Terror warnings from the United States and other countries in the past ten months have left nearly 14 000 Kenyan hotel workers unemployed, the Nairobi daily East African Standard reported on Monday. In most hotels on the coast and in national parks, the occupation rate has dropped 65%.
Member states of the East African Community have signed a protocol for establishing a customs union that is expected to boost growth in the region. The agreement was initialled on Tuesday in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha by the presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It will take effect in July this year.
Civil servants in Kenya have threatened to go on their first-ever strike at the end of March if the government fails to award them a 600% pay rise. The Kenya Civil Servants Union, which has been in existence for a year, says it has been negotiating with the government on behalf of about 250 000 workers.
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/ 27 February 2004
A report launched in Kenya this week indicates that levels of bribery in the country decreased last year. The third Kenya Bribery Index was issued on Tuesday this week by the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO. It says that monthly expenditure on bribery in 2003 was about ,8 per person, compared to per person in 2002.
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/ 25 February 2004
Connoisseurs have long appreciated the merits of Kenyan coffee, typically described as having a fruity, acidic flavour. But now coffee farm output has seriously declined — something attributed to rising production costs, mismanagement within cooperative ventures and poor policies on the part of the government.
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/ 6 February 2004
The contentious topic of abortion in Kenya was revisited this week during events to mark African Women’s Health and Rights Day. The procedure is currently banned in the East African country. However, women’s groups are urging the government to open a debate on this policy.
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/ 4 February 2004
The Church in Africa is concerned about United States pressure on African countries to introduce anti-terror legislation on pretext of fighting terrorism. The church is cautioning African governments against enacting such laws blindly, which it warns infringe on human rights.
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/ 2 February 2004
The signing of a wealth-sharing agreement earlier this month between Sudanese officials and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army was hailed an important step towards peace in that country. Now, hopes are growing that the accord might also spell the end of another conflict: that in northern Uganda.
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/ 15 January 2004
Kibera slum, near the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is at a considerable distance from the Indian city of Mumbai, where the World Social Forum is scheduled to begin in just two days. Nonetheless, the 700Â 000 inhabitants of this slum, said to be Africa’s largest, will provide one of the summit’s talking points when it gets under way.
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/ 12 January 2004
A decision by the guardians of 72 HIV-positive children to sue Kenya’s government for alleged discrimination in public schools appears to have struck a nerve in the East African country. Aids organisations say this trend may be widespread, and they are calling on the government to take action in the matter.
A Kenyan judge ordered the government and the East African country’s oldest and largest Aids orphanage Wednesday to try to work out a deal to get primary schools to admit children in infected with HIV, the virus that causes Aids.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and other humanitarian agencies will this week launch the second phase of emergency aid distributions in northern Somalia, where tens of thousands of people are facing food shortages because of drought.
Rights groups in Kenya are faced with the daunting task of persuading the government of President Mwai Kibaki to adopt a truth, justice and reconciliation commission (TJRC). A task force found that 90% of Kenyans backed the formation of such a commission.
The slogan on the side of the taxi-van told the world that its name was 2fast 2furious; the reggae was pumping, and the tout hung out of the sliding door hollering fares and destinations as the van lunged towards the kerb for a stop. The matatu is Nairobi’s answer to the transport problems but is also a death trap on wheels. New regulations seek to curb the horrifying number of related deaths.
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/ 16 December 2003
Under Kenya’s current Constitution, drafted during the colonial era, the president enjoys extensive powers. To reduce these powers — which have sometimes been abused — some Kenyans have called for the current process of constitutional review to allow for the post of prime minister. However, others disagree.
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/ 12 December 2003
Rights groups in Kenya have criticised the government’s decision to introduce an anti-terror law to tackle terrorism. The groups say the proposed Bill has been imposed on Kenya by the United States government as a result of two terror attacks witnessed by the country in the past five years.
