Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi has scolded his nation for over-reliance on oil, foreigners and imports and told it to start manufacturing things people need. The criticisms, in an unusual series of speeches in July and August, have stirred keen interest in a forthcoming annual September 1 address to the nation of five-million.
South Africa, which has backed Iran’s right to enrich uranium, says it is contemplating processing its own uranium to boost power generation and envisages building up to six new nuclear reactors. But Minerals and Energy Affiars Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said in a speech that any enrichment of uranium would be pursued within international obligations.
United States Senator Barack Obama called on Monday for stepped up protection of press freedom and the environment, meeting with embattled Kenyan journalists and Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai. Speaking at Nairobi’s Standard Media Group, Obama offered a pep talk to employees concerned by growing assaults on press freedom.
South African cardiac specialists are to help decide whether Zambia’s former president Frederick Chiluba is fit to stand trial on corruption charges. One of the doctors behind a preliminary medical report said that Chiluba was ”very sick” but more tests would be needed to ascertain the extent of his illness.
Increased productivity could lift South Africans out of the abyss of the many social ills they face, Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said in Johannesburg on Monday. The government is aware of the challenges in uplifting people’s lives, he told a conference on promoting productivity in Africa.
South Africa could face ”a grave constitutional crisis” that could leave judges considering whether they should ”continue on the bench”, the Durban High Court said on Monday. Judge Chris Nicholson was referring to a government statement that it would not to comply with a court order to expedite anti-retroviral treatment at Durban’s Westville prison.
At least 18 people were killed in northern Kenya during cross-border cattle raids by about 300 armed bandits from Ethiopia, officials said on Monday. Most of the dead were raiders who tried to steal thousands of animals from several villages close to the Ethiopian border, 650km from the capital, Nairobi, they added.
A suspected suicide bomber killed at least 17 people and wounded almost 50 in a crowded bazaar in southern Afghanistan on Monday, the latest attack in a surge of violence in the Taliban heartland. Several children were among those killed or hurt in the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of the country’s prime drug-growing province of Helmand.
At least three Egyptians died Monday when two buildings collapsed in separate incidents, police said, adding that several people were still trapped under the rubble. A three-storey building in the province of Qaliubiya, north of Cairo, collapsed overnight, killing three people and injuring three, a police official said.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi appealed on Monday for foreign aid to train security forces to help his weak government face growing threats from the country’s powerful Islamist movement. Gedi warned of continued instability in the lawless Horn of Africa nation without outside assistance to secure his administration.