Antony Ngige, a producer and feature reporter for the Kenyan Kikuyu radio station Kameme FM, produced a radio program about Internews' Local Voices project in Kenya that trains journalists how to cover HIV/AIDS. The station has close to 2 million listeners and is one of the most popular Kiukyu stations in the country. Ngige had attended two Internews journalism workshops on HIV/AIDS in Nairobi Kenya. For the story, he interviewed Internews Kenya Resident Advisor Mia Malan, Internews Kenya Media Coordinator Sandra Ndonye and Ann Mikia, another journalist trained in HIV/AIDS reporting.

What are the difficulties of designing a literacy project based on the way learners use literacy in everyday life? Evidence from a recent literacy project in South Africa and from the National Literacy Programme in Namibia demonstrates that difficulties are likely to arise from differences between learners' everyday uses of literacy and their understanding of what it can offer them.

Great and increasing inequities exist between the peoples of the Third World and those of the First. As well, we find ourselves threatened by imminent environmental catastrophes largely as a result of trying to maintain such inequities. This clear and straightforward text explains the complex origins of such bodies as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and others, and demonstrates the extent to which they exacerbate the problem.

This online course will review recent developments relating to the human right to adequate food, and also develop skills in applying it in specific contexts. It will use the Yahoo! Groups software. The core text is Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food, by the Course Director, Professor George Kent of the University of Hawai'i. The course will begin on February 20, 2006 and end on May 15, 2006. It will be offered online through TRANSCEND Peace University. The tuition cost for participants from the EU/Western Europe, North America, Japan and South-East Asia/Australia will be 300 Euros, and for all others it will be 150 Euros. Information about TPU and its registration procedures is available at http://www.transcend.org/tpu/

Patrick Bond wrote: "…using license to loot the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the late 1990s civil war…" (http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=226)

Shocking to read this rubbish. Is it a civil war when foreign armed forces cross a border to attack another state or is it an invasion? Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi crossed the Congolese borders on August 2nd 1998 and occupied the Congolese cities of Goma, Bukavu and Uvira. The RCD was founded in Rwanda on August 10th 1998. Please take time to do some researche to find out the difference between a civil war and an invasion.

Troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia were in the DRC. If the ZDF, according to your way of writing, looted the DRC, what about the Rwandese and Ugandan armies?

No single Congolese woman was raped by any ZDF soldier. No single Congolese citizen was brutalized by any ZDF soldier. The Western media are the one reporting about the ZDF looting the DRC.

So, Mr. Patrick Bond you better take time to do some research before writing this kind of shit. If you don't like Mugabe, it is your problem. But let the ZDF out of your mind. Zimbabwe (Mugabe and the ZDF) didn't loot the DRC. King Leopold II (Belgium), Museveni (Uganda) and Kagame (Rwanda) are the ones who looted the DRC. The ZDF has left the DRC some years ago, but Rwanda and Uganda are still looting the DRC, raping the Congolese women and killing the Congolese citizens inside the DRC.

PATRICK BOND responds:

Of course the past and present regimes in Kigali, Kampala, Brussels, Paris and Washington also deserve blame for belligerence and armed aggression. But should we let the Zimbabwe Defense Force (ZDF) 'out of our mind'?

Right then, let's return to 2002, when the Table de Concertation sur les Droits Humains au Congo/Kinshasa noted that 'all the warring parties are gaining important advantages from the situation, political advantages, but above all economic advantages, thanks to the illegal looting of the Congo's natural resources'. Some of the ZDF's massive outlays - in the range of $150 million by August 2002 - were expected to be reimbursed by Kinshasa in the form of further 'economic advantages'.

The Zimbabwe Financial Gazette - informed by top government officials - noted that Harare had 'not benefited directly from the war in the DRC, save for individual ruling Zanu(PF) politicians.' By October 2002, these allegations were amplified by the United Nations Security Council, whose panel of experts judged that 'New trade and service agreements were signed between the DRC and Zimbabwe just prior to the announced withdrawal of ZDF troops from the diamond centre of Mbuji Mayi late in August 2002 ... [including] a private Zimbabwean military company to guard Zimbabwe's economic investments'. Instead of 'looting that was previously conducted by the armies themselves', new systems had emerged: 'embezzlement, tax fraud, extortion, the use of stock options as kickbacks, and diversion of state funds conducted by groups that closely resemble criminal organisations'.

