KENYA’S parliament has passed a motion to stop the government laying off civil servants as part of a World Bank-backed plan to cut the size of the public sector. Opposition members of parliament pushed through the motion, which calls on the government to stop laying off workers until it provides detailed plans on how it […]

STELLA MAPENZAUSWA and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday SHARP divisions are starting to emerge in Zimbabwe’s beleaguered government after police and soldiers fought running battles with protesters in a Harare township for a third successive day of riots against soaring food prices. ZANU-PF parliamentarian Charles Ndhlovu said he would demand in parliament that the government […]

SUDANESE government planes have bombed two relief centres in the south of the country, killing ”several” people and injuring 32, the main rebel movement said. Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) representative George Garang said the attacks violated a 10-day ceasefire agreed to allow the United Nations Childrens’ Fund to carry out an anti-polio immunisation drive. […]

ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu, one of the sharpest critics of apartheid, has been admitted to hospital for further examination following cancer surgery last year. Tutu has made a slow recovery since returning to Cape Town in August from the United States, where he had been treated for prostate cancer. Tutu looked thin and frail in August […]

CHADIAN President Idriss Deby and Cameroonian President Paul Biya have laid the foundation stone of the 1 070km Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, which will transport 250 000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Doba basin of land locked Chad to Kribi for export by 2005. The development of the Doba oilfield, which is to […]

NIGERIA’S state oil firm NNPC and US-based Chevron Corp unfolded a $2bn investment plan for two projects aimed at converting natural gas to petroleum fuels. The first is the Escravos Gas Project (EGP) phase three, which will process nearly 400m cubic feet of gas per day, while the second project is the Escravos Gas-to-Liquids (GTL). […]

GAVIN PATTISON and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gulu | Thursday AN INTERNATIONAL team of health experts has arrived in northern Uganda to help contain an outbreak of the Ebola virus which has already killed 39 people – but health workers fear they will discover more cases in the next few days as medical teams reach remote villages. […]

SA power group Eskom has signed an agreement with its Nigerian counterpart to help repair Nigeria’s crumbling electricity grid. Negotiations between Eskom and Nigeria’s National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) are expected to be concluded by the end of this month. Financial details of the accord were not available. Eskom has an installed capacity to generate […]

HYDRO Air, a South African company, is launching its first-ever cargo service and first Africa-European air service in the first week of November – and is considering the possibility of launching a sea-air service between Europe and Africa in the longer term, because larger vessels could not serve smaller ports in Africa. ”The initial idea […]

THE International Monetary Fund has increased its loan programme for Kenya by $52m to help the East African nation deal with the effects of one of its most severe droughts ever. The Washington-based lending agency said it would increase its three year poverty-reduction loan to $247m, including $26 million which would be made immediately available. […]