Until now, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) had been assisting the repatriation of only camp-based Angolan refugees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), helping more than 42,000 to return to Angola since 2003. But the 250 who inaugurated a new phase of the programme were part of a group of almost 2,000 non-camp based refugees settled in Kasangulu, south of the capital, Kinshasa.

The new arrangement is great; there is always so much to read. At least there will be something to look forward to on Friday too. Thanks. Keep up the good work.

I am not IT adept so please excuse my ignorance. Rather than split Pambazuka News into two separate emails, it would be easier if you had HTML headers in a table of contents at the beginning of the newsletter. That way, when a reader sees a topic of interest to him, he simply clicks on the link and he is automatically taken to the relevant topic thereby skipping all the other stuff he does not want to read. Like I said, I am not an IT adept so I don't really know the technical jargon to describe what I have in mind. Please bear with me.

You are providing a great service to social service organizations in the continent that have been in need of just such an international forum. By providing information from the continent, as well as presenting informed commentary, readers across the entire world can learn first hand how citizens from the many nations of Africa are facing the myriad of problems confronting the continent.

I look forward to receiving your newsletter, it is highly informative and one of the best sources for news from Africa that isn't filtered through the mainstream press.

This paper from the International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication examines the links between and impact of globalisation and democratisation in Nigeria. It shows that while in several instances globalisation has led to the adoption of many neo-liberal economic and political policies, its impact on the country's democratisation processes has been dismal, and the country has joined the global network without adequate preparations. It argues that Nigeria has much to gain in the global network but concerted efforts must be made to transform all its civic and democratic institutions to help to sustain the current democratisation as well as contain the discontents of hyper globalisation.

Drawn from the World Bank Africa Database, this publication provides the most detailed collection of development data on Africa in one volume. It presents data from 53 African countries and 5 regional country groups, arranged in separate tables or matrices for more than 500 indicators of development.

African infrastructure development lags behind other regions. The lack of rural roads, telecommunications, electrification and water services is weakening poverty reduction efforts. Poor infrastructure directly affects poverty and requires urgent attention. A publication from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) explores the problem of inadequate infrastructure and approaches to remedying it. Poor infrastructure affects health, education, access to markets and investment. Transport costs for individual travel and for freight are far higher in Africa than in Asia, making products less competitive.

The European Union has once again demonstrated that the interests of European big business are its top priority, claimed development campaigners the World Development Movement (WDM) in Geneva. Commenting at the end of the World Trade Organisation's General Council meeting WDM said that despite the 'development round' rhetoric the interests of the poor are being opposed, sidelined and ignored. Several delegations, and the Africa Group as a whole, have expressed their anger at being excluded from negotiations during this General Council.

Almost 400 delegates from across Africa and beyond, met in Yaoundé on the occasion of the 2005 biennial conference of the International Association for Community Development, organised with the cooperation of the government of Cameroon. The conference addressed the theme of 'Building civil society through community development'. Throughout the five days of the conference, and in eighteen workshops, delegates from a wide range of community development backgrounds formulated a series of issues relating to the role of community development in building civil society in Africa.

With a Human Development Index ranking of 163 Zambia is one of the least developed countries in the world (UNDP 2004). Without question, reducing the number of Zambians living in absolute poverty is a valid goal to be pursued at a national and international level. Based on current trends, however, this and most of the other 7 MDGs are unlikely to be met in Zambia by 2015. From this one might infer that the MDGs are not making a great deal of difference at the local level in improving the lives of the most impoverished. This paper sets out to examine the main reasons why this is so, taking international as well as national economic, social and political factors into consideration.

Corruption was extreme in Angola in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Each year, about US$1 billion of Angola's oil revenues, reportedly, were disappearing. Angola provides a case study in building institutions from scratch. Both Angolans - civil-society groups and journalists - and outsiders - nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, foreign governments, and a few of the multinational oil companies - prodded the Angolan government to reform itself. A dysfunctional state has been driven by the combination of domestic and external pressure to take some initial steps - grudging and gradual but apparently genuine steps - toward accountability.

In Nigeria, even children understand corruption's menace. Increasingly, so do the donors that have poured more than $400 billion into African nations since 1980 and watched too much of it vanish into a sinkhole of fraud, malfeasance and waste. After years in which disappointed donors turned away from Africa - foreign aid to the continent reached a 17-year low in 1999 - the billions are beginning to flow again. In May, the world's richest nations agreed to write off $40 billion in loans owed by the world's 18 poorest nations. All but four are in Africa.

The UN Security Council has extended a two-year-old arms embargo on DR Congo and threatened to crack down on those who violate the sanctions. The resolution, adopted unanimously, says armed groups in eastern Congo "perpetuate a climate of insecurity in the whole region". The arms embargo applies to "any recipient" of weapons in the country.

We continue to ignore the stark lesson that externally imposed development models have not gotten us very far. It's what Africans do themselves that will determine how far and how fast we move forward. The only way forward is for Africa to drive its own bus and for the driver and passengers to be in full agreement about where they're going. That said, we do need help filling up the tank. The fundamental problem in Africa is not lack of resources, but the failure of political leadership.

