This paper examines the uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the African health sector. In particular, it shows the benefits that ICTs can bring to African health care systems in the areas of medical information, clinical data exchange, treatment, health education campaigns and international collaboration between African medical experts and their colleagues abroad. Despite the potential benefits and uses of ICTs, the paper warns that ICTs should not be naively celebrated as the panacea of African health care. It suggests that ICTs should be a means, not an end, for development in Africa. In this context, the paper illustrates how ICTs can be adapted for human development, social capabilities and literacy within African society.

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This article explores the social and cultural roles of ethnic print media in the country within the prism of Canada’s multicultural policy. Specifically, the article examines how the ethnic groups are framed in the mainstream national media in Canada and then examines how these ethnic media are [re]constructing their own identities in contrast to their framed identities in the mainstream national print media such as the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Sun. In exploring the overall socio-political impacts of these ethnic print media on the social fabrics and cultural identity in Canadian society, Montreal Community Contact, an ethnic newspaper of the black community in Montreal, is used as a case study.

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Nigeria, once considered the giant of Africa, was economically and politically dead. In this dark age of Nigerian history the approximately $150 billion earned from oil sales translated into crumbling infrastructure, and a three-fold increase in external debt. The period was also marked by 'arbitrary arrests and detentions, extrajudicial killings, corruption, excessive use of force, torture of detainees, harassment of journalists and democratic activists, arson attacks on media houses' ( Joseph, 1997: 137).To silence the news media, the pivot upon which civil society rotates in Nigeria, draconian laws were enacted by the government. These included Decree No. 4 of 1984, criminalizing press reports and written statements that exposed an officer of the military government to ridicule, and Offensive Publication (Proscription) Decree 35 of 1993 that empowered the president to ban or sanction any publication as he wished. Despite these restrictions journalists still found a way to continue operations and perform their role as the watchdog of Nigerian society. The focus of this article is on the political atmosphere in which the Nigerian news media, especially the print media, operated during the military rule, and how it set the tone and tenor for the democratization process, often by means of guerrilla journalism.