Chadian President Idriss Deby is expected to be cleared to stand for a third term after a referendum next week but diplomats, human rights activists and opposition parties have already alleged massive fraud and say the result has been fixed in advance. The people in this arid land-locked country will vote on Monday on whether to abolish the constitutional clause that stipulates that a president can only be re-elected once. Deby's second term in office is set to expire in 2006.

The election of communal councillors in Burundi began last Friday, amid reports of violence in the northwestern province of Bubanza. State-owned Radio Burundi reported on Friday that incidences of violence and exchange of gunfire in Bubanza had caused local residents to flee.

This exploration of the role of the mass media in promoting democracy and empowering civil society in Africa reaches some startling conclusions. Francis Nyamnjoh contextualizes Africa within the rapidly changing global media, shows how patterns of media ownership and state control have evolved and the huge difficulties facing most African media workers. Drawing on the example of Cameroon, he explores the question of media ethics and professionalism in Africa, and the important roles that rumour and political satire have played as sources of information and opinion formation. He argues that African governments have done very little to encourage independent media, but that the media must also share some of the blame.

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The continuous existence of such high levels of abject poverty in Africa and elsewhere in the world in its very nature is an affront to God and humanity and thus can never be justified. You, the leaders of the G8, have an opportunity in the coming weeks to begin to reverse this inhumanity and injustice, once and for all, and leave your mark on history. This open letter is a message from Africa, the Africans, in association with their non-African brethrens who recently attended an international conference, Africa: the Quest for Justice and Peace, which was held in Kenya.
(http://www.commongood.info/programme2005.html).
Conference Declaration:

* Please click on the URL provided to read the rest of this letter.

EDITORIALS: The IMF is plotting new forms of control in the event of universal debt cancellation, writes Soren Ambrose
COMMENT & ANALYSIS: George Dor on alternatives to neo-liberalism
LETTERS: Western mass media, human values and SA capital in Africa
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD: Why Saint Bob’s Live 8 concerts will be like trying to shave someone’s head in their absence
GLOBAL CALL TO ACTION AGAINST POVERTY: Country contact details and GCAP launch news from Sierra Leone
CONFLICTS & EMERGENCIES: Violence erupts in Somalia and Ivory Coast
HUMAN RIGHTS: Human Rights Watch exposes links between multinational and deadly armed group in DRC
REFUGEES & FORCED MIGRATION: The MDGs and migration
WOMEN & GENDER: Toolkit for engaging women in national peacebuilding and security processes
ELECTIONS&GOVERNANCE: Ethiopian opposition upset over poll result; SA housing protests continue; Zimbabwe constitutional reforms steam ahead
DEVELOPMENT: Wolf 2 takes office - the sharpening of economic policy as a weapon of mass impoverishment
AND MORE…links to news on corruption, health, education, media, environment, jobs and books.

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Together we can demonstrate overwhelming support from Africa for debt cancellation.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday condemned for the first time sexual abuse among peacekeepers after being told U.N. members ignored such exploitation for decades, fearing exposure of their own soldiers' wrongdoing. The United Nations has accused peacekeepers and civilian staff in the Democratic Republic of Congo of rape, pedophilia, and enticing hungry children with food or money in exchange for sex. Sexual abuse on a smaller scale was discovered in other missions.

Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF is pushing ahead with its plans for constitutional reform, and has approved the creation of a 65-member senate, which will serve as an upper house of parliament. ZANU-PF Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa told IRIN that the party's Central Committee agreed on the creation of the new house last week, and would submit the proposal to cabinet for approval before it was tabled in parliament.

Liberia needs to set up an independent anti-corruption commission because poor financial management and endemic graft are still plaguing the country's transitional government, according to a report by international donors. The Economic Governance Action Plan, a copy of which was seen by IRIN on Wednesday, said the power-sharing government, made up of representatives from the former warring factions and civilian groups, was doing little to tackle corruption.

"The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is disturbed by the government's over-reaction to protest actions by members of some of our poorest communities over the past three weeks. Instead of listening and talking to the people, who are demanding basic services and legitimate rights, and addressing their concerns, the government seems to want to criminalise them. In one case, in Harrismith, it has even brought wild charges of sedition against protesters. It has also involved the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). This demonstrates a degree of paranoia among sections of the government."

It has got a sad record of disease, brutality and corruption, and fewer inhabitants than Sheffield. But Equatorial Guinea is one of the key targets of the west's new "scramble for Africa". This mini country located under the armpit of the West African coast has immense quantities of oil; it is currently exporting $4.5bn worth (about £2.5bn) a year. Yet such an astonishing bonanza appears to have done most of the country's citizens no good. Who then, is getting the benefit?

Ethiopia’s national elections were heading to a stormy conclusion this week as the country’s two largest opposition groupings refused to accept provisional results showing that the ruling party had held on to power. The main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) threatened to boycott the next parliamentary session and hold protests if its claims of irregularities in 139 constituencies were not investigated properly.

South African police have arrested 33 people after housing protests in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. Police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades to disperse the protesters who had set up burning barricades and threw stones at passing vehicles. Grievances over housing shortages and poor services have prompted demonstrations in four Cape Town neighbourhoods in the past two weeks.

Senegalese opposition leader Abdourahim Agne has been charged with threatening state security after urging peaceful demonstrations against the president. The authorities said a recent speech he made was an incitement to rebellion. Mr Agne, who was arrested on Saturday, could be sentenced to five years in prison if convicted.

Anti-corruption campaigners have condemned Nigeria's senate for refusing to ban the acceptance of "gifts", in its new code of ethics. Auwal Rasanjani, head of the Nigerian branch of lobby group Transparency International, told the BBC that these "gifts" open the way to corruption. Senators argued that accepting gifts was part of Nigerian culture and that bribery was already illegal.

This Christian Aid briefing paper challenges the entrenched assumption that developing countries can only work their way out of poverty through radical economic liberalisation, calling for an end to aid conditions on such policies. It discusses the extent to which governments' aid decisions are based on positive economic assessments from the World Bank and the IMF, which are in turn based on levels of trade liberalisation within potential aid recipients. It notes that developing country economies have either declined or dramatically slowed under these policies, and that poor people dependent on farming or commodity production for their livelihoods have been adversely affected by liberalisation.

On June 1, Paul Wolfowitz will become the 10th President of the World Bank Group. "Around the world people have expressed great concern about Wolfowitz's new role and the new kinds of war he will be waging. When he takes office, anti-war and global justice activists will have the opportunity, and the challenge, of demonstrating the coherence of a global system where the odds against the poor and marginalized are kept stacked not by nature, or by accident, but by deliberate policy choices. No better illustration than Paul Wolfowitz is likely to come along soon," write Njoki Njoroge Njehu and Leslie Cagan, Director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition opposing the World Bank and IMF, and National Coordinator of United for Peace & Justice, the U.S.'s largest anti-war coalition, respectively.

"The Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD), a socio-economic justice network of Civil Society Organisations in Zimbabwe, joins the many Global Social Movements in protest against the nomination and confirmation of Mr Paul Wolfowitz, as president of the World Bank Group. Wolfowitz was foreign policy advisor to the president of the United States. Wolfowitz’s recent past is well known: he is one of the architects of the “pre-emptive” war strategy used in Afghanistan and Iraq beginning in October 2001."