Ugandans last Thursday voted overwhelmingly to repeal a two-decade ban on political parties in a national referendum that was, however, boycotted by the opposition, the electoral commission announced on Saturday. A total of 92.5 percent of voters who participated in the plebiscite backed the reforms, based on returns from 99.6 percent of the polling stations.

Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira, the former military ruler of Guinea-Bissau, scored a narrow victory over Malam Bacai Sanha, the candidate of the ruling PAIGC party, in the second round of the country's presidential election, according to provisional results released last Thursday. Malam Mane, the chairman of the National Electoral Commission, said Vieira, of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), won a majority of 52 percent, with 216,167 votes in last Sunday's ballot.

Ethiopia's political leaders have held their first ever face-to-face talks aimed at ending the deepening crisis over disputed legislative polls, an official said on Friday. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi met the opposition leaders to try and end the deadlock over who won the 15 May election, in which 25 million people turned out to vote.

Egyptian blog, "" (www.mindbleed.com) has resurfaced in a new blog called "In mourning". He reports (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4723339.stm) on the predictable backlash against British Muslims following the July 7th bombings in London. He asks whether the failure by the mainstream media to report the "faith related attacks" is "deliberately downplayed to stop anger fomenting in the ranks of British Muslims with violent tendencies of their own?" I am not sure which mainstream media he is referring to as the report he mentions was taken from the BBC which is about as mainstream as you can get. Also the London Guardian has a special report on attacks against Asians. Maybe he is referring to the tabloid press and surely one can only expect less than nothing from them.

Staying with the "Muslim" issue, SubZeroBlue (www.subzeroblue.com/archives/2005/07/us_muslim_scholars_i.html) from Tunisia reports that Muslim scholars in the US have issued a fatwa (religious edict) condemning terrorism and religious extremism.

In the edict, the 18-member FCNA said people who committed terrorism are "criminals," not "martyrs." It would be even more helpful if Muslim scholars in Britain and the Middle and Far East also issued a similar fatwa.

Kenyan blogger Bankelele (http://bankelele.blogspot.com) attends an AIDS conference in Kenya and provides an excellent breakdown of some very scary facts and figures on HIV/AIDS. Under "Bad Traditions" he writes:

- "We were circumcised on the same day, with the same knife" is a call to brotherhood that men often use. But such practices need to be updated, so that, perhaps, one knife per boy is used on that special day.
- While the Luo are chastised for their wife inheritance customs, in other communities (all over the country) young widows (whose husbands may have died from AIDS, and don't know their own HIV status) have silent affairs, cohabit, or even re-marry.
- The Church is still very negative towards potentially useful practices such as contraceptives and is also not very supportive of HIV+ people.
- Many family members still show very little sympathy or support to their HIV+ relatives
- Many employers still show very little sympathy or support to HIV+ workers.

Ethan Zuckerman's excellent blog "My Heart's in Accra" (www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=111) has a report on the blogger "Sleepless in Sudan" (http://sleeplessinsudan.blogspot.com) an aid worker who provides readers with daily reports from Darfur refugee camps.

"Sleepless recent posts have been about the Kalma camp, which houses about 150,000 IDPs. The Sudanese government is interested in breaking up the camp, either for the legitimate reason that it's in danger of flooding (a recent post describes Khartoum as a "veritable African Venice", with cabs and tuk-tuks stuck in an underwater traffic jam) or out of fear that rebels are training and regrouping within the camps."

What is worse is that Sleepless is reporting on rapes of women in the camps and the possibility that the attackers are anti-Janjaweed and anti-Khartoum rebels who want to make sure aid money continues to flow. Obviously this is her opinion based on her own observations on the ground but if true it is an extremely worrying development.

Sleepless blogs anonymously which is not unusual in countries where it is dangerous to speak out, to speak the truth. Bloggers have been subjected to harassment and police detention in countries such as China and Iran. In the case of Sleepless it is understandable as the Sudanese government have a record of arresting and detaining aid workers and human rights activists.

Akinyio (http://akinyio.blogspot.com) is a young Kenyan woman blogging from South Africa. Her blog is a "diary" blog basically covering the day to day happenings in her life. Here she provides us with an insight into Durban which she says is a beautiful city. However she makes the observation that beyond the beauty the legacy of apartheid remains.

"Durban is also a bit stuck in pre-1994 SA. There are places where you can actually count the black faces if any and there are times when you feel the tension. For me this was completely new and I hated having to second guess myself whenever I wanted to walk into a store or restaurant in a Mall because there were only white faces or only Indian faces in there."

Finally Black Looks (http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2005/08/victor_julie_mu.html) has a number of reports on Ugandan lesbian human rights activist, Victor Julie Mukosa (http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2005/07/ugandan_governl.html) who has been repeatedly violated by the Ugandan police. Since being detained and then released she has been in constant hiding and in fear for her life.

Congratulations and thank you for the new web-based format! I have been reading your newsletter for about a year now and I've only seen improvement since then. Yours in the struggle.