Schools re-opened in the backdrop of recent violent strikes in secondary schools which have brought into sharp focus the role of the Ministry of Education in the management of the public education system in Kenya. Management is the art of getting people together to accomplish desired goals through planning, organising, sourcing, leading or directing, and controlling an organisation or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal, writes Collins Wanderi.

Thirty-five bodies have been found washed up on the beaches of Yemen, Medecins Sans Frontieres says. The medical charity says the people died attempting to cross the sea from Somalia in an effort to escape the country's extreme poverty and warfare.

The New Path: The African forum for intellectual thought is published quarterly by the African Research and Resource Forum (ARRF) and provides a forum for innovative thinking about our common future and about how we need to tackle the most intractable problems facing Africa today – focusing on Eastern Africa. The editor invites your articles (opinion and analysis) for the September 2008 edition. This edition of ‘New Path’ will cover the following areas:

The Journal of African Cinemas will explore the interactions of visual and verbal narratives in African film. It recognizes the shifting paradigms that have defined and continue to define African cinemas. Identity and perception are interrogated in relation to their positions within diverse African film languages. The editors are seeking papers that expound on the identity or identities of Africa and its peoples represented in film.

Conectas Human Rights, Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), Open Society Initiative for Western Africa (OSIWA) and Open Society Justice Initiative (the Justice Initiative) are pleased to invite applications for the Human Rights Fellowship Program for the year 2009. The Fellowship Program is 21 months in duration and involves both academic study and practical experience in human rights/public interest advocacy. Human rights activists and lawyers from Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde will be selected to participate in the program.

This book has been written to lay the foundations of a single curriculum framework for citizenship education in Sierra Leone. It is a direct result of a consultative process aimed at complementing and consolidating a number of citizenship-related initiatives within and outside government circles in Sierra Leone. The framework it presents looks at some significant and critical themes, and goes on to set parameters and suggest guidelines to ensure its successful implementation.

The Third EQUINET Regional Conference on Equity in Health in east and southern Africa will be held at Munyonyo, Kampala, Uganda September 23rd-25th 2009 with the theme Reclaiming the Resources for Health: Building Universal People Centred Health Systems in East and Southern Africa. Welcome to the site where you will find latest updates on the conference,opportunities for participation and pre and post conference activities. Please let us know if you have any problems or feedback in using the site.... and welcome to Uganda in 2009!

To serve our fast growing portfolio of international clients like KLM, Heineken, Microsoft, Nestlé and Nike Africa Interactive is urgently looking for African reporters to do paid assignments. We are looking for: African journalists, African photographers and African cameramen/women in all African countries, who speak English or French or Portuguese

Internews Network is seeking an experienced manager with regional expertise in Africa. Candidates should have relevant media experience, as well as previous experience with US government funding and knowledge of French. The full job announcement can be viewed at:

Please email cover letter and resume to Helena Brykarz at [email][email protected]

Today (8th September) we are launching an important report on shack fires. We asked for this report to be written and we worked closely with the writer at all stages. We are releasing the report today so that it can be widely discussed in the lead up to the City Wide Shack Fire Summit called by the movement for Monday 22 September 2008. We will launch the isiZulu version of the report soon. We call on all organisations that are concerned with justice and that want a city in which everyone is safe to read and discuss the report.

The Program Officer for East Africa manages AJWS' portfolio of grants in four countries in East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda). S/he works closely with existing grantees, identifies potential new partners, and oversees a portfolio of approximately 50 grants. Reporting to the Senior Program Officer for Africa, the Program Officer plays an integral role in strategic planning for the Africa region and works with others in the Grants Department on cross-regional initiatives and departmental priorities.

I just heard the terrible news that Mahmoud Darwish passed away. As for many of you, I’m sure, the anguish and pain brought about by this loss is nearly unbearable. Some of us had the privilege, only a few weeks ago, of listening to him reading his poems in an arena in Arles. The sun was setting, there was a soundless wind in the trees and from the neighbouring streets we could hear the voices of children playing. And for hours we sat on the ancient stone seats, spellbound by the depth and the beauty of this poetry. Was it about Palestine? Was it about his people dying, the darkening sky, the intimate relationships with those on the other side of the wall, ’soldier’ and ‘guest’, exile and love, the return to what is no longer there, the memory of orchards, the dreams of freedom…? Yes - like a deep stream all of these themes were there, of course they so constantly informed his verses; but it was also about olives and figs and a horse against the skyline and the feel of cloth and the mystery of the colour of a flower and the eyes of a beloved and the imagination of a child and the hands of a grandfather.

And of death.

The Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa (LAWA) Fellowship Program was founded in 1993 at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., in order to train women's human rights lawyers from Africa who are committed to returning home to their countries in order to advance the status of women and girls in their own countries throughout their careers.

Reporters Without Borders has learned the good news that Amare Aregawi, the editor of the privately-owned Amharic-language weekly Reporter, was released on 27 August. The press freedom organisation calls on the Ethiopian government to amend the newly-adopted media law in order to eliminate prison sentences for press offences. It also urges the Ethiopian courts to ensure that the law is strictly respected, and thereby guarantee the rights of citizens.

The Kenyan human rights organisation Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) released its final report today on the gross human rights violations conducted both by the so-called Sabot Land Defence Forces (SLDF) and a joint police and military operation in the Mt Elgon area of Western Kenya. The report documents murder, rape, arbitrary and mass arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, destruction of property, and cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment of civilians.

35th Annual Conference
April 15-19, 2009
University of Vermont

Second call for panels, roundtables, and papers

General Theme: Africa and Blackness in World Literature and Visual Arts

The past two ALA conferences focused on various ways African and African Diaspora literature has functioned as a cultural catalyst that nurtures black people's subjectivity in the age of globalization. As a conclusion to the series, the 35th Annual ALA Conference will focus on the ways creative writers and artists from other cultural traditions imagined Africa and blackness in the past as well as the extent to which that imagining has evolved and can be said to foster intersubjective dialogue in the age of globalization. As always, the conference will also welcome panels on other unexplored or inadequately explored aspects of African and African Diaspora literature.

More Africans are risking transatlantic crossings to Europe after Mauritania’s military coup last week, according to Jerome Dukiya, a Catholic priest in the port town of Nouadhibou. Two years ago, Nouadhibou was one of the most highly-trafficked departure points for would-be migrants trying to escape to Europe by boat.

The Kenyan government has banned extra holiday tuition for students in private and public schools. Education Permanent Secretary Karega said children need to rest during holidays and not do extra work. Concerns were raised about the strain students are under after more than 300 secondary schools experienced riots.

The TAC is organising a conference at the end of 2008 to mark ten years since it’s establishment, both to celebrate its achievements and to encourage critical reflection on its past and future. Members, civil society partners and independent scholars are invited to attend and to present papers at the conference.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the advanced research and policy dialogue which it is organising on the theme of “Political Pluralism and Electoral Democracy in Guinea-Bissau: What are the Challenges?”. The objective of the dialogue is to contribute to the debate on the challenges of building a more open and democratic society in post-conflict Guinea-Bissau.