Legendary scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois laboured to complete an "Encyclopaedia Africana" before his death in 1963. Just over 35 years later, two Harvard educators, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Ghanaian-born Kwame Anthony Appiah, have brought Du Bois' intellectual dream to life.

The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa's apartheid regime. Among the book's interesting revelations is Mandela's ambivalence toward his lifetime of devotion to public works. It cost him two marriages and kept him distant from a family life he might otherwise have cherished.

In 1995, the International Association of Constitutional Law took the first step to develop a network of constitutionalists from African countries in order to provide a forum for the exchange of knowledge and information of African constitutionalists who took part in the scientific activities of the association. Within this framework, in April 1997 at the Gorée Institute in Senegal, a conference was organised on "Constitutionalism, universalism and democracy". Various scholars, representatives of the different African regions and legal systems and others involved in the international association took part. The essays in the present volume were presented and discussed during this conference. The book is a sequel to the earlier published volume "Constitutionalism in Africa. A quest for autochtonous principles".

As recently as 10 years ago, the words "environment," "recycling," and "waste" were rarely heard in the east African country of Kenya. But today, many Kenyans - especially young people - eagerly pitch in to recycle waste, protect the environment, and improve the daily lives of their people. One of the forces behind this change is a young man named Vincent Ogutu.

The 1st Nairobi International Poetry Festival has announced its poetry festival which will be held on March 21 ­ 23rd 2005. The theme of the festival will be "The Imagination of Poetry in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic". Poetry performances are encouraged as there will be poetry readings from renowned African poets, as well as from the rest of the world.

Parsalelo Kantai has been shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing (http://www.caineprize.com/) 2004 for his story, Comrade Lemma (http://www.kwani.org/comrade%20lemma.htm). He was recently awarded a Reuters fellowship at Oxford University for a year. Parsalelo is one of Kenya's leading investigative journalists, and the editor of Ecoforum. His Ecoforum cover story, A Deal in the Mara, has thrown light on the business practices in the Mara Conservancy.

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to the selfishness and shortsightedness of the rich, the suffering and dignity of the poor and the uses and abuses of power. And in this powerfully written, profoundly felt book, he gives us an unstinting account of the disastrous consequences of the fateful, centuries-old encounter between Africa and the West. French delineates the betrayal and greed of the West - often aided and abetted by Africa’s own leaders - that have given rise to the increasing exploitation of Africa’s natural resources and its human beings.

You have never read a novel like this one. Winner of the 1991 Booker Prize for fiction, The Famished Road tells the story of Azaro, a spirit-child. Though spirit-children rarely stay long in the painful world of the living, when Azaro is born he chooses to fight death: "I wanted," he says, "to make happy the bruised face of the woman who would become my mother." Survival in his chaotic African village is a struggle, though. Azaro and his family must contend with hunger, disease, and violence, as well as the boy's spirit-companions, who are constantly trying to trick him back into their world.

In vibrant prose infused with equal parts satire and social criticism, Mda (The Heart of Redness) charts new emotional terrain exploring the Madonna-whore complex in a South African setting. Readers catch their first glimpse of protagonist Niki in the burnt umber brushstrokes of a Boer priest's canvases. Father Claerhout's models hitchhike from surrounding black townships to earn a pittance shedding their clothes for the artist-priest. While his intentions are innocent, those of the Afrikaner farmers Niki and her friends come into contact with are more prurient.

The Merowe Dam, proposed for the Nile in Northern Sudan, demonstrates how not to plan and build a dam in the post-World Commission on Dams era. This project appears to violate virtually all of the WCD’s strategic priorities. It will displace more than 50,000 people (mainly small farmers living along the Nile, whose lives will never be the same), have far-reaching environmental consequences, and inundate a historically rich area. The dam’s impacts are expected to be great, and yet there is no project environmental impact assessment. Project planning has been non-transparent, and people who will be directly affected by it have not had their voices heard. Dissent against controversial dam projects in Sudan has been met with harsh government repression, and this project is no exception.

The latest Art for Humanity newsletter contains the following:
* Humanity’s Fingerprints
* Taking Art to Humanity
* Lottery Sponsors Billboard Roll-Out
* ‘God wants his people’ in Umlazi
* Uniting to Fight for Children’s Rights
* AfH Goes to Holland – Bon Voyage!

Mordechai Vanunu's release dovetailed with the release this week of a book - dedicated to him - on South Africa's nuclear weapons programme. The book, Uranium Road, was due to be released at a launch organised by the Nuclear Energy Costs the Earth Campaign of Earthlife Africa. It was written by environmentalist David Fig. Before he was locked up, Vanunu had alluded to nuclear links between South Africa and Israel during the apartheid era. According to Fig, Israel was just one of a number of countries that supported South Africa's nuclear programme during the apartheid era.

When we marched - slithered - through slimy mud past riot-shielded cops in Alex, while children peered wild-eyed from dark windows, for some of us these were re-runs of earlier apartheid - burdened days: but then it was defiant resolution that drove our hearts braced our feet: now sadness at betrayal sat stone-heavy on our hearts, our shouted slogans, weighted with irony, hung heavy over us in grimy air, we winced at familiar oft-repeated lies.
April 13/14 2004
* Alex = Alexandra Township, slum in Johannesburg, 31 August, 2002

Born into the Karko tribe in the Nuba mountains of northern Sudan, Nazer has written a straightforward, harrowing memoir that's a sobering reminder that slavery still needs to be stamped out. The first, substantial section of the book concentrates on Nazer's idyllic childhood, made all the more poignant for the misery readers know is to come. Nazer is presented as intelligent and headstrong, and her people as peaceful, generous and kind.

King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people.

Reading this book is like having a long, and somewhat homiletical, afternoon tea with former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Tutu. Four years after No Future Without Forgiveness, Tutu's reflection on his role as Chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, comes this deeply personal book that Tutu calls "a cumulative expression of my life's work."

Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts presents ‘Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’, a group exhibition exploring the cultural impact of the famous Nigerian musician and activist who died in 1997. Thirty-four artists will examine and respond to this cultural icon through approximately forty works of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, mixed media and sound installation, video, film, computer animation, and music. On view in our galleries from April 17 to July 4, 2004, Black President is organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus - if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple. (Buy this book from Amazon and Pambazuka News will receive a percentage of the sale.)

Some stories are so enthralling they deserve to be retold generation after generation. The wreck in 1815 of the Connecticut merchant ship, Commerce, and the subsequent ordeal of its crew in the Sahara Desert, is one such story. (Buy this book from Amazon and Pambazuka News will receive a percentage of the sale.)

This study focuses on internal persecution among Muslims. Internal persecution within the Islamic tradition means the persecution of Muslims by other Muslims, what might be characterised as “intra-religious” as opposed to “inter-religious” persecution, exposing the political and sociological nature of religious persecution, since the persecuted group is of the same religion as the persecuting majority. This study also helps to challenge the alleged religious rationale of such persecution in that every religious majority was in the past, and may become in future, a minority. Three case studies (the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, the Shi’is in Saudi Arabia and the Republican Brothers in the Sudan) are analyzed, and based on these cases, a contextual framework for understanding and combating intra-religious persecution is outlined.