Two Sudanese migrants were shot by border police and a third was detained after they were spotted along the border with Israel, an Egyptian security source in Sinai Peninsula told PANA. One woman was shot in the stomach and the man was hit in the left shoulder. According to the official, the guards ordered the three migrants to stop and when they refused, the guards opened fire.

The Harare Magistrate's Court on Thursday granted bail to 10 detained members of a Zimbabwe pressure group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), who had staged “Valentine’s demonstration”, the pressure group said in a communiqué.

Oxfam is hiring two consultants to conduct state capacity needs assessments in Nigeria, Liberia and Tanzania to determine the problems, challenges and opportunities being faced by the respective states which affect their ability to ratify and domesticate the African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

One of the major weaknesses of contemporary social research in and about Africa is its lack of careful attention to epistemological and methodological issues. This weakness has made itself manifest at a time when the increasing complexities of the social dynamics that shape livelihood on the continent and the wider global context call for a greater investment of effort in the refinement of the procedures and instruments of investigation and analyses with a view to achieving a more accurate and holistic assessment of rapidly changing realities.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is committed to working with local, regional and international partners to fight human rights abuses based on sexual orientation and gender identity worldwide. In mid-2007, IGLHRC opened a regional office for Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, to more effectively manage its operations on the continent and to build partnerships with African LGBT and human rights organizations. The Africa Program Coordinator will manage this office and IGLHRC’s Africa program.

One of the most important vehicles by which CODESRIA has sought to mobilise national-level research capacities and to channel these into organised reflections has been the National Working Groups (NWGs) which it has encouraged African researchers to organise autonomously on priority themes of their choice. NWGs have been supported by the Council in over forty African countries and have resulted in some of the most interesting studies on politics, economy and society in contemporary Africa.

African history is replete with tales and woes of underdevelopment and quest for development. The dominant theme emanating from the seminal works of Walter Rodney was the culpability or vicarious liability of the Europeans in the underdevelopment crisis that Africa has faced in the last 500 years or so. Several years after, the reality of Africa´s underdevelopment still persists. Why and how is it so?

Do you dream of writing but hesitate to start? Are your drawers full of manuscripts you dare not show anyone? Do you tell your kids wonderful bedtime stories and wish you could write them down? Here's the chance to turn your dreams into reality!

A writing workshop is the best way to hone your craft under the guidance of an expert published writer. The deadlines will encourage you to complete your stories, the workshop leader will help you polish them to perfection, and you would join a community of fellow writers. AND you will have the chance to get published by Storymoja, one of the most innovative publishing houses on the Kenyan scene today. What more could you ask for? Sign up now!

DETAILS:

Workshop Leader: Muthoni Garland. Her novella, "Tracking the Scent of My Mother," was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing. One of her children's stories, "Kamau's Finish" is used as supplementary reader in the US and UK, and is available in Uchumi, Nakumatt and most bookshops for only 300/.

Curriculum: Participants will discuss how to write books that excite young readers, and the various forms and age ranges of children's writing. You will also learn and apply such craft elements as character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, voice, and theme. In addition, writers will work with illustrators on the visual aspect of their books. Each participant will complete at least one publishable manuscript. Storymoja will publish the most promising manuscripts.

When: The workshops begin on Wednesday 25th February 2009.

They will run for two months and end Wednesday 29th April, 2009.

Sessions are every Thursday from 6:00pm to 8:30pm and every Saturday from 9am to 11:30am.

Where: Storymoja offices, off Lower Kabete Road, Spring Valley, Nairobi.

Cost: Ksh 12,000/ each.

If Storymoja publishes your manuscript, half of this (6,000) will be refunded to you as an advance against your author's royalties.

Scholarships: Storymoja is offering four scholarships to exceptionally talented writers who can demonstrate financial need. Please indicate when you register whether are applying for the scholarship and indicate in one paragraph why you are unable to pay the workshop fee.

Registration: please write to by February 18th and include the following:

a. Your name, e-mail and phone number.

b. Your publishing history (newcomers are very welcome!)

c. A short description of what you are hoping to write and/or why you want to attend this workshop. Add a paragraph explaining your financial situation IF you are applying for the scholarship.

d. A 800-word sample of your writing for children.

PLACES ARE LIMITED SO PLEASE SIGN-UP QUICKLY!

