A mass free distribution of mosquito nets in Kenya that has nearly halved child deaths from malaria in high-risk areas has led the World Health Organisation to recommend for the first time that nets should be given away, rather than sold, in the developing world. In a project that is being hailed as a model for other African countries, Kenya’s ministry of health has distributed 13,5-million insecticide-treated nets across the country since 2003.
Fatma Ahmed Chande was cold. It was 3am and raining. The 25-year-old Tanzanian woman was kneeling on the taxiway at Nairobi’s international airport. Headlights from a convoy of police vehicles punched holes in the darkness. She saw a group of blindfolded men being led towards a plane. She recognised some of the shackled women and children who followed them.
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/ 23 November 2006
President Robert Mugabe’s fight against corruption is closing in on his closest confidants. The 82-year-old leader is in a quandary and is unwilling to pass a routine political directive for the arrest and prosecution of Zanu-PF officials allegedly involved in illegal foreign currency dealings.
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/ 20 November 2006
A United Nations report that claims 720 fighters from Somalia’s Islamic courts fought alongside Hizbullah during the recent war with Israel has been questioned by experts. The report, compiled by the Monitoring Group on Somalia and to be presented to the UN Security Council on Friday, also alleges that Iran sought to purchase uranium from the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia in exchange for weapons.
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/ 30 October 2006
Moves to expel 150 000 Arabs who have settled in Niger over the past three decades are already underway, one day after the government made the surprise announcement that the Arabs, known as Mahamid, would have five days to leave the country. Many of the Arabs settled in Niger after leaving neighbouring Chad following the 1974 drought and again during the Chadian civil war of the 1980s.
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/ 1 September 2006
Chad’s president has threatened to expel energy giants Chevron and Petronas, two of the three consortium partners in a World Bank-backed project that was meant to serve as a model for oil extraction in Africa. Idriss Déby accused the United States and Malaysian companies of failing to pay R3,2-billion in taxes and told them to make plans to leave the country.
An Oscar-nominated documentary highlighting links between fish from Lake Victoria and the arms trade has drawn a furious reaction from Tanzania’s president and led to harassment of people involved in the film. President Jakaya Kikwete said Darwin’s Nightmare, a film by Austrian director Hubert Sauper, had hurt the country’s image and caused a slump in exports of Nile perch.
The traffic officers must have licked their lips when they saw the easy pickings approaching — a luxury grey Toyota LandCruiser with United Nations number plates. In time-honoured fashion, one of the officers stepped into the road on the outskirts of Nairobi, flagged down the vehicle, informed the driver that he had been speeding and confiscated his licence and car keys.
”The one with the diarrhoea opens the door” might seem an unlikely sentence in a book explaining biblical scriptures. So too essays on witchcraft, rape, ancestral worship and female genital mutilation. But Africa Bible Commentary, a new 1 600-page tome, provides explanations of verses from all 66 books of the Bible, using local proverbs and idioms.
”What has happened in Mogadishu is a miracle,” said Abdi Haji Gobdon, the 62-year-old director of Voice of Peace radio in the Somali capital. ”We are still trying to take it all in.” Three weeks ago, the last of Mogadishu’s warlords were chased from the city by a combination of Islamist militia fire power and what people here describe as a ”societal uprising”.