Charity begins at home, and Africans need to take the first bold steps to deal with problems affecting them instead of depending on the west. Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki’s message was met with a resounding applause at the 6th edition of Africities in Dakar, Senegal.
Reporting from Dakar Whilst it is no secret that conflicts are a bane of African development, the responsibility of conflict resolution should be left to Africans. Mkebi appears relentless when it comes to the Western interventions on the African continent.
“The Ivorian and Libyan crises confirmed a dangerous tendency with western countries who believe that they can intervene in every conflict on the continent,” Mbeki thundered with a clenched fist.
According to him, this behavior reveals an “illegal relationship between Africa and its former colonial masters!”, and Africa had become too dependent on the West".
But what are the solutions that would allow Africans to better manage the string of conflicts plaguing the continent?
Thabo Mbeki, suggests that encouraging unity between African states is key, and that the African Union (AU) needs to provide the needed support. “We must stand united to protect our interests" he says.
His words come as the organization continues to suffer from its inability to reach a unanimous decision in its handling of the Libyan conflict.
Nonetheless, Mbeki argues that the competence of the AU must be strengthened. "Our country must pass on part of their sovereignty to the African Union to ensure peace and security".
Obama’s family celebrating is second mandate in Kenya.
At the Obama family’s ancestral village, Kogelo in the north of Kenya, the villagers stayed up till dawn watching the US’ 2012 elections and celebrating the 44th president of the of the US, a Kenyan grandson re-elected to another four-year at the white house, I name Barak Obama! Though far from Chicago’s stage, the president Kenyan’s family stood up for his victory; Obama’s 91 years old of age step-grandmother, Sarah Obama and Mustapha Obama the president half-brother among many others closed who represented the president family in Africa, joined the euphoric dancing and singing crowd.
Kogelo has much changed since the 2008’ election of Barak Obama; the popularity of the first black president at Washington’s white house has lead to Kenyan’s tourist office inclusion of Kogelo into Kenyan’s cartography and infrastructures development such as roads and electricity… As said the half-brother of the president, the village also has a grand hotel and the best is yet to come! Mr President, will you double the stakes? However, some of the villagers deplore the lack of the US president’s implication in the development of Kogelo or Kenya generally speaking, hoping for this second and last mandate will allow him greater room for manoeuvre and why not a way back to the roots.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has the highest rate of malnutrition in central and West Africa, affecting 43% of children under five, says Unicef on Tuesday.
Marianne Flach, the representative of the UN children’s agency in Congo, said at the opening of a regional workshop on reducing malnutrition that in central Africa, some countries have a rate of chronic malnutrition which is still alarming. About 75 experts from various countries in central Africa came to take part in the workshop, which will continue until Thursday in a northern community of Brazzaville.
The DR Congo, affected by successive wars, is followed by the Central African Republic (40.7%) and Cameroon (32.5%), Flach said, suffer from this condition. She also added that the Congo Republic had 175 000 young children suffering from chronic malnutrition, or a rate of 24.4%. These countries are also amongst 11 countries categorized in the extreme risk with food insecurity. Report says even though a food crisis has not surfaced yet, there is possibility for food-related disruption across the most susceptible regions of the world, African.
Chronic malnutrition is a plague that affects several countries in the world and in Africa. It is the underlying cause of 35% of deaths in the world and can appear in different forms. Flach called for a “co-ordinate multi-sector response” to eradicate the problem. According to Unicef, chronic malnutrition shows itself in children by a delayed growth rate, which has a very negative impact on the health of the child, because he or she runs a higher risk of being infected by chronic non-infectious diseases. It has also been anticipated by the World Bank that 19 million people are in danger of hunger and malnutrition in Africa. According to them, too often borders get in the way of receiving food to homes and communities who have too little to eat . The situation can only be avoided if large swathes of uncultivated land are put to productive use and cross-border restrictions removed could also help prevent food crises and malnutrition if farmers are simply allowed to trade more with each other and get food to communities facing shortages.
International experts met in Bamako on Tuesday to firm up plans for an armed intervention to wrest northern Mali from the hands of Islamic radicals
. Defense Minister Yamoussa Camara said at the start of the week-long meeting that the conference is a meeting of harmonisation which must lead to concrete proposals for the adoption of a strategic plan to liberate the north of the country.
The plans are to be presented to the UN at the end of November. The conference will discuss the improvement of the Malian army, which is under-equipped and demoralised after its defeat by the Tuareg fighters whose nationalist revolt in January and activated the country’s rapid implosion. A group of angry soldiers had expelled the government in Bamako in March, which allowed the vast north to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists who sidelined their erstwhile Tuareg allies.
