People living with HIV in Chad risk becoming victims of the explosion of violence in the capital, N'Djamena, in early February. During clashes between the army and groups of rebels from the east of the country, health services were damaged and many organisations working to fight the epidemic were looted.

Eight Egyptian men who were arrested and forced to undergo HIV tests, and the subsequent torture of the two who tested HIV-positive, has unleashed a storm of controversy in a country where people still know very little about the virus. "You can find people who know what you are talking about when you talk about AIDS, but I could say that most people who live here don't know the difference between a person with HIV and a person with AIDS," said UNAIDS Country Officer Wessam El-Beih.

Some of the young people who seek help at the Youth Information and Orientation Centre for Reproductive Health (CIOJ) in N'Djamena, capital of Chad, do not understand how they became pregnant or contracted a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Workers at the centre blame the high levels of ignorance on the failure of parents to talk to their children about sex.

According to the government’s current estimates, donors will need to provide 20,000 tonnes of food aid to compensate for expected production shortfalls in 2008. Aid experts in Bissau, however, said that if the government had better policies, and if the rains came at the right time, the country should be able to feed itself with current levels of international assistance.

Providing HIV drug cocktails to people in their homes can cut AIDS-related deaths substantially in poor, rural areas of Africa, researchers said on Friday. A study in Uganda showed that hiring local health workers to help people stick to a strict regimen of drugs cut the number of AIDS deaths by more than 90 percent.

Jegede Ademola Oluborode makes a case for human rights being a collective responsibility everywhere all the time

As an activist, one of the most pressing concerns which have agitated my mind in recent times is the way and when human rights issues evolve for national as well as international attention. Quite frequently, I have been tempted to question the agenda of these issues by asking the following: Whose issues are they? And how involving and timely is the process of defining, identifying, building consensus and designing interventions on the issues?

I am governed in this skepticism because apart from being unimpressed by the timing of human rights issues, I have been bordered by the response of political leadership to issues of widespread human rights significance and traumatized by the attention given to less significant issues being glamourised as most significant. In the many times that I have done this, I can not help but to notice that relevance has often been compromised for glamour. Indeed, more often than not, the agenda for human rights issues is dominantly the “King’s Agenda and not people oriented”! Sad enough, this trend has also found its way into the global stage.

I will make my self clearer with a story I have thought out for this purpose! For the sake of this story we will assume the existence of a Kingdom, a King and a fierce Lion. Let’s go now into the storyline!

Once upon a time, the subjects of a kingdom converged to seek the gracious audience of the King on the issue of a fierce lion which comes attacking at will, maiming lives and killing many in the kingdom. The king granted them an audience. Having listened to the concerns and comments so movingly related by the people about the strange lion, the king proceeded to ask their spokesmen “where is the Lion?” To which the entire people replied “it has fled away.” Then the King said “if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because “the trouble has gone.”At this stage, the king’s officials requested the people to leave the palace. Bewildered and disappointed, the people dispersed.

The Lion continued with its preying and subsequent reports on its attacks met with the same question and response of the king “where is the lion”, “if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because the “the trouble has gone.”

One fateful day, the king’s only son went on a royal visit to a neighbouring village. As providence would have it, the Lion came attacking once again and on that occasion, it was the one and only son of the king who fell prey to the ferocious animal. Shocked by the incident, the people’s initial challenge was how to inform the King about the tragedy as they were afraid of his possible reaction and wrath. But they summoned the courage to make the decision about informing the King.

As usual, they arrived at the palace to request the audience of the king who came out in the full regalia of a happy ruler to attend to his subjects. Now, listen to his royal majesty’s first comment “hope it is not the Lion again because you will only have one response from me which is, if the Lion has gone, then there is no trouble because the trouble has gone.” The spokesmen of the subjects said “Long live the King, you are right, it is the Lion, and it has eaten up your one and only son.” The King shouted wild in response “TROUBLE HAS COME!”

Any time political leadership, whether national or international, moves the nation or world around an issue; let’s bother to inform them that we hope it is not their “only son who has been killed”. Let us go further to ask them about how seriously the issues affect so many. Indeed, quality and positive human rights activism lies in being able to foresee issues and take steps to check them, for the fence around the hill is better than an ambulance in the valley-prevention is better than cure!

* Jegede Ademola Oluborode is a legal practitioner and a human rights activist in Nigeria.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

As developing countries scale up their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programmes, more and more people living with HIV are expected to develop resistance to their drug regimens and will need second-line medicines. Many second-line drugs are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive in developing countries, and doctors often lack experience or knowledge of what combination of second-line ARVs to prescribe.

