Kenya has its fair share of South Africans and when one has a craving for boerewors, koeksisters and melktert, one can head straight for Gail’s Kitchen on the outskirts of Nairobi. South African-born Gail Unsworth says she has trained a team of Kenyans to make food ”the South African way”.
Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday denied reports from the United Nations that UN peacekeepers destroyed six of their bases in the eastern DRC last week. ”We are still controlling our positions,” said a spokesperson for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
A leading international agricultural policy group on Thursday urged African nations to drop opposition to biotechnology crop research and genetically modified foods, saying such a step could dramatically improve food security on the impoverished continent.
Kenya’s largest supermarket chain said on Wednesday it has begun using new biodegradable bags in response to growing environmental concerns about pollution by discarded flimsy plastic shopping containers. The chain uses more than 30-million bags every year at a cost of more than R3,4-billion.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) demanded on Tuesday that the pirates who commandeered a commercial vessel chartered to transport food aid to 28 000 tsunami survivors in Somalia release the ship, its cargo and crew within 48 hours. The <i>MV Semlow</i> was hijacked on June 27.
At least 21 people, many of them children, were killed on Tuesday when armed raiders attacked a rival clan’s village in a long-running dispute over water and pasture in eastern Kenya, residents said. Members of the Borana clan invaded the remote village of Turbi, about 580km north-east of Nairobi, early on Tuesday.
”Our backs are broken but we are still alive,” seethed Felix Nge’tich as he scoured the ruins of his shebeen at Nakuru in central Kenya. Security forces and furious members of the public continued to raid drinking dens across the country this week following the deaths of 52 people who consumed the illegal alcohol, known locally as chang’aa.
Alarmed by the increasingly bitter dispute over the relocation of the Somali transitional government, United Nations chief Kofi Annan is urging a ”serious dialogue” between rival factions to resolve the row that threatens peace hopes for the lawless nation.
A regional Kenyan hospital overwhelmed at the weekend with patients made violently ill by adulterated moonshine appealed for assistance on Monday as the death toll from the poisonous brew hit 46. Simon Mueke, superintendant of the Machakos District hospital southwest of Nairobi, said his small facility was stretched to the limit and could barely cope with the influx of sick drinkers.
Twelve French troops were convicted in a Paris military court of stealing cash last year from an Côte d’Ivoire bank they supposedly were protecting, the Ivorian daily Fraternite reported on Wednesday. The troops stole about 000 dollars from the bank in the rebel- held town of Man in the country’s northwest.
Kenya is evicting thousands of families who illegally occupy a vast swathe of forest in the country’s Rift Valley region, government spokesperson Alfred Mutua said on Friday. ”These forest areas are water catchment areas and the waters from these areas not only feed our country but [also] … trickle through the Maasai Mara to our neighbours”.
Kenya, facing fierce criticism over rampant sleaze, on Thursday said it would have followed South Africa’s example of sacking graft-tainted officials, but lacked evidence to take such a move, a government spokesperson said. Several graft investigations are under way in Kenya, the most vibrant economy in the East African region, but no action has been taken against top government officials.
Ethiopia’s crackdown on opposition members and students has spread outside the capital, while thousands of detainees are at increasing risk for abuse, a leading human rights group said on Wednesday. Human Rights Watch has obtained reports of mass arrests in at least nine cities outside of Addis Ababa.
Kenyan police on Thursday re-arrested a Muslim man suspected of terrorism links just hours after he was acquitted on murder charges in connection with the 2002 al-Qaeda-linked bombing of an Israeli hotel near the southern port city of Mombasa, his lawyer said. He was arrested as he was about to leave prison.
At least 30 people have died since interclan fighting broke out on Monday in the town of Beletweyne, south-central Somalia. More than 70 people have been wounded and hundreds more displaced in the violence, now in its fourth day, local sources said on Thursday.
A Kenyan judge on Thursday dismissed murder charges against four Kenyan men accused in the 2002 al-Qaeda linked bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel near the southern city of Mombasa and ordered them released for lack of evidence. ”The accused ought not to have been charged with murder,” he said.
