Book

This handbook is a timely, illustrated and easy-to-read guide and resource material for journalists. It evolved primarily out of a desire to equip all journalists with more information and understanding of gender issues in their work. It is addressed to media organisations, professional associations and journalists’ unions seeking to contribute to the goal of gender equality.

Gender mainstreaming has been adopted by the global community as a strategy for achieving gender equity and quality and the attainment of internationally recognised development goals including the Millennium Develpment Goals (MDGs). Gender mainstreaming entails taking into consideration the needs and concerns of women and men in developing process, from design stage to monitoring and evaluation. In Zambia progress in mainstreaming gender has been slow and uneven. This has been attributed to some of embedded negative cultural beliefs and traditions in society that have slowed down our journey to social economic empowerment of women. These negative cultural beliefs and traditional practices have been replicated in formal instituttions such as the Public Service and are a major challenge to the implementation of gender responsive development and ultimately the achievement of Zambia’s Vision 2003.

The Botswana 2015 Gender Protocol Barometer is the fifth annual tracking report on the country’s performance against the 28 targets of the SADC Gender Protocol for 2015. Included in the report are topics like: Constitutional and Legal Rights, Economic Justice HIV and AIDs and Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development.

2015 is a landmark year for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) as the SADC Gender Protocol, aligned to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), expires this year. At their meeting in Harare in May 2015, SADC Gender Ministers resolved to review the Protocol and align it to the upcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Beijing Plus Twenty Review, and Africa’s Agenda 2063. They also agreed that the Post-2015 SADC Gender Protocol must be accompanied by a Monitoring, Evaluation and Results (MER) framework.

South Africa is celebrating 20 years of freedom À“ a milestone for a country that in 1994 emerged from an apartheid past and had just started on the road towards building a democratic and inclusive society. Building democracy is a process. All sectors of society, to a greater or lesser extent, have played a part in transforming South Africa so that today we live in a better place. In the media environment it has been no different.

Media Landscape 2014 is a collection of chapters from media experts. Each of them was asked to consider the media landscape of 1994, to reflect on how far we have come, and to suggest a roadmap for the future. All were given the opportunity to present a range of views and opinions and to focus on the print, broadcast and digital media space where appropriate. Broadly speaking, all the authors start from the premise that the South African media of today is in a far better position than it was 20 years ago. Many refer back to the key principles and policies that were discussed, debated and adopted during the transition to democracy and that now form the important foundational building blocks like those rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Although agriculture contributes greatly to the economy and a significant proportion of the poor depend on it, Public expenditure in this sector has declined significantly over the past financial years; with the share of the sector ranging from between 3-4% of the national budget causing a decline in Uganda’s agricultural output and productivity. Uganda’s agricultural growth rate is still below the 6 percent annual growth target of the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP).

To effectively engage the Government of Uganda to reverse the trend, and enhance investment in the sector, the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group [CSBAG] in 2012 deemed it necessary to undertake a study that will facilitate a deepened understanding on how resources are being used within this sector. Using case studies of four donor funded projects – the Vegetable Oil Development Project, Agricultural Improved Rice, Production Creation of Tsetse and Trypanomiasis Free Areas, et al.

These stories are real experiences of women in Botswana and not fiction. The book gives a glimpse of the horrors experienced by women on a daily basis. They go through many forms of gender based violence and deserve a standing ovation for their courage in sharing their stories. For years Gender Links in Botswana has been using stories from other countries and in 2013 the first book was launched. This is the second volume written in the languages that the survivors choose to use.

This book addresses many aspects of disability law in Africa. The book starts with a chapter on the right of disabled persons to receive protection in the African human rights system. There are chapters on the rights of disabled children to an education. There are also chapters on labour law and the right of a disabled person to be treated equally in the workplace in Malawi and in South Africa.

This issue of the Nordicom Review, edited by Pradip Ninan Thomas, is a result of the boutique conference ‘Beyond the Impasse’ which was organized by the Centre for Communication and Social Change, University of Queensland in January 2013. The aim was to bring together academics who were involved in pushing the boundaries as it were of communication for social change in terms of theory and methods as they applied to practice.

The complexity of development and social change and growing tensions between dominant
results-based and emerging learning and improvement-based approaches to evaluating development interventions have created major challenges for the evaluation of communication for development (C4D). Drawing on our recent research, we identify significant tensions, challenges and issues in evaluating C4D. They include contextual and institutional challenges, problems with attribution and unrealistic timeframes, a lack of capacities in both evaluation and C4D, and a lack of appreciation, funding and support for approaches that are more appropriate for the evaluation of C4D.