Blood donation drives held in Kenya in recent weeks to meet the need created by post-election violence have highlighted the shortage of regular blood donors and the problem this creates in public healthcare, say officials from the national blood transfusion service. "We realise people have a lack of confidence in their health status that generates the fear to donate blood," said Stranslaus Onyango, assistant programme officer at Hope Worldwide Kenya.

Certain medical workers in Rwanda have expressed concern about the country's campaign to promote male circumcision as a means of curbing the spread of HIV. They fear that in a country with low levels of knowledge about sexual health, people could mistakenly believe the procedure offers complete protection against the virus. An epidemiologist based in the capital, Kigali, said there was a risk of "a bloodbath in the country once circumcision is taken as an anti-AIDS measure."

Efforts to reduce maternal mortality in Africa are not being driven by evidence, say Spanish and Mozambican reasearchers, after an autopsy study published this week in PLoS Medicine revealed that half of mothers died of infectious causes and just under one in seven died of HIV-related causes. Common obstetric complications accounted for just 38% of deaths during pregnancy, labour or after delivery.

Giving people with genital herpes an advance supply of anti-herpes medication and instructions on how to recognise the early signs of a herpes attack may be the most effective way of limiting the spread of HIV in Africa through herpes lesions, doctors from the United Kingdom and South Africa argue in a recent edition of The Lancet.

Neil Watkins tackles the unfinished agenda on debt, calls for an audit of past lending in Africa by the United States and international financial institutions including the IMF and World Ban in order to look at which debts are odious, onerous, or illegal.

President Bush in Africa is looking to secure his legacy in part through the lens of his administration’s development initiatives on the continent. One of those initiatives is the administration’s support for expanded debt relief for the continent.

To take a closer look at this Administration’s record on debt, let us start with a question that Africa-based civil society groups often start with when describing the debt issue: Who Owes Whom?

Take the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United States, the World Bank and IMF, and other creditors lent former President Mobutu Sese Seko billions of dollars in the 1970s and 1980s, knowing full well that the funds would not benefit the people. This was a price they were willing to pay in the context of the Cold War to win then Zaire’s allegiance to the West. But this clearly odious and illegitimate debt remains on the books today – over $9 billion worth in fact, and the people of the DRC are still paying for the sins of a leader they didn’t want.

But the Bush administration has supported debt cancellation in Africa. Does Africa owe President Bush a debt of gratitude? Let’s look at the Bush administration’s record on Africa’s debt. In 2005, the Bush administration, together with the UK, took strong leadership at the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland that year, and agreed to provide the possibility of 100% debt stock cancellation of eligible debts to eligible countries. This was important because up until this point, only debt relief – reduction of payments – rather than outright cancellation, was possible.

The initiative championed by the Bush Administration has since become known as the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Under this program, 23 countries have received 100% cancellation of eligible debts, 19 of them in Africa. Another 20 countries are potentially eligible for the program but have not yet seen their debts cancelled. Added together with previous rounds of debt cancellation, this has meant that eligible nations are saving about $2 billion in debt payments each year

The money saved from debt relief has been put to good use. Of the five countries President Bush will visit on his trip, four -- Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana – have received debt cancellation under the MDRI. In Tanzania, debt relief led to a 50% increase in primary school enrollment. In Ghana, freed up funds supported the rehabilitation of essential major highways and feeder roads in the main agricultural areas, and to support education and health initiatives. In Benin, relief bolstered investment in health and education and funded small-holder projects in agriculture.

The other country President Bush will visit on his trip – Liberia – just recently moved towards eligibility for the official IMF/World Bank debt relief program with the strong support of the administration. But Liberia has not yet seen its more than $3.5 billion debt – much of it run up by the odious regimes of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor – cancelled outright yet.

It is clear that the Bush Administration has provided leadership on debt relief that has benefited a number of African countries. But President Bush could do even more. He could return from Africa - - inspired by seeing first-hand the impacts of relief to date – and address the unfinished agenda on debt, in turn cementing his legacy in this area.

He should support the expansion of debt cancellation to all countries that need it to reach global poverty-reducing goals, including countries devastated by HIV/AIDS—such as Lesotho -- that have not been included in agreements for debt cancellation to date.

