Zambia's government has filed a corruption case against former President Frederick Chiluba, in a High Court in the UK. Mr Chiluba - along with a Congolese businessman - is accused of defrauding the Zambian state of almost $35m and sending the money abroad.

Thousands of protesters in Niger have demonstrated outside parliament against rising prices - some calling for the president's resignation. They were complaining about tax increases of nearly 20% imposed in January on basic commodities.

About 90 non-government organisations have opposed a proposal in the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2005, to lift presidential term limits. The NGOs are under an umbrella body called the Coalition for Constitutional Amendments. "Lifting term limits is to ignore the very lessons we claim to have learnt," the National Coordinator of the Human Rights Network, Mr Martin Masiga, also co-ordinating the Uganda Human Rights House Project, told journalists at Collin Hotel.

Members of Liberia's transitional parliament voted on Monday to indefinitely suspend their parliamentary speaker, George Dweh, for corruption along with his deputy and two other members of the house. A report by a special parliamentary committee, published last week, concluded that the four men had spent US$92,000 of government money without authorisation.

Votes were being counted on Monday in the Central African Republic (CAR), the day after presidential and parliamentary elections marked by delays in many polling stations. The country's electoral body, the Mixed Independent Electoral Commission (CEMI), has 15 days to announce the results of the polls.

Togo's opposition parties have picked septuagenarian politician Emmanuel Bob-Akitani as their joint candidate for next month's presidential election, hoping he will be able to beat the son of the late head of state, Gnassingbe Eyadema. "He is the sole candidate for Togo's democratic opposition to stand against the dying dictatorship," the main opposition party Union of Forces for Change (UFC) said on its website. "He represents the hope of a whole nation."

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday rejected a proposal from Burundi's electoral commission to postpone the country's final round of elections by two months, a senior Ugandan government official told IRIN. The deadline for the next poll had been 22 April 2005. A senior official in the Ugandan government, who asked to remain anonymous, said that IEC officials had wanted the next poll to be delayed because they felt that laws required to organise voting more efficiently were not yet in place.

President Thabo Mbeki said this week that he has every confidence in Zimbabwe's ability to hold free and fair elections, and that the country's new electoral law is the first to adhere to SADC's principles and guidelines governing democratic elections. As President, not only of the most powerful nation within the SADC group, but also the nation which chairs the SADC organ on defence, security and politics, and which for this reason is to head the observer mission to Zimbabwe, his comments deserve the most serious attention.

President Mbeki is quoted as saying:" I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair." Like other commentators around the world, we have to say that we are astounded at the President's remarks. Indeed dumbfounded.

"The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) has been observing elections in the SADC Region for the past seven years and in the process has been involved in over 20 electoral processes. The organisation has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience in the observation of elections in the SADC region and beyond. EISA observer missions gather information for the purposes of assessing and documenting key aspects of the electoral process with a view to promoting peer learning across the region. It is in this spirit that the organisation planned and hoped to observe the 2005 Zimbabwe Parliamentary Elections.

Our interest in observing the election was made known in writing to the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following the statement of our intentions, EISA communicated with the said ministry on a regular basis hoping to receive an affirmative response. Unfortunately, an invitation to observe the elections has not been forthcoming."

At a two-day meeting that began on Tuesday, AU officials were considering three options for disarming an estimated 10 000 to 14 000 Rwandan rebels in the DRC. "Short of nothing is being done and there is no other option than to make a forceful disarmament of the" rebels, said AU's Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit. "Africa is ready to provide troops for that forceful disarmament. But we don't want to intervene in isolation of all the existing efforts." Both DRC's President Joseph Kabila and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame have agreed to allow the African Union to coordinate any new operation involving African Union troops.

"As organisations within civil society that are concerned with enhancing transparency and accountability of both our public and private institutions we would like to have our voices heard on the matter of whether the Directorate of Special Operations (DSO) or the "Scorpions" should be moved from the National Prosecuting Authority to the South African Police Services. We believe that to date the Scorpions have played an invaluable role in successfully tackling highly complex criminal cases in South Africa. They have demonstrated that they possess the will and capacity to investigate serious allegations of criminality and corruption without fear or favour. In doing so they have provided the public with the reassurance that even criminals at the highest levels of government and commerce can be held accountable for their actions. The Scorpions have done much to give us hope that in South Africa no one is untouchable and we can achieve the constitutional vision that all shall be equal before the law."

