At least 75 people have been reported killed and thousands more displaced in southern Sudan’s Lakes State since interclan violence, sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over pasture and water, erupted on April 24, aid workers said on Wednesday.
A television journalist who was slapped by Kenyan First Lady Lucy Kibaki has filed a formal complaint with the police, charging her with assault and calling for her arrest. ”In terms of justice being served, I am keeping my fingers crossed,” said Clifford Derrick, adding that he has already received several calls warning him to be careful.
Calls for debt relief to be awarded to African countries have become de rigueur in non-governmental circles and a good many news publications. But does the matter crop up during dinner conversations across the continent? Is it sufficiently important to crowd out sports talk among people riding minibus taxis on their way to work?
Few would dispute that community radio stations play a valuable role in informing people about events in their neighbourhood — and give a voice to those who might be denied a platform by larger media organisations. It’s a shame, then, that governments often hamper the development of community radio.
Poor financial accountability and transparency are hindering Kenyan efforts to fight corruption, the outgoing World Bank country director said on Monday. ”We are all aware that Kenya’s public sector functions with limited and weak accountability,” Makhtar Diop said at a financial management forum in Nairobi.
The United States has issued a drought alert for Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, warning that conditions in parts of the Horn of Africa countries threaten starvation, water shortages and diseases. The alert was issued on Wednesday in Washington by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
British Airways (BA) has severed ties with ailing Kenyan carrier Regional Air which this month was forced to suspend all flights for six days over a cash-flow crisis. Under the 2001 franchise agreement, Regional Air had been using BA’s flag and flight numbers to its destinations in East and Southern Africa which include Khartoum, Asmara, Djibouti, Johannesburg, Lilongwe, Lusaka and Harare.
A Kenyan lawmaker known for linguistic improvisation was briefly detained by authorities this week for allegedly composing a song that mocks President Mwai Kibaki and his wife, police said on Thursday. MP Reuben Ndolo was arrested and questioned on Wednesday in Kenya’s Eastern Province.
Jet fuel has become a major component in a local illicit brew drunk by many urban poor in Nairobi, a local newspaper reported Thursday. The Daily Nation newspaper quoted a brewer and seller of the illegal changaa liquor in a Nairobi slum, saying airport workers sell jet fuel to a well established net of customers who sell it on to brewers in the city.
Kenya is pushing ahead with plans for an East African political federation with neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda that would create a common currency and Constitution for the three nations by 2010. Kibaki, Tanzanian President Yoweri Museveni and Ugandan President Benjamin Mkapa are due to meet at a special summit, probably in Kenya, on May 20.
Last week’s call by the United Nations Population Fund to governments to increase spending on reproductive health may prove to be hard for Kenya to implement. Kenya has no budgetary allocation for reproductive health. Concerns are mounting that without state commitment to provide family planning in Kenya, maternal mortality may continue to rise.
The mandate of the peacekeepers patrolling a buffer zone between the warring parties in Côte d’Ivoire has been extended for one month by the United Nations Security Council. The short extension, approved late on Monday, will allow the UN and France to monitor progress at peace talks between the government and the rebels.
Amnesty International (AI), the British-based human rights watchdog, has accused Kenyan authorities of violating the rights of terror suspects in the East African country — and called for an immediate end to these alleged abuses. "We do not support terrorism. However, measures to prevent terrorism can only be effective if they also guarantee and protect human rights," said a researcher on Kenyan issues for AI.
The crisis over the relocation from exile of Somalia’s transitional government deepened on Wednesday as powerful warlords said they will move to impeach President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Warlords controlling the capital of Mogadishu said they will introduce a no-confidence motion against Yusuf in Parliament and seek his removal.
Somalia’s transitional government-in-exile met in Nairobi, Kenya, on Tuesday in a bid to bridge deep divisions over plans to relocate to the war-shattered nation that are now in chaos, officials said. But with inter-clan tensions still running high, there was no indication that Tuesday’s meeting would yield any immediate consensus, the officials said.
Somalia’s transitional leaders met in Nairobi on Friday in a bid to restore order to a heated parliamentary debate over a controversial peacekeeping mission to their anarchic country that degenerated into a bloody brawl. A spokesperson said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed had called for political dialogue and harmony.
Water, say some experts, is a much more likely reason for countries to go to war than oil, and in the largely arid countries along the river Nile in northeastern Africa, the lack of water risks bringing neighbours dangerously close to armed conflict. Egypt is the greatest user of the Nile waters and has been able to irrigate large parts of land to feed its people.
Assailants armed with guns and swords shot and hacked to death 22 people, mainly women and children, from a rival clan in northeastern Kenya on Tuesday, officials said. Security forces later killed 12 suspects during an operation to restore order in Mandera, a district troubled by clashes between the Garre and Murule clans.
The United Nations believes that more than 180 000 people may have died in the troubled Darfur region in western Sudan. According to the UN’s top emergency coordination official, Jan Egeland, the number refers to people who have died of malnutrition and disease, and does not cover those who have been killed in the conflict.
The United Nations Security Council on Monday extended the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) until 15 September 2005, and called on both countries to refrain from any threat of use of force against each other.
Thousands of elephants in Central Africa are killed each year to cater to world consumer demand for ivory, much of which passes through the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, wildlife trade expert Edmond Martin said on Monday in Nairobi. Martin said Khartoum now holds one of the world’s largest markets for illegal ivory.
Action by Churches Together appealed this week for more than ,2-million to fund projects aimed at alleviating food and water shortages in Eritrea, caused by four years of drought. Scarce rainfall has resulted in another poor harvest, and food reserves have been depleted and the coping mechanisms of the population are stretched to the limit, said a statement.
A decade after a landmark United Nations conference resolved to tackle violence against women head on, not enough has been done to put an end to this scourge, say female legislators from East Africa. They said that leaders in their countries had largely relegated violence against women — and other issues related to gender equality — to the back seat of policy-making and resource allocation over the past ten years.
As the citizens of the Central African Republic go to the polls to choose a new president and parliament this weekend, experts differ on whether it is a step toward true democracy. The landlocked nation has had a violent and troubled past. Since independence from colonial master France in 1960, it has been continuously rocked by political instability.
Sudan needs almost -billion for reconstruction and development over the next two years to recover from two decades of north-south civil war, an assessment team said on Wednesday. The team, made up of representatives from the Khartoum government and the ex-rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said ,8-billion, would be required until 2007.
Somalia’s new environment minister asked the United Nations on Wednesday to investigate possible hazardous waste that was washed ashore by last year’s tsunami. The waste may be causing illnesses among local people. The minister said strange objects washed ashore all along his country’s coastline when the tsunami struck on December 26 last year.
Toxic waste washed on to Somalia’s coastline by last December’s tsumani have spawned diseases bearing symptoms of radioactive exposure in villagers along the shorelines of the shattered African nation, the United Nations Environment Programme said on Friday.
Togo’s electoral commission has set April 24 as the date for presidential elections, news reports said on Friday. The way for elections was cleared when Faure Gnassingbe stepped down as president last weekend after heavy international pressure.
Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi has urged Britain to formally apologise for the brutality it committed against the country’s independence fighters, Mau Mau, during the colonial period. Murungi was speaking on Thursday during the launch of a book, Britain’s Gulag: The brutal end of empire in Kenya, by Caroline Elkins of Harvard University.
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/ 24 February 2005
Somalia’s exiled president and prime minister left Kenya on Thursday on their first visits home since taking the helm of the country’s transitional government last year, officials said. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Gedi left the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in separate planes.
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/ 23 February 2005
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.
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/ 23 February 2005
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.