Second, Bush should put an end to unconscionable practices of so-called “vulture funds.” Vulture funds are private creditors that buy up distressed developing country debt on the secondary markets, then refuse to join other creditors in the debt relief process and instead sue poor country governments for a big mark-up. Last year, Zambia had to pay $15 million to Donegal International, a vulture fund that paid $3 million for the debt originally. The President should support changes to US law that would make profiteering by vulture funds illegal. While that work is underway, he could immediately reach out to non-Paris Club creditors in the US’s sphere of influence and urge them to sign onto a new Paris Club agreement that commits creditors not to on-sell claims on the secondary market.

Another problem facing Africa now is a rapid re-accumulation of debts, including massive new lending from China. The administration’s plan to address this problem has focused on an IMF/World Bank framework which punishes debtors by hardening the terms of soft loans they get from the World Bank if they borrow too much. But this approach is likely to only worsen the problem and punishes poor countries without addressing creditor co-responsibility for the problem. Only a strong, binding international system for responsible lending and sovereign debt restructuring which holds creditors and debtors responsible can ensure debt sustainability in the future.

Finally, to finally answer the question of who owes whom, there should be an audit of past lending in Africa by the United States and international financial institutions including the IMF and World Bank. Such an audit should look at which debts are odious, onerous, or illegal. Having this information will help us to learn lessons from the past and avoid the same mistakes in the future.

To enhance his legacy in this area, President Bush could announce his support for the bi-partisan Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending (S. 2166 / H. 2634) which addresses many of the aforementioned elements of the unfinished agenda on debt and is currently pending in Congress.

*Neil Watkins is National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of religious organizations, development agencies, and human rights groups working for debt cancellation and responsible lending for impoverished nations.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In 2007, an international network of researchers and people involved in building comprehensive primary health care (CPHC) received funding to support research and research capacity-building. This network, associated with the People's Health Movement, includes individuals in India, Africa, Latin America, Europe, Canada and Australia. The project is now seeking applications (Expressions of Interest) from research teams committed to developing important new knowledge and action on comprehensive primary health care. These research teams will come from one of four different areas/regions in which are focusing our overall project work.

The UN refugee agency has launched a final distribution of aid for a large group of displaced people who have returned to their homes in the southern province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "This intervention is being carried out as part of UNHCR's programme of assistance and protection for people displaced in northern and central Katanga," said Roger Hollo, a protection officer in the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.

Uganda has undergone a striking change in the profile of people becoming newly infected, with older and married individuals now making up the vast majority of new infections, according to findings from a national study of HIV incidence conducted in 2004-5 and presented last week at the Fifteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston.

The South African Department of Health this week published new guidelines for prevention of mother to child transmission in South Africa. However activists and doctors say they still leave South Africa out of step with poorer and less well resourced nations. South Africa will not adopt the regimen described as `more efficacious` by World Health Organization guidelines issued in August 2006 - seven days of AZT and 3TC for mothers after single dose nevirapine at the time of delivery – but instead use AZT alone for the infant - but not the mother - in the week after delivery.

Malawi is riding high on the success of its fertiliser subsidy programme and has become a regional exporter hoping to profit from booming food prices, but analysts are a bit more wary. Globally food prices have shot up by nearly 75 percent within a decade and will continue to do so, according to the World Bank's annual Global Economic Prospects 2008.

Health officials are concerned about the long-term impact of Kenya's political crisis on healthcare, especially in areas hardest hit by violence since the end of December 2007. "The most worrying issue is that of drug resistance among patients of chronic diseases," Ian van Engelgem, the medical coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told IRIN on 5 February.

Francis B. Nyamnjoh reflects on the central role Issa Shivji has played in the development of African revolutionary scholarship.

It is 15th July 2006 at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Issa G. Shivji, at 60, is giving his valedictory lecture. Titled “Lawyers in Neoliberalism: Authority’s Professional Supplicants or Society’s Amateurish Conscience”, the lecture marks the end of a rich and distinguished 36 year career of selfless service that started as a tutorial assistant in May 1970 and was crowned with full professorship in July 1986. The lecture is on a theme that has been at the centre of Shivji’s humanity and scholarship since his student days in East Africa and the United Kingdom. If neoliberalism cultivates corporate greed and reinforces an elitist order that never tires of globalizing a culture of poverty, Shivji as a lawyer and scholar has positioned himself passionately and selfishly at variance with neoliberalism. He uses changing land and labour regimes in Tanzania to criticize the changing concepts of personhood and human agency that have tended to question cultures and socio-political communities underpinned by collective success where greed is not the creed. Drawing on leading labour cases, Shivji convincingly demonstrates how Tanzania and Africa have jumped “from the frying pan of state nationalism into the fire of corporate neoliberalism”, hence his criticism of lawyers who come across more as technicians oiling the wheels of neoliberalism than as saboteurs to the corporate greed and global consumer culture it champions.

