Some 1.3 million children in southern Sudan are expected to start classes this year, compared to just 340,000 in 2005, thanks to an initiative supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to boost school enrolment and strengthen the education system.

According to Associated Press, police have raided their offices at a Harare hotel in what he called the start of a "crackdown." Police apparently raided and ransacked several rooms used by the party at the downtown Meikles hotel. No one was arrested. Paramilitary police in riot gear also raided a hotel used by foreign journalists in Harare and took away three or four reporters, according to a man who answered the phone at the hotel.

This is clearly an attempt to establish a news blackout as a prelude to ...?

The struggle to implement a meaningul power-sharing agreement in Kenya has stalled over cabinet ministreal positions. Instead of dividing up the existing positions so that power is balanced between the two parties, the call has been for increasing the number of positions. This will not only create needless bureaucracy, but will not guarantee that power will be equitably distributed.

Please join other Kenyans calling for a moratorium of 24 cabinet ministers in Kenya and sign a petition at

International development agencies, Progressio, Trócaire, Tearfund and FEPA today call for immediate action to stop what appears to impartial observers as government-led election rigging of Zimbabwe’s March 29th polls.

All four agencies are concerned about the slow release of election results, which as Noel Kututwa, Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network says “is fuelling speculation that there could be something going on”. Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary Observer Mission, has also expressed concern over the delay.

Our mutual partner, Pastor Promise of the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance said: “SADC principles and guidelines governing democratic elections stipulate that counting of votes shall be done at the polling stations. This was done and completed yet ZEC is withholding the results which are already public knowledge as they were posted outside each polling station. With Kenya’s violence so fresh in our minds, it is not acceptable to delay the timely announcement of results as if to provoke the already highly charged electorate. It’s extremely urgent that ZEC announces all the results immediately.”

Specifically, the agencies are concerned that:

- In some cases, officially announced votes do not appear to be tallying with those registered and displayed at polling stations;

- It has taken over 30 hours to collate and begin to announce election results, which were posted up outside polling stations two days ago;

- The pace of announcement has been painfully slow. By 3pm on Monday 31st March the Electoral Commission had announced parliamentary poll results for only 30 out of 210 constituencies. Results for senatorial and presidential polls are also still pending;

- The delay in announcing results and the failure of the Electoral Commission to satisfactorily explain the delays to the general public is contributing to tensions and could lead to a situation of instability in the country;

- The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has already issued its statement on the elections. According to article 6.1.12 of the SADC guidelines, observers monitoring elections are obliged to issue a statement on 'conduct AND outcome'. The SADC observer mission only issued a statement on conduct of elections yesterday afternoon and has now declared its work finished.

In light of these serious concerns, we urge governments to take the following critical actions:

- African and especially southern African leaders should ensure that the SADC observer mission fulfils its obligations to the people of Zimbabwe by following through on assessing the counting process and declared outcome of the polls;

- There should be an SADC investigation and response to the allegations of fraud made by independent outside and domestic analysts and observers, in particular with respect to why the announcement of results was delayed when polling stations results were already reported;

- African Union and national leaders should be prepared to lead a process of mediation in the event of a disputed outcome;

- The UK, Ireland, EU and member states should encourage African leaders to insist that the SADC principles are rigorously followed, in particular on ensuring that the results announced reflect the will of the people;

- Security forces in Zimbabwe are also urged to respect the verdict of the people.

*Progressio is an international development agency working for sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

As is traditional, the African Centre will host the 43rd Forum on the participation of NGOs in the Ordinary session of the African Commission. The forum will deliberate generally on the human rights situation in Africa in general and attempt to bring to the fore specific situations that need to be highlighted in order to attract the attention of the African Commission in particular and the international community and other concerned bodies.

When Kenya's government introduced free primary schooling in 2003, vast numbers of additional pupils were brought into the education system overnight, putting it on a steep learning curve. A dearth of teachers, scarcity of textbooks and inadequate facilities were amongst the problems that made for a bumpy ride as primary schools went from educating about six million children in 2002 to the current total of eight million. And five years on, questions remain about the

Stunned friends have remembered Ivan Toms as a larger than life character who had tremendous energy and huge passion for the country he loved and served. Toms was on Tuesday morning found dead in his Mowbray, Cape Town home after he failed to pitch for an important meeting. No foul play is suspected.

Uganda's government has banned a workshop for prostitutes scheduled to start on Wednesday in Entebbe. "We don't take any delight at all in the idea that prostitutes are coming together to devise ways of spreading their vice," the ethics minister said.

The Iraqi Voices in Cairo is a website project under the auspices of the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program (FMRS). The Iraqi Voices in Cairo Project was formed by an association of reporters and researchers working together with the Iraqi community of Cairo. The goal of the project is to address a worldwide lack of humanitarian information about Iraqi refugees in Egypt. With an extensive international campaign, Iraqi Voices in Cairo aims to draw international attention to the Iraqi people who have been forced from their country into Egypt. The seminar will discuss the mandate of the project as well as the findings and goals for the future.

Report highlights growing hunger, energy dependency on Global South, corporate control
 
Food First/The Institute for Food & Development Policy, based in Oakland, Calif., has released a policy brief titled, “When Renewable isn’t Sustainable: Agrofuels’ and the Inconvenient Truths behind the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act.”  The report, co-authored by Food First Executive Director Eric Holt-Giménez and program consultant Isabella Kenfield, discusses the implications of the Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS) targets for agrofuels in the 2007 U.S. Energy Bill.
 
