Sun Fire Solutions presents a range on innovative Solar Lighting systems especially suitable to African not easy conditions of life. What is most important is the fact that this South African innovative technology is respectful to what the earth is requiring from its residents in term of attention and protection.
From outside it looks a bit like a satellite but in the reality it has nothing to do with television. This imaginative device is in nature of saving forests, stopping soil erosion and putting a brake to a global warming that remains threatening the human being. Its easy transportability and usage making them ideal as a household lighting system or camping compliment. As it is a solar powered stove can be used to cook, to bake and to fry wherever there is sunlight.
The existence of different types of the parabolic attests the reliability of the South African technology.The parabolic 12 is suitable for cooking for 2-5 people, the 15 is suitable for cooking for a family of 5-10 people while 18 is suitable for schools and such like institutes. Their lifetime exceeds 10 years and it took 20 minutes to assemble. Providing you have shadow you can still cook but it will be a lot slower.
In cloudless conditions you boil a kettle of water in 4-8 minutes. On the parabolic 18 you can cook a 16 saucepan of chicken stew in around 180 minutes. With this system people in Africa’s rural communities will not have to walk kilometres to collect firewood. Their daily conditions of life are getting easier and the non emission of carbon dioxide is heralding a promising future in terms of environmental protection.
A judge from the tiny Samoan archipelago made history last week by declaring that Charles Taylor, the deposed president of the West African state of Liberia was guilty of “aiding and abetting” the multiple atrocities committed by a rebel force in neighbouring Sierra Leone – nine years after being indicted by a United Nations Special Court. The judges unanimously ruled that Mr Taylor knowingly assisted the commission of these crimes by providing a continuous flow of arms, ammunitions, logistical and other forms of support to the main rebel group (Revolutionary United Front) in exchange for diamonds.
The six-year trial heard harrowing stories of how Taylor’s forces unleashed a maelstrom of brutality across the volatile region. Taylor aimed to make billions from exploiting the richest diamond fields of that part of the planet – and as many as 70.000 people were killed in the blood-soaked conflict that embroiled Liberia and Sierra Leone, even spreading in neighbouring Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea.
According to the verdict passed last week by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor, the warlord-turned- president of neighbouring Liberia, was responsible for helping to “mastermind” the strategy of vicious repression that was implemented against innocent civilians in Sierra Leone – a country he once wielded immense influence, and where tens of thousands of people were killed, mutilated, raped and repeatedly displaced for years.
It seems such a long time ago that our television screens were filled every night with the latest atrocities committed in Sierra Leone and Liberia’s civil wars. Yet even by the standards of Africa’s recent violent history, the conflict in Sierra Leone generated some of the most gruesome images of cruelty we ever seen in modern times, and is one of the most blood-splattered episodes in African story.
But, as so often happens with so many conflicts in Africa, the horrors of Sierra Leone soon passed from our consciousness, particularly after Britain’s military intervention in 2000 – led in swashbuckling style by the hawkish government of former Premier Tony Blair.
The signature atrocity of the rebel forces that first overran Sierra Leone in the 1990s was to chop off the limbs of their opponents with a machete or an axe. They were stories of truckloads of victims who had recently been maimed being taken to a UN compound still bearing their severed limbs in the forlorn hope that they might be saved.
So the fact that, all these years later, the person responsible for this bloodshed has been convicted of war crimes should be seen as a major breakthrough in the global effort to bring war criminals to justice. Not since Karl Donitz, the German admiral who briefly succeeded Hitler upon his death was tried and sentenced by the International Military Tribunal, has a head of state been convicted by an international court. The judgement is an important milestone in the efforts to combat impunity – and sends a powerful message that there is nowhere left for bloodthirsty despots to hide. This ground-breaking verdict permanently locks in and solidifies that rogue leaders are now accountable to what they do to their people, and are not immune from prosecution. It also represents a substantial step forward for international justice: even if a state is too destabilised or weak to put one-time rulers on trial, there exist international mechanisms to do it.
