The African Women’s Development Fund is offering bursaries to interested grantees to attend The International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (IWRM), a three day international conference being organised by Resource Alliance in Malaysia. The workshop will equip participants with the relevant skills needed for effective and sustainable fundraising and resource mobilisation. Please note that the deadline for receiving all applications is March 30, 2008.

While there is optimism for permanent peace in Kenya due to the power-sharing pact signed between the Party of National Unity (PNU) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), a new row is brewing over the powers of the president, vice president, prime minister and deputy prime ministers.

The inaugural conference within the CODESRIA initiative on African History is planned to hold in Nairobi, Kenya, from 13 – 15 August, 2008. The theme around which it is proposed to organise the conference is: Re-Reading the History and Historiography of Domination and Resistance in Africa. The choice of this theme for the inaugural conference has been informed by a number of considerations, five of which are outlined in this conference announcement.

the Center for Citizens’ Participation in the AU (CCP-AU)is seeking to recruit a coordinator to be based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The deadline for applications is 18 March 2008.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the 2008 Competition for its prize for the best three doctoral theses produced annually in Africa in the Social Sciences and Humanities. This programme was introduced with a view to promoting the research work of African doctoral students and to celebrate the performance of those among them who produce outstanding studies that are worthy of being given greater visibility than would otherwise be possible in the absence of a special initiative designed to bring them to the attention of a critical international scholarly audience.

FEMNET is looking for a consultant to design and write a booklet on advocacy approaches and experiences that SOAWR has used over the past years to campaign for the ratification, popularisation and implementation of the protocol. The consultant will be contracted for 45 days to carry out this duty and will report regularly to FEMNET’s advocacy officer.Deadline for applications is March 30, 2008.

As part of its Interventions series, CODESRIA invites younger researchers enrolled in post-graduate programmes in African universities or who have completed their doctoral research not more than five years ago to submit essays of between 10,000 and 12,000 words on the theme of The Social Sciences and the New Hegemonism in Global Affairs.

Here below is an organizational sign-on letter to G8 leaders calling for the $60 billion committed last year to AIDS, TB, malaria, and health system strengthening to be apportioned about the G8 countries to help make that commitment real, as well as for technical and financial support, through an agreed framework again apportioning responsibility among G8 countries, to support national health workforce plans designed to meet health goals. The Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative (http://www.healthworkforce.info/HWAI/Welcome.html), a civil society-led network affiliated with the Global Health Workforce Alliance, circulated this letter for signature last week at the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Kampala, Uganda, where it received considerable support. We now seek supplementary organizational signatures to support this call. If your organization is able sign, please email Amanda Cary ([email protected]) with your organization’s name and country by Tuesday, March 18.

Dear Prime Minister Fukuda,

We are health workers, non-governmental organization representatives, people living with HIV/AIDS, global health leaders, government ministers, health professional association presidents, academics, and other citizens from around the globe who are committed to a healthier world. We recognize that the health workforce is central to achieving the human right to health, and [many of us] have gathered in Kampala, Uganda, for the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, March 2-7, 2008. Our presence in Kampala symbolizes the global consensus on the need for unprecedented action to respond to the global health workforce crisis. Only then can the unconscionable level of death and disease in much of the developing world – such as the 1 in 16 chance lifetime risk that a woman in sub-Saharan Africa has of dying in childbirth – be overcome.

We write to you as the host of this year’s G8 summit. Japan has a recent history of supporting global health, including by launching the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria following the G8 Kyushu-Okinawa Summit, Japan’s Okinawa Infectious Diseases Initiative, and more recently the Health and Development Initiative. At the half-way point towards MDG health commitment, many countries are falling far behind. Thus it is critical for the 2008 summit to become be a landmark in fulfilling commitments to global health.

In your World Economic Forum speech in January, you recognized the massive shortage of health workers. Sub-Saharan Africa needs an estimated 1.5 million new health workers. Inadequate human resources for health is a fundamental obstacle to scaling up of services to address HIV/AIDS, other infectious disease, and maternal and child death.

Therefore, we urge you to lead the G8 members this year to commit to fully meet their responsibilities under the Global Action Plan for Human Resources for Health adopted at this First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, including to provide predictable financing sufficient (combined with other sources) to enable national health workforce plans to be fully implemented; to ensure that international financial institutions relax macroeconomic constraints; to adhere to ethical recruitment practices and strive for self-sufficiency in their own health workforces; and to provide technical support. We too commit ourselves to meeting our collective responsibilities in the action agenda, since, as you have correctly noted, changing the current crisis cannot be shouldered by the G8 alone, but requires actions from all stakeholders.

To help implement the Global Action Plan for Human Resources for Health, you can lead the G8 to the historic step of turning joint past commitments an agreed framework of individual country action by G8 countries. In particular, at the 2007 G8 Summit, G8 countries committed to spend $60 billion in the coming years for AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and health system strengthening. We urge you to turn this pledge into concrete action. The first essential step is a G8 plan where the $60 billion is apportioned among each G8 country, pursuant to a timeline that is consistent with the pace and scale of investments required to achieve universal access to HIV/AIDS services by 2010 and the MDG health goals. The 2008 G8 Summit should also fully fund the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at $6-8 billion annually. We urge you lead a G8 strategy to apportion funding for the G8 commitment by launching negotiations among the G8 countries and seeking to conclude such negotiations by the end of Japan’s G8 Presidency.

