Chinese President Hu Jintao's upcoming visit to Tanzania will further enhance bilateral economic cooperation and help both countries tide over global financial crisis, said a senior Tanzanian investment official in a recent interview with Xinhua. Emmanuel Ole Naiko, executive director of Tanzania's Investment Center, said Tanzania and China will not only overcome the international financial crisis through cooperation of mutual benefit, but also deepen long-standing friendship between the two countries.

Chinese ambassador to Botswana Ding Xiaowen has assured the country that China’s stable market could be the saving grace for Botswana’s under pressure diamond industry. The representative of the world’s third largest economy, has urged the Botswanan government to turn to the Chinese diamond market.

President Hu Jintao is currently on a five nation to Saudi Arabia, Mali, Tanzania, Senegal and Mauritius The visit comes at a time when speculation is rife as to whether China’s Africa engagement, especially delivery of the FOCAC commitments will be threatened as a result of the global financial crisis., President Hu’s visit, - his fourth to the continent since becoming China’s leader - is therefore intended to demonstrate that Africa remains a strategic player in China’s overall foreign policy and to emphasise both to Africa and to China’s detractors that China’s interest in Africa is not

After some five years of research, Hans Fässler's book on Switzerland's links with slavery and the slave trade was published in 2005 under the title "Reise in Schwarz-Weiss. Schweizer Ortstermine in Sachen Sklaverei" (Rotpunkt-Verlag, Zurich). It has since been translated into French and been published in France under the title "Une Suisse esclavagiste. Voyage dans un pays au-dessus de tout soupçon" (Duboiris, Paris) with a preface by Doudou Diène, special rapporteur to the UN on contemporary forms of racism.

In September 2007, the International Humanitarian Law Project at the London School
of Economics and Political Science held a Symposium to discuss the content of the
Pact and its Protocols. The follow-up Conference on 29-30 May 2009 will focus on
the implementation and enforcement of the Protocols. Individuals who played an
integral role in drafting the Pact and Protocols as well as those responsible for its implementation have been invited to participate during the course of the first day.

This conference forms part of a collaborative project between the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) and the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS). Compared to the rapidly proliferating work on China in Africa, India, the other great ‘Asian Driver’, has been rather neglected in academic and policy circles. This event will bring together a series of papers on India’s changing relations with one region of sub-Saharan Africa.

On February 21 - 22, 2009, the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) will hold it’s second annual International Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Conference will open with a presentation by African Socialist International (ASI) Chairman Omali Yeshitela, who is credited with keeping alive the vision of Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Garvey for a united prosperous Africa and forging a practical 21st century program for its achievement.

World Pulse Media is pleased to announce a Call for Applicants for Voices of Our Future, an exciting new international women's correspondent network. World Pulse will choose up to 30 applicants who are beginning to use new media to speak for themselves to the world, transform their communities, and change their own lives.

High on the agenda for developing countries at the Accra High Level Forum on aid effectiveness was a commitment to use developing country systems (alignment) and to regulate division of labour (harmonisation). Regarding alignment donor governments agreed to channel at least 50% of aid through developing country systems. As for ‘donor harmonisation’, no specifics were given except for a call for donors to ‘harmonise their assistance proactively’.

In the wake of the global financial and economic crisis, the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, set up a commission of experts chaired by Nobel Prize Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, whose mandate includes putting forward “credible and feasible proposals for reforming the international monetary and financial system in the best interest of the international community”. The Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System will present its final report in early April 2009.

During a seminar entitled "Discrimination in Inheritance" held in Tunis on January 24th, Mauritanian human rights organisations and activists spoke out against slavery, which they said is still eroding Mauritanian society. "Slavery is a painful reality in Mauritania," said Bairam Ould Messaoud, head of Mauritania-based organisation SOS Slaves. "Some families still own slaves and take them around houses and farms here in Nouakchott without the government intervening."

Despite a U.S. jury finding in Chevron’s favor late last fall in a U.S. Federal District Court in San Francisco, the company is now asking the plaintiffs - all who are Nigerian villagers - to pay Chevron over $485,000 in legal costs the company incurred during the five week long trial.

The International Monetary Fund is hoping for more information on the losses suffered by the Bank of Central African States and is watching the situation closely, a senior IMF official told Reuters on Wednesday. Leaders from half a dozen mostly oil-producing central African nations ordered far-reaching audits of their central bank at the weekend in connection with investments held with France's Société Générale SA.

Stephen Marks and Sanusha Naidui look at China’s response and the impact on Africa. It’s early days so far in the Obama Presidency but there continue to be worrying indications of US-China friction on trade. If co-operation did break down it would be bad news for Africa. But there are encouraging signs that a lot of the noise may be posturing. There are also good reasons to believe that China’s African commitment will not suffer, and may even be stepped up as a result of the global crisis. But the reasons for African vigilance on the ground will also continue.

Residents of the Italian island of Lampedusa are rebelling against Rome. Thousands of refugees who have arrived there by boat could soon be interned on the small island -- to prevent them from disappearing into the European Union. When drama becomes commonplace, even idealists can sound callous at times. Antonino Maggiore says that he wants to build "a better world" -- for Italians, even more so for persecuted foreigners and, in fact, for everyone. Maggiore is 25, an age at which idealistic pronouncements like that are to be expected.

The International Women’s Media Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2009-10 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, which is open to women journalists whose focus is human rights and social justice. Named for the 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award winner and Boston Globe correspondent who was killed in Iraq in May 2003, the fellowship allows one woman journalist to spend an academic year in a tailored program with access to Boston-area universities as well as the Boston Globe and New York Times. Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2009, and the fellowship will run from September 2009 – May 2010.

This catalogue was published on the occasion of the Event Series “200 Years Later…”, commemorating the 200 year anniversary of the official Abolition of the Maafa (Transatlantic Slave Trade), Berlin, 23-30.11.2008. It was awarded UNESCO's Toussaint Louverture Medal for its “contribution to the struggle against domination, racism and intolerance”. At the centre stands the celebration of the much neglected and still widely unknown manifold strategies of resistance of African people / people of African descent against one of the greatest atrocities in the history of mankind and the cultural and artistic practices they developed on the basis of this resilience.

In the debates about China-Africa relations, the issue of cultural exchanges seems to be of less importance compared to questions about economics, trade, investment, aid, and exploitation of natural resources. Despite this, cultural exchanges have played a significant role in Sino-African relations, especially since the 1950s. As much as African countries have benefited from these exchanges, China has been a major beneficiary in two significant ways: 1) increasing investment and resources in these exchanges, and 2) through the active promotion of newly established Confucius Institutes across the continent. Yet the same cannot be said of the promotion of, African culture in China, which is largely absent.

Vanguard’s documentary , which premiered in late 2008 is a well-informed and multi-faceted commentary on China’s growing role in Africa. Given the heightened and often fever-pitch media commentary that reflects on China-Africa relations, it is refreshing to find a documentary that attempts to presents a multidimensional perspective to what has become parochial and controversial mainstream reporting. With Angola as its case study, the production team ambitiously sought to unpack the various elements of Luanda’s relations with Beijing.

In this essay Chris Colley of China’s Renmin University analyzes the UN’s new China Human Development Report. This report comes out as China celebrates 30 years of reform. Colley then discusses how the global financial crisis will affect China. He concludes by arguing that the “Beijing Consensus” model of development is unique to China and may not be able to be exported.