This also sets an important precedent that, in the long and sorry annals of monsters in power, was long overdue. It may have given the ICC the courage to indict the Sudanese tyrant Omar al-Bashir who is openly defying attempts to arrest him on genocide charges committed in Darfur. He remains out of reach of the court and is engaged in a new conflict with the oil-rich South Soudan. He continues to rule Soudan with an implicit nod from African leaders, including the triumvirate of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya, who failed to arrest him when he visited their respective countries. Another tyrant who has escaped justice so far is the former Chad president Hissene Habre, who resides in a sumptuous mansion in the West African state of Senegal, which has refused to try or extradite him on charges that he orchestrated the political killings of more than 50.000 citizens.
The sombre finale of Taylor’s trial in the windowless courtroom in a leafy suburb of The Hague marked a dramatic turnaround for a man who once reigned supreme in tropical jungles half a world away. It also represented a symbolic moment for Sierra Leone, Liberia and even Cote d’Ivoire as they come to terms with the legacy of his bloody campaigns in the 1990s.
Like many would-be dictators and despots, Taylor did not soil his own hands with the disagreeable business of committing atrocities: he left that grisly task to the henchmen of Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front, the main rebel body. The only “dirty” business Taylor himself undertook was to receive millions of dollars’ worth of “blood diamonds” as payment for the arms he helped to ship across the Liberian border to the Sierra Leonean rebels.
Selective accountability
One of the ironies of the Taylor’s trial is that, while it is of great significance for Africa, it has also highlighted concerns that, for international tribunals, the Dark Continent has been a “convenient laboratory “to test concepts which have not been applied to other parts of the world. Perhaps inevitably, justice is also selective. Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame, respectively presidents of Uganda and Rwanda have both armed rebels who pillaged the Democratic Republic of the Congo to gain control of their vast natural resources. The aforementioned leaders would be vulnerable to the same prima facie case as Taylor, but so far, the ICC is not even contemplating of asking for their prosecution.
Some will rightly argue that the overly constrained proceedings in The Hague are really like a show trial, a demonstration of western judicial power rather than a real exploration of the facts and figures surrounding series of events that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives across the region. Many “fleet street” newspapers and left-wing “think-tanks” have written articles suggesting that all leaders can be held accountable for their crimes by the ICC - but if we are all talking about accountability, then we should look immediately at the permanent members of the UN Security Council: namely the USA, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The likes of presidents Putin, Bush, and Hu Jintao will never face criminal sanctions for their roles(aiding and abetting) in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Tibet to name but a few. When we hear the names of Guantanamo Bay, and the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib, the immediate association is with American war crimes. How likely that we will see former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and his stooges, such as his former foreign secretary Jack Straw, brought to justice for their complicities in Iraq, and for many cases of torture and rendition flights in Libya under Muammar Kaddafi.
A growing number of civil rights activists, international law experts, and human rights groups have raised their concerns at the ICC dealings – a court created for the crimes in one continent is by definition discriminatory, incapable of equal justice, and a weapon against chosen “enemies” – Thomas Lubanga, Jean Pierre Bemba and Laurent Gbagbo amongst many. If there is to be a fair International Criminal Court, it must act equally as to all nations with none above the law.
The growing number of African defendants in the international courts, especially high-ranking politicians and heads of state, will at least put pressure on African autocrats to consider the personal risks of their human rights abuses. But it could also encourage some to cling at any costs to power, fearing jail if they step down.
Africa’s steps to establish accountability will not be swift, but hopefully they will be sure. A more immediate impact of this landmark verdict will be felt in the region. Several African countries remain fertile ground for conflict and repression. Justice and accountability efforts for many victims in Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Chad, and Zimbabwe have fallen all short.