In my country (DRC) we like to celebrate, to organize ceremonies... it is our way of expression. Africa is primary a rhythmic continent. Particularly for this kind of celebration (International Women's Day), I think it was very important to celebrate.

Celebration of this kind of day allows government to have the opportunity to evaluate the importance of something. But its also an opportunity for interested people like NGOs and civil society to share their point of view, to express what they are thinking about the situation of women and to be heard. This is not to fight against men, just to have the same chance in the life.

And you know what? Just a few day after women's day our Parliament agreed a big law for all the woman of DRC. Now we share fifty-fifty (equality) with men the opportunity to be represented in government and decision-making institutions! Step by step we will arrive...

We must take all the opportunities to express our voices!

If a UN Security Council draft resolution currently being negotiated is weakened by divisions and veto threats, the situation in Darfur is likely to worsen, warns the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a new report.

The ICG says the key to stabilising the security situation is to persuade the government to begin to fulfil its numerous commitments to disarm and neutralise the Janjaweed militia, responsible for the worst of the atrocities. "The record of at least the past year shows it will not do this as long as it believes the cost of inaction is minimal," states the ICG.

Recommendations to the UN Security Council include the passing of a resolution that: Finds the Government of Sudan in breach of its obligations under Resolutions 1556 of 30 July 2004 and 1664 of 18 September 2004; Imposes asset freezes on ruling party businesses and travel bans on regime officials responsible for atrocities; Gives authorization to the International Criminal Court to exercise jurisdiction over atrocity crimes; and urges the AU force explicitly to protect civilians and relief deliveries.

For its part the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) is urged to expand "significantly" and expand its mandate to include a focus on civilian protection. It should also appoint a senior African diplomat familiar with Sudan and the region to serve as chief mediator in the Abuja peace process.

Meanwhile, the Darfur Consortium, an umbrella group of primarily Africa-based civil society organizations, has called on the UN to take "decisive action" to address the ongoing humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur. The Consortium identified two "paramount concerns" - ensuring protection and security for civilians in Darfur and taking immediate international action to bring those responsible for atrocities in Darfur to justice.

* Visit http://www.icg.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=3314
to read the full ICG report. Click on the link below for a letter from the ICG to the United Nations and a press release from the Darfur Consortium.

I find your news very useful and it is a worthwhile exercise to educate and inform the citizens of Africa about the realities and challenges facing the continent. Some of us do not necessarily go to workshops and conferences where some of these issues are discussed. Pambazuka has made it possible for us to understand the realities of Africa.

I would like to know how you get your information about countries in Africa. I feel in the case of Namibia that it does not really reflect the situation in our country.

My organization, Breaking The Wall of Silence, deals with the human rights abuses that took place during our liberation struggle while in exile. SWAPO, now the ruling party, committed gross human rights violations against its own members. This issue is not yet resolved. BWS is the only organization in Namibia that deals with the conflicts of the past. It is an organization formed by the survivors of such atrocities. If welcomed to participate in information disemination through Pambazuka then i can give you the background information and our activities aimed at resolving the SWAPO ex-deatinee question. Thank-you and keep up the good work.

Editor's Reply: We get our information from African countries by researching news on the internet and by information that is submitted to us by organisations from around Africa. Our editorials and commentary consist of articles that are either submitted to us or commissioned by us. We have a limited staff component to compile the newsletter which is probably why you feel that we don't cover Namibia as well as we should. Please feel free to submit your news and information to

It is with a sad heart that I write to you to express my condolences to you, the Mhone family and all who knew and admired Professor Guy Mhone. We worked with Guy at the University of Zimbabwe from early the early 80s. He was such a soft-spoken, intense and focused gentleman. He was an economist par excellence. I remember our children growing together. I recall moments playing with Tamara Mhone, his beautiful daughter. Our special condolences to the Mhone family. His death will rob many in Africa of such a brilliant person. May his soul rest in eternal peace.

I must commend this African son for recognizing the need to support our evolving African governments in so far as democratization is concerned (Pambazuka News 196: Pan-African Postcard). I couldn't agree with him any more! Our governments need to work together with their citizens and it is the moral authority of the citizens to applaud them when they go right in the same strength we shout when they are in the wrong.

We must realize that as a former president of Kenya used to say "no one out there loves African" and as much as we are receiving funds and moral support from the west for political activism in the name of democracy, they will, and always, desert us when chaos erupt. Do you see those pictures of the so called foreign evacuations from warring countries? Which Africans or citizens are evacuated because their countries are burning and at war? Never!

