Community Multimedia Centres combine local media, especially radio, by local people in local languages with information and communication technology (ICT) applications in a wide range of social, economic and cultural areas. An interactive and participatory approach ensures that the ICTs are genuinely enabling technologies for all members of the community.

Joanna Macrae
International aid traditionally assumes the existence of states capable of making policy. In countries like Cambodia, Uganda or Kosovo, this is no longer the case. The big donor agencies usually respond by substituting emergency relief assistance for development aid. There are now calls to make relief more development-oriented in order to address the conflicts underlying crises. But the original research in this book demonstrates that relief and development aid are very distinct processes. Without public policy-making authorities, aid becomes highly fragmented, often inadequate in scale and incapable of building local sustainability for particular programmes. Zed Books, 2001, ISBN: 1 85649 941 3.

T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, editors.
The forms, policies, and practices of citizenship are changing rapidly around the globe, and the meaning of these changes is the subject of deep dispute. Citizenship Today brings together leading experts in their field to define the core issues at stake in the citizenship debates.

The Institute of Equity, Ecology, Humor and Art creates innovative multimedia materials such as websites, video, computer games, music and educational material to promote social justice and environmental equity.

Among the visual arts, a considerable number of exhibitions dealing with the Aids crisis have been mounted in recent years, most particularly co-inciding with the HIV/Aids conference 2000, hosted in Durban. But despite efforts at reaching out, museums and galleries continue to attract only a small, art-interested sector of the South African population, and often not those most at risk of infection.

The Case of Ethiopia by Tirfe Mammo
In this study, the author focuses on Ethiopia as a case study, to argue that the root cause of Africa's poverty lies in the neglect of the indigenous knowledge, traditional practices and local institutions of the continent's peoples. He further contends that this has been brought about either by external factors or set in by endogenous forces. To provide a remedy to the problem, the scholar proposes the putting in place of mechanisms through which the efforts of ordinary peoples and governments are combined to address the problem from its root causes.

Two short community based plays were designed to sensitise the Barbaig community (a nomadic ethnic group in northern Tanzania) on the negative impact of female circumcision (FGM), domestic violence and the importance of sending girls to school. A 3 week creative session was held among The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Department of Fine & Performing Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam, along with HAWOCODE (Hanang Women's Counseling & Development Association) to produce the plays. The plays were performed and then discussed with the community. Key question asked after the performance: What positive alternative can be suggested to this cultural activity (FGM) rather than simply telling them it is bad and should be stopped? Contact Dr. Augustin Hatar.

Thomas Meyer
A critically important question confronts many countries in the post-Cold War epoch: are culturally determined political conflicts inevitable? While acknowledging people's need for identity, and that different cultures necessarily produce differentiated identities, Professor Meyer argues that difference only leads to intolerance and violence when politically ambitious leaderships exploit it. Fundamentalism is therefore essentially a political phenomenon that has occured in all civilizations, particularly in contemporary Europe and North America. In the present age of globalization, Meyer suggests that social crisis grows out of an exclusionary dynamic that marginalizes growing numbers of people. PbISBN 1 84277 063 2.

J. Townsend, E. Zapata, J. Rowlands, P. Alberti, M. Mercado. Reviewed by Bipasha Baruah. The authors of this book pursue a new definition of empowerment through a re-
evaluation and deconstruction of the concept of power. They shed light upon how rural Mexican women negotiate power in their day-to-day lives. By documenting their challenges, opportunities and accomplishments, the authors demonstrate how poor women in developing countries are exploring new social, economic and political powers and transforming their lives in the process. Zed Books Limited, London (UK) and New York (USA). 1999.

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the view that the Sun revolved around the earth, arguing instead that the earth revolved around the Sun. His paper led to a revolution in thinking-to a new worldview. Eco-Economy discusses the need today for a similar shift in our worldview. The issue now is whether the environment is part of the economy or the economy is part of the environment. Brown argues the latter, pointing out that treating the environment as part of the economy has produced an economy that is destroying its natural support systems. Download Eco-Economy for free. (Requires Adobe Acrobat).

Harry Mutasa, sculptor from Harare has won a Commonwealth award in April 2001 and is currently working as an artist-in-residence at OCAD in Toronto, Canada. "Through struggling as a young artist l used to work on different subject matters like heritage and things l needed to research and always ended no way. Then l realized that my feelings are the only true thing l really know in my alien being trying to fit in and overstand life. Being African and being from this culture is what people tell me l am, so my art is not african, cultural, black, human or any titles, it is me, the inner, the soul which l am still uncovering with feelings which comes out."

An Ethiopian film, The Father, that has been winning awards across Africa, is serving as a reminder that President Robert Mugabe has been sheltering one of the world’s most notorious dictators in Zimbabwe for the past decade. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the "Butcher of Addis Ababa", ruled Ethiopia for 17 years, imposing a regime based on a strategy of total fear that he himself called the "Red Terror".

The Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC), in collaboration with the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), has launched a new publication covering the most significant information policy formulation and implementation processes in Southern Africa.

by Mariane C. Ferme.
In this erudite and gracefully written ethnography, Mariane Ferme explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende- speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region. Since 1990, this area has been ravaged by a civil war that produced population displacements and regional instability. The Underneath of Things documents the rural impact of the progressive collapse of the Sierra Leonean state in the past several decades, and seeks to understand how an even earlier history is reinscribed in the present. University of California Press; ISBN: 0520225430, 2001.

Can Africa survive? Many of the nations of sub-Saharan African have all but ceased to exist as organized states: tyranny, diseases such as AIDS, civil war and ethnic conflict-and border invasions threaten the complete disintegration of a region. Peter Schwab offers a clear, authoritative portrait of a continent on the brink. Palgrave; ISBN: 031224018X, 2001.

The contemporary urban environment in Africa has nurtured ever increasing numbers of artists who are creating art that is directed at local or international markets rather than for use in ancient religious practices. These artists strive to create art forms that reflect their own cultural backgrounds but that express new ideas about the struggle to deal with a difficult and quickly changing African environment.

Like the art of all peoples, the art of Africans expresses values, attitudes, and thought which are the products of their past experience. For that reason, the study of their art provides a way of learning about their history. Through the study of African art we can study the questions which have long preoccupied historians of Africa. This essay -- written by a historian who studies the African past -- presents an introduction to these questions. Its purpose is to encourage students to use their knowledge of African art to think about issues in African history. – Professor James Giblin, University of Iowa

Free software faces difficult challenges and dangers. In an article for UNESCO Free Software Portal, Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the developer of software like gcc and Emacs, outlines the development in this area since 1984. "I'm grateful to UNESCO for recognizing that, in the domain of software, free software disseminates human knowledge in a way that non-free software cannot do" says Stallman.

The concerns are widespread and infectious. Most Nigerian students of this generation hate or fear mathematics and science subjects. Failure rate in mathematics and sciences is on a steep increase. Few female students offer science subjects unless they are made compulsory. There is acute shortage of science and mathematics teachers, lack of instructional materials, laboratory equipment and training facilities as well as an insufficiency of classrooms.

This article from News Update 83 discusses the role of corporate culture in Ghanaian software - and other - organisations. It has some interesting comments on how ICTs are used and perceived in Ghana. Perhaps many of the observations that are true for this country are also relevant for other African states.