Kenya is a country that is greatly differentiated from most of the other countries in Africa and the rest of the world. Over the years, the socio-political uniqueness of the country has made the lack of understanding of local cultures and arts even more engrained, especially to foreigners, and the rest of the world. Within Africa, Kenya has produced a large number of professionals, who have been absorbed in almost every industry in the world. Not relatively so with the Arts, and other creative disciplines, says this article on the website www.africancolours.com

Drawing on stories elicited from women and children living on the streets, particularly girls, this book considers why girls live their lives and work on the city streets. It discusses what happens to them when they do so, what mechanisms they adopt to cope, the support they receive, and how they adjust to other ways of life. It outlines common perceptions of street children, what may be done to improve their lot, and some existing intervention programmes.

* Liberation and Democracy: Cases from Southern Africa
Henning Melber
* Democracy and the control of elites
Kenneth Good
* Liberation and opposition in Zimbabwe
Suzanne Dansereau

* The state, civil society and social policy: setting a research agenda
Steven Friedman
* Mergers in South African Higher Education: theorising change in transitional contexts
Jonathan Jansen
* Civil Society and the Democratisation processes in Kenya and Uganda
Juman Anthony Okuku

Shell has bowed to pressure from Tony Blair and human rights campaigners by publishing details of payments made to the Nigerian government, which amounted to $900-million last year. The information is included in a new report on its operations in the turbulent west African nation, which also shows the Anglo-Dutch company produced 15,5-million tons of greenhouse gases.

This is the true life story of a young Ugandan girl who runs away from her oppressive and abusive home and is drafted into Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army and is soon in the thick of a guerrilla war.

This book suggests strategies, principles and tools to reduce development-induced disputes and interpersonal conflict as obstacles to achieving sustainable rural livelihoods. Consensual 'win-win' negotiation is promoted as the preferred strategy, but set firmly within the context of the alternatives. The importance of conflict management processes that 'fit' with local customary and legal approaches is stressed.

A solo exhibition of Danisile Ncube's work takes place at the Alliance Francaise in Harare, Zimbabwe between 3 June - 3 July and is entitled: "METAL-TALK". It is composed of sculptures and metal masks.

Olonana ole Mbatian, popularly known as Lenana, was one of the most outstanding Masai and Kenyan leaders, African chief and Laibon (prophet/visionary), whose life spanned the second half of the nineteenth, and the first decade of the twentieth centuries. He lived through and influenced a crucial period in Kenya's history: when the Masai were engaged in nation building, there was competition for leadership, land, people, livestock, wealth and power; and when European intrusions, which were becoming ever more intensive, were shaping Kenya's colonial culture and economy. This is a balanced and critical study of an individual's biography, and historical context.

George Monbiot asks and answers the key questions of our time: what would global democracy look like? And how could we make it happen, against the resistance of the world's most powerful governments? The world is run not by its people but by a handful of self-appointed men in the rich nations. They make the decisions on which everyone else depends: concerning war, peace, debt, development and the balance of trade. The rest of us have no means of holding them to account. While these men might have a national democratic mandate, on the global level their rule is unchallengeable.

Can Africa survive? Many of the nations of sub-Saharan African have all but ceased to exist as organised states: tyranny, diseases such as AIDS, civil war and ethnic conflict--and border invasions threaten the complete disintegration of a region. Peter Schwab offers a clear, authoritative portrait of a continent on the brink. Globalisation and an accompanying level of economic health have passed over Africa. Added to these factors is a patronizing attitude from the West that change in Africa must take place within Western parameters, a UN that lacks any real power, and a US foreign policy in Africa that is unclear.

A Dutch theatre group called The Lunatics have come to South Africa to perform at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. On their way to Grahamstown they will perform in Newtown, Johannesburg.

This book takes a new look at the urban poverty debate at a time when there is renewed interest in urban poverty and management from the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies. It brings together contributions from academics, practitioners and urban poverty specialists to present a multi-disciplinary approach to the debate, highlighting the need to link policy, institutional, and grassroots efforts.

AJOL offers the tables of content and abstracts from journals published in Africa on: Agricultural sciences, arts, culture, language and literature, health, science and technology, and social sciences.

Filmmakers are no doubt visionaries … artists who observe the reality and reproduce it – larger than life on the silver screen. Karyl-Lyn Sanderson, a baby-faced 22-year-old, and a recent NYU film school graduate, is no exception. Her latest project "Elusive Fortune" a documentary about the influence of western culture on young South Africans is at once intriguing and disturbing. In the film Karyl-Lyn interviews young Black South Africans, asking them to define themselves. Some responses are shocking. Karyl-Lyn documents the loss of traditional cultures in South Africa and the overpowering influence of the West.

Twenty-five years after moving to the United States from Mali, an acclaimed filmmaker and scholar explores what it means to be an African in the West, interweaving his own life story with reflections on immigration and change. In this deeply personal and unflinchingly honest exploration of what it means to be African, Manthia Diawara recounts the bittersweet experience of an expatriate who no longer lives life as an "African" yet is the object of others' fantasies and fears about people of the dark continent.

CHIMURENGA is an advertising-free and self-funded quarterly of arts.cultures.politics from Africa for Africa. Contributors to the latest edition include Toure, Kgafela oa Magogodi, Yambo Ouologuem, Zackie Achmat, Elaine Salo, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Kalamu ya Salaam, Gael Reagon, Mukoma wa Ngugi.

From devastating resource wars fuelled by oil or diamonds to a surge in clean, cheap wind power, Vital Signs 2003 documents the trends that are shaping our future in concise analyses and clear tables and graphs. This twelfth volume of the Worldwatch Institute series finds that the twin goals of protecting Earth’s fragile ecosystems and improving the prospects of billions of people will not be achieved as long as humanity remains divided into the extremes of rich and poor.

Cost Recovery and the Crisis of Service Delivery in South Africa is a groundbreaking publication, providing a theoretical and empirical review of the dramatic shift from welfare municipalism to a neoliberal vision of balanced budgets and fiscal restraint. Centred largely on case studies in a number of South African municipalities, this volume critically examines ‘cost recovery’, the heart of this new municipal vision. The authors contend that cost recovery has far-reaching implications for access to services, affordability and privatisation. At a theoretical level, the book explores ways of reversing the insidious effects of commodification, the role of the market in shaping service delivery, and the way we ‘value’ essential goods such as water. These issues are of increasing importance internationally as governments around the world move more aggressively toward full cost recovery measures.

After performing for Nelson Mandela, the Queen and the Royalty party; concerts in New Zealand, Ireland, Paris and so on, they are coming to ekasie Diepkloof. This Soweto violin group is called Buskuid. It was and is not the case of charity where the Goddess (Nalden- the group instructor) will flap her golden wings from her country to uncover talents from Soweto gutters.