The obligation of political leaders to answer to the public for their actions and decisions is a cornerstone of a well-functioning democratic system. In principle, political accountability serves a dual purpose. It checks the power of political leaders to prevent them ruling in an arbitrary or abusive manner – and helps to ensure that governments operate effectively and efficiently. Moreover, accountability is linked to citizen participation, leadership responsiveness, and the rule of law, three other pillars that both define and reinforce the practice of democracy.
Charles Taylor conviction will have important ramifications around Africa. This is indeed a monumental verdict because the continent has grabbled with the challenge of prosecuting powerful individuals. It is a stark reminder to African leaders, many of whom have often acted with impunity, will have to rethink their actions. After last week court ruling, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that, they, too, one day be forced to pay for their crimes.
International justice must not only be done, but also made to look useful and appealing so that future politicians will decide, in the phrase of the late theorist Judith Shklar, to choose “justice, as a policy”.
Repeated coups, military rebellions and political assassinations have transformed Guinea-Bissau, the new hub for cocaine trafficking (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) into an unstable competitive authoritarian regime. Guinea-Bissau was previously classified as an electoral democracy by the American human rights organization Freedom House, but is now considered as undemocratic. The struggle for democracy is more complex as the next presidential election will be held on March 18, 2012. In fact, drug trafficking has increased during the last decade. The government has suspected some high-ranking army officers and senior officials of partnering with drug cartels. These partnerships are necessary in order to facilitate the distribution of drugs from Latin America to Europe. Under these circumstances, it is widely believed that zealous political leaders threatening the traffickers’ interests will be stopped.
Guinea-Bissau is a small and impoverished coastal West African state located between Senegal and Guinea. After Independence from Portugal in 1974, the political history of the country has been associated with political violence and instability. In 1980, João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira ousted the first president, Luís Severino de Almeida Cabral, after a bloodless military coup. Despite the failure of several alleged coup plots (1983, 1985 and 1993), President Vieira was finally ousted from the government in 1999, following a bloody civil war that begun in 1998. After a transparent election, opposition leader Kumba Yalá became president in 2000, taking power from a transitional government. Another military coup ousted President Yalá in 2003, and Henrique Rosa took over as interim president until the return of President Vieira after transparent elections in 2005. Despite the fair election, political violence later escalated and President Vieira was accused by his opponents of being the country’s number one drug trafficker.
The multiple political assassinations during the year 2009 are suspected to be related to the drug trafficking. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, about 27% (40 tons, US dollars 1.8 billion of the wholesale price) of the cocaine consumed in Europe is coming from West Africa, with an significant quantity transiting through Guinea-Bissau. More than 33 tons of cocaine were also accidentally intercepted in West Africa. Some high‐ranking army officers were suspected of organizing several times the disappearance of significant quantities of illegal drugs. Earlier in 2008, the Navy Chief of Staff, José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, suspected of trafficking, was arrested and suspended, but he escaped. Scrupulous investigators working on his case were threatened. These events divided outlaws and law-abiding senior officers.
The increased division within the Army concerning drug issues is widely believed to have reached its summon with several assassinations in 2009. According to Amnesty International, the culture of violence significantly increased during the 2009 electoral period with more incidents of serious violation of human rights including extrajudicial executions of politicians. The most common targets of these violent acts were people criticizing the Army or the Government on drug trafficking. General Batista Tagme Na Waie, Guinea Bissau’s Army Chief of Staff, was brutally murdered on March 1, 2009, by a group of soldiers suspected to be under contract to kill him. On March 2nd, loyal officers to the general also killed the President Vieira, believed to be involved in the assassination of their chief. Suspected of preparing a coup, the presidential candidate Baciro Dabó and the former Defense Minister Helder Proença were killed in June, before the election. The court President and former Prime Minister Francisco José Fadul was beaten and tortured by a group of soldiers after making a statement requesting the military to give an account of crime and corruption responsibilities. The lawyer and president of the Human Rights League of Guinea-Bissau, Luís Vaz Martins received death threats after taking the defense of Fadul.