The 2008 G8 Summit should also ensure that countries can secure technical support to develop health sector strategies and national health workforce plans aimed at achieving the health-related MDGs, and that no sound strategy or plan should lack funding needed for full implementation. The G8 should develop a framework – such as that used for the $60 billion – to ensure that the G8 invests its fair share in these health workforce plans. We urge the G8 to begin to fund implementation at country level on an urgent basis, particularly in the countries that are furthest behind towards achieving the MDGs.

We look forward to a Hokkaido Summit that will help turn the ideal of human security that Japan has championed into reality for untold millions of people around the world, including through the commitments and concrete actions required to secure for every person, in every part of every country, access to skilled health workers who are equipped, motivated, and supported.

*To sign, please email the name of your organization and country to Amanda Cary at [email][email protected] no later than March 18.

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) is seeking a qualified and dynamic legal officer for the deputy RSD team leader position. The job of the Deputy RSD team leader is full-time for 35 hours per week. S/he works under the day-to-day supervision of the RSD team leader. Application deadline: March 27 2008.

Research for International Tobacco Control (RITC) of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is pleased to announce a Call for Letters of Intent for the African Tobacco Situational Analyses (ATSA). This competition is a joint initiative of RITC/IDRC and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The competition is administered by RITC/IDRC.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce the seventh session of its Annual Social Science Campus, and invites applications from African scholars for participation in the programme which, this year, is scheduled to hold in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, from 29 September, 2008 to 03 October, 2008. The Campus is conceived as an advanced research dialogue that is both multidisciplinary and intergenerational in nature.

UNDP Regional Service Centre now have a possibility for an internship in Democratic Governance/Aid Effectiveness at the centre in Johannesburg, for Southern and Eastern Africa. The internship will be unpaid, preferably for a minimum of 6 months, and starting in March or April. Women and candidates from Southern or Eastern Africa are especially encouraged to apply.

To apply, interested individuals are asked to send a cover letter to [email][email protected] with their stated preference for work or focus within Governance, Aid Effectiveness, Corruption or a related area, identifying how this would relate to any academic work they have pursued or will be pursuing in this period, if applicable. Kindly attach a CV. Preference will be given to candidates who reply by 10 March.

Fidelis Wainaina passed away from cancer as our country's own cancer dug itself deeper into our entrails. Personally, I think she lost her faith - not in her God - but in humanity. She had worked relentlessly for over 15 years in rural Luo land to bring back the rewards of agriculture.

The 2008 summer school will focus on Borders and Border-Crossings in Africa. It will be sponsored by AEGIS-Naples in collaboration with the AEGIS Centres of Bayreuth, Edinburgh and Leiden. The aim of the summer school is: a) to bring together advanced Ph.D. students and teaching staff from AEGIS Centres (and possibly beyond) in order to exchange field and research experience; b) to improve the students’ ability to prepare and present their research in an international context; c) to promote graduate training within AEGIS and stimulate African-European inter-university cooperation. Application deadline 15 March 2008.

Are you a lecturer in an African university? Do you have responsibility for the teaching of courses on research methods? If so, this announcement is targeted at you. The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa is pleased to announce its initiative targeted at those members of the African social research community who have responsibility in their universities for teaching undergraduate and graduate-level course in social science research methods.

Cebound Projects and Ditiro Productions are calling for submissions of poems, essays, reviews, stories and artworks for a new literary journal called Mo(v)ements.

Mo(ve)ments is an annual journal of prose, poetry and visual arts focused on writers and artists from Free State and Kwazulu-Natal writing in English, Sesotho, Isizulu, Isixhosa, Afrikaans, Setswana, Sepedi and isiswati.

MISSION
To create a platform for the exposure of budding and established artists in Free State and KZN and to promote greater interaction between writers, artists and readers from these two provinces, and to expose their works to the rest of the country.

AIMS
[1] Provide a platform for writers and artists to reach a wider audience and readership.

[2] Promote the culture of reading and writing

[3] Encourage writers to write in all South African languages

[4] Increase the body of literature written in these languages

[5] Appreciation of the beauty of the languages and literature.

EDITORIAL AND SUBMISSION POLICY

Copyright in the works submitted shall belong to the writers and artists themselves. All contributors shall receive two free copies of the issue of Mo(v)ements in which their works appear. Contributors should include a self-addressed and stamped envelope (SASE). It is recommended that submitted works be typed but hand-written works shall be accepted provided they are readable. Works by writers and artists from Free State and Kwazulu-Natal shall be given first priority, as there are no other literary magazines in these provinces.

Editors reserve the right to decide which submitted works to publish in the magazine. Submissions should be sent by e-mail to [email][email protected] or [email][email protected] or by post to Ditiro Productions PO BOX 48002 Qualbert 4078.

Human Rights Watch is seeking an Executive Director for its Africa Division. The executive director will be based in New York or Europe, but other locations considered. Oversight, strategy, high-level advocacy, fundraising, staff development and security, and editing reports to advance human rights protections in Africa. This position requires frequent international travel. Immediate vacancy.

With only one third of Liberians reaching the fifth grade of school and children less likely to read than their parents, the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced a $20 million programme to help rebuild the education system of the West African country, which was gutted during a long, brutal civil war.

About 650,000 or half of all children in Darfur do not receive an education, despite efforts by various organisations to provide schooling in camps and towns across the western Sudanese region, an international NGO said."Education is the foundation for economically viable and more peaceful societies. But the international community has been loath to fund schooling in conflict situations," Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children US, said in a statement on 27 February. "This is shortsighted."

The 2008 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research disciplines. These disciplines are uniformly confronted with broadly similar difficulties of understanding social reality and the challenges posed by techniques of data collection and analysis, which, on account of their “qualitative” nature, are suspected by some to be seriously lacking in scientific rigour.