

Malian musician Salif Keita has a new CD and will perform its mostly acoustic songs as part of a US tour in October. He talked to Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre of Afropop Worldwide about his new work -and about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Mali.

The bookmobile travels around the USA and prints out public domain books that are available as etexts on the Internet. This wonderful project could be implemented in any country - all it takes is a vehicle, a wirelesss link to the net and a PC with a printer and paper. The site also has links to many online texts.

Afrika Heritage, the Biennale of The Pan-African Circle of Artists, is at its 4th edition this year. It began in 1995 at Didi Museum and is growing to become a major art event in this part of the continent. This year, Afrika Heritage happens at four centres in Lagos, Nigeria.

The new South Africa is in the grip of unanticipated social changes. Rainbow Vice depicts the fast growing drug culture, tightly linked to the world of commercial sex and in conflict with a profoundly Christian population. Punchy in style and based on several hundred interviews, the author shows how multifarious the drug scene is.

Corruption and the systematic looting of the state is the focus of this in-depth analysis of Nigeria from 1960 onwards, by one of Nigeria's leading writers on political matters. The author reveals the methodical way in which the state has been plundered over forty years, giving particular attention to General Abacha's regime and personality. The financial scandals of the government of his successor, General Abubakar, are also examined.

The Third Arusha Book festival is being held from 16 to 21 September at the Arusha Regional Library premises. The festival, supported by the Book Development Council of Tanzania, is aimed at cultivating the habit of reading books among the youth and public in general.

In this book a group of distinguished authors explodes the defeatist myth that ‘there is no alternative’ to corporate sponsored globalization. Theoreticians and activists from feminist, environmental, anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles across five continents report on existing community-based initiatives, and demonstrate how we can all defy the creed of corporate globalization.

Mmino is a funding programme aimed at supporting the development of music in South Africa. Funding is available for Music and Education Projects.

I Refuse to Die is political activist Koigi wa Wamwere's account of his life in the human rights movement. In it, he documents the injustices committed under British rule and President Moi's oppressive regime, and he celebrates the Kenyan people's ongoing struggle for survival and human dignity. Born in Nakuru, Kenya, in 1949, wa Wamwere attended Cornell University, where he was inspired by the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. He returned to Kenya to push for change, first as a member of parliament and then as a journalist. Wa Wamwere ran for president in 1997, but his outspoken criticism of Kenya's human rights record incurred the anger of the Kenyan government who imprisoned him four times. Now living in New York, wa Wamwere continues to speak out for democracy in Africa. With 16 pages of black-and-white photographs, this is a moving autobiography by one of Africa's leading human rights advocates.

World Resources 2002-2004 focuses on the importance of good environmental governance. We explore how citizens, government managers, and business owners can foster better environmental decisions -- decisions that meet the needs of both ecosystems and people with equity and balance.

There are many difficult questions surrounding the legitimization and protection of human rights in non-Western cultures. This book clarifies in an African context both what ought to constitute human rights and strategies for their realization.

How accurate are the claims of large corporations that they are now environmentally responsible and promoting development? This book examines the debate and identifies areas of progress as well as the limits of corporate environmentalism in developing countries.

This book presents a bold critique of human rights corpus as it is currently constructed. The author argues that the human rights enterprise mistakenly presents itself as a final inflexible truth, a glimpse of utopia without which human advancement is not possible. Mutua contends that in fact the human rights corpus, though well meaning, is a Eurocentric formula for the reconstruction of non-Western societies and peoples through a set of culturally based norms and practices that inhere in liberal thought and philosophy.