Despite these series of assassinations and intimidations, Malam Bacai Sanhá was elected president in 2009, and ruled the country until his death from a long illness in January 2012. In conformity with the constitution, the Parliamentary Speaker, President Raimundo PEREIRA, replaced him.
The successful contention of military plots during the hospitalization of President Malam Bacai Sanhá (December 2011), and the relative stability of the country since his death show reasons to believe that upcoming elections will be critical for the future of the country. Free and fair elections may offer a unique opportunity to consolidate weak stability and democratize the political system, by offering elected leaders the legitimacy to reform institutions for more transparency, representativity and accountability to citizens.
For the upcoming election, over half a dozen candidates are finally competing, even though more initially sought candidacy (ten out of fourteen were initially approved by the Supreme Court, but some resigned). Important candidates include the opposition leader and Former President Kumba Yalá (2000-2003), representing the Social Renewal Party (PRS); the ruling party candidate and Former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior. He represents the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Also running as an independent candidate is former interim President Henrique Pereira Rosa (2003-2005).
Several actors have been involved in Guinea-Bissau. The United States has provided substantial food aid and reforms packages. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) have contributed to the peace process. The United Nations Integrated Peace-Building Office in Guinea-Bissau is also "assisting the Peacebuilding Commission in its multidimensional engagement with Guinea-Bissau", and the United Nations Development Programme oversees the international fund to help ensure a free, fair and transparent 2012 election.
The ultimate questions are: Will Guinea-Bissau’s leaders and army seize the opportunity to end authoritarianism and military coups, fight drug trafficking, build strong institutions, and foster economic development? Will they come back to a democratic path, subordinate the military to the authority of elected civilians, and require a strict respect of political rights and civil liberties?
The President of the Libyan supreme authority, Mustafa Abdul Jalil one of the credible personalities of TNC, is threatening to resign, following the Friday’s massive protests, especially in Benghazi .
Attacked by protesters on Saturday, contesting the content of the draft of electoral law, the TNC now held its meetings in a secret location, to avoid any incident. In fact, since the fall of the Gaddafi regime, anyone knows who is the decision maker in Libya , observers agree. The warlords have refused to put away their men and weapons to certainly better negotiate their status in the post-Kaddafi Libya . The protest movement against the TNC grown Thursday and Friday in Benghazi , Libya epicenter of spring, during which "jelatinas" (artisanal bombs), were used against the government’s offices.
The security in the capital Tripoli remains at the center of the new Libyan authorities’ concern and the government has failed to make the revolutionaries complying with the law.
The unsecured Tripoli is partly in the hands of former Islamists having served in Afghanistan and Libyan Berbers particularly targeted during decades by Kaddafi.
The revolutionaries (Thouwar) are requiring more compensation for the wounded persons, more jobs and better salaries.
Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi, demand a faster introduction of Sharia, promised by the president of the CNT. Women’s liberal movement seeking at least 20 seats in the future Chamber of Deputies, double the 10% under the bill. It is precisely this draft of electoral law that set fire to the powder. Critics are also rising on the composition of the electoral college, the number of vacancies for women, the ineligibility of persons having been close to the regime, and the issue of voting residents abroad, for some suspects secularization, for other valuable rebuild the country.
The situation in Libya remains confused and the positive issue is not yet clear.There are still about 8000 prisoners in 60 prisons or detention camps, often improvised, and the hands of local groups, according to the NGO Human Rights. And to corroborate this, the High Committee for Refugees United Nations based in Malta , confirmed the continuing abuses against foreign black skin, suspected of being mercenaries Gaddafi! Summary executions continue, in addition to looting, confiscation of money, phones and objects, and rape.
The insights of Frederick Hayek concerning thedevelopment of modern human society have contributed greatly to our understanding of the relationshipbetween law, economics and politics.