”War is inevitable against the terrorists in northern Mali, even if all wars end around the negotiating table,” said Camara. The soldiers were not happy at the way the government had been handling the rebellion the North of Mali. On 12 October, the UN Security Council had approved a resolution urging the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to speed up preparations for a force of over 3 000 troops that would attempt to help recapture northern Mali. Up to 26 November had been given to Ecowas in order to clarify its plans. Ecowas representative Abdou Cheick Toure said hope has not been abandoned for a negotiated end to the occupation. According to him it is normal to talk to the Tuareg separatists and Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) because they are Malian. He also says that they will try to look for a way for them to agree to come back into the republic and abandon their secessionist ideas in order to make peace.
Representatives from the West African bloc, the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations are all present at the Bamako conference. Guinea’s former transition leader General Sekouba Konate, who was appointed by the African Union to make the imagining West African force in Mali operational, will arrive in Bamako on Sunday to take part in talks.
20 people have been shot death and others badly hurt by a gang of bandits in a raid on Kaboro village, on Tuesday in northern Nigeria’s Zamfara state, an official said
“The robbers shot (the chief) dead and then went door to door seizing cash and other valuables before fleeing,” Anka on of the victims said. In June a gang of robbers killed 23 people in the nearby villages of Dan-Gulbi and Guru, in an attack where some of the victims’ throats were cut. The June massacre was supposedly carried out by gunmen seeking for vengeance against a community armed force. The Locals said that the vigilante force had killed several people they accused of being gang members given they had grown tired of repeated robberies in the area. About 80 gunmen riding on motorcycles were reported to have carried out the June massacre, whereas in January, around 100 robbers were killed and the bodies of 15 traders were also burnt as they returned from a market in another state.
The attacks in Zamfara have previously involved scores of attackers. Northern Nigeria has also been strike by effect of attacks by radical Islamist group Boko Haram, but the worst violence has been concentrated in the northeast and central north. North-western states like Zamfara have largely been spared by the extremist group and there was no indication that Boko Haram was involved in the latest attack. The level of the violence in Nigeria’s mainly in the north where Muslim live, include attacks blamed on Boko Haram and this has prompted scathing criticism from activists, who accuse President Goodluck Jonathan’s government of failing to protect the population.
Report also says that deadly communal and ethnic conflicts often occur in Nigeria, last month, armed robbers opened fire on a group of people as they left pre-dawn prayers at a mosque in Kaduna state, killing about 20 people.Those killings was reportedly sparked by an current rivalry between a community protection force and a group of thieves active in the area.
A group of irritated demonstrators in Kenya have held a protest in the western town of Kisumu following the killing of a local politician Shem Onyango Kwega
Police have fired tear gas on hundreds of youth as they gathered in a slum area in day two protest. Four demonstrators have died in riots in the town, on the shore of Lake Victoria, some 350km west of the capital Nairobi a day after. Violent protests blew up after Shem Onyango Kwega, a candidate for a parliamentary seat in Kisumu in general elections due in March, was killed by unidentified armed men on Monday while driving in town. Kwega, the local branch chairperson of Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), was shot in the head and later passed out at the hospital while his wife was seriously wounded and was taken to hospital. Youths burnt down tyres along a road in Kisumu, Kenya during riots. The murder was at first attributed to thug, but a political motive was not immediately ruled out.
The ODM in a statement condemned the “brutal murder” and called on authorities to “investigate the motive” behind the killing. On Monday, three people died when a tear gas canister thrown into a kiosk they were hiding in caught fire, and another person died after being shot. Kisumu, Odinga’s, has been a hotspot during Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence. The unrest, which left more than 1 000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced throughout Kenya, was activated by the contested election of incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against Odinga. Prime Minister Raila Odinga leads the race to replace retiring President Mwai Kibaki the same poll showed. The prime minister and Kibaki were the main rivals in a disputed 2007 presidential poll, when then opposition leader Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing the vote. Not all Kenyans are so gloomy about the prospects for next year’s election. The same survey showed that many are hopeful that the vote will be better organised than the 2007 election with 73% of those surveyed saying they think police would ensure public safety during the vote.
Lonmin, the third largest producer of platinum, made a gesture to persuade the miners on striking to return to work after five weeks of social conflict. The British company has proposed Tuesday a premium of 140 euros to its employees over 98 euros salary increase proposed last week. This pay increase was rejected by minors. Since August 10, minors of Marikana go on strike to protest against the security and demand a to their boss to triple their incomes from 400 to 1200 euros monthly. This social movement has taken a dramatic turn Thursday, Aug. 16 when South African police opened fire on the strikers killing 34 of them
An Egyptian soldier was killed Sunday in clashes with gunmen in the Sinai Peninsula, according to a spokesman for the Egyptian army, state television reported. The soldier was fatally wounded during an exchange of fire between security forces and militants in the northern Sinai. According to officials of the security services, he succumbed to his injuries after being transferred to a hospital in Cairo.
Damara and Sibut, two cities located respectively 75 km and 185 km from Bangui, the CAR capital, were stormed Saturday by unidentified armed group reports the BBC. Suspicion would be for a dissident wing of the Chadian rebellion Popular Front for Unity (RPF). reports the BBC.
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.