KENYA

Somali Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi has postponed a planned fact-finding trip to Somalia this week due to transport hitches, the lawless country’s exiled transitional government said on Wednesday. Gedi had been due to embark on Wednesday on his first trip to Somalia since becoming premier last year.

Toxic waste has washed up on Somalia’s shores almost two months after the devastating tsunami that struck countries bordering the Indian Ocean, according to a study by the United Nations Environment Programme presented on Tuesday in Nairobi.

Somalia’s government-in-exile has begun its return to its volatile country by sending teams to the southern part of the country, the prime minister said on Thursday. Government officials had said they would start relocating on Monday — but such promises have been made and broken before.

Kenyan police on Wednesday fired tear gas to break up a crowd of several hundred protesting market vendors who had blockaded a government building in central Nairobi, witnesses said. At least two dozen police in riot gear launched tear gas into the demonstrators.

At least 40 members of Somalia’s interim government left Kenya on Wednesday for various regions of Somalia to explain the new government’s policies to the public, an official in Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi’s office said. The trip is the latest indicator that momentum is building up for the Kenya-based Somali government to return home.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, faced with blistering criticism for not doing enough to fight rampant government corruption, on Wednesday renewed pledges to battle graft vigorously and in a transparent manner. ”We want everything known because there should be nothing secretive in the way we manage government affairs,” Kibaki said.

The Cabinet reshuffle by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki in response to a recent outcry over corruption is ”completely unsatisfactory”, the countrys leading anti-graft watchdog said on Tuesday. ”It makes a mockery of Kenyans concerns [over corruption],” said Gladwell Otieno, head of the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International.

African Union officials will fly into Somalia on Monday to assess security ahead of the deployment of African troops to help restore an administration after 14 years of chaos. The trip had been scheduled to leave on Friday, but was delayed amid security fears after the slaying of a BBC journalist in Mogadishu last Wednesday.

An inquiry into Kenya’s biggest financial scandal to date ended in Nairobi on Thursday after nearly 300 days of hearings into how the country was defrauded of hundreds, or even thousands, of millions of dollars. The hearings ended amid a firestorm of international criticism lobbed at the Kenyan government.

Kenyan anti-graft chief John Githongo on Monday resigned amid complaints from donors that the government is not doing enough to stamp out corruption. His resignation comes less than a week after the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Edward Clay, mounted a renewed attack on what he called major corruption in 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.”