Hotels in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have given members of Somalia’s transitional government up to Wednesday to vacate the rooms they have occupied for almost three years, a Somalian MP said on Wednesday. Another member of the Nairobi-based transitional federal Parliament said the notice was not a surprise.
The United Nations is looking into how best to resolve the problem of internally displaced persons worldwide, a senior UN official has said, describing internal displacement as a neglected humanitarian issue. More attention will be paid to eight countries with acute IDP problems, which include Nepal, Somalia and Sudan.
Some of the luxurious, lush suburbs of Nairobi justify the slogan that tourism promoters have given the Kenyan capital; ”The Green City under the Sun”. Quiet streets are lined by perfectly manicured lawns and shadowed by giant jacaranda trees.
Somalia’s government will not abandon plans to return from exile and establish itself in the country, a presidential spokesperson said on Tuesday, a day after militias loyal to rival Somali lawmakers fought for control of the town of Baidoa.
The Kenyan government is drafting a Bill that will outlaw smoking or holding lit tobacco products in public places, the country’s top physician said on Monday, a day ahead of World No Tobacco day. Among the provisions of the law are an increase tax on tobacco by 15% and penalties for those found smoking in public.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has fired a senior prosecutor involved in dropping murder charges against a prominent British aristocrat accused of killing a Maasai game warden, officials said on Thursday. He ”had to go because he acted unprofessionally when handling the case”, a senior government official said.
World media chiefs meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, demanded action on Tuesday from the Gambian government on the as-yet unsolved December murder of a journalist, and pilloried the country for repressing the independent press. Deyda Hydara, the co-founder and editor of the independent newspaper The Point, was killed last year.
Floods caused by heavy rains have killed at least eight people and displaced tens of thousands across Kenya this month, officials said on Tuesday as downpours continued in parts of the East African nation. Over the weekend three sisters drowned in the central Rift Valley and an infant was swept away by waters in western Kenya.
World press chiefs are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference next week amid growing criticism of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s government for alleged deterioriation in media freedom. The Vienna-based International Press Institute kicks off its annual three-day general assembly in Nairobi on Sunday.
A United States-funded famine-monitoring group on Thursday warned of continued food shortage in Somalia unless it rains in the country’s breadbasket southern region. Famine Early Warning System Network said about a million people are in need of humanitarian support in the Horn of Africa country.
Kenyan Immigration Minister Linah Chebii Kilimo personally led police to the rescue of five Indian women immigrants who were being forced to sing in a plush nightclub and locked up during the day, officials said on Thursday. Kilimo stormed into the nightclub in upmarket Parklands estate late on Tuesday.
The Merowe/Hamadab dam being built on the Nile River in northern Sudan could cause serious environmental problems, two environmental advocacy groups have warned. The dam is currently the largest hydropower project being developed in Africa and is expected to be completed between 2007 and 2009.
A magistrate dropped assault charges against Kenyan First Lady Lucy Kibaki after the attorney general said neither police nor prosecutors have had time to investigate whether she had slapped a television news cameraman on World Press Freedom Day. ”I’m so disappointed,” the cameraman said after hearing the ruling.
A recent statement by Kenyan Minister of Justice Kiraitu Murungi that it is ”no longer necessary” for the country to establish a commission to investigate atrocities committed under previous governments has been greeted with both outrage and delight. The promise to set up such a body, was one of the key pledges made during the current head of state’s campaign for office.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi has sacked his information minister, seen as too close to powerful Somali warlords, amid a deepening split in the fledging transitional government still exiled in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday. Gedi fired Mohamoud Abdullahi Jama over the weekend.
As Ethiopia prepares for weekend elections, its human rights record has come under increasing criticism from watchdogs who believe the poll has already been marred by myriad abuses. Human Rights Watch accused Addis Ababa of taking advantage of a fight against the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front to justify the torture, imprisonment and sustained harassment of its critics.