Extraction of the Congo's riches - especially lumber and minerals - was meant, theoretically, to offset some of the Mugabe regime's costs of providing military support to Kabila during the 1998-2002 war. According to the UN, 'The elite network of Congolese and Zimbabwean political, military, and commercial interests seeks to maintain its grip on the main mineral resources - diamonds, cobalt, copper, germanium - of the government-controlled area. This network has transferred ownership of at least US$5 billion of assets from the state mining sector to private companies under its control in the past three years, with no compensation or benefit for the state treasury.' For example, pristine rain forests of teak and mahogany in Katanga were razed by what The Observer newspaper discovered was a web of Zimbabwe-related companies which sold the timber through African Hardwood Marketing in London.

Zimbabweans also exploited diamonds and mining concessions through a ZDF military company, Operation Sovereign Legitimacy (Osleg), which operated another shady outfit, Cosleg, as a joint venture with the DRC firm Comiex-Congo. Yet another example was a diamond mining scheme in Kalobo, associated with colonel Tshinga Dube of Zimbabwe Defence Industries and a notorious Ukrainian diamond and arms dealer, Leonid Minim. Many such joint ventures emerged, some initially established to raid DRC state assets by Mugabe's cronies Billy Rautenbach and John Bredenkamp (partly through the latter's company Tremalt and its subsidiary, the Kababankola Mining Company). Rautenbach was formerly the chief executive of the DRC state firm Gécamines, which the UN found was repeatedly raided by unethical managers. In conjunction with European arms manufacturers, Bredenkamp regularly violated military hardware sanctions against Zimbabwe. His monthly strategy meetings included attendance by ZDF commander Vitalis Zvinavashe, brigadier general Sibusiso Moyo, air commodore Mike Karakadzai, Kababankola's managing director, Colin Blythe-Wood, and another Kababankola director, Gary Webster.

In one of the most lucrative operations, 'conflict diamonds' from the Mbuji-Mayi mine in the DRC war zone were apparently smuggled to Johannesburg, cut and repackaged, and then smuggled back to Harare and onwards to Antwerp where they were sold as if they had come legally and certifiably from a (non-conflict) mine owned by Oryx Natural Resources. An Omani national, Thamer Said Ahmed Al Shanfari, controlled Oryx - 'a front for ZDF and its military company Osleg' - and became the Zimbabwean military's 'most important foreign business partner', in the words of a Pretoria intelligence report cited in Madrid's respected El Pais newspaper. Leading Zimbabwean politician Emmerson Mnangagwa was revealed to be 'the key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the elite network', according to the UN, providing political cover and assisting with distribution of the spoils to colleagues such as minister of defence Sidney Sekeramayi.

In the meantime, the war in the DRC was responsible for between two and three million deaths.

The HIV/AIDS programme initiated by Medicins sans Frontieres in Lusikisiki is well on its way to reaching everyone in the sub-district that needs treatment. Lusikisiki, a tiny town in the Eastern Cape, has just celebrated enrolling over 1100 AIDS patients on antiretroviral treatment thus becoming the biggest rural treatment programme in the country. “The majority of people in South Africa can’t spell Lusikisiki. They just know that it is in the bhundu. If we can achieve this here, the whole country can achieve even more. Let us be a light for others by saving our own lives,” Dr TC Thomas, superintendent of the local St Elizabeth Hospital, told the 2000-strong crowd gathered in the town on Friday (28 October).

Leading up to the December 2005 World Trade Organization's (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, Pambazuka News is examining some of the issues regarding the WTO as it affects Africa. This week we look at agriculture in Africa.

The importance of agriculture and agricultural trade in Africa cannot be exaggerated. In 2001 alone, agriculture provided $20.7 billion to Africa’s economy. Indeed, farming employs at least 70% of the workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa, and generates about 30% of the continents gross domestic product. At the same time, African farmers are among the poorest in the world. Access to fair and equitable agricultural trade policies is crucial for Africa in terms of food security, economic development and poverty eradication.

First the good news. Young Liberians know about AIDS, how they might contract the disease and what they can do to protect themselves. Now the bad news. They are not putting that knowledge into practice. A study commissioned by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) found while nine out of 10 respondents knew HIV could spread through sexual intercourse, and six out of 10 knew a condom would protect them, only one in 10 used it the first time they had sex.

