By Patrick Smith, Editor Africa Confidential

There is a worsening crackdown on journalists in many regions of the world, especially Africa, as governments and businesses struggle to deal with harsher economic conditions.

One of the latest victims in Africa is Ngota Ngota Germain, editor of the weekly Cameroon Express, who died in detention on 23 April in Yaoundé's Kodengui gaol. Along with two other journalists, Serge Sabouang and Robert Mintya, Ngota had been investigating allegations of corruption against Secretary General in the Presidency Laurent Esso and the state oil company.

By Amil Khan aka Londonstani @ abumuqawama

Skeptics of Social Media should watch this extraordinary video. The Social Media Revolution 2 video has vaulted up the Youtube hit parade since it was published last week. The new and updated social media & mobile statistics are hard to ignore

Ezekiel Nworie, Imo State, NIgeria
It was a black Wednesday in Nigeria as she lost her 13th Head of State.
Sadness and sorrow engulfed the Presidential Villa, Nigeria's seat of
power, on Wednesday, as ailing President Umaru Yar' Adua died at the age
of 58.

It was indeed regrettable that Nigeria has lost a true visionary leader,
peace-loving man, a father, and man whose motto was Rule of law. It may
not be an overstatement to say that the vacuum created by his death can
never be filled by anybody in Nigeria.

Late President Yar'Adua style of leadership brought succor to Nigerians
and especially to the youths and most especially the youths from Niger
Delta region, who before his administration and the amnesty program, had
suffered all kinds of inhuman treatments and humiliation from the
government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

For 150 years, Greece has relied on clientelism and political favors to run its economy, now with its $40 billion loan program for Greece, the International Monetary Fund is back in the nation-building business..

By Takis Michas 

The debacle of the Greek state should not be seen simply as the result of fraudulent budget statistics or a few years of profligate spending. Instead, it signifies the collapse of a model of economic development that from its very inception in the 19th century has always placed politics above markets.

The central organizing principle of Greek society has always been political clientelism--a system in which political support is provided in exchange for material benefits. In this situation the state's role as the main provider of benefits to various groups and individuals becomes paramount. As Greek left-wing historian Kostas Vergopoulos puts it:

"The fundamental structure of Greece has never been civil society but the state. Ever since the middle of the 19th century nothing could be done in Greece without it necessarily passing through the machinery of the state."

In the Anglo-Saxon world the state was primarily seen as a protector of certain Lockean rights, especially the right to private property. This concept went hand in hand with the existence of a ruling class with vested interest in large property holdings.

In Greece, however, the social group that took over after the liberation from the Ottomans were the local notables whose power lay not in their ownership of land but in the fact that they acted as tax collectors for their Ottoman rulers. Thus in Greece the ruling class that emerged after independence saw the state not as an instrument for the protection of pre-existing assets, but as its chief source of income.

Many Chinese citizens die "unnaturally" in the detention center run by the Ministry of Public Security. This animated video asks what is the true function of detention centers and why so many unjust deaths occur there?

by David Shaman,
author of The World Bank Unveiled: Inside the Revolutionary Struggle for Transparency
The world has come to a line in the sand. Over one and a half billion people live in abject poverty today. Millions die each year of malnutrition or from treatable disease. This condition has existed for decades and yet help from the rich nations of the world has been inadequate, inefficient and achingly slow.

In the post-9/11 period (from 2001 to 2008), the world's largest donors said they would increase development assistance. In 2002, in Monterrey, Mexico, the richest countries pledged to raise aid levels to 0.7% of their gross national income. In 2005, in Gleneagles, Scotland, they again promised to send $150 billion in aid to Africa.

Looking at a sea of puzzled Dubin schoolboy faces unable to grasp an intricate point of Algebra, a frustrated teacher of mine liked to remark that: "some boys' mothers have very slow sons."

That lost feeling returned last week when I attended the World Bank's Innovation Fair in Cape Town and the discussion kept returning to Ushahidi and social mapping. 

The sceptical journalist in me demanded evidence that all the energy going into mapping and geo-location was capable of doing any good. What was going to stop a government, with evil intent in mind, from undermining an Ushahidi project by disseminating false information?

"How many Haitians had been pulled from the rubble thanks to Ushahidi's enormous texting and geo-location efforts by volunteers around the world and on the ground?" I asked.

"We don't know" came the honest reply.

 It took time to penetrate, but after learning about several social mapping projects taking place around the world, I finally 'get' why mapping is central to the future of communication. Its already being used around the world to empower traditionally voiceless people. 

Take the Map Kibera  for example a project in which local residents of the famous Nairobi slum collaborated to map what they believe is important in their community. Kenyan government maps depict Kibera as a forest! This is very convenient because trees don't need services. Thus, almost  a million  people living in Kibera get virtually no services from the government.

Not any more. Thanks to Map Kibera, the slum now has a political personality all its own. At a click on a map its residents can make the case for resources. Along with video and twitter feeds the community is finally gaining a voice of its own.

The worry that Ushahidi's technology might be deliberately undermined by a repressive government still lingered, however. Given the behavior of Chinese hackers and Iranian secret police this seems a looming danger. This morning I received an email of a post about a TED talk by Patrick Meier, one of Ushahaidi's founders and current spokesperson of the organisation. 

Its well worth a read.