The first inconvenient truth of the RFS mandate is the effect it is already having on food prices and supplies around the world. It is estimated that half of the U.S. corn harvest will be diverted to ethanol production by the end of 2008. Because U.S. corn accounts for some 40% of global production, increased demand for U.S. corn as feedstock for fuel impacts global markets for corn as food. As acreage planted to corn increases from rising demand, acreage for other food grains such as wheat and soybeans is reduced, raising the prices for these crops as well.  People around the world are already experiencing the food price and supply shocks that the spike in U.S. ethanol demand and consumption is causing.
 
A second inconvenient truth about the RFS mandate is that instead of offering energy independence and security, the 2007 Energy Bill actually reflects a bi-partisan, unspoken agreement to rely on imported agrofuels from the Global South. This is already leading to massive environmental destruction, loss of livelihoods and human rights abuses in agrofuels-producing regions of the South, and threatens to further economic and political instability in these regions.
 
To better understand the agrofuels boom, the authors analyze how the industry is aiding market expansion and consolidation by the giant grain, biotech and oil companies. Contrary to being “clean” and “green,” agrofuels exacerbate all of the problems currently caused by industrial agriculture—including global warming.
 
Holt-Giménez concludes that “In order to think about alternatives to agrofuels—local biofuels, conservation, wind, or solar—and in order to advance truly sustainable agricultural development at home and abroad, we need to construct an alternative food and energy context. We must challenge the political-economic context as well as the technologies, debunk the assumptions as well as the claims, and propose new relationships between producers and consumers in our food and fuel systems.”
 
To remove the artificial market incentive that created the industry—the RFS targets—Food First, with a coalition of progressive U.S. organizations, proposes a Moratorium on U.S. agrofuels.  The call for a Moratorium can be found and signed here:
 
To obtain a copy of the report, log on to www.foodfirst.org

The coalition Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) is inviting members to submit grant proposals for actions that will contribute to the following campaign objectives:
1. By the end of 2008, SOAWR will have accelerated ratification in ten countries, namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and two North African Countries.
2. By the end of 2008 there will be national implementation strategies and actions generated and running in eight countries, namely Gambia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from suitably qualified senior African scholars for the position of Executive Secretary in its pan-African Secretariat located in Dakar, Senegal. All applications must be received by Monday 30 June, 2008. Any application received after this date will not be considered.

With the new academic year in Kenya underway, teacher Moses Simiyu Kalenda is once again instructing children - just not in the place where he expected to be doing so. Previously, he taught pre-schoolers at Kalaha Farm, some 400 kilometres west of the capital, Nairobi; now he works from a makeshift class in a displaced persons camp, both he and his pupils victims of the violence that erupted after the Dec. 27 presidential election.

South Africa has by far the worst TB prevalence rate in the world, with almost 1000 South Africans out of every 100 000 living with the disease in 2006. This is according to the Global TB report released in Geneva yesterday (Monday 16th March), based mainly on 2006 statistics supplied to the World Health Organisation by over 200 countries.

Women of Zimbabwe Arise launched a report in Harare on Wednesday, titled “The effects of fighting Repression with Love” which documents the experiences of their members over the last few years as they were arrested, assaulted, humiliated and tortured at the hands of state agents, particularly the police. Our Harare correspondent Simon Muchemwa attended the event, along with representatives from civil organisations and diplomats.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has dispatched 58 “schools-in-a-box” to flood-hit areas of Zambia to help pupils whose families have had to flee their homes because of rising waters or whose school buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Each school-in-a-box, which contains enough supplies for 100 children, will be distributed to community and Government schools in Southern, Lusaka and Western provinces, among the regions hardest hit by the recent flooding.

This Guide reflects the growing focus of civil society organizations on monitoring the results achieved by government expenditures. It offers an overview of government budget implementation, including budget execution, procurement, impact measurement, and auditing and legislative oversight processes. The Guide provides practical, tested tools that can be used by independent organizations interested in monitoring government expenditures.

We are writing to you to announce a writers' conference in Ghana, July 3rd-18th of this year. We hope to get the word out. The flier is attached here.

SABLE in London, U.K. and KwaniTrust in Nairobi, Kenya are two of many organizations that we are partnering with internationally.

We will be based at the New York University Campus in Accra, Ghana. We will waive the conference for any applicant based on the African continent or charge a nominal amount, depending on a given applicant's financial circumstances and need. We want to encourage any writer interested in coming to the conference to apply for travel funds, monies to cover the airfare.

We are especially anxious to get the word out to writers in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Information about our organization and the 2008 conference is available at The web site will be updated next week

Sitting on a plastic mat in an outdoor classroom at a site for people displaced by violence outside the town of Goz Beida in southeastern Chad, Ibrahim Abdoulaye Moussa has reason to pay attention in class. "I'm in school to save my country," said the boy who is one of 180,000 displaced Chadians scattered around the vast semi-desert east of the country. "I dream of being president."

The UN refugee agency's introduction last August of cash grants for Burundian returnees appears to have both encouraged more people to go back home and eased their reintegration. In the months since the 50,000 Burundian Francs (about US$45) grant per person was introduced for Burundians in Tanzania, some 35,000 refugees have returned to their country.