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/ 19 November 2007
It was after the second beating by Ethiopian soldiers that Abdi Bashi Jama says he decided to head for the border. But though separated from family, far from his home village in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region, and a refugee rather than a shop-owner now, Jama considers himself lucky.
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/ 15 November 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday lodged nomination papers with the electoral board, seeking a second and final term of office ahead of polls expected to be the country’s closest yet. Kibaki vowed to crack down on violence in the run-up to the December 27 election, the fourth since pluralism was reintroduced in 1992.
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/ 13 November 2007
Researchers unveiled a 10-million-year-old jaw bone on Tuesday they believe belonged to a new species of great ape that could be the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans. The Kenyan and Japanese team found the fragment, dating back to between 9,8-and 9,88-million years, in 2005 along with 11 teeth.
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/ 13 November 2007
The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria has approved a grant of ,3-million to boost Kenya’s anti-HIV/Aids drive, the Health Ministry announced on Tuesday. The grant will finance programmes over the next five years, but an initial amount of ,1-million will be released in the first two years.
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/ 12 November 2007
A crew member of a Japanese chemical tanker hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast on October 28 escaped and has been rescued after spending two days at sea, a maritime official said on Monday. The Golden Nori was hijacked with 23 crew members aboard, including two South Koreans.
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/ 9 November 2007
An outbreak of cholera has swept a hideout camp housing Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, infecting its leader, Joseph Kony; his deputy, Vincent Otti; and scores of fighters, a spokesperson said on Friday. The outbreak was first reported in September, but details of fatalities remain unclear.
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/ 6 November 2007
A Kenyan judge has ordered an investigation of a United States children’s charity accused in a civil suit of exploiting and trafficking children, a court official said on Tuesday. The court on Monday extended an order first issued on October 9 barring Kids Alive Kenya from operating in the country until the suit filed against it has been resolved.
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/ 5 November 2007
A human rights panel on Monday implicated Kenyan police in the execution of nearly 500 men in the country during a months-long crackdown on the ultra-violent Mungiki gang. The state-run Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said the victims were executed by a single bullet between June and October.
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/ 5 November 2007
Horn of Africa enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea may return to war over their disputed border in a matter of weeks if there is no major international push to halt them. A war on the boundary killed 70 000 people from 1998 to 2000 and brought untold hardship to two of the world’s poorest nations.
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/ 4 November 2007
Ethiopia’s Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels said on Sunday they had killed another 270 government troops in heightened fighting in the remote eastern region of the Horn of Africa nation. Most were blown up in packed trucks, the rebels said.
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/ 2 November 2007
Tanzanian officials were on Friday meeting to decide the fate of a proposed chemical plant on a remote lake that environmentalists say threatens the world’s most important breeding site for the lesser flamingo. The leaders of conservation groups in 23 African countries have signed a petition opposing the plan.
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/ 2 November 2007
Amnesty International urged governments on Friday not to send anyone suspected of crimes during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide to be tried in the country, saying it had serious concerns over the justice system. The Central African country wants suspects in the 100-day slaughter of 800Â 000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be transferred to its custody.
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/ 1 November 2007
Three days of fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, displaced 88 000 people from their homes, adding to hundreds of thousands who fled violence earlier this year, the United Nations said on Thursday. In an unprecedented statement, 39 aid agencies also said they could not respond effectively to Somalia’s unfolding ”humanitarian catastrophe” due to insecurity.
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/ 30 October 2007
The crew of a foreign cargo ship seized by Somali pirates overpowered their hijackers on Tuesday and retook control of the latest vessel to run into trouble in some of the world’s most dangerous waters. The East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme said the North Korean ship had been hijacked late on Monday or early on Tuesday.
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/ 26 October 2007
A wave of alleged executions by Kenyan police is terrifying anyone with links to those killed, while families of the missing fear their corpses could turn up next. Kenyan police came under fire this week from local rights groups, who say they executed scores of suspected members of the dreaded Mungiki criminal gang and dumped their bodies outside Nairobi.
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/ 26 October 2007
Kenya will hold presidential and legislative elections on December 27, the electoral commission announced on Friday, days after President Mwai Kibaki dissolved the Parliament. Commission chief Samuel Kivuitu said 14 248 838 Kenyans have so far registered to vote in the one-day exercise, the fourth since Kenya reverted to pluralism in 1992.
