KENYA

Kenyan government plans to send 300 wild animals from the East African country to a zoo in Thailand has been heavily criticised by animal welfare organisations in the country. Animal welfare groups have questioned Kenya’s commitment to protecting its wildlife, as some of the animals on the list have been in steady decline in Kenya.

Five of the last remaining highly endangered northern white rhinos in the wild are to be airlifted from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Kenya in coming weeks to protect them from extinction at the hands of poachers. The rhinos are to be moved to a wildlife reserve in Kenya, a lead conservationist on the project said.

British Minister of Finance Gordon Brown opened a week-long tour of Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, on Wednesday with an appeal for the developed world to back a new plan to ease the continent’s chronic poverty. ”It is simply not acceptable in the modern age … to have hundreds of millions of children not getting the chance at education,” he said.

The signing of an agreement to end two decades of civil war in Sudan not only brings the opportunity for millions of people to return home and begin new lives, but also carries with it a chance for investors to make money in a needy country with large oil reserves and, now, substantial international goodwill.

Sudanese leaders signed a peace deal on Sunday that, if implemented, will end Africa’s longest-running conflict and transform politics in a nation which has spent 40 of the last 50 years at war with itself. Turning the incredibly detailed agreement into reality, though, may prove more difficult than the eight years of talks required to draft it.

A ceremony to mark the signing of a peace deal between the Sudanese government and southern rebels opened in Nairobi on Sunday amid high hopes for a final end to Africa’s longest-running conflict. The pact, which formally ends 21 years of war, was to be signed by Sudan’s Vice-President Ali Osman Taha and rebel leader John Garang at Kenya’s Nyayo National Stadium with a host of African heads of state and other witnesses looking on.

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi announced on Friday in Nairobi the names of 47 ministers who will form his new Cabinet, nearly a month after the country’s Parliament sacked his first team. The ministers and 42 assistant ministers were immediately sworn into office before President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.

The African Union is seeking to act as mediator in the conflict pitting Ugandan government troops and rebels in the north, a spokesperson said on Thursday. President Yoweri Museveni at the weekend ordered the army to resume attacks against the insurgents, after last-minute hitches scuppered a December 31 ceasefire deal.

A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant, male, century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombasa, officials said on Thursday. The hippo, nicknamed Owen, was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean and then forced back to shore when the tsunami struck.

The United Nations is appealing for $13,1-million (about R76-million) to provide urgent relief to 54 000 Somalis who lost their homes and livelihoods after last week’s deadly tsunami slammed African shores, a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday. Somalia’s civil war has devastated the country’s physical infrastructure.

A permanent ceasefire agreement signed between the Sudanese government and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on Friday spells out how a final peace accord between the two parties will be implemented, officials said. SPLM/A spokesperson Yasser Arman said: ”The mood is joyful. It is a historical moment.”

The Somali Parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly approved Mohammed Ali Gedi as Prime Minister of the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation, 12 days after it fired him and his government for being in office illegally. ”I thank all MPs for approving me as prime minister,” Gedi said. ”Now, I will form the government after wide consultations with each of you.”

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Friday appealed for -million to feed about 224 000 refugees who face food shortages in Kenya. ”Less and less food has been reaching refugee families. It will get continually worse unless contributions come forward urgently,” said Tesema Negash, the WFP’s country director in Kenya.

Life is anything but easy in Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera slum, which has been labelled one of the biggest and worst on the African continent, with HIV/Aids and unemployment hitting dwellers hard and indiscriminately. But when walking through the slum a little before Christmas, hardly anyone encountered complains.

United Nations Secretary General Koffi Annan admitted on Friday there is clear evidence that civilian staff and a small number of troops in its peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) committed sexual abuse, saying he is outraged by the incidents. ”This is a shameful thing for the UN to have to say,” Annan said.

United Nations Security Council President John Danforth on Friday urged Sudan and its warring rebels to shoulder the responsibility for ending their civil war and bringing peace and prosperity to Africa’s largest country. "We came here not for a ceremony, not for a photo op, but for results," he insisted.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=125788">Sudan peace pledge at rare UN meeting</a>

United Nations leaders attending a rare Security Council session in Nairobi, Kenya, won a pledge on Thursday that Sudan’s government and main southern rebel group will reach a deal to end their two-decade war this year. The agreement came after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the meeting: ”There is no time to waste.”

Kenyan police and unknown attackers exchanged gunfire overnight at the Nairobi residence of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, witnesses inside his house said on Wednesday. ”I don’t know the motive of the attack, no one was hurt and that is all what I can tell you,” said a resident who asked to remain unnamed.

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Sudan to try to end a 20-month conflict in the country’s western Darfur region, where the UN estimates about 70 000 people have been killed. The Security Council is due to hold a special session on Sudan in Nairobi this week.

A Rwandan rebel force based in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday affirmed its readiness to cooperate in any inquiry into alleged rapes in the region. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda is a mainly Hutu group of fighters, including remnants of those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

The trial of three Kenyans charged with plotting the bombing of the United States embassy in Kenya in August 1998, which killed more than 200 people, resumed in the Kenyan capital on Monday after a three-month break. The US embassy in Dar es Salaam, in neighbouring Tanzania, was bombed at nearly the same time, killing 11 people.

The president of Somalia’s transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, on Wednesday named Professor Ali Muhammad Gedi as his new prime minister. The appointment was made 10 days ahead of a deadline set by the country’s interim Constitution for the president to name a prime minister.

Conflicting reports from the disputed region of Sool, northern Somalia, indicate that at least 100 people were killed on Friday when forces from the self-declared republic of Somaliland clashed with those of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland. Both sides are accusing the other of initiating the hostilities.

A Kenyan street boy emerged  000 richer this week after stumbling across a local radio station’s top treasure-hunt prize while relieving himself in a Nairobi park. Evans Kamande’s first thoughts were for his mother, who works as a house cleaner in Nairobi.

A marathon public inquiry into Kenya’s biggest financial scandal was suspended on Tuesday amid a legal row over the ejection of two lawyers representing the state. The suspension was announced on the 282nd day of hearings by Peter le Pelley, one of three judges presiding over the Goldenberg inquiry.

A Kenyan man who has married 130 women in 65 years says that ”dictatorship and hard work” is required to make a polygamous family happy and productive. Eighty-five-year-old Ancentus Akuku, also known as ”Danger”, lives in Homa Bay on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya.