How Africa is the loser in international football, more cooperation between British aid agencies, and the rebellious rapper who's upset U.S. immigration...

In 1977, Brazilian football legend Pele predicted that an African nation would lift the World Cup trophy by the end of the 20th century. When that didn't happen, he altered the deadline to 2010 - which is the year the tournament will be held in Africa for the first time, in South Africa. The cover story in this week's New Statesman magazine uses Pele's predictions as a springboard to argue that Africa hasn't gained much from international football.

Five African countries have qualified for this summer's tournament in Germany: Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Tunisia, but David Runciman writes that it will be surprising if any of them get beyond the first stages. Despite the success of many individual African players on European and U.S. pitches, hardly any of the money involved finds its way back to Africa to nurture the grassroots of football on the continent.

Neither the world's top teams nor players seem too interested in developing the infrastructure of the game in Africa. And if countries take measures to try and keep their talent at home - as in Ivory Coast, where new laws stop local players being traded overseas until they reach 18 - then international scouts are likely to move on elsewhere.

New Statesman says the only country that has made a big effort to build a solid foundation for the game is South Africa - but unfortunately it hasn't discovered many talented players. Perhaps it - and Africa's other soccer powerhouses Nigeria, Cameroon and Senegal (which all failed to qualify this year) - will endeavour to get their act sorted by 2010. After all, home advantage counts for a lot: the Cup has only been won twice by a team from outside the continent where it's played (1958 and 2002 - and it was Brazil on both occasions).

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British aid agencies are sitting up and taking notice of criticisms levelled at them after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. A January 2006 evaluation of the relief response published by the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee (an umbrella group of agencies) said competition between charities was an issue for concern, especially in relation to assessment, and coordinating mechanisms had been slow to develop.

It urged members to "reflect more deeply on the potential for achieving greater impact through collective activity". Suggestions included designating a lead member for each disaster zone to encourage collaboration, and having more regular joint meetings in Britain.

Now it seems agencies are acting on those recommendations. Third Sector, a weekly British newsletter for charities, reports that several groups have kick-started talks on working together as a coalition in disaster relief operations. It lists those involved as Care International, the Red Cross, Oxfam, ActionAid, Help the Aged, Save the Children and Plan UK.

The idea would be for each agency to work out what it's best at and use that as a basis for assigning duties. Care, for example, is said to be good at logistics and setting up camps for displaced people, and Oxfam is a whiz at water. Divvying up the work could also reduce competition for government funding.

It strikes AlertNet that this kind of approach wouldn't be so dissimilar from the United Nation's efforts to set up specialist "clusters" to coordinate key areas of emergency relief operations. Only thing is, as ActionAid flags up on our site this week, there are also lots of pitfalls to doing things this way.

Jack Campbell writes about how ActionAid found the cluster pilot implemented after the Kashmir quake "shambolic". He says the numbers of clusters "spiralled out of control", making their progress hard to track. Busy aid workers didn't always turn up to meetings and there was no overall strategy for involving local knowledge (not even translators at meetings).

We would assume that any attempt at U.K.-level coordination would be planned to avoid adding any more fat to that particular fire.

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As Sri Lanka seems to move ever closer towards a resumption of civil war, the conflict is also making waves in the music world. According to the Metro newspaper, British rapper MIA (Maya Arulpragasam), the daughter of a Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebel, has been refused entry into the United States because her lyrics are deemed too political.

The United States lists the Tamil Tigers' organisation (the LTTE) as a foreign terrorist group.

The 28-year-old MC, who spent most of her childhood in south London, sings about guns and bucking the system, but also highlights the long-running Tamil campaign against the Sri Lankan authorities.

Her single Sunshowers purportedly tells the story of a suicide bomber, and passages from it were banned on American MTV, according to Metro.

When we checked out her website http://www.miauk.com, it was down (we wonder why?!), but MIA reportedly wrote on it: "They (U.S. immigration) won't let me in. Now I'm strictly making my album from outside the borders."

Shouldn't think President Bush will be rushing to the shops to buy it - but censors will no doubt have fun trying to figure out the exact meaning of her somewhat unfathomable lyrics (or maybe I'm just too old to get it).

Megan Rowling
AlertNet journalist