As he argues, neoliberalism generates a transnational legal intelligentsia to serve and oil it. The neoliberal elite globalizes the so-called ‘rule of law’, not as embedded in liberal political values of the Enlightenment period, but rather as “firmly rooted in the exigencies of the ‘rule of capital’ in the service of a corporatocracy.” The result is the global “expansion and protection of property relations and private appropriation of surplus value,” to the detriment of multitudes of poor and ordinary citizens simply seeking to get by. In the valedictory lecture, reproduced in the popular pan-African Pambazuka electronic news bulletin: Shivji is scathing in his criticism of African lawyers and intellectuals at the beg and call of neoliberalism, which privileges profit over people and is interested in development and culture only to the extent that these guarantee profitability. Shivji has remained consistent and uncompromisingly critical over the last forty years.

In 1968, he published “The Educated Barbarians”, an article that was passionately critical by the injustices of unequal encounters that had reduced being cultured to emptying oneself of all meaningful cultural difference vis-à-vis neocolonial forces and its harbingers in Africa. In those days, as today, Shivji was committed to Africans old and young passionate about making the world a better place politically, economically and culturally. In his words, “We discussed Fanon while we worked in cashew nut farms around the University, taught literacy classes in Mlalakuwa based on Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, built our own shelters, called houses, through self-help.” It was an exercise of making both development and culture in tune with the lives and expectations of those called upon to partake of both.

This passionate commitment to challenging the culture of injustice and greed with the culture of equality of humanity and the celebration of difference seems to diminish in Africa by the day. Shivji is worried, and blames the insidiousness of Neo-liberalism, which “has taken its toll and the language of consultancy has displaced and replaced the language of conscience and commitment.” He argues that “corporatisation of the university is part of the neoliberal ideological attack on critical thinking, on intellectuals who would ‘Speak Truth to Power’. It undermines the university as a critical site of knowledge, as a mirror of society. No doubt, temptations are great and none of us is immune.” This recognition, notwithstanding, Shivji is particularly scandalized by the fact that even the committed progressive scholars of yesteryears “can only agonize and gradually forget even to diagnose the ills of our society.”

Professor Issa Shivji has had a rich career as one of Africa’s leading experts on law and development issues. He retires as director of the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Dar es Salaam where he has taught since 1970’s. In Tanzania where he was born in 1946, Shivji has served as advocate of the High Court and the Court of Appeal of Tanzania since 1977 and advocate of High Court in Zanzibar since 1989. He has served as visiting professor in Mexico, Zimbabwe, South Africa, United Kingdom, India, Hong Kong and USA, and has won several awards and distinctions. Shivji’s influence as a lawyer, scholar, professor and public intellectual is global. He has researched, written and published extensively on a broad range of issues including on human rights, land tenure, labour, higher education and the politics of recognition and representation.

He has published 15 books that include his 1989 groundbreaking The Concepts of Human Rights in Africa - a critique of dominant ideologies of human rights that seeks to reconceptualise human rights from the perspective of the working people of Africa, 6 monographs, 33 book chapters, 36 articles in scholarly journals, and over 40 other papers, reports and writings in newspapers, newsletters and bulletins. His most recent book -- Let the People Speak: Tanzania Down the Road to Neoliberalism—published by CODESRIA to coincide with his valedictory lecture, consists of 90 critical and thought-provoking essays selected from over 150 written between 1990 and 2005 in three different newspapers. The book captures the richness of Shivji’s contributions as a public intellectual. It deals with the period when Tanzania under external pressures from donors and financial institutions was forced down the road of neo-liberalism. The local compradorial elites whose economic appetites had been suppressed under Nyerere’s radical nationalism now openly flexed muscles to get a place under the capitalist sun as nationalism, radical or otherwise, was abandoned, and neo-liberalism uncritically embraced.

