The 532-page World Report 2006 contains information on human rights developments in more than 60 countries in 2005. The Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 contains survey information on human rights developments in more than 70 countries in 2005. In addition to the introductory essay on torture, the volume contains two essays: “Private Companies and the Public Interest: Why Corporations Should Welcome Global Human Rights Rules” and “Preventing the Further Spread of HIV/AIDS: The Essential Role of Human Rights.”

SAT was established to support civil society to engage effectively in regional level public policy processes aimed at reducing poverty and inequality in southern Africa. SAT is making an initial call for proposals for once-off grants to promote innovative regional-level work that supports these goals.

Reporting directly to the Executive Director, the Research Directors will design, manage and complete research projects for which they are responsible. In most cases, this involves preparing a detailed project design in consultation with experts, recruiting a research team and project advisers, supporting the research team both logistically and in substance, editing draft and final reports, and holding a range of meetings and events during the research and after publication to discuss and publicise the project's findings.

A boat carrying 110 Somali and Ethiopian migrants destined for Yemen went missing after leaving the northeastern coast of Somalia early this week according to sources in the port of Bosasso. No news has been heard from the missing boat, which was one of six vessels en route across the Gulf of Aden. The travelers had paid between US $30 and $50 each for the voyage to Yemen, which would be the point of departure in their search for work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

This report from the European Centre for Development Policy Management examines capacity building for decentralised education service delivery in Ethiopia. Main key findings on devolution and education services in Ethiopia include: the devolution of service delivery was included in the 1995 Constitution, which provides an unusual degree of autonomy to Ethiopia's 11 regional states. However, the administration appears to be more aligned to deconcentration below the regional level.

This paper from the Sustainable Development Department, FAO, emphasises the need for a strong specific focus on rural people and argues that education is the most effective way to empower the rural poor to get out of poverty and to ensure that the MDG targets are met in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper provides empirical data on the human development situation and trends for rural peoples of the region, explains the critical roles of agriculture, food security and nutrition for the achievement of the MDGs, identifies key potentials and strategic challenges of sustainable agriculture and rural development, and highlights the important contribution of education for rural people (ERP) to sustainable rural development and to achieve the MDGs.

eLearning Africa intends to become an eLearning capacity-building event for the entire African continent and a forum for all stakeholders engaged in the planning and implementation of technology-supported learning and training. The event is supported by the United Nations Commission for Africa and the European Commission's DG Information Society. The Ethiopian Ministry of Capacity Building has taken the patronage over the conference. The event will be accompanied by an exhibition.

The Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council is looking for an experienced Training Officer to strengthen the IDMC's training team. Mandated by the United Nations, the IDMC is the leading international body monitoring internal displacement worldwide and providing training on the protection of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to field-based actors. Target groups of IDMC's activities include national and local authorities, international agencies (UN and NGOs), local NGOs and leaders of displaced communities, and national human rights institutions.

WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video as a tool to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice. WITNESS is an independent nonprofit organization with an annual budget of $3,000,000 and a staff of nineteen. The Finance Manager is responsible for full range of financial management systems including fiscal analysis, budgeting, internal controls, audits and reports. The Finance Manager is a key member of WITNESS’ senior management team but operates as the only member of the Finance team. S/he reports to the Deputy Director and works closely with the WITNESS Board Treasurer, auditors and other members of the WITNESS Finance Committee.

Refurbishing used and second hand computers is one means among many for African schools to gain access to affordable ICTs. However, addressing Africa's digital divide is not simply a matter of shipping unwanted computers from the developed world. Not every second-hand computer is suitable for re-use. By sending unusable personal computers (PCs) to Africa, the developed world is dumping on to Africa the environmental challenge of disposing of the toxic substances in PCs.

“Improving the Quality of Literacy Learning in the Content Areas: Situational Analysis of Secondary Level Education in Botswana” underscores the importance of continuous literacy development in order to maximize secondary school students’ learning opportunities. The study sheds light on the critical issue of transitional challenges between primary and secondary levels of education. It argues that solid competencies in literacy are required for a truly participatory and student-centred approach to learning at the secondary level.

The Federal Minister of Education and the Minister of Education, Science and Technology of Southern Sudan visited UNESCO on 5 January 2006 with the aim of strengthening cooperation between the Organization and this war-torn country. Reconstruction in Sudan has been possible since peace accords were signed in January 2005 between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan. Nevertheless, the country still faces many educational challenges with a literacy rate of less than 40% and the number of children enrolled in school dropping, according to UNESCO.