They are contained in his two major works,’The Constitution of Liberty’ and ’Law, Legislation and Liberty’. Butthis Nobel Prize winner also wrote for ordinary people. That ishow Hayek’s best known book, ’The Road to Serfdom’, which explainedthe dangers of socialism, was the one and only abbreviated book everpublished by the Readers Digest at the front, instead of the back, ofthe magazine. Hayek’s study of economic freedom covered many years.
Despite this, it was very straightforward.In his own words, ’In 1936 I suddenly saw, as I prepared my PresidentialAddress to the London Economic Club, that my previous work in differentbranches of economics had a common root.’ His great insight was that’the price system was really an instrument that enabled millionsof people to adjust their efforts to events, demands and conditionsof which they had no direct knowledge, and that thewhole coordination of the world economy was due to certain practicesand usages which had grown up unconsciously.’ ’I gradually found,’ hewrote, ’that the basic function of economics was to explain the process ofhow human activity adapted itself to data about which it had noinformation.
Thus the whole economic order rested on the factthat, by using prices as a guide or as signals, we were led to servethe demands and enlist the powers and capacities of people of whom we knewnothing. It was because we had relied on a system which we had neverunderstood and which we had never designed that we had been able to producethe wealth to sustain an enormous increase in the world’s population, andto begin to realize our new ambitions of distributing this wealthmore justly. ‘This insight, he said, ’has extraordinarily importantconsequences once its truth has been accepted. Either you mustconfine yourself to creating an inst i tut ional framework within which the price system will operate as efficientlyas possible, or you are driven to upsetting its function. If itis true that prices are signals which enable us to adapt ouractivities to unknown events and demands, it is obviously nonsenseto believe that we can control prices’.Hayek explains in detail how theprice system communicates the results of very sophisticatedinformation throughout the
market.
Suppose, for example, that a new usefor some resource such as tin has been discovered, or that anexisting source of tin has become exhausted. Significantly itdoes not matter to the trader which of these two causes has occurred.All he needs to know is that he must economise on tin because it nowcommands a higher price; the change in market conditions has enabledtin producers to obtain more for their product. Some users of tinwill no doubt economise, perhaps switching to substitute materials thatare now cheaper.
Thus the scarce tin will continue to beemployed only where alternatives are unavailable or aremore expensive. The new demand for substitutes will prompt theirfurther supply or switching from less profitable employments, which willin turn affect the things which can be substituted for the substitutes,and so on.
The entire market order adjusts tothe scarcity or new demand for tin, and acts as one market, eventhough few people know the original cause of the changes. Usersand producers do not need to scan the whole field, or to be aware ofthe various uses for tin and its substitutes, for this adjustmentto occur and for the relevant information to be communicated to all.The prices of these goods are all they need to know in order for acomplete adjustment to be made.
The most remarkable fact aboutprices, Hayek explains, is that in this way they match the purposesof many unknown people by summarizing a great deal of informationvery simply. Any central planner would need to know all of the varioususes and end purposes for tin and its substitutes before he could evenbegin to work out what switching should occur, but the marketprovides the adjustments rapidly and without any need to find outall this detailed information. Of the price system Hayek says:’In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only
the most essential information is passedon, and passed on only to those concerned.’ The result of this isthat the price system ensures that goods are produced in themost efficient and least costly way possible.What does all this mean forthe ’P’ words of economics - prices, profits and planning?
To control signals involves distortingthem, with harmful results. If the price for a product (cooking oil,for example,) is set below its economic level, demand will be boosted butproduction discouraged, resulting in a shortage. Conversely, ifthe price of a service (labour, for example) is set above its economiclevel, supply will be encouraged but demand reduced, resulting in asurplus, i.e. unemployment.
How about profits, a business objective which hasoften been denounced as evil? The prospect of high profitsencourages entrepreneurs to concentrate on products which are in highdemand, whereas losses or low profits encourage moves toimprove efficiency or to switch to other products which are ingreater demand.
Both actions are economically beneficial.Another major role of profit is to stimulate individuals to discovernew and untapped opportunities.
