It will soon be a quarter of a century since the death of Thomas Sankara. He joined Lumumba, Um Nyobé, Felix Moumié, Osendé Afana, Ben Barka, Outel Bono, Pierre Mulele, etc in the pantheon of the worthy sons of Africa assassinated by the colonialists and their African accomplices. But today, when Africa more than ever needs the spirit of the Sankarist action, Guy-Marius Sagna considers it regrettable that Sankara is not the reference he should have been.

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For 50 years now, France has covered a state crime it has had since 17 October 1961, when the Parisian police attacked Algerian demonstrators and killed more than 200 of them. Some were killed by bullets, while others drowned in the Seine River. From General de Gaulle to Sarkozy, this massacre has been covered like a deliberate political decision, because it has never been disapproved. Emmanuel Terray thinks "it is high time that this accomplice silence ends!”.
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Paul Biya is set for a third term in office. A well locked electoral system offers him re-election without encountering any opposition. It is in this respect that the Cameroonian autocrat has gone after the popular movement which had destabilized him in 2008, where the repression caused about 140 deaths. According to Pierre Sidy, the political opposition failed for "not taking the political direction of these social movements and for not succeeding in structuring and anchoring them in the popular quarters”.
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The Durban+10 Coalition conference passed in near indifference from international media. Not shocking when it is known that the states which control the world had wanted to empty the Durban Declaration of all its contents ten years ago. The conference against racism, discrimination, xenophobia and associated intolerance, fights on in the same logic. Behind their masks of virtue, racism, xenophobia and intolerance continue to nourish them. ‘Some’, notes Mireille Pennon-Mendès-France, ‘do not hesitate to bring back to the surface the theory of the supremacy of the ` white race' as the only race that can save humanity’. Interventions such as that carried out by NATO in Libya do not justify themselves differently.

It is almost a quarter of a century since Thomas Sankara disappeared. In the pantheon of the brave sons of Africa assassinated by the former colonists and their African accomplices, he joins people like Lumumba, Um Nyobé, Félix Moumié, Osendé Afana, Ben Barka, Outel Bono and Pierre Mulele. But today, now that Africa needs the Sankarist spirit of action more than ever, Guy-Marius Sanga wishes more people looked to Sankara as a role model

DePaul’s Program in African and Black Diaspora Studies provides its students with a systematic, interdisciplinary, and integrated course of study of Africa and the Black Diaspora. Students will have an opportunity to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and Black Diaspora Studies with a concentration in Africa, Black America, or Afro-Caribbean and Latin America.

'For years since the dramatic 2001 decision by Federal District Judge William Yohn overturning Abu-Jamal’s death sentence on grounds that the trial judge’s instructions to the jury had been faulty and that the jury verdict form was dangerously misleading, Abu-Jamal has remained stuck in brutal solitary confinement at SCI-Green,' writes Dave Lindorf, the author of 'Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal'. 'That’s the super-max facility that houses Pennsylvania’s condemned prisoners, where Abu-Jamal and the others who are actually facing death are denied any human contact either with each other or with close relatives and friends.'

Charles Nhamo Rupare discusses xenophobic attacks in South Africa and the concept of ubuntu. 'We are all children of Afrika and our future is in our actions and relations,' he writes.

The United States's incarceration of the 'Cuban Five' proves that it has no respect for humanity and justice, the ANC Youth League said. In a statement supporting the release of the Cuban Five, the league criticised the US government for its approach to international politics. 'In the spirit of international and human solidarity, the ANC Youth League is of the conviction that the incarceration of the Cuban Five by the United States government is not only unjust, but a gross violation of human rights and disrespect of the integrity and sovereignty of Cuba.'

More than 500 US residents with a blood connection to Kenya gathered in Washington recently in the first conference focused on the diaspora's relationship with the homeland. One particularly prominent figure was absent however: President Barack Obama. Kenya's US Ambassador Elkanah Odembo said organisers had invited Mr Obama, whose father was Kenyan, to attend the event. The White House replied that the president's schedule did not allow for such an appearance.