The AIDS Consortium embarked on a process of restructure and change in 2004. This resulted in the organisation being strengthened, repositioned and a new governance structure implemented and additional funding secured as part of a feasibility plan. Now, nearly two years on, the AIDS Consortium is seeking to enforce its governance structure and leadership with the appointment of additional specialist Board members, in the following areas of expertise:
Financial Management – qualified chartered accountant
Business Management – senior experienced business leaders
Civil rights – advocates or attorney’s
Health – Medical – HIV/AIDS and related health specialities
Community Leaders – rural, urban and peri-urban

The AIDS Consortium is seeking to receive CV’s for the post of Executive Director. Key responsibilities include: Overall management of organisational operations; Oversee the development & maintenance of a strategic programme of action for the organisation; Full understanding and management of financial resources, procedures and systems in place or required in the organisation; Undertake fundraising and ensure effective donor management; Reporting to the Board of Directors on all financial, organisational and programme matters; Ensuring the implementation and maintenance of workplace policies and systems; Ensuring full compliance with statutory obligations including all secretarial and labour law matters; An excellent communicator at all levels: CBOs, ASOs, NGOs, Government, Private Sector, Nationally and Internationally; Providing visionary leadership to the organisation.

Kenya plans to position itself as one of the world's leading outsourcing hubs for companies in North America and Europe looking to cut costs in their business processes. In an interview, the country's Information and Technology Permanent Secretary revealed a strategy to set up outsourcing incubators at local universities that are hoped to create up to 30,000 jobs. The new enthusiasm to push the Kenyan economy to the digital age follows last week's approval of the long-awaited Information and Communications Technology (ICT) policy by President Kibaki's new Cabinet, at its second sitting.

About 50 million African children are currently denied school due to lack of investment on education by governments in the continent according to African Education Ministers. The Ministers said this at a gathering of the first extra-ordinary conference on Education in Addis Ababa, to evaluate the First Decade of Education For All (EFA)-1997 to 2006.They observed that a number of countries in Africa spend, on average, only less than 3 per cent of their GNP on education and less than 12 per cent of their budgets.

Okello Oculi looks back at a Council for Development and Social Research in Africa (Codesria) meeting that took place in Maputo early in December under the title "Rethinking African Development: Beyond Impasse, Towards Alternatives". While the decimation of African economies through the application of so-called development policies was frequently raised during the meeting, attention also focused on the poor state of African scholarship.

The Council for Development and Social Research in Africa, CODESRIA, held its tri-ennial General Assembly in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, from 6-10 December, 2005. The theme of the event was "Rethinking African Development: Beyond Impasse, Towards Alternatives", and was attended by 400 scholars drawn from within and outside Africa. Its hosting by a Portuguese-speaking country (or rather a country where the language of government is Portuguese) was a landmark in unifying Africa's scholars across colonial language walls. The election of a female Mozambiquecan, Professor Tresa Cruz da Silva, as the new President, retained the tradition of having a woman at the top, while Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, of Nigeria, remains as Executive Secretary. Professor Zen Tedesse from Ethiopia stepped down from the presidency.

The theme of "impasse" in Africa's development clearly also applied to the dismal condition of scholarship in the continent's universities. The chairman of the "Scientific Council" of the organisation reported, for example, that out of the one thousand proposals sent by those who wished to participate in the Maputo assembly, only 155 were suitable in terms of quality of research. There was virtual poverty in philosophical issues including those in the fields of law and anthropology at a time when the continent is desperately in need of new directions and alternatives to the disaster in governance and economic decay which has marked the last three decades.

A major indicator of the impasse for Nigeria was in the low level of representation by the spread of universities which sent scholars and the ranking of those who attended. Only Ahmadu Bello University, Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo, Nsukka, and Lagos State Universities, were represented with a grand total of less than 15. Like Kenya, Nigeria's more senior academics were either out of the business of active and creative scholarship or too tied down with earning money from consultancy work, or both. At a time when both countries are gripped by intense and often murderous struggle for power and over new directions for development, it was laughable that their weight was woefully light in Maputo as CODESRIA searched "Towards Alternatives".

