One-sided decision making and a lack of communication from the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) contributed to the breakdown in the relationship between the organisations, says Shuttleworth Foundation programme manager Jason Hudson. The comments follow Tectonic's article last week in which the Meraka Centre said they expected to become the South African LPI affiliate after the foundation removed itself from the role.

After being sought by police for five days, Houssein Ahmed Farah was arrested on 7 February 2007 and taken to the criminal investigation department, Reporters Without Borders has learned from his brother, Daher Ahmed Farah, managing editor of the privately-owned weekly "Le Renouveau" and head of the Movement for Democratic Renewal (MRD), an opposition party.

Employees of Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (NECSA) in Phelindaba, Pretoria are suffering from asthma, cancer and myetoma. Although the cause of their illnesses is not clear, it is believed that they are suffering from occupational diseases.

The U.S. Treasury is studying how it might block the financial transactions of more Sudanese people and companies if Khartoum bars an international force from deploying in Darfur, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, February 7.

The International Institute on Sustainable development (IISD) has announced the launch of an information sharing facility that spotlights the African Union’s focus on science and technology (S&T), climate change and sustainable development in Africa. These issues will occupy a central theme at this week’s AU Heads of State summit in Addis Ababa.

Farmers in Ghana will soon be introduced to an innovative agricultural market information service which will help them sell their produce across Africa. The new service known as TradeNet will enable farmers and traders across the continent to share and fix prices of various agricultural products through the use of mobile phone text messages. Farmers who sign up for the service will receive SMS alerts on whatever commodity they are interested in and also where the product is available.

South Africa has identified science, technology and innovation as important pillars of backing a competitive economy, Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom said on Tuesday (January 30). Speaking at the South Africa-Chile Intergovernmental seminar in Pretoria, Mr Hanekom said the importance of these aspects was necessitated by the distorted economy inherited in 1994.

Developing countries must adopt effective policies on technology transfer that meet the needs of all social classes, including the poorest. There is a common misconception that the single most important factor in science and development is the need for adequate funding for relevant research. This type of thinking — sometimes described as the 'science push' model of development — tends to focus on the proportion of a country's gross national product spent on research and development.

The US government broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) is launching a new daily radio broadcast in the Somali language to the Horn of Africa, writes Eric Nyakagwa. The daily half-hour broadcast will start on February 12, and will rely on a group of Somali broadcasters at VOA's headquarters in Washington, DC and freelance reporters in Africa and elsewhere.

Reporters Without Borders has called on the Ivorian authorities to withdraw all charges against journalist Claude Dassé of the privately-owned daily "Soir Info", after he was held for five days at Abidjan investigative police headquarters on a contempt of court charge brought by the state prosecutor.

Radio Victoire, a privately-owned FM station in Lomé, that was suspended for 15 days by the media regulator, Haute Autorité de l'Audiovisuel de la Communication (HAAC), on 24 January 2007, resumed operations after serving the full term of the suspension. On 9 January, HAAC suspended the radio station for an alleged professional misconduct.

Some members of Liberia's lower house of Parliament, opposing the leadership of Speaker Edwin Snowe on 23 January 2007, threatened to bar two independent FM stations and a pro-government radio station from covering their sessions. Star Radio and Radio Veritas, two independent, Monrovia-based stations and Truth FM, a pro-government radio station, were accused of bias in the coverage of the ongoing leadership conflict in the country's legislature.

The cost of international broadband is set to drastically reduce within 18 months after the Kenyan government confirmed that it is ready to adopt three different under sea cables provided through various routes. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communication said that Kenya was taking a three-pronged approach calculated to reduce the cost of international connectivity.

Stinging criticism from the world-renowned Reuters news agency, evidence from numerous analysts and a verbal lashing by President Thabo Mbeki himself have failed to penetrate Telkom’s impervious skin and force it to cut its prices. So what impact will come from 200 despondent consumers moaning about the high cost of a phone call?

ZMI is a summer school for media and politics started in 1994 by the cofounders of Z Magazine (1988) and South End Press (1977) to teach radical politics, media and organizing skills, the principles and practice of creating non-hierarchical institutions and projects, activism, and particularly vision and strategy for social change. Classes are held in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Six months after Senegal agreed to an African Union request that it prosecute Chad's former dictator, it has moved very slowly in bringing Hissène Habré to trial on charges of crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper. Human Rights Watch noted that Senegal had not even passed the legislation needed to try Habré.

Media practitioners in Africa have been challenged to help African governments in formulating a regulatory environment that is conducive to the establishment of indigenous media.

Speaking at a media session 22 January at the ongoing World Social Forum at Kasarani in Nairobi, the Director of Highway Africa News Agency (HANA), Chris Kabwato said there was urgent need to engage African governments in media best practices. This kind of dialogue with the government would enable indigenous African practitioners to invest in producing culturally relevant content and counter the highly

Skewed Euro-centric content that Africans are currently consuming. Mr Kabwato said that Africa had for years been infiltrated by foreign media and this had reduced Africans to almost pure consumers of media and not producers. Time had come he said, for Africans to establish home-grown media as alternatives to the foreign media which dominate broadcast and print media in Africa. Mr Kabwato warned that some of the alternative media in Africa relied heavily on donor funding for their operations. This he said was dangerous because it meant that the media were not self-sustainable.

Other issues he outlined as crucial for African government’s to address in order to create indigenous African media with culturally relevant content were : access of media ; citizenship versus consumerism ; the north/south relationship ; hegemony ; and diversity and pluralism. Speaking at the same forum, the Africa director of Inter Press Service news agency, Ms Farai Samhungu revealed that although IPS was formed with the ideal of the South to generate home- grown news, the agency was still donor dependent 43 years later. Ms Samhungu said although IPS publishes in about 20 languages, the cost of translations was exorbitant.

“For example it may cost us three times more to produce a French translation of a news report from English”, said Ms Samhungu emphasizing the expenses involved in producing multi-lingual content. She however said there is room for the co-existence of information as a commodity as well as for the common good.

A communication activist, Jason Nadi, spoke about the liberalization of media content production. Mr Nadi said that the modern information communication technologies such as the Internet, had enabled individuals to produce their own news content culminating in a information society. In common parlance an information society is one where information is treated as a form of currency at different platforms and fora. Mr Nadi said this individually produced media is an alternative to the traditional mass media. Mr Nadi said that in Europe, media conglomerates in individual countries have distorted media freedom as giant companies had the financial power to control content and the manner of distribution. He said information through mass media is becoming less reliable because it is treated as merchandise for consumers not audiences.

“To counter this we need communities to be able to create and exchange their own content and use different platforms”, said Nadi adding that modern technology in the media was operating amid medieval media governance structures. Jon Barnes from the PANOS London office said that his organisation had identified weaknesses and challenges within the African media and began redressing them. For example, he said, PANOS was engaged in building African journalists capacity to report effectively on trade issues especially at international level where there is a dearth of African generated content.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

If the present political condition of modern Africa can be judged by current western media headlines, the judgment-call of history is not in Africa’s favour. Current headlines correspond to a biased interpretation of the reality on the ground, encourage the cult of Afro pessimism among its readers, reports John Gashugi for the New Times of Rwanda.

The call for papers for the second eLearning Africa conference, which will take place from May 28 to 30 in Nairobi, Kenya, has just closed. The annual event is rapidly becoming the preeminent eLearning capacity-building event for the entire African continent and a forum for all stakeholders engaged in the planning and implementation of technology-supported learning and training.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has vehemently condemned the unlawful sacking of seven members of the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) from the Nation Media Group who lost their jobs because of their involvement in the union.