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/ 5 September 2005
Kenya will hold its first-ever nationwide referendum on November 21 when voters cast ballots on a new Constitution that has already deeply split the East African nation, officials said on Monday. On that date, 11,8-million voters will be asked to accept or reject a draft Constitution containing sweeping changes to Kenya’s founding document.
African conservationists on Thursday dismissed with contempt a suggestion by United States scientists that the best way to save the planet’s large wild mammals, most of them native to Africa, is to build a huge nature preserve in the midwest United States.
Sudan prepared on Saturday to bury the late vice-president and ex-rebel chief John Garang, who led southern Sudanese in a 21-year war against the government in Khartoum before sealing a historic peace deal in January.
World press chiefs are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference next week amid growing criticism of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s government for alleged deterioriation in media freedom. The Vienna-based International Press Institute kicks off its annual three-day general assembly in Nairobi on Sunday.
Kenya is pushing ahead with plans for an East African political federation with neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda that would create a common currency and Constitution for the three nations by 2010. Kibaki, Tanzanian President Yoweri Museveni and Ugandan President Benjamin Mkapa are due to meet at a special summit, probably in Kenya, on May 20.
Militia groups in southern Sudan are threatening to wreck a fragile peace that has emerged nearly three months after Khartoum and the region’s main rebel force inked a deal to end 21 years of war, residents and aid workers said on Friday. About 30 such groups continue to terrorise Upper Nile state, collecting illegal taxes and abducting locals, they said.
The crisis over the relocation from exile of Somalia’s transitional government deepened on Wednesday as powerful warlords said they will move to impeach President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Warlords controlling the capital of Mogadishu said they will introduce a no-confidence motion against Yusuf in Parliament and seek his removal.
Somalia’s transitional government-in-exile met in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday in a bid to bridge deep divisions over plans to relocate to the war-shattered nation that are now in chaos, officials said. But with inter-clan tensions still running high, there was no indication that Tuesday’s meeting would yield any immediate consensus, the officials said.
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/ 11 February 2005
Stung by intense criticism over new corruption allegations, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday ordered anti-graft officials to examine a cancelled suspect passport deal with a French firm. Faced with mounting concerns over his government’s commitment to fighting corruption, Kibaki has forwarded the contract to an anti-graft panel.
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/ 18 December 2004
A controversial new Kenyan law, passed this month to allow sport hunting and killing of wildlife straying on to private land, has triggered complaints from conservationists, activists and local communities. ”Just a few words of legislation could spell doom for wildlife conservation,” Maasai wildlife activist Godfrey ole Ndopaiya said.