The political crisis in Côte d'Ivoire is hitting an already broken education system, with gunfire disrupting classes, teachers staying home for political reasons and families increasingly desperate about their children's schooling. Under-investment and instability in recent decades have weakened education in Côte d'Ivoire and many development projects - now suspended - called for strengthening basic services such as health and education.

APSA and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) University of Nairobi, are pleased to announce a call for applications from individuals who would like to participate in a workshop on 'Representation Reconsidered: Ethnic Politics and Africa's Governance Institutions in Comparative Perspective' from 23 July to 6 August 2011, in Nairobi, Kenya. The 2011 APSA Africa Workshop will be led by Todd Eisenstadt and Carl LeVan, both of American University in Washington, DC, along with Josephine Ahikire from Makerere University in Uganda , and Karuti Kanyinga from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Seeking advice, Laurent Gbagbo's been teleconferencing with Mwai Kibaki and Robert Mugabe, Gado reckons.

Mozambican poet and painter Malangatana Ngwenya passed away on 5 January. Pauline Wynter celebrates the iconic artist who brought the world around him to life.

South Africa has given tens of thousands of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants a reprieve after agreeing to extend the deadline for them to regularise their stay to 31 March. It is estimated that 1.5 million Zimbabweans are in South Africa illegally and most of them do not have proper identification documents.

There has not been much progress in government's job creation project due to the economic crisis that hit the world recently, President Jacob Zuma said during an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, reports the Mail and Guardian. Speaking a day after addressing the 99th African National Congress (ANC) anniversary celebration in Polokwane, Limpopo, Zuma said the issue of job creation was going to be a central issue at the upcoming ANC congress, as well as how resources would be allocated to see to it.

It's a 'whopping' increase in the matric pass rate, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said triumphantly last Thursday morning. But education specialists were immediately divided on the question of whether so unexpected and so huge an improvement is educationally both believable and reliable as a true indicator of pupils' aptitudes. At 67,8 per cent, the pass rate for the 2010 national senior certificate (NSC) outstrips 2009's 60,6 per cent by 7.2 per cent and all nine provinces recorded increases in their pass rates as well, reports the Mail and Guardian.

This edited volume brings together some of the papers that were presented at a conference organised in Accra, Ghana by Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) and the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) in November 2008, on the theme: ‘Beyond Foreign Direct Investment in Africa’s Mining Sector’. The conference brought together activists from community groups and NGOs, officials from African government institutions as well as intergovernmental bodies and academics to discuss the state of mining on the continent and the experience of two decades of mining sector policy dominated by strategies for attracting foreign direct investment.In total, eight papers are contained in this volume. The first four papers explore various financial aspects of mining sector reform in sub-Saharan Africa.

Akina Mama wa Afrika is tendering for applications for consultants to conduct a Tracer Study on the African Women’s Leadership Institute.

Sponsored by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental & African Studies

Opening remarks by Prof. Stephen Chan, SOAS
Co-chair: Victoria Brittain
Speakers: Richard Gott, António Gumende, High Commissioner Republic of Mozambique, Adotey Bing, Lionel Cliffe, Peter Brayshore, Senait Jones, Extracts from Basil’s Channel 4 African History series, introduced by Mick Csaky.

27 January 2011, 6 – 9pm
Khalili Theatre, Main Building, SOAS, Thornhaugh St, London WC1H 0XG.

Co-sponsors: Institute of Race Relations, Review of African Political Economy and Action for Southern Africa
RSVP: Nick Davidson, 75 Balfour Road, London N5 2HD
or [email][email protected]

ESPA is a highly innovative global research programme designed to provide world-class evidence on how ecosystem services can improve the lives of the world's poorest people. ESPA will invest in researchers around the world to create new knowledge, through excellent interdisciplinary research to be conducted in Africa, South Asia, China and the Amazon Basin. The ESPA I-PAC has a crucial role in providing advice to the Directorate and ESPA's funders to ensure that the programme delivers world class science, meeting the most pressing current policy and evidence needs, and through this has the potential to improve the lives of millions of poor people around the world. I-PAC members will be world-leading researchers, opinion formers and development practitioners selected to provide ESPA with the advice it requires to ensure success.

This program will provide a unique opportunity to explore shifting security dynamics in the Asia Pacific region and to discuss the future of the US role. Visits to Okinawa and Tokyo will provide insight into the sensitivities surrounding the physical presence of US troops and Japan’s renewed debates about its defense strategy given the perceived threat from North Korea and territorial disagreements with both China and Russia.

Through an initiative by called 'Treasures we Bring' migrants of all kinds - refugees, economic migrants, students, cross border or from one city to the next - are being invited to share their stories thorough video testimonies about a treasured object that represents where they come from, their journey, their challenges, and their hope for the future.

By telling these stories, the videos aim to show how migrants bring a wealth of diversity, talent, and skills to their new homes, while also sharing the histories of the personal objects that they consider to be treasures.

The recorded videos are uploaded to

Up to 80 African migrants are feared to have drowned off the south coast of Yemen after their boats capsized, Yemeni officials say. The migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, were travelling in two boats which were hit by strong wind and waves, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Fahamu and UHAI are co-organising a training programme called the Movement Building Boot Camp. The goal of the MBBC is to grow and strengthen the base of leadership among East African activists working on sexual rights and LGBTI rights. As part of this, the training will build and deepen skills and knowledge on issues of sexuality, gender and human rights, power and accountability. Please do note that this Movement Building Boot Camp is for East African activists only.

For more information and to participate in this exciting and novel journey, kindly fill in the online application form () by 22 January 2011.

Makerere University is considering altering its government sponsorship admission criteria to ensure that reasonable numbers of both girls and boys are admitted to each course. The new measures are expected to be in place before Makerere’s admissions in August. They may impose an admission ratio of 60:40 for government sponsorship in humanities (arts) and a 70:30 ratio for science courses, in favour of the less-represented sex in each academic discipline.

This edition includes the articles:

- The extraversion of protest: conditions, history and use of the ‘international’ in Africa,
Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle
- Internal dynamics, the state, and recourse to external aid: towards a historical sociology of the peasant movement in Senegal since the 1960s
- Peasant struggles in Mali: from defending cotton producers’ interests to becoming part of the Malian power structures by Alexis Roy.

Click on the link provided to access the journal.

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.’

The University of Cambridge's Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR, www?.?polis?.?cam?.?ac?.?uk/cghr) is seeking to appoint a post-doctoral Research Associate to work for up to 22 months on our new research project ‘New communication technologies and citizen-led governance in Africa’, funded by the Cairns Family Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust.

Donors continue pressing the Tanzanian government to fight against corruption as Transparency International’s global report indicated a dramatic increase in corruption worldwide, reports the Tanzania Corruption Tracking System. Speaking at the end of a week long Poverty Eradication Review and Annual Policy Dialogue, the General Budget Support (GBS) group of development Partners in Tanzania spoke tough against the government’s slow pace in the fight against corruption. Over 14 donors contribute to Tanzania’s budget through the GBS modality.