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/ 26 November 2007
Kenya has offered asylum to nearly two dozen Somali refugees, yielding to opposition to its plans to deport them to violence-torn Mogadishu, officials said on Monday. A military truck transported the 22 refugees from Nairobi to Kenya’s north-eastern Dadaab refugee camp on Saturday after the government dropped plans to deport them.
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/ 26 November 2007
More than 8 000 Kenyans have been executed or tortured to death since 2002 when police launched a crackdown on a banned, politically-linked sect, a group of Kenyan lawyers said on Sunday. Security forces launched a crackdown on the Mungiki sect after it was banned in March 2002.
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/ 24 November 2007
A helicopter pilot described on Friday how he had been forced to drink his own urine and eat leaves to survive for eight days and nights after crashing in the depths of the Kenyan jungle. Solomon Nyanjui broke several ribs when his helicopter crashed on November 15 in the Mount Kenya region.
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/ 23 November 2007
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki has closed a gap with leading challenger Raila Odinga and is now running neck-and-neck with him ahead of elections in five weeks’ time, the country’s leading poll service said on Friday. The latest Steadman poll gave Odinga 43,6% to Kibaki’s 43,3%.
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/ 23 November 2007
A Somali media panel on Friday asked the country’s new Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, to protect press freedom that has been under siege as the government battles insurgents. The National Union of Somali Journalists appeal came a day after President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed appointed Hussein, a veteran law-enforcement official.
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/ 21 November 2007
African states should harmonise their aviation regulations to attract financing needed by the continent’s carriers to compete in the global market, Nigeria’s minister for air transport said Tuesday. Experts say Africa has the world’s highest rate of air accidents, while accounting for just 4,5% of global air traffic.
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/ 20 November 2007
A human rights group condemned Kenya on Tuesday for repatriating 18 Somali refugees who had already been turned away from Uganda despite the horrific security situation in their homeland. Ali-Amin Kimathi, chairperson of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, accused Kenyan police officers of beating some of the refugees.
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/ 20 November 2007
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) said on Tuesday it would push ahead with talks to end two decades of conflict with the government despite the expulsion of some of its fighters. The LRA is notorious for its brutal methods of attacking civilians, slicing body parts off survivors and kidnapping children to serve as fighters and sex slaves.
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/ 20 November 2007
A commander and several fighters from Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have deserted the movement to escape a treason probe for allegedly collaborating with the government, a spokesperson said on Monday. The group fled in October from the LRA’s hideout along the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border.
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/ 19 November 2007
Chinese Defence Minister General Cao Gangcuan on Monday pledged to help Kenya modernise its armed forces during talks with President Mwai Kibaki, an official statement said. Kibaki said the ”support would not only improve the forces’ ability to ensure security along the borders but also enhance Kenya’s role in peacekeeping activities in Africa and beyond”.
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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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/ 2 November 2007
Religion and the debate between those who want a federal state and those who prefer centralised power have become key elements in Kenya’s election politics, which are heating up before the December 27 poll. The Kenyan Catholic Church is openly backing incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, who is seeking re- election and who wants to maintain the current system in which power is concentrated in the executive.
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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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/ 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.