Botswana has launched a new project that encourages young people to donate "safe blood" and teaches them how to avoid contracting HIV, Reuters AlertNet reports. The project, Pledge 25, targets youths both in and out of school because "most of them are not yet sexually active, which means they are still free from HIV," Mukendi Kaembe, a National Blood Transfusion Service pathologist at the Princess Marina Hospital in the capital city of Gaborone, said.

On November 8, Human Rights Watch will give its highest recognition to Beatrice Were, a leading advocate for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Ms. Were was one of the first Ugandans ever to declare her HIV-positive status publicly. She is a founder of the National Community of Women Living with AIDS (NACWOLA), a grassroots organization that provides services to over 40,000 women in 20 districts of Uganda. She has defended the rights of people living with AIDS against controversial shifts in the country's AIDS policy, including the recent adoption of U.S.-funded "abstinence-until-marriage" programs.

South African opposition leader Tony Leon has called for an inquiry into allegations made in the UN report on the Iraq oil-for-food programme. The report suggests that four South African companies may have been among 2,200 firms worldwide that paid money to Saddam Hussein's government. At least two of the companies are linked to the governing ANC party.

The HIV and AIDS epidemic has reached such a dimension that, along with other global problems, it became a central obstacle for achieving development in many of the affected countries worldwide. The social and economic consequences of HIV and AIDS in high-prevalence countries, e.g. in Africa are devastating and widespread. The effects are not limited to the health sector but are felt throughout society and the economy – in education, industry, agriculture, and transportation. This course is an introduction to HIV and AIDS.

Defending the diversity of the world's animals and plants can go a long way toward protecting humans from diseases such as AIDS, Ebola and bird flu, scientists say. Deforestation and other human interruptions to biodiversity are exposing people to new diseases that originate in wildlife, said the international group Diversitas, urging governments to do more to protect nature.

This course is an introduction to HIV and AIDS. It provides a starting-point for developing a clear understanding of the global epidemic, as well as an opportunity for participants to examine their own beliefs and attitudes towards HIV and AIDS and those affected by the disease.

For Zenabo Nikieme, a Burkinabé woman who has been HIV-positive since 2000, the future once again offers a glimmer of hope. Last year it was a very different story -- something that prompted her to pen an open letter to Burkina Faso's Minister of Health. "I'm an HIV-positive widow and I have three children," wrote the 35-year-old fruit vendor from the capital of Ouagadougou, who was advised to begin taking anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).

UN charity Unicef says 18 million children in sub-Saharan Africa could be orphaned by Aids by the end of 2010. It also says that every minute, a child is infected with HIV and another child dies from an Aids-related illness. The charity says children are being overlooked in the global fight against HIV and Aids.

Malawi is "teetering on the brink" of what could become by January a widespread famine, caused by the "lethal combination" of HIV/AIDS and drought, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports (Nolen, Globe and Mail, 10/18). Many people in Malawi survive on subsistence farming, but an estimated 900,000 of the country's 12 million people are HIV-positive, a situation that exacerbates the "vicious cycle of poverty, hunger and disease," the AP/Las Vegas Sun reports.

UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis on Sunday criticized rich nations for failing to deliver adequate aid to Africa, CBC News reports. Lewis also recently launched a book titled "Race Against Time." In the book, Lewis criticizes musician Bob Geldof for using the "hype" surrounding the Live 8 concerts in July to allow the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to promote a "wholly inadequate" aid package for Africa as a "major triumph of international consensus and generosity," the Ottawa Citizen reports.

The Rath Foundation, which promotes its vitamins as a cure for AIDS and encourages HIV positive people to abandon their antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, has set its sights on the Eastern Cape. In the past few weeks, Rath Foundation pamphlets condemning ARVs as “toxic” have been distributed in Frere and Cecilia Makiwane hospitals, according to a doctor working in the hospitals who asked not to be identified.

The Initiative for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Health Sector Reforms is an international research, capacity building and advocacy project (also known as the Rights and Reforms Initiative). It aims to promote health sector reforms that are conducive to implementing the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development's (ICPD) Programme of Action, are driven by in-country actors, and are responsive to the needs of the people of the country, especially poor women.