It is therefore very important to "listen to our shoes when they pinch" and get the right sizes other than trying to wear other people's unfitting shoes. Am I saying we condone corruption, abuse of human rights by our governments, and other such happenings? No. What I am trying to say is that we should ensure our houses do not burn such that we are left in the cold by giving the government moral support whenever it is working towards the right direction and not just being critical, at times, to please external masters.

What a good observation Issa Shivji has made! It is high time to reflect on these issues, however, politics have always dominated and diverted the good course of such arguments. While Tanzanians and other people from developing countries blame the World Bank, IMF and other bilateral and multilateral institutions, our leaders have a case to answer before the citizens. What kind of country are we building today?

As we await the formal release of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa’s report, it is right that the question of Africa’s odious debt has assumed a central place in the debate with the Global Call for Action against Poverty. But what exactly do we have on the table to guarantee that the Blair Commission as well as a number of other initiatives takes seriously the views from the ground on debt?

It would appear that the Commission’s general thrust on debt is relief, not cancellation. Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, is touting the British proposal for developed countries to help finance 100% multilateral debt service cancellation for sub Saharan Africa, with the savings to be channelled into education and health projects. Gordon Brown is also promoting his plan for an International Finance Facility which if successful would result in an immediate doubling of aid from OECD countries, essential to the meeting of the Millennium Development Goal targets. The idea is that donors would make long-term pledges to the IFF extending over 15 years, and these payments would enable the IFF to issue bonds, turning the income into capital available for immediate disbursement.

Even though this has moved the debate closer to what African civil society activists have called for over the last two decades, it is still a far cry from outright cancellation of the continent’s odious debt. For this reason, one is still sceptical about anything short of outright debt cancellation for the continent. Resident in Nigeria, a country whose debt burden has hovered between $32 - $35 billion dollars in the last decade with a poverty profile of seventy percent of its population living below the poverty line and an eighth of its total earnings disappearing into the hole of debt repayments, there is very little that can help Nigeria in Gordon Brown’s proposals. Although it is commendable that the British government is moving beyond the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (established by the World Bank and the IMF), which failed to provide a realistic and sustainable exit from debt, the current approach remains skewed, disjointed and uncoordinated with other key players and one wonders what is stopping Britain from going the whole way.

Apart from the practical problems arising directly from the continent’s debt trap, there is also a huge moral burden that the debt issue poses for the future of Africa. The bulk of the debt owed by most African countries, certainly by Nigeria, is a carry-over from their authoritarian past – when many of the governments were extensions of metropolitan powers totally unaccountable to their citizens.

Also, the debts were incurred in the heydays of tied aid and dubious loans, in the era of the discredited export credit guarantee schemes. Even if one were to argue that a debt is a debt and any cancellation would result in a loss to those who owe no debt, surely there is a moral responsibility here for the industrial world, given the manner innocent children, most of who were unborn at the time the debts were incurred, suffer untold hardship out of deprivation occasioned by the debt burden.

In any case, we already have a precedence that demonstrates a willingness to cancel debt if it is in the strategic interest of particular powerful countries. Iraq just had $20billion of its debt wiped off in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s removal from office. This shows that where there is political will, and citizens’ pressure of governments in the global North is central to this, we should not despair about the ultimate possibility of debt cancellation. In any case, this is increasingly becoming a case of “Can’t pay”, not really one of “Won’t pay” in several African countries. Clearly, poverty - as exemplified by the inequality arising out of unfair sharing of global opportunities - remains the greatest threat to security and democratic consolidation in Africa today and, at the broadest level, globalisation is resulting in deep polarisation between rich and poor throughout the continent.

One’s call for debt cancellation should however not be mistaken for indulgent endorsement of bad and undemocratic governance in Africa. The argument has often been put by some in the West that debt relief or even a Marshall Plan for Africa would not lead to transformational development, allegedly because all the monies would be stolen. This reverse logic is often an excuse for inaction by Western authorities that are themselves indulgent of bad governance in Africa. The story in Africa is clear in the past and even now. Bi-lateral and multilateral agencies continue to seize the momentum provided by the weak capacity of the state to impose received wisdom and new theories of development rather than align external assistance with local needs and efforts and yet turn around to blame the countries in questions for the eventual failure of such policies that they claim to be Africa owned - a claim that is often rejected by many Africans. Where state institutional capacity is weak, an immense burden of responsibility is placed on development partners in which real dialogue with the people and wide consultations (not cosmetic ones a la PRSP) ought to underscore whatever actions are taken.

