IGIHE

Author: Publisher

  • Uganda ‘top Pork Consumer in sub-Saharan Africa’

    Uganda ‘top Pork Consumer in sub-Saharan Africa’

    {{Uganda is the leading consumer of pork in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).}}

    Over 2.3 million pigs are kept by one million households in Uganda for consumption, says the institute which further indicates that the majority of pigs are kept by women in smallholder households.

    Pig rearing has become a popular and a lucrative venture in Uganda over the last 30 years.

    The institute, which works to improve food security and reduce poverty in developing countries, says the local pig population has climbed from 190, 000 to over 2.3 million in the three decades.

    A 2011 report showed that the domestic consumption rate of pork stood at 3.4kg per person per year.

    Researchers from ILRI – whose headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya – are conducting two projects in Uganda.

    The projects are targeted at presenting more efficient ways of raising pigs, safer ways of handling and selling pork, and ways to increase access to pig markets by poor farmers.

    NV

  • Ghana’s President Takes Over as Head of Ecowas

    Ghana’s President Takes Over as Head of Ecowas

    {{Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama ({pictured above}) has been elected the new head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at a summit of the 15-nation regional bloc, his Ivorian predecessor announced on Saturday.}}

    “I am very happy to tell you that yesterday (Friday) my peers… decided to name as head of ECOWAS, my brother and friend John Dramani Mahama, the president of the Republic of Ghana,” said Ivory Coast’s leader Alassane Ouattara in a speech at the closing of the ECOWAS summit.

    Ouattara has wrapped up two one-year terms as head of the West African group during which he dealt with the democratic transition in Guinea-Bissau and the war in Mali.

    Ousattara touted his achievements in Mali, which has faced a coup and Islamist insurgency during his tenure.

    “The election of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on August 11, 2012, was the result of a successful transition in Mali,” he said.

    The bloc’s new leader, 55-year-old Mahama, was vice president in Ghana when president John Atta Mills died in July 2012. He was elected the leader of a country seen as beacon of democracy in West Africa in December that year.

    NMG

  • 6 Countries to Benefit From Africa-led Fund to End Hunger

    6 Countries to Benefit From Africa-led Fund to End Hunger

    {{A unique, Africa-led fund designed to improve food security across the continent has become a reality for the first six countries slated to benefit from the initiative.}}

    The Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Niger and South Sudan signed agreements in Tunis with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to receive $2 million each from the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund.

    “The Africa Solidarity Trust Fund shows that African countries are ready to step up and work with their neighbours to build a sustainable and food secure region, and to have the future we want,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

    The agreements were signed during the FAO Regional Conference for Africa. At the ceremony, Graziano da Silva encouraged other African governments to join the effort and contribute to the Fund.

    The contributions will be used to bolster a wide range of projects to improve food security, nutrition, agriculture and rural development.

    They include policies and programmes to increase opportunities for youth employment; improve natural resources management and the quality of food production; increase the resilience of livelihoods in conflict-affected areas; and rapidly increase the availability of nutritious food through programmes like cash transfers, school feeding and school gardens.

    The trust fund, which is housed at FAO, was originally proposed in 2012 by President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo, during the previous Regional Conference for Africa in Brazzaville.

    The Fund was launched officially in June 2013 with a funding package of $30 million from Equatorial Guinea.

    Additional funding from Angola ($10 million) and a group of civil society organizations in the Republic of the Congo have brought the total amount to $40 million. Cameroon has also pledged to add to the fund and other countries are expected to join in the coming months.

    “Thanks to the Africa Solidarity Trust Fund’s initial contributors, the political will to end hunger in the region can be transformed into effective action,” said Bukar Tijani, Assistant Director-General/Regional Representative for Africa.

    “This will help to increase FAO’s cooperation with African governments and other partners to better coordinate their ongoing efforts to help vulnerable families improve their lives.”

    {{Project highlights}}

    The US$2 million allocated to each country will support projects including:

    Central African Republic: Livelihoods resilience opportunities for conflict-affected rural communities in Central African Republic, such as support in diversifying agricultural production and development of financial services;

    Ethiopia: Enhanced livelihoods and poverty reduction through economic diversification and decent work opportunities for rural communities;

    Malawi: Integrated approaches to building the resilience of vulnerable communities to climatic shocks in one of the most affected districts in Malawi;

    Mali: Improving employment opportunities for young men and women in rural areas, using, for example, FAO’s Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools to increase training in agribusiness;

    Niger: Support to the 3N initiative (Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens). Improving nutrition, supporting natural resources management and increasing access to financial and social protection services;

    South Sudan: Providing information, equipment, seeds and livestock services to protect and restore livelihoods.

