The informal sector features prominently in many discussions about Africa’s economic health. Some say it should be encouraged. After all, it’s a lot better than having citizens turn to crime in their effort to survive. But in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, where an an average of 100 000 vendors operates, some people have a different view.
Poverty has often played the leading role in driving Kenyans to look for employment in the Middle East. But last week’s kidnapping of three Kenyans by Iraqi militants is set to change all that, if the government has its way. The government of President Mwai Kibaki has urged Kenyans working in the Middle East to return home, but that will mean an increase in the number of people looking for jobs.
The diplomatic community in Kenya has coined a new phrase to describe the country’s new political leadership for its inability to fight corruption. The diplomats describe Kenya as ”a new boat sailing without a functional captain”. The captain, President Mwai Kibaki, promised electorates zero tolerance against corruption. Instead, a new culture of get-rich-quickly, embraced by his cohorts, is setting new records.
In a few years, an old woman in rural Africa should be able, if all goes according to plan, to connect to the net and communicate with her children in the city. This is what an Information Communication Technology (ICT) workshop being held in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is seeking to explore. The meeting is seeking to ensure accessibility of ICT to rural people, who form the bulk of Africa’s population.
Should Kenyan authorities have been better prepared for the drought that has ravaged most of the country, prompting widespread food shortages? It’s a question that elicits a mixed response from analysts. Some say that on the basis of past experience, more could have been done.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan says that peace talks for southern Sudan may be compromised if mediators continue to turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis raging in the western region of Darfur, where more than a million people have been displaced by fighting.
After a marathon round of talks, peace may finally be in sight for Somalia, which has been without central government since 1991. But, some fear that a deeply-rooted practice — the chewing of khat — may undermine the gains of negotiations.
The khat plant contains a substance that makes the person consuming it feel alert, energetic or euphoric. Too alert, say certain Somali women.
Thursday July 1 should have been the day that Kenya woke up to a new Constitution that set the country on a path of improved governance and development. But yet again, the government has failed to deliver this document. President Mwai Kibaki first promised that a new Constitution would be in hand by the end of his first 100 days in office.
A decade after the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, maternal mortality continues to plague Africa. Delegates to a meeting held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, recently heard that of the 585 000 deaths caused every year by obstetric complications, many occur in sub-Saharan Africa.
”The toll on children is most worrying,” says James Elder, communications officer for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), about the situation in Darfur, western Sudan. He noted that; ”There are high levels of malnutrition, especially among children. Many of them have died of malnutrition, but it is difficult to get the number of those dead due to the lack of monitoring logistics.”
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