Ultimately African governments have not performed well over the past decades. The citizens in several African countries are however challenging bad governance in all its ramifications and it is also true to acknowledge that some governments are changing. The problem for them is that there is a limit to how best governments can manage poverty and this is why we need a clean slate on the continent. Only after this would our moral armour be strengthened against bad and unaccountable governance on the continent. Unfortunately, the Blair Commission is likely to fail this test.

* Kayode Fayemi is Director, Centre for Democracy & Development, a research, training and advocacy organisation in West Africa based in Abuja, Nigeria.

* Please send comments to

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank team visited Zambia in February and declared that the country had reached the completion of its Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, which seeks to provide debt relief to poor nations that adhere to IMF conditions. The team declared that they would make a final decision within the next few months as to whether Zambia would qualify for about $3.8 billion of its $6.8 billion debt to be written off.

The IMF and Bank team declared: "IMF and World Bank staff have reviewed progress made in meeting the steps required for reaching the completion point under the HIPC initiative. Information received indicates that all triggers relating to poverty reduction and social sectors have been met.”

Zambia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Poverty rates are up, life expectancy is down, infant mortality has more than doubled since 1990 and malnutrition is common. Debt looms large as one of the reasons why the country has failed to escape the poverty trap. According to figures available from the website of the African Forum for Debt and Development (Afrodad), Zambia spends US$14 per capita on health compared to an average of US$2 500 for high income countries. Spending on debt servicing is 6.4 percent of GNP, more than on health and education combined.

In the essay ‘The Politics of Debt Relief and Poverty Alleviation in Zambia’, Bertha Osei-Hwedie states: “Allocation of the bulk of resources to debt service and government cuts in social expenditure have deprived the majority of the population of access to education, health facilities, clean water and housing, and employment opportunities, making their livelihood hard. Zambia spends 40 percent of new aid money on the repayment of multilateral loans, especially of the IMF and World Bank, instead of on poverty alleviation.” This is despite an HIV/AIDS epidemic, and high infant and maternal mortality.

According to a 2004 World Development Movement report, Zambia turned to the IMF and World Bank for loans in the 1970s after the oil crisis and commodity price collapse. After these external economic shocks in the early 1970s, says the WDM report, Zambia's total external debt rose from US$814 million to US$3,244 million by the end of the decade. The situation then further deteriorated with Zambia's external debt more than doubling to US$6,916 million by the end of the 1980s. “By the late 1990s the debt crisis in countries such as Zambia led to the creation of the much vaunted Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.” By the start of 2003, Zambia had received only 5 per cent of the debt service reduction committed to it under HIPC, says the WDM.

In getting to the latest HIPC completion point where it can be considered for a $3.8 billion debt write-off, Zambia has had a rocky relationship with the IMF and World Bank. In order to qualify for HIPC write-offs she has had to adopt stringent conditions including tight controls on government spending, privatizing public utilities, removing subsidies, deregulating its markets and opening its doors to foreign imports.

Under the HIPC, Zambia has had to adopt a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The PRSP process has been compared by Jubilee Zambia with the earlier Structural Adjustment Programmes and criticized for its market-based growth at the expense of social and economic development of the more vulnerable groups within the country. Like SAPs, states Jubilee Zambia, the PRSP process had an over reliance on the trickle down effect; failed to recognise the cost of growth in terms of the reduction in the social capital and set targets that were heavily influenced by external funders and insufficiently influenced by the results of public participation.

After years of SAPs and PRSPs in 2004, says Make Poverty History, Zambia spent $377 million repaying its debt, an amount twice what it spends on education. If the country does indeed receive a $3.8billion write-off it would still have a debt of $3billion, an amount that would still consume 3-4% of its GDP in servicing, or roughly the same amount as that spent on education. Whether this will be enough to free the country from the chains of debt and whether the price paid was worth it remains to be seen.

SOURCES:
http://www.jctr.org.zm/downloads/prpscrtiq.pdf
http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/aim2.html
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news_…
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=45518
http://www.afrodad.org/debt/zambia.htm
http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns/cambriefs/debt/zambia/zambia.pdf

In connection with a Danida project about the use of Internet in university libraries, an investigation into African researchers' and librarians' expectations of the Internet was conducted. The investigation, situated in Ghana and South Africa, indicates that the Internet has a large potential to improve access to information and break down the isolation that the countries experience. Another aim of the investigation was to look into the possibilities of proving a direct connection between access to the Internet and the traditional methods of measuring a country's development process.