Tanzania is lagging behind on key development goals for safe water, income and health, even though the east African nation has benefited from a growing economy over the last few years, according a newly released household budget survey. Supported by budding financial markets, the proportion of Tanzania's population living below the poverty line dropped to 33.3 percent last year from 35.7 percent in 2000/01, stated the 2007 survey, which was released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

CONCERNED about the recent challenges that we have faced as a country and the multiple threats to the well-being of our people and, therefore, determined to resolve these permanently...CONSIDERING our shared determination to uphold, defend and sustain Zimbabwe's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity, as a respected member of the international community, a nation where all citizens respect and, therefore, enjoy equal protection of the law and have equal opportunity to compete and prosper in all spheres of life.

Power-sharing in Zimbabwe is dead and it is time for African governments to oust President Robert Mugabe, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said. After talks with Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in Nairobi, Mr Odinga told the BBC that Mr Mugabe had no interest in sharing power.

The Botswana President Ian Tseretse Khama has unveiled his government is ready to fund the whole election re-run in Zimbabwe. Speaking on national television, he said Botswana is not part of the quiet diplomacy employed by other leaders saying its time for such tactics fast expired long time ago.

An independent United Nations human rights expert today voiced his deep concern over the diminishing freedom of expression and association in Burundi, warning that violations of these freedoms imperil the rule of law in the African Great Lakes country. “The Government must restore a calm political climate and take all necessary measures to end the harassment and intimidation of journalists and representatives of civil society, trade unions and political parties,” said Akich Okola, the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Burundi.

The benefits of the Bujagali Dam project, now being built by private companies on the Nile River in Uganda, have been overstated and its risks understated, according to a 17-month investigation by the World Bank Inspection Panel. Worse, most of those risks fall on Uganda – one of the world’s poorest countries – rather than the project developers. The result could be a project that fails to fulfill the Bank’s “broad objective of sustainable development and poverty reduction embodied in Bank policy,” the Panel states.

Every now and then we put together an issue and the whole editorial team says, “Ah, now this is one satisfying issue” – a short hand way of saying that the essays are deep, urgent, far reaching and also, a sheer pleasure to read. This is one such issue.

The essays are much longer than our usual ones – but we promise they will be worth every minute you spend on them.

At the top of the list is Mahmood Mamdani's incisive analysis of the struggle for land reform in Zimbabwe.

You will find Amiri Baraka arguing that the left outlook on Obama is wrong-headed and that the left risks being left (pun intended) behind by the people. Amiri Baraka thunders at the left and says “the task of the revolutionary is to lead the people by taking what they already know and giving it back to them with the focus of the present the past and the future.” Along the same lines, you will find, Michael Novick arguing that revolutionary resistance cannot be organized against Obama, or alongside him necessarily, but ahead of him.

In contrast, you will find Patrick Bond deriding Obama on his cabinet picks that seem to be taking him further away from the promise of change, bring on board hawks and the neoliberals.

But just as soon you are done with the Baraka and Novick pieces, Doreen Lwanga will ask you: What of the relationship between Africans and African Americans in the US? No one has really looked at the implications of an Obama presidency in the light of this important relationship, subversive but also fraught with contradiction.

AFRICOM is now official and Daniel Volman provides an invaluable comprehensive background piece. And Jacques Depelchin does the same for the food crisis while contextualizing the crisis in the old days of the invisible hand and in the equally invisible equality promised by globalization.

Silence Chihuri looks at the cholera epidemic, the massive economic meltdown and why home affairs remain the gate keepers of Zimbabwe.

While Neville Alexander and colleagues critique the crisis of education in South Africa.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, in the Pan-African Post Card is piercing - as always - cutting through the bubble wrap, this time using Uganda to ask whether we need liberation from the liberators.

And as usual, we have letters, the African blogosphere, and a round up on China in Africa.

But this also reflects the ever growing number of high quality articles being submitted to Pambazuka News, itself a reflection of the growth of critical voices on the African continent.