In his opening speech Professor Adebayo Olukoshi condemned increasing calls by leading propagandists in Europe and North America for the "recolonisation of Africa". Professor Jomo Kwame Sunderam, a Malaysian scholar (whose father attended the 1945 Pan African Congress in Manchester and later named his son after Jomo Kenyata and Kwame Nkrumah who were at that Congress), ended his address by stating that: "Our challenge is to make History African", as against calls in newspapers like The Times (of London) and the Washington Post, as well as some think-tanks in London and Washington, for bringing an end to "problems of failed states in Africa" by establishing a new American Empire over the continent. Nigeria's academics and scholars are clearly not responding to these calls by increasingly choosing to watch football matches between Arsenal and Manchester United etc etc, instead of rising to CODESRIA's war horns.

Professor Sunderam drew attention to what he called " a counter-revolution against development economics" which since the 1980s hit Africa devastatingly with "trade liberalisation", "de-agriculturalisation", and negative "terms of trade". Opening up Africa's markets to massive imports resulted in de-industrialisation through the collapse of "whatever manufacturing capacity which had developed" in the 1960s and 1970s. The loss of jobs, in South East Asia, for example, hit jobs where women had sought liberation from tyrannies of household labour. Massive imports of food or food aid, and insistence by the World Bank and the IMF that subsidies to peasant farmers be withdrawn, resulted in undermining local food prices and capacities for food production, resulting in the collapse of food securities all across Africa.

The third blow has been in the prolonged decline in prices of primary commodities. Mwalimu Nyerere had long ago complained about the higher quantities of cotton or sisal Tanzania had to export in order to purchase one imported tractor. While prices of commodities from the tropics (like cotton) have declined severely, that of temperate commodities (like wool) have been much less. Moreover, the industrialized countries are producing chemical products out of Africa's plants, herbs and condiments and claiming intellectual copyrights over them.

In Sunderam's view, "intellectual property rights have become the biggest earners of foreign exchange for the United States of America". Finally, he focused on the sad fact that most governments in Africa now have "fewer instruments to be able to stimulate economic growth". This is due mainly to takeovers of local banks. In Kenya, for example, foreign banks have returned to the colonial practice of not lending to the local private sector, preferring to get 44 per cent of their earnings from buying government bonds; as well as charging interest rates as high as 26 per cent, thereby crippling productive investment.

In any case, only 20 per cent of foreign direct investment goes into the so-called "green fields" i.e. those that create new manufacturing capacities. The myth of foreign direct investment continues to hide the fact that African countries are net exporters of capital to North America and Europe either as debt over-repayments, payments for patents, over invoiced charges by multinational corporations, or stolen funds being hidden by corrupt officials.

One deficiency in the CODESRIA general assembly meeting in Maputo was that this analysis came from a scholar from outside Africa's universities. This is due partly to African governments keeping their own scholars away from government corridors and policy arena, with files marked "Secret" being more accessible to foreign researchers with dollars to pay as tips to their vigilant keepers. In addition to this, is the severe poverty of local scholars, which leaves the best of them vulnerable to funds to be earned from the IMF/World Bank - sponsored projects whose agenda have more to do with "palliative economics" than with "development economics". The promise by the Executive Secretary of the organisation, Professor Adebayo Olukoshi, that "fighting for academic freedom" will be a priority in the next three years, should include yanking open to African researchers creaky gates to government policy vaults.

* Okello Oculi, Ph.D, is Executive Director of Africa Vision

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Ten years after the first significant planting of Genetically Modified (GM) crops there are no apparent benefits for consumers, farmers or the environment, and despite renewed promises by biotech corporations, there has been no impact on hunger and poverty, according to a report by the African Center for Biosafety and Friends of the Earth International. The 100-page report "Who benefits from GM crops? Monsanto and its corporate driven genetically modified crop revolution" concludes that the increase in GM crops in a limited number of countries has largely been the result of the aggressive strategies of the biotech industry, rather than the consequence of benefits derived from using GM technology.

Midlands State University is calling for papers from individuals, academics and professionals interested in attending an international conference on “ Constitutionalism and Governance in Africa: Reconstituting Constitutional Government in the SADC.” The conference will be held in Zimbabwe from 25-27 April 2006. It is also open to those interested in issues covered but may not wish to develop papers for presentation.

Anti-debt campaigners and some US lawmakers are joining forces to call on the George W. Bush administration to return debt arrears owed by Nigeria and to let the African nation spend the funds on health and education through a World Bank-sponsored fund. Eighteen members of the US Congress sent a letter to US Treasury Secretary John Snow and Export-Import Bank President James Lambright asking Washington to return part of the 12.4 billion dollars Nigeria will have to pay by March as part of a debt reduction agreement reached last year with the Paris Club.