Dave Zirin, writing in The Nation, asks a series of questions about the US execution. 'Can Troy Davis, who fought to his last breath, actually be dead this morning? If we felt tortured with fear and hope for the four hours that the Supreme Court deliberated on Troy’s case, how did the Davis family feel? Why does this hurt so much?'

Pan-African Awards for Entrepreneurship in Education is a competition initiated by Teach A Man To Fish and generously sponsored by partner organisation Educating Africa. It continues to reward organizations in Africa that use innovative and entrepreneurial techniques to fill gaps in educational services across the continent. The competition is open to all organisations based in Africa working in education, from primary through to tertiary, as well as in non-formal and adult education.

This gathering, the PACAI, capitalises on the 20th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration, to make a difference to information access. The event is convened by the Windhoek+20 Campaign on Access to Information in Africa in conjunction with UNESCO, and possibly the African Union. It will be one of several conferences taking place simultaneously in Cape Town, and it will share an opening session with them. The totality of events will come together for a joint closing session, dubbed as the Africa Information and Media Summit (AIMS).

Remittances from Africans abroad are booming, growing fourfold in the past 20 years and shrugging off the global financial crisis, to total $40 billion a year. 'Tapping into this money with so-called diaspora bonds could help provide Africa with the equipment and services it needs for long-term growth and poverty reduction,' World Bank policymakers Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Dilip Ratha wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times.

'Thinking Africa: Liberation, Race and Higher Education' supplement was published by South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper (26 August 2011) and contains reflection pieces from Rhodes University's 'Thinking Africa: Fanon 50 years later' (6-9 July 2011) colloquium as well as the 'Race in Higher Education Roundtable' (11-13 July 2011) organised under the auspices of the university's Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning.

An ‘ambitious and brilliant book by one of Africa’s leading diaspora intellectuals’, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza’s ‘In Search of African Diasporas’ is ‘filled with analytical insights, captivating stories, and intriguing observations on the complex histories and experiences of African diasporas, their triumphs and tragedies, perils and possibilities, and their enduring struggles for belonging, for their humanity.’

Africa’s ‘tale of treasures at one end and tragedies at the other cannot be understood’ without ‘locating it in the trajectory of worldwide capitalist accumulation,’ argues Issa Shivji.

Only it's not bombs they are dropping!

US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables. The cables show that high-level US and UN officials even discussed a politically motivated prosecution of Aristide to prevent him from 'gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti'.

The 7th conference of 'The Revival of Panafricanism Forum' was held on Saturday, 16 July 2011. The topic of the conference was 'Panafricanism: A Viable Ideology to Address Africa’s Rape Redux/Euro-American 21st Century Neo-Colonial Re-Conquest and Scramble for Africa.' The speakers were Dr. Molefi Kete Asante (keynote), Peter Bailey, Maurice Carney, and Chioma Oruh. Videos of the conference are posted on Youtube:
- (Part 1)
- (Dr. Molefi Asante, keynote speaker)
- (Closing remarks and comments).

Following the desecration of the tomb of the late Thomas Sankara in Ougadougou, his family is calling on the Burkinabé state ‘to apprehend and sanction the authors of this barbaric act and to ensure that this type of behaviour does not go unpunished.’

‘Defying the image of Kenyans as a parasitic nation that would gladly stand by and watch fellow citizens die’, Kenyans of various backgrounds have raised ‘in eight days ten times what the Kenyan government had pledged to put towards food distribution to the drought stricken areas,’ writes H. Nanjala Nyabola. Shouldn't the government be doing more?

Opposition members of parliament in Burkina Faso have called on France to open its archives to look for evidence of involvement of the French secret services in the 1987 death of Thomas Sankara. The call is the latest effort in a long-running struggle to force a full and open inquiry into the assassination which brought Burkina Faso's current president, Blaise Compaoré, to power. 'Evidence presented in other countries indicates that France was involved in the death of Thomas Sankara,' said MP and lawyer Stanislas Benewindé Sankara - no relation to the former president - at a 16 July press conference in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital.