she said i'm not
altogether there
grasping at bits of myself
like playdoh
that just won't come together…

Pambazuka News is pleased to announce the call for submissions for the first annual Pambazuka Samir Amin Award. This award, launched to mark Samir Amin’s 80th birthday in 2011, pays tribute to the extraordinary contribution Samir Amin has made to our understanding of the exploitation of the peoples of Africa and the global South.

Slogans won’t be enough to build a new Egypt. Mazin Qumsiyeh gives some tips on how Egyptians can recover from dictatorship.

Responses to the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato and Egypt’s inspiring revolution are the key topics covered in this week’s round-up of the African blogosphere, compiled by Sokari Ekine.

Who we are is a question that requires constant inward contemplation merged with the outside - negotiating between two worlds - for knowing is paramount in affirming our existence and freedom. Who we are is a self-orientation of where we have been and the direction we are heading in, realizing that we cannot be anything unless (Sartre: 2007) others acknowledging us as such or may be not. The big business in the quest of identity - socially constructed, contingent, and performatively constituted - is in fact shaped by personal experiences, the formation of oneself within hegemonic social conditions undistinguished between the personal and the political or between private and public spaces.

‘This poem is inspired by the events that unfolded in Tunisia recently but also born out of frustrations with our so-called leaders all across the globe who spare no expense in putting their interests first but don't think twice about the needs of their people. Mr President is an umbrella term for all the presidents – male and female – generals, prime ministers, and all who seem to rule our world with iron fists,’ writes Nebila Abdulmelik.

Africa has a wealth of leadership outside of state politics. Sanya Osha gives some examples.

Nigeria’s opposition parties failed to agree on a joint candidate to face President Goodluck Jonathan, the flag bearer of the ruling People’s Democratic Party, in April’s presidential election, the parties said. The inability to reach an accord comes ahead of the deadline for all parties to submit the nomination papers of their candidates to the Independent National Electoral Commission. 'Each party is at this time pursuing their fortunes separately,' Dapo Olorunyomi, chief of staff to Nuhu Ribadu, the candidate for the Action Congress of Nigeria, said in a telephone interview.

The poverty line for maintaining a family of five in economically ravaged Zimbabwe rose last year to $467 per month - but without increased earnings to cover the 8 per cent rise, Zimbabwe's state statistics agency said on Monday. The nation's 240,000 civil servants, teachers and government workers are planning to strike to protest average monthly incomes of about $200. With massive unemployment, most Zimbabweans survive on the equivalent of about $1 a day. Two million people are set to receive food aid in coming months, according to the United Nations.

Kenya's diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court got a major boost after the African Union agreed to back its bid to defer Hague trials against six of its citizens. AU chief Jean Ping told reporters that the summit had approved Kenya's request for a suspension of the trials for one year as it seeks to overhaul its judicial system and try the suspects at home. Kenya had appealed for a suspension of the ICC process against prominent Kenyans which the court has accused of sponsoring the violence that saw 1,133 killed and close to 600,000 flee from their homes.

Namibia’s opposition parties have taken issue with government once again, this time over what they termed as the ruling Swapo party’s unfair rubberstamping of laws without adequate deliberations in the country’s legislative chambers. Swapo used its two-thirds majority in the legislative chambers last December to rush through a bill that gave optimum power to the President to appoint regional governors, as opposed to the former system where governors were selected from among regional councillors.

Major trading powers agreed on Friday to push for an outline deal in the decade-old Doha trade talks by July as world leaders appealed for all nations to make concessions or risk losing the opportunity for years. European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said the ministers from seven key economies had also agreed to instruct officials to negotiate a deal in the Doha round across the board and leave the trade-offs for ministers to tackle to a minimum.

Most Kenyans are not aware that 2012 is not just a critical election year, but also the year that will usher in a major change in the financial landscape of the country and Eastern Africa, writes Rasnah Warah in the Daily Nation. Next year, the East African Community is set to adopt a common currency in the five member states (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda), which is expected to reduce the cost and risk of doing business in the region. While the EAC is determined to go ahead with plans to adopt a common currency, sceptics are not sure whether the currency will be viable, especially as the region’s various members experience vastly differing socio-economic conditions, which could hinder the sustainability of the monetary union.

The African Union (AU) has been charged to set up a mechanism to monitor the decisions taken by its various authorities to ensure implementation, Désiré Assogbavi, an official of the Oxfam NGO said Saturday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 'AU holds at least two ordinary summits and several high-powered meetings every year. Important decisions come out from them for African populations but only ten per cent of the total of those AU measures are applied in the end. We must get out of this situation,' Mr. Assogbavi, who is the director of Oxfam liaison Office to the African Union said in a PANA interview. The African Union member countries have agreed to devote ten per cent of their public spending to agriculture and 15 per cent to the health sector.

With four years to go, Tanzania still lags behind other East African countries towards the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), says the latest report by the Centre for Global Development (CGD). The US-based think-tank puts Tanzania at fourth position, having one out of eight points, only surpassing war-torn Burundi which has 0.5 points on the eight core MDG targets of ridding extreme poverty, hunger, improving education, ensuring gender parity, reducing child mortality and maternal mortality, HIV/Aids, and attaining sufficiency in water provision.

Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) comprise a fifth of Swaziland's roughly one million people, 80,000 more than predicted in a doomsday scenario back in 2004, but a social meltdown feared by some, has not happened. In 2004 the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) projected a grim future for the landlocked country as a consequence of the world's highest HIV prevalence rates - 26.1 per cent of people aged 15-49 are living with the virus - but although the nation is struggling, it is managing to cope.

A candidate for governor in the north-eastern Nigerian state of Borno has been shot dead, officials say. Modu Fannami Gubio and at least four other people, including a 10-year-old child, were killed by men on motorbikes after Friday prayers in Maiduguri city. Mr Gubio was the candidate for the opposition All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) in April's elections.

Egyptian air force fighter planes buzzed low over Cairo, helicopters hovered above and extra troop trucks appeared in a central square where protesters were demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's rule. State television said that a curfew has been imposed in the capital and the military urged the protesters to go home. But the thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square chose to stay on Sunday. The show of defiance came as Egypt entered another turbulent day following a night of deadly unrest.

Egyptian protesters have called for a massive demonstration on Tuesday in a bid to force out president Hosni Mubarak from power. The so-called April 6 Movement said it plans to have more than a million people on the streets of the capital Cairo, as anti-government sentiment reaches a fever pitch. Several hundred demonstrators remained camped out in Tahrir square in central Cairo early on Monday morning, defying a curfew that has been extended by the army.

The African Union has backed off from its earlier position on a possible military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire if the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo does not hand over to Alassane Ouattara, who has been recognised internationally to have won the elections last November. Instead, the AU has agreed to set up a panel of five Heads of State to find a settlement with a month.