    FAO will provide technical assistance for implementation of the projects in cooperation with partners.

    {wirestory}

  • Nick Cannon Reveals Celebrities he Has Slept With

    Nick Cannon Reveals Celebrities he Has Slept With

    {{American actor, comedian, rapper, Nicholas Scott “Nick” Cannon has made a startling revelation of some of the A-list celebrities he has had sex with.}}

    Rarely do celebrities come out publicly to announce intimate affairs they have had with fellow celebrities but Nick did not find it hard to spill the beans.

    Answering a question on which celebrities he has had sex with in an interview on Big Boy’s Power 106 TV, the actor, who is now married to Mariah Carey, said the list includes Kim Kardashian.

    According to him, apart from Kim Kardashian, musicians Christina Milian, Nicole Scherzinger, supermodel Selita Ebanks and others have been with him.

    After mentioning the names, he said “people already know some of them,” and said liisting them “is just easy.”

    He said he lost his virginity at age 13.

    He said he “worked hard at” getting his dream wife Mariah Carey and he was persistent till he got her.

    Nick said he loves Mariah and revealed that “she is my soul mate”.

    {internet}

  • Black Queens Ranked 3rd-best in Africa

    Black Queens Ranked 3rd-best in Africa

    {{Black Queens are ranked the third-best side on the continent after the latest ranking of women’s national teams was released by FIFA on Friday.}}

    The senior national women’s team are behind leaders Nigeria and Cameroon in that order with 1459 points for the month of March.

    Ghana dropped two places to the 50th position in the overall rankings from their previous 48th place in the rankings released every quarter.

    USA retained first place followed by Germany and Japan.

    According to FIFA, a total of 142 matches were taken into account for the latest edition of the women’s world ranking.

    {agencies}

  • UN Criticises Kenya’s Refugee Clampdown

    UN Criticises Kenya’s Refugee Clampdown

    {{The UN refugee agency has criticised Kenya’s decision to order all refugees, most of them Somalis, to report to two overcrowded camps after a deadly attack on a church.}}

    “UNHCR understands Kenya’s need to address security concerns,” said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

    “Reinforcement of law enforcement measures are important in this regard, but blanket measures that target people based on nationality or membership of a group is discriminatory. It can create suffering for innocent people and is usually ineffective,” he told reporters in Geneva.

    Kenya issued its order on Tuesday, following a weekend attack by unknown gunmen near the port city of Mombasa that killed six people, and came amid heightened warnings of a threat of Islamist violence in Kenya despite boosted security in major cities.

    Kenya has been hit by a series of attacks since sending troops into southern Somalia in 2011 to battle Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab insurgents — the deadliest being an assault by Islamist commandos last September on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall that claimed 67 lives.

    “Insecurity affects all communities and populations alike. Scapegoating refugees is no answer. Refugees are as much at risk from insecurity as the wider Kenyan population,” said Edwards.

    Kenyan officials have also asked locals to report to police any refugees or illegal immigrants who remained outside the remote and overcrowded camps — Dadaab in the east and Kakuma in the northwest.

    Dadaab, where people often live in appalling conditions, is home to more than 400,000 mainly Somali refugees, while Kakuma, a vast desert settlement, is home to more than 125,000 refugees from across the region, including Somalia.

    To the UN refugee agency, “blanket implementation of the encampment measures carries threats to human dignity, equality and freedom. It has no regard for individual circumstances and is therefore arbitrary and unreasonable,” Edwards said.

    Rights groups in Kenya have accused police in the past of a brutal campaign against Somali refugees, following a string of grenade attacks and shootings blamed on supporters or members of the Shabaab.

    Edwards echoed those concerns, showing that past measures against refugees had been “accompanied by increased police harassment, detention and extortion”.

    The country had previously ordered all asylum seekers and refugees to report to the camps in December 2012, after attacks that included blasts in a largely ethnic-Somali neighbourhood of the capital Nairobi.

