Reporters Without Borders has called on the heads of state and government attending the Southern African Development Community summit being held in the Angolan capital of Luanda from 14 to 19 August to examine the situation of the media in Zimbabwe, where press freedom violations are increasing at an alarming rate. In the past month alone, Reporters Without Borders has tallied more than 11 violations of the freedom or safety of journalists, all of which have remained unpunished.

This article form Fesmedia Africa assesses the role of new media in social change in Africa. 'New media platforms are changing how people communicate with each other around the world. However, there is great variation in both the kind of communication platforms people make use of as well as in how they access these platforms. Computer ownership and internet access are still the prerogative of the wealthy few in wide swathes of the African continent. All the same, mobile internet access is on the rise and if current growth rates continue, African mobile phone penetration will reach 100 per cent by 2014.'

Three journalists were killed and 21 others injured in Tripoli after North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) warplanes bombed three transmission towers on 30 July in an effort to take Libyan state television off the air. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have condemned the attack.

Police from the Law and Order section on 11 August 2011 visited Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) offices in search of Zimbabwe Independent editor Constantine Chimakure and senior political reporter Wongai Zhangazha over a story the paper published in its edition of 8 July 2011. Detectives said that they wanted the two to assist in investigations of who ‘leaked’ the details of the story as it was based on cabinet deliberations, which is an offence under the Official Secrets Act.

Insights MENA is an interactive tool providing critical data about the online behavior of urban consumers in five key MENA markets: Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. Visit the website to find out more.

Guinea's first democratically elected President survived an assassination attempt on 19 July after gunmen surrounded his home and pummeled it with heavy artillery. Three people were killed during two separate attacks. But President Alpha Condé immediately clamped down on any media coverage of the attack, a censorship that IFEX members report is emblematic of his contempt for the media, despite promises for positive change.

The National Archives and Records Service were ill-equipped to deal with the deluge of declassified information likely to ensue once the Protection of Information Bill becomes law, the Nelson Mandela Foundation warned. With over-classification believed to have been the norm since the Minimum Information Security Standards became policy in 1996, MPs have been grappling with the question of what to do with secret files from the recent past, as well as those from the apartheid era.

The world is pleading for two Gambian journalists who could face capital punishment for distributing T-shirts that call for an end to dictatorship in their country. Last month the high court in Gambia charged Ms Ndey Tapha Sosseh and Mr Matthew K. Jallow with treason in a country where the death penalty is very much alive. The pair are presently in exile in two different West African countries. If the regime succeeds in roping the two journalists back home, they are most likely to be killed by a firing squad or by hanging, analysts say.

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has begun long-awaited compensation payments to families over a 1996 drug trial blamed for the deaths of 11 children and disabilities in dozens of others. But the payments were initially distributed only to four families, while some 200 children participated in the trial of meningitis drug, Trovan. Parents of four of the children who died as a result of the trial received cheques of $175,000 each at a reception in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where the trial took place.

Guest editor David Anderson Hooker, Director of Research and Training for 'Coming to the Table: Taking America (USA) Beyond the Legacy of Enslavement', and the editorial staff of 'Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts', invite submissions for the first issue of its fifth volume, entitled '500 Years Later: Reverberations of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.'

South Africa now has a website offering where broadband customers can enter their phone numbers and find the cheapest broadband offering in their area.

On 6 August 2011, journalists in the West African country of Togo rallied in the streets of the capital Lomé [fr] to protest against the threats that their colleagues received recently, reports Global Voices. The rally was launched on 3 August by the association ‘SOS Journalistes en Danger' (SOS Journalists in Danger). The week prior to the event, several media professionals in the association warned against threats sent to a group of Togolese journalists that were believed to be 'critical of the power in place'.

With elections on the horizon, Ghana’s politics have entered the season of allegations - and counter-allegations. First, it was the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) which claimed it had in its possession a tape of the deputy minister of information, Baba Jamal, promising bribes to a group of journalists if they backed the government with positive stories. Before this could blow over, the propaganda secretary of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Richard Quarshigah, flung out a cracker: that the NPP was planning to unleash a group of young girls to bait NDC officials in sleaze stings.

The Front to Defend Egyptian Protesters, which includes 34 human rights organisations and a number of volunteer lawyers, has welcomed the initiative taken by many activists and political powers to help in representing the civil plaintiffs in the case of the ousted president Hosny Mubarak, his sons, his interior minister, and some figures of the former police apparatus. The initiative comes to ease the burden carried by the Front since establishment in April 2008, especially with the growing pattern of cases it is competent with since the aftermath of January 25th revolution.

The promotion of two Côte d’Ivoire military commanders against whom there are serious allegations of involvement in grave crimes raises concerns about President Alassane Ouattara’s commitment to end impunity and ensure justice for victims, Human Rights Watch has said. On 3 August 2011, President Ouattara signed a promotion making Chérif Ousmane the second-in-command for presidential security (Groupe de sécurité de la présidence de la République). During the final battle for Abidjan, Ousmane was the head of the Republican Forces operations in Yopougon neighborhood, where scores of perceived supporters of Laurent Gbagbo were executed extrajudicially.

Witnesses' chilling depictions of a new Sudanese genocide at an emergency US congressional hearing quelled any remnants of doubt that a humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the Nuba mountain region of South Kordofan, reports IPS Africa. 'It is a war of horror,' Sudanese bishop Andudu Adam Elnail told a House committee here. Elnail's closest colleagues had told him they witnessed two pits being dug at a school one night, where bodies were later transported to the site, put in 'wide body bags' and thrown in the pits – something to add to the heap of evidence piling up in Washington that a decades-old campaign to exterminate the ethnic Nuba has resumed in the wake of the south's independence.

Angolan authorities should explain the arrest and incommunicado detention of a radio journalist for reporting on a nationwide wave of mass fainting of people, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said. Since April, more than 800 people, mostly teenage schoolchildren, have fainted after complaining of sore throats and eyes, shortness of breath, and coughs, the Catholic Church-run station Radio Ecclesia reported.

With Pambazuka News publishing its 200th French-language edition this week, Tidiane Kassé – Pambazuka’s French-language editor – discusses the importance of alternative, Africa-led media and the challenges for the future.

The Sowetan newspaper apologised to City Press editor Ferial Haffajee on Thursday (04 August) for publishing an insulting column. 'In his latest column, [Eric] Miyeni crossed the line between robust debate and the condonation of violence,' said Sowetan and Sunday World general manager Justice Malala and Avusa editor-in-chief Mondli Makhanya in a statement on page 15. Miyeni's column, "Haffajee does it for white masters", appeared in the daily on Monday. He wrote that 'in the 80s she'd [Haffajee] probably have had a burning tyre around her neck'. City Press last week reported about African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema's trust, which he allegedly uses to bankroll his lavish lifestyle.

The International Freedom of Expression Exchange Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG), a coalition of 21 IFEX members, is urging action to prevent any repeat of recent violent crackdowns on demonstrators and journalists in the run up to scheduled constitutional elections in October. The IFEX-TMG's concerns deepened after a statement by Interim Prime Minister Béji Caïd Essebsi in which he accused journalists of stirring up trouble.