And planning? Central planning by governments is appropriate fornational finances and major infrastructure.But otherwise it should be left to businesses to respond to thesignals provided by price and profit. In short, the appropriateguides for virtually all economic activity are the signals providedby prices, for which economic freedom is the right environment. Having died in 1991, Hayek was not aliveto comment on the current world recession.
We can be sure, however, that he wouldnot have agreed with those who blame it on excessive economicliberty.
He would doubtless have attributed it mainlyto the actions of those ’government sponsored enterprises’, FreddieMac and Fannie Mae, which, encouraged by the government, supportedthe excessive promotion of ’subprime’ mortgages.
Murray Sanderson is Executive Secretary of ZambiaInstitute for Public Policy Analysis. This article is syndicated by AfricanLiberty.org
Franklin Cudjoe is head of Ghanaian think tank, IMANI, a non-profit, non-government organization dedicated to fostering public awareness of important policy issues concerning business, government and civil society. He is also editor of AfricanLiberty.org The Foreign Policy Magazine named IMANI, the fifth most influential think tank in Africa in 2009. Franklin was named Young Global Leader 2010 by the World Economic Forum.
** “If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”.-Sir Isaac Newton,
The use of GM (genetically modified) food crops is a highly emotive issue. What should influence the debate between those who support these developments and those who oppose them is a report by the US Department of Agriculture. They estimate that with rising population trends, if no significant reforms are made over the next decade, the number of “food insecure” people (those consuming less than 2,100 calories per day) in Africa, will increase by 30 per cent to 645 million. To make use of the latest available technological developments is, therefore, of paramount importance.
To counter food shortages, farmers need to derive the maximum possible yield from their farms. Worldwide, alfalfa (lucerne) is grown mainly as a food for cattle. The recent development by seed company, Monsanto, of a GM variety of alfalfa that is resistant to herbicides, makes it possible now for farmers to spray their alfalfa with a herbicide, killing the weeds without harming their crop.
Most authoritative reviews conclude that neither GM crops nor food produced from them pose a significant risk to the humans who consume them. Indeed, in its annual State of the World’s Food and Agriculture report, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) states that the balance of evidence suggests that GM technology does not harm humans and GM seeds do not harm the environment.
According to the FAO, food production must increase by at least 70 per cent to meet the growing demands of a world population expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050. It is essential, however, that increased agricultural productivity be derived from the better use of existing agricultural land and not from an expansion of agricultural land as in the past four decades, when increasing amounts of land were put to use for farming to the detriment of forests, soil, and water.
Like any business, the goal of farming is to deliver the goods required by the market. To achieve this it has to become more profitable by being more efficient, that is by farming more intensively, not extensively. Biotechnology, and, more specifically, genetically modified foods offer a realistic opportunity to meet the demands of growing populations by increasing a farmer’s productivity.
Throughout the world, more and more farmers are recognising the benefits of using the latest available technologies and are switching to transgenic seeds.
In 2010, 15.4 million farmers in 29 countries planted 148 million hectares of transgenic crops. The United States is the biggest producer of GM crops, with an estimated 66.8 million hectares followed by Brazil (25.4), Argentina (22.9), India (9.4) and Canada (8.8). South Africa is the 9th largest producer of transgenic crops with 2.2 million hectares, comprising maize, soybean and cotton.
Transgenic seeds offer great promise to poor African farmers who missed the green revolution. Compared to the rest of the world, African countries generally suffer from very low agricultural yields. For example, in the case of maize, the average yield per hectare in the developed world is 10 to15 tons per hectare, whereas the average yield in Africa is 1.4 tons per hectare. Since a large proportion of Africa’s inhabitants are subsistence farmers, these low yields contribute to the continent’s poverty and lack of economic development.
