Two Rwandan journalists with the Umurabyo newspaper have been sentenced to long jail terms after being found guilty of stirring up ethnic divisions. Editor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years, while reporter Saidath Mukakibibi was imprisoned for seven.

Two violent attacks by police on news photographers in Pretoria and Bloemfontein are to be taken up by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). The investigation comes as editor and journalist groups condemned the attacks and demanded that the policemen responsible be criminally investigated and prosecuted.

Police personnel in Accra on 2 February 2011 scuttled a plan picketing by members of the Right to Information (RTI) Coalition at Ghana’s Parliament House to register their displeasure about undue delay of the law makers to pass the bill into law, which was laid in 2009. The RTI Bill went through the first reading on 5 February 2010, it is now before the Joint Communication and Legal Committee of parliament and the committee is expected to conduct a nationwide consultative meeting, but the coalition says the bill is not on the agenda of this session of the house which ends in June, 2011.

Sanogo Aboubakar and Kangbe Yayoro Charles Lopez, of the pro-Ouattara Television Notre Patrie (TVN) in Bouake, the second largest city in Cote d’Ivoire, have been detained by security forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo since their arrest on 28 January 2011. The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the two journalists were picked up at the airbase of the Liaison Transport Air Group in Abidjan where they were to board a flight belonging to the United Nations Operations in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI) to cover a story at the Golf hotel.

The Angola Monitor covers the politics, economics, development, democracy and human rights of Angola. It is published quarterly by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) and is available in both English and Portuguese. This issue covers President dos Santos’ state visit to South Africa, the meeting of the general secretaries of liberation movements in Luanda and the 2011 budget and increased investment in industry and health. It also covers calls for more transparency in the oil industry, cases of rape during the continued mass expulsions into DRC and growing concerns about violence against reporters.

Do you want to change the world? Are you a woman working in tech, or working for a cause in which Google Maps could help tell your story? Or perhaps you’re just interested in Google Map Maker and mapping your world, as well as interacting with other like minded women? Then join us at iHub on 12 February 2011 for a Mapping Party using Google Map Maker.

The Egyptian government's attacks on journalists and unprecedented blackout of the nation's Internet and mobile phone services have crushed the rights of free expression, assembly and association and should be reversed immediately, say the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and a growing chorus of IFEX members.

In a letter to the Ad Hoc Committee for the Protection of Information Bill, Idasa, the African Democracy Centre has questioned the applicability of the controversial legislation to various organs of state. 'It appears that the ad hoc committee’s view is that it is in fact too time-consuming to do an audit of the organs of state which exist. We are of the view that it is crucial that every consideration be given to the scope/applicability of the proposed legislation. Given the extensive number of organs of state, we submit that Parliament needs to be mindful of legislating without fully considering the impact of the draft legislation.'

Richard Rooney’s online Swazi Media Commentary is a rare example of objective, progressive news and journalism in a country burdened with biased reporting and censorship, writes Peter Kenworthy.

A group of engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow (which Google acquired last week) have built a speak-to-tweet service for protesters in Egypt. The service, which is already live, enables users to send tweets using a voice connection. Anyone can tweet by leaving a voicemail on one of three international phone numbers: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855. Tweets sent using the service will automatically include the hashtag #egypt.

Judges at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor have admitted into evidence two Wikileaks documents that appear to question the impartiality of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The decision comes just days before prosecutors and defense attorneys present their closing arguments in Mr. Taylor's war crimes trial.

Secret US embassy cables sent from Cairo in the past two years reveal that the Obama administration wanted to maintain a close political and military relationship with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, who is now facing a popular uprising. A frank briefing note in May 2009 ahead of Mubarak's trip to Washington, leaked by WikiLeaks, reported that the Egyptian president had a dismal opinion of Obama's predecessor, George Bush.

Even as they were officially supporting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, American officials were secretly helping dissidents interested in using social media to overthrow his regime, a secret dispatch from the US embassy in Cairo has revealed. The cable, dated 30 December 2008 and recently released on the Wikileaks website, also describes a plot to oust Mr. Mubarak in 2011, which it dismisses as 'unrealistic'.

Parliament threw MPs debating the contentious Protection of Information Bill a lifeline on Friday with a last-minute extension of their deadline. The mandate of the ad hoc committee set up in March last year to process the bill was due to expire on Friday. But the chairman, ANC MP Cecil Burgess, said at the last scheduled sitting that though he could not cite the rule making it possible, he had been assured that the speaker, Max Sisulu, would announce an extension before the current mandate ran out. He told reporters later the deadline had been extended to March 31.

On Twitter, friends express concerns for Egyptian blogger and Google Middle East staffer Wael Ghonim, who has been missing since Thursday. Ghonim, who studied in Cairo and is now Head of Marketing at Google's UAE office, had tweeted his intent to be at the 25 January protests.

International press institutes have come out strongly against Egyptian authorities’ suppression of the media, following the withdrawal of Al Jazeera’s license to broadcast from the North African country. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned on Sunday the information ministry’s move to shutdown Al Jazeera’s bureau in the country. The CPJ described the move as an attempt to 'disrupt media coverage by Al Jazeera and calls on them to reverse the decision immediately'.

The latest edition of this newsletter contains information on:
- Building solidarity across borders
- NGO referral meeting
- The right to choose: a short play
- Home-based care
- Announcements.

The spread of digital technologies in the Middle East and Africa has generated the view that 'new media' open up political spaces for dissent, activism and emancipation. In October 2010, a conference 'New Media|Alternative Politics' brought together researchers, academics, activists, journalists and policy makers to discuss whether and how new media empower an alternative politics and mobilises political change. The first working paper, 'New media, same old regime politics: Resisting the repression of media freedom in Zimbabwe' by Amanda Atwood and Bev Clark from the Kubatana Trust of Zimbabwe is now available.

This book traces the role of politicians and public intellectuals in media, civil society and the academy in producing and disseminating a politically usable historical narrative concerning ideas about patriotism, race, land, human rights and sovereignty. It raises pressing questions about the role of contemporary African intellectuals in the making of democratic societies. In so doing the book adds a new and rich dimension to the study of African politics, which is often diluted by the neglect of ideas.

The protest movement in Egypt has mobilised the young and the middle classes using the Internet and social networks in a challenge to the authorities that has seen both Twitter and Swedish video-streaming site Bambuser blocked. Mobile phones too were unable to get a signal on Tuesday in Tahrir Square in the centre of the capital Cairo, which has been a rallying point for thousands of protesters. Pro-democracy activists countered on Wednesday by disseminating technical advice to overcome these obstacles to enable the mobilisation to continue.