Mango exists to help aid agencies and NGOs to work more efficiently, helping to strengthen their financial management by providing:
- financial training for NGO staff,
- qualified finance staff to work with NGOs,
- accounting resources and publications,
- professional networking opportunities,
- specialist consultancy services. Visit their website for more details of their training programmes.

The successful candidate will assist in the development, review, and monitoring of marketing plans and the development of evidence-based marketing; track country research plans; provide and maintain resources and references on social marketing; support the development of field platforms and field operations; and stimulate sharing of best practices across country platforms.

"The Friday ward round starts, like any other weekday round, at 7:30 and continues till 11:30. It involves a multidisciplinary team of specialists, therapists and nurses. The children are critically ill. We review each patient and plan management for the day. Our tools include mechanical devices and powerful drugs that support vital functions, and antibiotics. Our decisions have life-changing implications. The potential to do harm is enormous, the responsibility overwhelming. The buck stops with me.

After the round, team members implement the decisions, continuously monitoring changes in the patients’ conditions. Meanwhile new admissions arrive: children who have had major operations, critically ill children with medical conditions.

The afternoon round starts routinely at 4:30. On this Friday night it ended after 7 pm. I went home at 8:57 pm after updating my notes and discussing a child’s condition with her family, leaving two registrars to cover the night. Later, during the night I had 6 phone calls from the registrars to discuss patients." The latest issue of Critical Health Perspectives, produced by the People's Health Movement, examines the issue of the overtime contracts and salaries of health workers.

The government will recruit professional HIV/Aids counsellors in schools. The Commissioner of Secondary Education and HIV/Aids Coordinator in the Ministry of Education and Sports, Hajji Yusuf Nsubuga, said they will create awareness among students on the HIV/Aids scourge.

More than one million children in urban slums and arid areas are still out of school. A joint donor statement released in Nairobi last Thursday says the Government has a daunting task in ensuring the children receive education. Widespread poverty has pushed the children out of school, and they spend the day doing domestic chores at the expense of education, says the report.

Senior lecturer at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, Prof. Jimi Adesina, has called for a sustained commitment to education in Nigeria. Prof. Adesina, who was a participant at the "Conference on Education Reform in Nigeria", held in Abuja last week told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that sustained commitment to "higher education in particular was imperative as a public good rather than as a commodity".

HNI-TPO will start up a regional programme focusing on the rehabilitation of basic health services in the Great Lakes District and the Horn of Africa. The regional programme will include specific interventions in Burundi, DR Congo and Sudan with an emphasis on disease control (including malaria and HIV/AIDS) and sexual and reproductive health.

The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), supported by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is looking for an Associate Professional Officer to work on CIFOR research and communications activities. This program gives promising young researchers/professionals invaluable on-the-job training under guidance by established scientists/professionals.

City dwellers can spot the young maids fresh from Chadian villages from afar - by their ragged dusty clothes and unsophisticated hair, and the way they shy away from cars speeding up and down the streets. Teenagers from far-off rural villages are flocking increasingly to the capital N'djamena nowadays to become domestic workers, one of the most elusive forms of child labour. "They're aged between 8 and 15, and earn very little," Felicien Ntakiyimana, who works on child protection for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Chad, told IRIN.

The South African Council of Churches has called for the formation of a Save Jobs Coalition, led by COSATU, in response to the impending closure of Rex Trueform’s Salt River plant. The closure of the plant will put another 1000 people out of work in the Western Cape, and bring the clothing, textile and leather industries closer to collapse. The decline of the clothing and textile industries undermines the prosperity and dignity not only of individual households, but also of entire communities.

The United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) and the International Foundation for Science (IFS) are pleased to announce a new call for proposals to the Agriculture for Peace Fellowship (APF) competition. All applications must be received by IFS no later than 30 June, 2005 in order to be considered for support.

Doctors of the World-USA seeks public health professional to lead field-based implementation of a new project in the West Pokot District of Kenya. Duties include working with HQ program leadership and in-country partners; establishing DOW operations in Western Kenya, including overseeing human resources, facilities, and financial operations issues; and leading project activities in close cooperation with a Kenyan clinician.

Established in 1988, the Reebok Human Rights Award provides recognition and financial support to young people from the United States and around the world who have made significant contributions to the cause of human rights, often against great odds. A $50,000 grant is given to further the work of each award recipient. 

