News stories by Servaas van den Bosch, page 8

New channels like sms messages and social-networking application Facebook are just some of the tools government and civil rights groups will be using to encourage input on the Child Care and Protection Bill will soon be tabled in Namibia's parliament.

Fears that accession to an economic partnership agreement (EPA) in Southern Africa will destroy regional integration seem to be coming true after Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (BLS) ignored a key provision of the Southern African Customs Union when they initialled their trade deal with the European Union last week.

Namibia will sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) when the outstanding contentious issues have been resolved through new wording in the texts of the interim EPA, says the country’s trade and industry minister Hage Geingob.

High-level talks at a Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) meeting in Gaborone last week failed to produce an agreement on the signing of the interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union.

It is a Sunday around five o’ clock in the afternoon when carpenter Thomas Haimbodi knocks off work. He is waiting for the lorry that will take him and his colleagues from the building site – the office building for the new ministry of lands and resettlement in Windhoek – to Katutura, the township on the outskirts of the Namibian capital.

Within the next twelve months, eight Southern African countries will synchronise their battles against malaria through cross-border collaboration. They hope to eliminate malaria in four of them by 2015.

Southern African countries remain mum on the interim economic partnership agreement (EPA), despite a letter from European Commission (EC) trade commissioner Catherine Ashton urging them to sign.

Tax relief for lower income groups in Namibia should not conceal that the 2009/10 budget falls short in addressing structural problems in the economy, civil society organisations have charged.

While South Africa plays for time, the signing of a finalised economic partnership agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and the southern African countries seems imminent - despite regional trade fragmentation remaining a danger.