If you already have a children's manuscript and you want us to evaluate whether it meets our publishing requirements, please send it to

For a number of years now, particularly in the period of globalisation, trade unions have been faced with major challenges which call for strategic responses. These challenges include building trade union internationalism in the period of mobile capital, assessing relations with left political parties as these have been dragged towards the political centre, tensions between collective bargaining and defensive struggles and strategic, revolutionary unionism and so on. This, the first of a new series of Annual Conferences, hosted by ILRIG and other partners, is an opportunities for activists and analysts - trade unionists as well as those involved in social movement campaigns - in South Africa to debate experiences of organising in South Africa, and elsewhere, whilst hearing of other forms of trade unionism in South Africa and elsewhere.

In this research programme an interpretation will be offered of the relationship between the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), social space, mobility and marginality in Sub-Saharan Africa. In six case-studies (Central Chad, West-Cameroon, Central Mali, Senegal, North Angola and South-East Angola), the programme seeks to arrive at an interdisciplinary analysis of the dynamics of mobility, social relations and communication technologies.

Within the framework of its strategy for building comparative knowledge on Africa produced from within the African continent, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites proposals from researchers based in African universities and centres of research for the constitution of Comparative Research Networks (CRNs).

CODESRIA / SEPHIS programme is pleased to announce the 2009 session of its Lecture Tour series. The Lecture Tour series is an international academic forum that seeks to create a space for scholars from the South to discuss and express their ideas and share their perspectives on selected themes. It serves as an opportunity for Southern institutes or universities to invite a scholar with an established reputation from another area of the South, affiliated to a historic school or specific research approach, to present a series of public lectures and seminars on chosen themes.

Sylvie Kouamé*, 17, told IRIN she had sex for money with a man she met on line in her home country Côte d’Ivoire. She needed a few dollars for school fees. She no longer needs money for school. Five months pregnant, Kouamé dropped out a few years short of graduating secondary school.

As Mali’s government makes strides toward the Millennium Development Goal of primary education for all by 2015, increased school enrolment and the resulting shortage of teachers and classroom space have blocked a growing number of students from secondary education. In 2008, some 17,000 students out of more than 80,000 who passed their secondary school exams, known as the diplôme d’étude fondamentale (DEF), were not admitted to secondary schools, according to the Ministry of Education.

The Third National LGBTI Youth Leaders’ Lekgotla, which unites students’ gay groups from different universities in South Africa, is starting on 3 to 7 April 2009. The University of Cape Town’s gay rights group Rainbow UCT will be hosting this annual gathering and is expecting groups from about nine universities in South Africa.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that a call by the United Nations Special Envoy in Somalia, Ahmed Ould Abdallah, to suspend news reporting from Somalia was an "ill-thought out and counter-productive" response to the media crisis in the country. "We oppose this move because it will not work and could make the situation even worse for journalists," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary.

Over 1,600 migrants currently held on the Italian island of Lampedusa are at risk of being forcibly returned to their home countries. According to an official statement by the Italian Minister of the Interior on 23 January, 150 migrants have already been returned from Lampedusa since 1 January. All those on the island are at risk of being returned without access to a fair procedure for examining their asylum claims or the opportunity to challenge their deportation.

cc. Kakuma News Reflector (KANERE) is an independent news magazine produced by Ethiopian, Congolese, Ugandan, Rwandan, Somali, Sudanese and Kenyan journalists operating in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. In a new article following on from an original piece published in Pambazuka entitled www.kakuma.wordpress.com.

The 2009 session of the CODESRIA sub-regional methodological workshops will explore the conditions for the employment and validation of qualitative perspectives in African contexts. To this end, the workshops will be open to all the social research disciplines. These disciplines are uniformly confronted with broadly similar difficulties of understanding social reality and the challenges posed by techniques of data collection and analysis, which, on account of their “qualitative” nature, are suspected by some to be seriously lacking in scientific rigour.

CODESRIA/SEPHIS collaborative programme is pleased to announce the launch of its Faculty Exchange Programme. The programme is scheduled for May-June 2009 and will start off with one fellow. The basic idea of the Faculty Exchange programme is to foster knowledge and understanding by facilitating exchange of faculty and publications between two departments in different continents of the South. The objective is to create South-South awareness and curiosity among staff in educational institutions through a dynamic intellectual exchange among research traditions and networks in the South.