The former Pop Star, of Boomtown Rats fame, Bob Geldof, (also known as Sir Bob or Saint Bob) is not a very popular man in some very powerful quarters in Uganda these days.

Nothing new in that because even in the Irish republic where he was born and in Britain where he made his Pop name and was later Knighted by the British Queen - not for his Pop Music, but for inspiring the Band Aid appeal that caught global attention in 1984 in response to the Ethiopian famine - he is not universally popular.

He has earned a well- deserved reputation for being a loud-mouth (and here I should declare a potential personal conflict of interest because my mouth does not often have a stopper), rubbing people the wrong way and ruffling all available feathers in his crusade against hunger, debt and poverty in Africa.

I have had occasion to observe that he sometimes appears to be crying more than the bereaved. It is easy to be taken over by the cause and sometimes that may lead to the precipitate road of the end justifying the means. If there is a Guinness Book of Records entry for using expletives without caring whether it is president or prisoner, diplomat or peasants, that are listening, Bob Geldof should be a runaway winner. It is part of his stock in trade. Sometimes the theatrics stand in the way of the message he has which makes many to accuse him of either insatiable individualism or petulant exhibitionism. I have had one or two run-ins with him where it was bull for bull . But his publicity tactics have worked well for him because whatever he says often gets global attention.

And so it was typical of him at the launching of the Blair Commission for Africa report two weeks ago to send a verbal missile in an aside about President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and his worst kept secret attempt to tinker with the constitution of Uganda and lift the restriction on two terms for the presidency so that he could stand again. Ekisanja (as the self succession bid is known in Luganda) has now reached global media. Thanks to Geldof asking Museveni to move off the state lodge!

Not unexpectedly the Ekisanja supporters have been up in arms decrying his impertinence: how dare he interfere in our sovereign affairs? What does this foreigner, a musician for that matter (some say with angry disbelief, as if musicians should have no political views), know about Uganda to be asking Mzee to step aside?

The uproar culminated in an obviously orchestrated demonstration by supporters of the President last Monday condemning Geldof’s brash pronouncement. While they were at it they also had non-diplomatic words for the British government for meddling in Uganda’s affairs. The UK High Commissioner to Uganda has been grumbling rather too loudly of recent and also a recent statement by a British Foreign Office Junior Minster voiced concerns about Uganda’s transition to a genuine multi party democracy.

According to newspaper reports there were many placards and slogans on display. They were broadly nationalistic, anti imperialist, very Pan Africanist, anti neo-colonialism, etc. But one in particular caught my attention: It said ‘yes to aid but no to foreign intervention!’

While Bob Geldof may not be surprised (and would have been disappointed if people were indifferent to his remarks) at attacks on him, I am not sure how he would react to a planned demonstration today by anti-Museveni, anti-third term and opposition supporters or activists in his support. They must be hoping they can enlist his support as a veteran global publicist for their local cause. In addition to Bob’s crusade to feed starving Africans the Ugandan opposition is adding delivery of democracy too! The bad news is that only recently Geldof in yet another choreographed outburst openly said he was tired of being regarded as ‘Mr Bloody Africa’.

The banner that said ‘yes to aid but no to intervention’ exposes the self-inflicted humiliating contradiction confronting many African leaders. They expect foreigners to build their roads, feed their people, construct their stadiums and hospitals but at the same time they want to assert their independence. Uganda under Museveni is typical of this disease. The country is talked up as a success story, though it is fast losing its shine to new ‘miracles’ like Mozambique. Yet its budget and development plans are more than 50% dependent on foreigners. How sustainable is this in the long run? No doubt the country has seen some economic growth under Museveni’s laissez fair economics but real development is still very much elusive. But it is a country that has now become an Aid junkie.

It will be ridiculous for those who are paying the piper not to want to dictate the tune. After all those who attended the Ekisanja demonstration must report back to those who provided them with the logistics, facilitation and the sodas that followed their successful mission to Parliament Avenue. As it is with individuals so it is with states and between states where the stakes are much higher.

But African governments would like to eat their cake and keep same. They want to serve imperialism and serve their people even when the logic of the relationship is one of cat and mouse. They steal their peoples’ money and head for European and American banks with them and yet they want to be independent of Washington, London or Paris! Many of them have signed away the national economy, without referendum or even perfunctory consultation, yet when it comes to some very narrowly defined convenient political issues like our obligation to continue to choose them (or vote without choosing as some have described it) they suddenly declare the people are sovereign. What kind of sovereignty and selective empowerment is this that does not allow you to decide the way your national resources are managed or mismanaged? If the people are too backward to decide how their economy is managed why do you need their voice in determining how they should be governed and by whom?