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/ 12 December 2003
The Health Ministry of the Republic of Congo reported on Thursday that the current ebola outbreak in the country’s northwestern Cuvette Ouest Department is stabilising, with 29 deaths among 42 registered cases to date. Since December 2 no further deaths had been registered in the two worst-affected villages.
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/ 10 December 2003
Sudan’s fledgling civil society organisations are demanding the setting up of a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) as soon as the final peace agreement between the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army is signed. The agreement seeks to bring to an end Africa’s longest-running conflict.
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/ 9 December 2003
A Kenyan man has been arrested after decapitating his infant nephew and eating parts of the severed head after a row with the boy’s mother, police said on Tuesday. The man’s motives were being investigated, said police, adding that he had no known history of cannibalism.
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/ 2 December 2003
The United States embassy in Kenya warned its citizens of looming terrorist attacks in the country’s capital, Nairobi, the embassy’s spokesperson said on Tuesday. Kenyan authorities have tightened security around the city.
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/ 2 December 2003
The World Health Organisation and UNAids have launched a new initiative to provide anti-retrovirals to three million people by the end of 2005. The "3 by 5" campaign will focus on five areas, including global leadership in the fight against Aids and "sustained country support" for the therapy.
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/ 27 November 2003
In an effort to strengthen bilateral relations between their two countries, the foreign ministers of the Republic of Congo and South Africa on Tuesday signed an agreement providing for the establishment of a joint cooperation commission ”in various fields of common interest”.
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/ 26 November 2003
Brigit Namwalo has nothing to celebrate. ”I have become [my husband’s] punching bag and several times he has knifed me,” she says. Her remarks come in the midst of an international campaign, 16 Days of Activism on Violence against Women, which is being observed in more than 100 countries, including South Africa.
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/ 24 November 2003
Hundreds of families who were driven out of their homes by recent fighting in the Galgudud region of the central Somalia are said to be living in ”destitute” conditions. Local elders said the exodus was due to heavy fighting two weeks ago between the Darod subclan of the Marehan and the Dir subclan of Fiqi Mahmud.
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/ 19 November 2003
Kenya finds itself in a quagmire as it struggles to contain the HIV/Aids pandemic ravaging the country. According to the National Aids and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control Programme, about 270 000 people urgently require ARV treatment. But, at most, only 11 000 Kenyans are receiving the drugs.
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/ 17 November 2003
A Hutu rebel group in Burundi has refused to join Burundi’s peace process unless it can negotiate directly with Tutsis, a spokesperson for the National Liberation Forces said on Monday. ”Those who love Burundi should call the Tutsis so that they can open up and confess the wrongs they have done against Hutus,” he said.
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/ 14 November 2003
Winnie Mitullah was in no mood to take part in this year’s ”Africa University Day” celebration held in Nairobi on Wednesday. She has joined other striking university lecturers in a demand for better pay.
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/ 11 November 2003
After closing Kenya’s six public universities, the Kenyan government has announced it will only negotiate with lecturers if they call off their strike. On Monday, the six universities were closed indefinitely after the strike began. Police were posted around the universities, but students remained calm.
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/ 11 November 2003
A top UN official on Tuesday described the 17-year-old rebel war in northern Uganda as the worst forgotten humanitarian crisis on earth. ”The conflict in northern Uganda is the biggest forgotten, neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today,” said Jan Egeland, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs.
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/ 29 October 2003
African countries must integrate if they are to overcome poverty, facilitate development and access international markets, Eastern African leaders said at a regional summit in Nairobi on Wednesday. The leaders were taking part in a one-day meeting about the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
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/ 20 October 2003
Rights organisations are demanding that Kenya’s draft constitution be adopted to allow inmates to vote in 2007. Like in most African countries, Kenyan prisoners do not vote. If Kenya allows its prisoners to vote, it will be the second African country — after South Africa — to do so.
Ethiopia has returned to Kenya 37 elephant tusks seized from smugglers who were trying to export them illegally to the Far East, Kenyan wildlife authorities said on Wednesday. The tusks, weighing 145kg, were intercepted while in transit through Ethiopia in April, the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) said in a statement.