One of biotechnology’s great advantages is that it can become available almost immediately to farmers outside industrialised countries. In just a few years, GM crops could improve the effectiveness of the agricultural sector and food security in many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are several bar-riers that can prevent farmers from using these new age seeds to improve their productivity. They are governmen-tal restrictions, lack of credit, poor infrastructure, high transaction costs, and educational and cultural barriers.
Those farmers who have adopted these modern technologies have seen a substantial increase in their crop yields and a reduction in their workloads. They have been able to produce more than they consume and to sell their excess product. GM crops have improved their health, well-being and overall quality of life. To force these individuals to return to traditional farming methods is out of the question.
Jasson Urbach is an economist with the Free Market Foundation. This article is syndicated by AfricanLiberty.org
According to reports from Burundi’s national radio, several people, including 12 school going children and a teacher, were killed and some seriously injured, when lighting struck two provinces on Wednesday, 16 February. The affected provinces include the central region province of Karuzi, where most of the fatal cases were reported, and Bubanza province in the western region. October last year, AFP reported that: "Three people were killed by lightning... as heavy rains pounded the hills of Murambi and Kiganda (southern Burundi), where at least 37 homes were destroyed". A few days earlier, in the same month of October, a lightning incident caused the death of an Anglican priest and three of his church members during mass in southern Burundi.
Uganda MP Bahati accused of calling for a “gay death penalty” says he has been misrepresented and is only trying to criminalize child abusers. David Bahati says the new offence of “aggravated homosexuality” is a penalty against “defilement” of under-18s. He claims there has been distortion in the media and that the death penalty is aimed solely at homosexuals “who defile a kid less than 18 years old,” notes BBC.
According to VOA, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has announced the country’s first post-war presidential election will likely be delayed for another three years. The leader, who had previously said the vote would take place in 2009, says he wants his MPLA party to complete the mandate it won in last year’s parliamentary elections.
A Nigerian court has issued an arrest warrant for a senior member of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration charged with abuse of office and criminal conspiracy, reports Angola Press. Authorities have planned to ask Interpol for help in tracking down Nasir El-Rugai, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory under Obasanjo from 2003-2007, after he failed to show up to any of his court hearings in the past seven months.
British admiral in charge of the European Union fleet watching out for Somali pirates wants to extend its patrol area, the Press Association has revealed. Rear Admiral Peter Hudson said his flotilla’s range needed to increase because pirates were launching attacks up to 1,000 miles off the coast, nearer India tha Africa. The EU Naval Force currently deploys up to seven warships, covering a sea area said to be 10 times the size of Germany.
According to Al Jazeera, Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF party has met for its first party congress since the formation of a unity government with its rival, the Movement for Democratic Change. Thousands of Zanu PF members are expected to attend the two-day event in Harare. Deligates are hoping to revitalize the party in the wake of last year’s post-election standoff that pushed it into a power-sharing deal with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), lef by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
More than 3.8 million Kenyans are currently facing hunger as drought in the Eastern African country persists, writes All Africa. As a result, the team coordinating the emergency intervention program launched in August, the Crisis Response Centre, has recommended in a report that more funds should be raised. The report says areas at high risk of becoming a humanitarian emergency include the greater Marsabit, Isiolo, Mandera, Wajir and most parts of Rana River districts.
France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was, allegedly, involved in a plot to kill the leader of Guinea’s ruling junta, the country’s military rulers say, according to BBC. Junta spokesman Idrissa Cherif declared that Mr. Kouchner had “activated some networks” in order to “change the situation” in the West African country. France’s government said the claims were “completely groundless.”
Somali pirates Thursday freed the Greek cargo ship “Ariana” for a ransom of 2.5 million dollars, bringing a seven-month captivity of 24 Ukranian crewmen to an end, La Croix reported.
According to TV5, the Guinean junta and the coalition of political parties and civil societies have been invited to meet on Sunday in Ouagadougou to talk about the present situation in their country, indicated the Burkina Faso President and mediator of the Guinean crisis, Blaise Compaoré.