    {capitalfm}

  • World Bank Funds Repair Works at Jomo Kenyatta Airport

    World Bank Funds Repair Works at Jomo Kenyatta Airport

    {{The World Bank has approved a US$206mn fund to repair Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport’s (JKIA) arrivals hall, which was destroyed by fire in August 2013
    Of the total amount, US$27.6mn is expected to be alloted for the construction the temporary Greenfield Terminal as well as permanent facilities for the international arrival lounge in Terminal 4, currently under construction.}}

    Diarietou Gaye, World Bank country director for Kenya, said, “Additional financing will support the government to restore operations at Kenya’s premier airport and improve disaster preparedness.”

    Gaye added that the financing will also enable completion of ongoing contracts for upgrading of the two major trade and transport corridors to facilitate regional trade and integration.

    Germany’s Roder HTS Hocker has already been awarded the tender to construct the 2.5mn passenger terminal expected to be completed by the end of 2014.

    The Kenya government had also started work on the construction of a new US$654mn terminal at JKIA in December 2013.

    The project is jointly funded by Kenyan and Chinese governments.
    Two Chinese companies — Anhui Construction Engineering Group and China National Aero-Technology International Engineering Corporation — are working on the project.

    Upon its completion in 2017, the new terminal would increase the passenger capacity from the current 6.5mn to 20mn.

    With an annual passenger growth of 12 per cent, it is expected that by 2020, the passenger numbers will reach to 17.1mn and double by 2030.

    The airport is projected to contribute over 10 per cent of the GDP through tourism, horticulture and other sectors.

    Mbuvi Ngunze, chief operating officer of Kenya Airways, said, “We need to have the right infrastructure in place as we grow. We are optimistic that the works will be completed on time.”

    africanreview

  • 7 Killed at Funeral in Central African Republic

    7 Killed at Funeral in Central African Republic

    {{Seven people died in the capital of Central African Republic after a grenade exploded among a crowd of mourners attending a funeral, the African Union peacekeeping mission known as MISCA said on Friday.}}

    “The figure for the number who died then and there is seven,” MISCA spokesman Orlando Bama said, confirming the incident.

    The deployment of 2,000 French soldiers and a 6,000 strong African Union peacekeeping mission to the impoverished and landlocked country has so far failed to halt violence.

    Thousands have been killed in tit-for-tat between militias known as anti-balaka drawn from the Christian majority pitted against a mostly Muslim group of northern rebels who seized power a year ago.

  • Mugabe Says Will Boycott EU-Africa Summit over Wife’s Visa

    Mugabe Says Will Boycott EU-Africa Summit over Wife’s Visa

    {{Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will not attend a European Union-Africa summit next week if his wife is denied a visa to travel with him, his spokesman said on Friday.}}

    Mugabe, 90, and his wife Grace are subject to travel bans by the EU because of allegations about human rights abuses and election-rigging but the union allowed Zimbabwe’s sole ruler to attend the meeting after pressure from the African Union.

    The two-day summit starts on April 2 in Brussels.

    “We are sovereign and equals and the EU cannot decide on our delegations. The president, and Zimbabwe will not be there if they continue to hold out on the visa,” Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba said.

    EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Aldo Dell’Ariccia told a local radio station on Friday the bloc had not given a visa to Grace because there was no program for wives of presidents and there was no need for her to attend.

    {wirestory}

  • Russian-U.S. Crew Makes Belated Arrival at Space Station

    Russian-U.S. Crew Makes Belated Arrival at Space Station

    {{A Russian spaceship carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut made a belated arrival at the International Space Station on Thursday, returning the orbital outpost to full staff.}}

    Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket two days ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

    They had expected to reach the station, a $100 billion research complex that flies about 250 miles above Earth, six hours later.

    But about two hours after launch, the crew’s Soyuz capsule failed to fire its maneuvering engines as planned, forcing a delay to the next station docking opportunity on Thursday.

    The cause of the skipped rocket firing remains under investigation, said NASA mission commentator Rob Navias.

    Preliminary analysis shows the spaceship was 1 degree out of alignment from its predicted orientation, triggering the Soyuz computers to automatically abort the engine burn, Navias said during a NASA Television broadcast of the docking.

    Since Tuesday’s mishap, the Soyuz successfully conducted the necessary engine firings to reach the station.

    “Better late than never,” said Navias as the Soyuz made its final approach to the outpost.

    The crew’s prolonged journey ended at 7:53 p.m. EDT as the Soyuz slipped into a berthing port on the station’s Poisk module.

    The arrival of Skvortsov, Artemyev and Swanson returns the station to a full six-member crew. The orbital outpost, a project of 15 nations, has been short-staffed since two other cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned to Earth on March 11.