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At the annual general meeting on February 24, 2010 at the Peech Hotel the FCA formed a new board. Please see Statements on left-hand menu for more information.

According to FCA bylaws the board will vote for the chair, deputy chair and treasurer at the next board meeting in two weeks time.

• FCA Members List 2009
• FCA Journalist Visa information for Angola, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan

Last Updated 10 Mar 2010

A Selection from our Members

NAIROBI, Kenya -- In Kenya's last national election, the country's youths were out on the street, campaigning for candidates who promised to improve their lives. Some young Kenyans even carried out horrific acts of ethnic violence at the urging of their political leaders.

But now, disgruntled Kenyan young adults say, they won't be fooled again.

"Young people have served the role of being the gear levers used by politicians to reach power, and at the end of the day, youth feel excluded from political power," says Joshua Nyamori, leader of the Nyanza Youth Coalition in Kisumu. "So we've started a dialogue among ourselves. We decided to organize ourselves around issues, instead of around politicians."

He chuckles. "The public officials are fearful. They do not know how to handle us."

By Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor (U.S.)

BLANTYRE, Malawi --Tiwonge Chimbalanga looked like a man but said he was a woman. He helped with the cooking and dressed in feminine wraparound skirts. Steven Monjeza was a quiet, sullen man often intoxicated on sorghum beer. He said he had never been happy until he finally met the right companion.

The two celebrated their engagement - their chinkhoswe, in the Chichewa language - with a party at a lodge here in Malawi's commercial capital. It began cheerfully enough. But later, gawkers pushed their way inside, some shouting taunts, others just staring through despising eyes. Then the electricity failed. The band stopped playing, and the bride collapsed in tears.

By Barry Bearak, The New York Times (U.S.)

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The image of former South African president Nelson Mandela walking out of prison after 27 years on February 11, 1990, is one of the defining moments of our time.

Apart from symbolizing the triumph of the human spirit over tyranny, and the enduring nature of the elemental desire for freedom, Mandela's release also marked, as his biographer Anthony Sampson noted, 'the return of the lost leader.'

As the face of the African National Congress (ANC), the outlawed party of liberation from the apartheid system of white supremacist rule, Mandela's image had been banned from publication by the apartheid authorities for three decades.

Outside the country, the bearded features of the activist as a young man were emblazoned on Free Mandela campaign posters and t-shirts.

Within South Africa, however, a whole generation had no mental image of the lawyer who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.

By Clare Byrne, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (Germany)

The woman, 24-year-old Setew Tilahun, had gone into labour the night before. But the baby was twisted around inside her and could not come out. Nobody in her remote Ethiopian village could help her. And so her arduous journey began.

When the villagers finally reached the nearest town, late at night, after carrying her on their shoulders for six hours, the people at the health centre said they could do nothing for her. They found an ambulance and sent her on to the next town, a four-hour drive.

At 2 a.m., medical staff in the town of Fitche looked at her and said they couldn't help either. They put her back on the road again. At 4 a.m., she finally reached a hospital in the capital, Addis Ababa, where doctors found that her baby had died.

By Geoffrey York, The Globe and Mail (Canada)