The essays are on varied subjects ranging from the politics of multi-party, the strains and stresses of the Union with Zanzibar, the deep-seated extra-constitutional behaviour of the ruling elite to the hopes, fears and resistance of the working people. In these essays, contemporary Tanzanian history is recorded in sweeping journalistic strokes without burying the commitment of a critical public intellectual in turgid scholarship. As a warning on the slippery slope that neo-liberalism constitutes, Let the People Speak will echo in many an African country. Hence the salience and relevance of Shivj’s renewed call for the resurrection of a radical, people driven Pan-Africanism. Shivji sees in the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), an institution that epitomizes the Pan-Africanism he would want to resurrect. CODESRIA was created in 1973 with a clear mandate to promote the production and dissemination of multidisciplinary social research by African scholars. It was tasked with the responsibility of doing this simultaneously with an investment of effort in transcending the various barriers of language, geography, discipline, gender and generation that hamper cross-national African networking for the advancement of science.

As a foundation member, Shivji has played important roles in the life of CODESRIA. He has been an authoritative and important voice. His high standing and commitment to intellectual activism have played a pivotal role in CODESRIA’s history. The Social Science community in Africa has benefited enormously from the spread of his ideas and influence, and from the encouragement that he has never relented in giving so many people. Shivji has served CODESRIA in various capacities over the years, including as: Chair person for the Drafting Committee to the 1990 Dar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom & Social Responsibility of Academics; Director of CODESRIA Democratic Governance Institute, July – September 1996; Chairperson, CODESRIA Governance Reform Committee, 2000-2002; and Executive Committee member of CODESRIA, 2002-2005. It is this African and global social science community which Shivji has shaped and been shaped by that reacted with outpours of email messages of congratulations and recognition when Shivji made public his retirement through an open invitation to his valedictory lecture.

Without space to do justice to the scores of testimonies in praise of him, let me refer only to a few: Carlos Lopes, a scholar of Guinea Bissau currently Assistant Secretary General at the UNO, writes:

When I was still a teenager I was already reading Issa Shivji, thanks to my mentor's insistence, the late Mário de Andrade, leading Angolan intellectual and founder of the MPLA. When later I wrote my first book, in 1982, quotes from Shivji were prominent. So despite being from a totally different generation I feel I have been in dialogue with Shivji for decades now; and, as a result, consider his enduring influence on my thinking, very important. However what I really would like to mention is the personality of this scholar that always considered himself an agent of change, a revolutionary, committed to the transformation of our beloved continent. From the Dar School to the activism of AAPS, or CODESRIA, Issa has been a reference figure because of his personality. Bonds were established because of his intellectual honesty. We know what he stands for and we know his personal interests matter little for he is a man of convictions, and his convictions are for the good of the collective. At this moment I would like to pay tribute to him and his colleagues that have put the University of Dar es Salaam in the radar of Africa's transformation. We need you!

Dr. Thandika Mkandawire, former Executive Secretary of CODESRIA, author of African Intellectuals, and currently Director of UNRISD in Geneva, writes: Dear Issa, Thanks for the invitation. I really wish I could attend this event to pay tribute to a courageous and inspiring scholar I hope you realise that your retirement at such an early age simply marks a new beginning. I therefore look forward to more of your seminal work. Warm regards

Dr. Jacques Depelchin, a committed intellectual, academic, and activist for peace, democracy, transparency and pro-people politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and author of Silences in African History, writes:

Dear Issa, For your fidelity and commitment to emancipatory politics at all times, we can never thank you enough. However, do not worry, although things might look gloomy, there are unmistakable signs that --to paraphrase Ayi Kwei Armah in his novel KMT-- the people of the Sphere shall prevail over the people of the Pyramid. It is easier to heal than to give into the idea that everything has fallen apart. Do take care

Dr. Jimi Adesina, Professor of Sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa, and co-editor of Africa and Development Challenges in the New Millennium, writes: Mzee: Wished I could be there. Thanks for the years of inspiring intellectual leadership that you given all of us and the space that you continue to provide for the intellectual project at the service of ordinary people, who daily do extraordinary things. I am sure this is only a formal end of employment at UD rather than a retirement. May your cooking place never grow cold!