Can you tell just how excited we are by this issue? Now, be sure to let us know what you thought of it by sending comments to or commenting online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Without an effective response to the deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia, the population there could face "total destitution", said Mark Bowden, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, warning that "this is now a make or break year for Somalia".

Patrick Bond in this essay argues that while Obama was elected on a platform of change, his cabinet and advisor picks point to a return to domestic Clintonian policy, and an extension of Bush’s foreign policy. Even though Bond acknowledges that “Obama may not run as extreme a militarist regime as Bush/Cheney or as McCain/Palin would have” still, being less militaristic while pursuing a neo-liberal economic agenda does not bode well for the third world.

Nigeria's leading anti-corruption campaigner has in recent weeks been subject to an escalating campaign of harassment, threats, and an apparent attempt on his life, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch called on the Nigerian government to protect the campaigner, Nuhu Ribadu, former chairman of Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Kenya's anti-corruption watchdog is suing seven current and former members of parliament for taking illegal allowances worth $250,000 (£166,000). Information Minister Samuel Poghisio has denied taking 2.8m shillings ($35,000, £23,000) in 2006 and 2007. Similar allegations have been filed against the assistant defence minister and five former members of parliament.

Is Mozambique an African success story? It has 7 percent a year growth rate and substantial foreign investment. Fifteen years after the war of destabilisation, the peace has held. Mozambique is the donors' model pupil, carefully following their prescriptions and receiving more than a billion dollars a year in aid. The number of bicycles has doubled and this is often cited as the symbol of development. In this book Joseph Hanlon challenges some key assumptions of both the donors and the government

Kenya's parliament has set up a committee to review MPs' generous salaries and allowances. This follows a widespread public outcry over a decision by the country's legislators to drop a proposal to tax their allowances.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has warned the UN Security Council not to shield Sudan's president if the court issues an arrest warrant. Luis Moreno-Ocampo accused President Omar al-Bashir in July of genocide in Darfur - a charge he denies.

Botswana's government said Wednesday it would give 370,000 dollars to neighbouring Zimbabwe for cholera and food relief, but that the money was not intended for President Robert Mugabe's regime. "We have no quarrel with the people of Zimbabwe. They are in this because their leadership has failed to form a government. The money is intended for the people and not authorities," said Clifford Maribe, a foreign affairs official.

Zimbabwe government announced Wednesday that it will bring to book soldiers who went on a rampage beating up people and looting shops in central Harare, the defence minister told journalists. "A number of properties were damaged, innocent people injured, money, and property stolen. These acts are deplorable, reprehensible and criminal," defence minister, Sydney Sekeramayi told journalists at a press conference.

"Slavery is the reality of modern day life. It has evolved in many parts of the world into many diverse and cruel forms", says, new UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery its causes and consequences, Ms. Gulnara Shahinian. "Last year, the world celebrated 200 years of the abolition of the slave trade. However, slavery is not history," warns the UN expert. "Despite significant progress in the fight against slavery in many parts of the world, these efforts seem to be insufficient."

Following an invitation extended by the Electoral Commission of Ghana, EISA is deploying a mission to observe the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in Ghana, scheduled for Sunday 7 December 2008. The Mission is led by Mr Denis Kadima, EISA Executive Director. It consists of 15 members drawn from civil society organisations (CSOs) from 13 African countries, namely Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mozambique, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Zambia.

Sokari Ekine review blogs from:

My Nigeria
Moot Box
Africa is a country
Kenya Environment & Political News
Black Looks
Timbuktu Chronicles
Tales from the loo

The situation in Zimbabwe has reached unprecedented levels of crisis. As we have been saying for the last few years, such crisis was climaxing and with a number of possibilities arising. Firstly and most likely was the likelihood of the bourgeois elite politicians in Zanu PF and the opposition MDC uniting together in an elitist government of national unity in which Zanu PF would be the senior partner and MDC the junior around a western and capitalist supported neoliberal economic agenda.