They go to the IMF/World Bank without consultation. They fight wars without consultation but when they have problems with their donor-masters then they remember sovereignty, self-determination and Pan Africanism. Otherwise they are proud to be seen with their powerful friends from Europe and America. It is like wannabe Africans –Americans who only remember they are Black when they are in big trouble. Remember OJ Simpson? Now look at the pathetic Michael Jackson and his trial for paedophilia. Suddenly Rev Jesse Jackson is his spiritual counsellor.

This Ekisanja militia of Uganda of today or their cousins across the continent in similar battles to sustain ruling regimes are mere pawns in a cynical manipulation of the population to perpetuate personal or class rule. Where were those now carrying the banner of non-interference when Uganda and Rwanda tragically fought against each other, three times, in the DRC and both Presidents and their executive entourage traveled to Auntie Clare in London to settle their differences!

They did not listen to their own peoples, even their own cabinets, let alone neighbours or other Africans, but as soon as London called they were off like good boys. Why? Because Clare Short was in charge of DFID and was dishing out millions of British taxpayer money to Uganda and Rwanda. They even claimed that Clare was a mutual friend of theirs. But the same was said of Lynda Chalker before Clare and I am sure now both governments have ingratiated themselves to the DFID boss, Hilary Benn! But the dependence on outsiders (and external leverage in our affairs) is not just on the part of governments but is fast corroding our civil society at all levels especially in these days of donor-driven professional NGOs, MONGOs (my own NGO), NGI (Non Governmental Individuals), etc.

Yet we proclaim independence and demand sovereignty. Like Wole Soyinka challenged Late Sedar Senghor of Senegal, the apostle of Negritude: ‘A tiger needs not proclaim its Tigeritude’. You do not claim independence and self-determination but earn it by self-reliant actions and trusting your own people to decide the economic, social, cultural and political direction of their polity. It cannot be a tactical tool used when it is convenient.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to

"Glorified secondary schools" is the derisive term coined by Nigerians to describe their country's universities. Classrooms are overcrowded, with many students sitting on the floor during lectures. Libraries lack books, and laboratories are ill-equipped to conduct experiments. "It is not what it used to be in terms of facilities, in terms of teaching aids, in terms of infrastructures. It certainly has deteriorated quite considerably," says Bola Fajemirokun, an environmental activist who graduated from the University of Lagos 20 years ago.

The University of Bouake in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire is set to reopen next month almost three years after the outbreak of war forced it to close it doors and deprived thousands of youngsters of a chance of higher education, government and rebel officials said. Dozens of new students lined up at the campus on Wednesday to enrol for the first academic year since the start of the civil war in September 2002.

We are an initiative called 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005. Our goal is to identify 1000 women worldwide who work for peace every day. Together these 1000 women and their work are being honored with a nomination to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. At this stage of the project, the biographies of the 1000 peace women are being written locally according to several formats: an exhibition, a book with 100 photographs and 1000 texts plus introductory chapters, post cards with abbreviated descriptions of the work of the 1000 women, and extensive biographies for a website. We are looking for regional editors who are willing to work with our regional coordinators and take on the responsibility of editing the biographies produced in the regions.

The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium), the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), the Faculty of Law of University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and the International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations (IFHHRO) have pleasure in announcing the 4th International Human Rights Academy which will take place from 16-29 October 2005 in Cape Town South Africa.

The report from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa examines the critical factors that affect rural schooling in South Africa, focusing on the three provinces KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. The report argues that the historical development, contours and consolidation of power relations between urban and rural, and within rural areas, have resulted in neither formal nor substantive equality for people living in rural areas. It states that for rural development strategies to be sustainable they need to integrate both educational issues as well as community participation.

Ghana has made considerable progress in increasing enrolments amongst both boys and girls. The rate of progress has been sufficient to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, and hence gender equality at primary level. However, reaching this goal cannot be taken for granted, since there are still a large number of disadvantaged schools in poorer areas - shown by the fact that nearly one in five of primary graduates are illiterate. Achieving the targets will require increased focus on schools in remote areas and help for those schools that need it.