The President of CODESRIA Teresa Cruz e Silva, a Mozambican Historian, had this, among other things, to say: Professor Issa Shivji is a brother, a friend, and in many ways an inspiration to Africans big and small, an intellectual animated by a passion for freedom, a passion well summed up in the title of his latest book: ‘Let the People Speak’. After such an illustrious academic life rich in contribution to the development of Social Sciences in Africa, Professor Issa Shivji deserves his formal retirement from the University of Dar es Salaam, although I doubt, given his wisdom and generosity of spirit, that he is going to allow himself the rest he needs. On behalf of CODESRIA, also represented today by the eminent Professor Archie Mafeje and two former Presidents of CODESRIA, Professors Zenebeworke Tadesse and Mahmood Mamdani -- all three of them founding members of CODESRIA, allow me Professor Shivji to congratulate you and the University of Dar es Salaam for your outstanding academic production and your contribution to the formation of new generations of African scholars in the last decades. Allow me also, personally, to express my gratitude and my tremendous admiration for your scholarship and integrity, as well as your strong intellectual activism illustrated by your writings on Africa and particularly on contemporary Tanzanian issues, and your consistent and very honest positions concerning world politics.

My first true memory of Issa Shivji´s name come from the mid to the late 70´s, after the independence of my country, Mozambique, when at the very new African Studies Centre at Eduardo Mondlane University and under the leadership of Ruth First and Aquino de Bragança, an uninformed young and enthusiastic group of Mozambicans received all the strong influence of the Dar es Salaam school, particularly the very first contacts with issues related with African development, the new research approaches on African history and for the first time a rare chance to read African authors. For scholars of my generation, Issa Shivji´s name always has been a source of inspiration and an extraordinary example of struggle to build up African universities not only with high standards, but with scholars committed to the development of the continent. The huge range of Issa´s achievements was and is still recognized by successive generations of scholars who have his work and intellectual commitment as a source of inspiration. Today we are here to celebrate a transition from one fruitful stage to another one in the academic life of Professor Issa Shivji. Issa´s energy and commitment have been a vital resource for CODESRIA, and for the social science community in general. We sincerely trust that he will continue to guide the young generations and to give more and more of his commitment to African Development. Which is way I say to him: Issa, for this new phase of your life we wish you happiness and good fortune, but CODESRIA cannot guarantee you the rest you so badly need after working so hard. For we need you even more than ever to mentor the younger generation in whom you have sown the seeds of HOPE in a bright future for Africa.

Professor Issa Shivji has never been a lip service scholar, less still a scholar who pays lip service to social responsibility. He does not thrive in dissemblance, and would state his mind even at the risk of being the only voice who dares to say the king is naked in his new clothes. Not untypical therefore, he found reason to voice his concerns about the the Mo Ibrahim Prize for a retired African president which was awarded to Joachim Chissano of Mozambique. In this commentary titled “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul” (see Pambazuka), Shivji argues that “it is naïve, if not mischievous, to award a person – moreover with a cash prize – for bringing peace or democracy to his country.” He questions the reason for the award – “good governance”, the yardsticks by which this is determined, and the derogatory assumptions vis-à-vis Africa, its humanity and dignity that surround the award. He particularly regrets the “uncritical and unqualified celebration” of the award “by scribes and even academics and intellectuals”.

It is too simplistic, he argues, to assume that African problems are created exclusively by Africans, or that the excesses of the world out there has little bearing on the excesses of the world in here. Not to recognize this especially by scholars is dangerous, as it could easily lead to mistaking villains for heroes, mercenaries for savours, dictators for democrats, exploiters for philanthropists, capitalists for socialists. Only such critical understanding can put in perspective the fact that no one who has “made millions of dollars from the sweat and blood of the African people” can be celebrated when instead of returning “a few million to the people through providing badly needed schools, dispensaries, and water wells, proceeds to “add insult to injury by robbing (poor) Peter to pay (rich) Paul.” As Shahida El-Baz remarked in an email to me and others when she read this piece by Issa Shivji, “This is really refreshing. To read/hear such honest, brilliant and committed analysis is like a glowing light in the middle of darkness, where a great number of those, who used to be called progressive intellectuals, enjoy adopting uncritically the fashionable concepts and policies of imperialist globalization. It is also a typical description of what is happening in all our countries. Thank you Issa for holding the torch so high. Keep going…”

The magnitude of Professor Issa Shivji’s scholarly, legal, political and educational contributions to development and culture in Africa and globally, and his humanity, honesty and generosity of spirit constitute a glowing example worth emulating of intellectual and social responsibility in action and in tune with Africa and its predicaments.

* Francis B. Nyamnjoh is Associate Professor and Head of Publications and Dissemination with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). Email: [email][email protected], Website: www.nyamnjoh.com

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The provision of antiretrovirals (ARVs), along with comprehensive sexual risk behaviour and ARV adherence support programmes, cut the risk of HIV transmission by 91% over a three year period in a study from eastern Uganda, the Fifteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections heard today in Boston.