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/ 25 October 2007
Humanity is changing Earth’s climate so fast and devouring resources so voraciously that it is poised to bequeath a ravaged planet to future generations, the United Nations warned on Thursday in its most comprehensive survey of the environment. The fourth <i>Global Environment Outlook</i> is compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data garnered over two decades.
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/ 25 October 2007
Police may have killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on Kenya’s notorious Mungiki gang, a rights group said on Thursday, in a growing national controversy ahead of a presidential election in December. Police are furiously denying the new accusations, calling them an attempt to besmirch authorities.
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/ 24 October 2007
Africa’s cellphone connections rose by 15-million subscribers or 6,6% in the third quarter of 2007, according to figures from an industry trade body seen by Reuters on Wednesday. The GSM Association said subscribers to GSM and CDMA technologies totalled 241,2-million in the third quarter.
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/ 24 October 2007
A series of bodies found dumped in secluded bushland on the edge of Kenya’s capital Nairobi has terrified locals and brought accusations of police executions in their war on the notorious Mungiki criminal gang. Locals say more than a dozen corpses have turned up in recent weeks, thrown by the roadside or left in scrub.
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/ 23 October 2007
An international rights group has lambasted the Somali government for ”systematic harassment” of reporters, closure of media outlets and failure to investigate the killing of eight journalists this year. Few foreign correspondents go into Somalia these days, leaving local reporters to face the risks.
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/ 22 October 2007
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki dissolved Parliament on Monday, starting the countdown to what could be the closest election in East Africa’s biggest economy. ”I hereby dissolve the ninth Parliament of the Republic of Kenya,” Kibaki said in a televised speech.
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/ 22 October 2007
Somali pirates have seized a cargo ship off the East African coast, the head of a local seafarers’ association said on Monday. Gunmen attacked the vessel last Wednesday, said Andrew Mwangura, the programme coordinator of the East Africa Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, but due to chaotic communications with Somalia the incident had taken several days to confirm.
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/ 18 October 2007
A convoy of shiny, 4×4 vehicles roars into the main street of a small town, kicking up dust and scattering people in their way. As traffic grinds to a halt, corpulent politicians emerge from their cars to wave at crowds of mainly young men, some still fingering the small amounts of money and food they have been given to come to the rally.
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/ 17 October 2007
Piracy off Somalia is on the rise because an Islamic group that had cracked down on pirates was ousted, an official who tracks piracy cases off Africa’s side of the Indian Ocean said. Earlier, an international watchdog reported maritime pirate attacks worldwide had shot up 14% in the first nine months of 2007.
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/ 16 October 2007
A South African-led consortium will invest -million (R178-million) in the 106-year-old Kenya-Uganda Railway by June next year to revitalise operations on the decrepit track. The Kenyan and Ugandan governments handed over the money-losing colonial-era railway to Rift Valley Railways Consortium under a 25-year concession last year.
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/ 14 October 2007
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) on Saturday said floods that have wreaked havoc across Africa killed 5 000 wildebeest, and not tens of thousands, blaming tourists for exaggerating the toll. Patrick Omondi, KWS head of species conservation and management, said the wildebeest drowning is a natural-selection phenomenon.
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/ 12 October 2007
The United States should reconsider funding anti-HIV/Aids strategies in Uganda, where recipients of such money violate the rights of homosexuals, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. The watchdog group, in a letter to US officials on Thursday, said Ugandan officials and the media have intensified attacks on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
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/ 12 October 2007
"Our crops have been destroyed by the water and houses have collapsed," says Egoliam of his village’s ordeal in Amuria, Uganda. The heaviest rains in 35 years have caused the worst floods on the continent in decades. Flood waters have destroyed vital infrastructure and left more than one million people needing emergency help.
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/ 10 October 2007
About 15 000 wildebeest have drowned in the Mara River during their annual migration between Tanzania and Kenya, shocking tourists and baffling conservationists, officials said on Wednesday. The mass death of the animals was the first of its kind in recent memory, officials said.
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/ 10 October 2007
Conventional food aid is not enough to solve Africa’s malnutrition crisis, especially in nations wracked by conflict, an international health agency said on Wednesday. In a continent where thousands of young children suffer from acute malnutrition, the use of nutrient-dense ready-to-use foods needs urgent expansion, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.
The Somali government has ordered all media organisations to register with the Information Ministry in order to operate in the country, an official said on Friday. ”They must come to my office anytime to register in order to operate. That is what the law says,” Information Minister Madobe Nurrow Mohamed said in the capital, Mogadishu.