IGIHE

Author: Publisher

  • Rwanda has no uncertainty to work with all forces to stabilize the RCA

    Rwanda has no uncertainty to work with all forces to stabilize the RCA

    {Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, said that Rwanda will have no ambiguity in its mission and collaboration with all the forces who serve in the International Stabilization Mission in CAR (MISCA).}

    She was responding to a question from her twitter follower who wanted to know whether Rwanda is ready to collaborate with FARDC under the same guide.

    FARDC used to accuse Rwanda to support the M23 rebellion while Rwanda also accused FARDC to collaborate with FDLR rebels which Rwanda sees as the threat to its security.

    Last week, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Joseph Kabila, has decided to send a battalion in the Central African Republic as part of the International Stabilization Mission in CAR (MISCA) that is being deployed.

    Rwanda also has been asked by the Africa Union to contribute its troops in that mission and it has responded positively.

    Meanwhile, Burundian and Chadian troops in the African force deployed in the Central African Republic (CAR) have exchanged fire in Bangui, raising new questions yesterday about the stance of the Chadian contingent of a UN-mandated force sent to tame a country rocked by sectarian killings.

    The Burundian military reported the exchange occurred on Monday as the Chadians, mainly because they are Muslim; face accusations of complicity with the Seleka rebels who overthrew President Francois Bozize in March in the predominantly Christian country now gearing up for Christmas.

  • Iran mulls plan to move capital from Tehran

    Iran mulls plan to move capital from Tehran

    {The Iranian parliament has voted to consider a proposal to pick another city as the nation’s capital, potentially moving the seat of government from the overcrowded Tehran.}

    Iran’s official news agency IRNA said on Tuesday that politicians had accepted outlines of the proposal with 110 out of 214 present lawmakers supporting it. The chamber has 290 seats.

    Under the plan, a council would be set up and spend two years studying which alternate location would be best.

    While there was no suggestion in the bill which cities would be looked at, several central and western cities already have said they would like to be considered.

    Supporters of the plan said Tehran, with a metropolitan population of 12 million people could not support the capital.

    They pointed at the heavy pollution, the city’s traffic jams and risk of earthquakes there. Iran is located on several faults and experiences a light earthquake a day, on average.

    Still, moving the capital seems unlikely, due to the high cost involved.

    Vice-president Mohammad Ali Ansari, who is in charge of parliament affairs, said he opposed the plan, which he said was was not practical, and that politicians did not have the power to order the capital to be moved.

    He said relocating the capital was part of main policies of the ruling establishment, a reference to the authority of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who has final say on all state matters.

    “It is impossible to decide about making the decision on moving without consulting his Excellency,” Ansari said.

    Costly plan

    Parliament speaker Ali Larijani opposed the plan over the cost and said the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog that vets the bills, would likely reject it as well.

    Saeed Leilaz, a Tehran-based political-economic analyst, also said the plan was not feasible.

    “This will cost dozens of billion dollars for a government that has not enough to pay the monthly salary of its staff,” Leilaz said.

    Iran has been crippled by Western sanctions over its disputed nuclear power programme, which has cut its access to the oil money that makes up to 80 percent of its foreign income and 50 percent of budget.

    Politicians and officials occasionally have raised the idea over the past 50 years, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted King Mohmmad Reza Pahlavi.

    US advisers reportedly had asked the king to relocate the capital because it was too close to borders of the Soviet Union.

    During World War I, the Iranian government decided to move the capital temporarily when Russian and British forces occupied parts of the country, although the order was never carried out.

    Source:
    AP

  • The painful path to Obamacare deadline

    The painful path to Obamacare deadline

    {{Tuesday is a moment of truth for Obamacare.}}

    It marks the final deadline for most Americans to sign up for health insurance under President Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, if they want coverage starting on January 1.

    If enough people – and the right mix of young and old – do not enroll, the ambitious program designed to provide health benefits to millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans risks eventually unraveling.

    The deadline caps a turbulent roll-out this year for Obamacare and the HealthCare.gov website that is key to enrolling millions of people in the initiative. The website crashed upon its launch on October 1, frustrating users trying to shop for insurance plans. It now is functioning much better, but is still not at 100 percent.

    Despite the continuing problems, the administration is expressing confidence that Obamacare is getting back on track after enrollment accelerated in December, with more than 1 million people signing up for private insurance.

    Here is a look at some notable moments in the months leading up to Obamacare’s troubled launch.

    EYES WIDE SHUT

    In June 2012, Margaret Tavenner was worried.

    As acting director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), she was responsible for orchestrating the launch of the most sweeping U.S. domestic legislation in more than four decades.

    With uncertainty surrounding how the new law would work, most states were undecided whether to establish their own insurance marketplaces or rely instead on a federally run exchange.

    “What keeps me up at night is knowing around December, there are going to be like 30 states who want to come in and be state-based exchanges,” Tavenner told a Washington healthcare conference, according to the Modern Healthcare newsletter.

    Tavenner’s anxiety – more than a year ahead of the planned launch of the exchanges – spurred concerns among industry and advocacy groups, which publicly questioned whether the multiple government agencies involved in the effort would be able to pull it off.

    The White House was closely briefed on the issues. Tavenner was cleared to visit White House officials involved in the project 425 times from December 2009 to June 2013, including several meetings with Obama, visitor logs show. The White House said later that Obama knew only the broad picture, not details of the effort.

    The administration also sought industry feedback, but some groups complained their warnings fell on deaf ears.

    On a video of a February 2013 conference of health insurance brokers and agents in Washington, attendees could be heard grumbling when CMS official Chiquita Brooks-Lasure asked for feedback by the next day on a “streamlined” insurance application form.

    The 21-page packet was jammed with questions on income and insurance status. For insurance brokers who had learned to keep it simple for customers, it was a harbinger of trouble.

    “It was ridiculous,” said Tom Harte, president of the National Association of Health Underwriters, which sponsored the conference. He said the group had been making suggestions to the administration on Obamacare enrollment for months.

    “The image I always had (of the administration’s efforts) was of a horse with blinders on, just plowing ahead and ignoring everything else,” he said.

    DANGER SIGNS

    Added to technical and administrative issues, CMS had run into political problems on Capitol Hill with Tavenner’s permanent appointment as director.

    A former head of Virginia’s state health system, Tavenner had been acting director of CMS since December 2011 while her confirmation was delayed by partisan clashes in the Senate over Obamacare. Finally, a Senate hearing was set for April 9, 2013, and she and others on the CMS staff had to prepare her for tough questions about the healthcare program’s roll out.

    Tavenner assured the panel that software development and testing for HealthCare.gov would be done by September 2013.

    A week later, on April 18, Tavenner’s boss, Katherine Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, delivered a similar message to a House budget panel. She said work on the insurance exchanges was “up and running, and we are on track.”

    These confident public displays masked a different reality.

    Earlier that month, Tavenner and Sebelius had been briefed by an outside consultant about a broad array of risks threatening the October 1 launch of HealthCare.gov.

    The report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co depicted a tangled, leaderless bureaucracy managing the effort and warned of possible system failures that materialized barely six months later. It blamed tight deadlines, insufficient testing and the absence of a “single, empowered decision-making authority.”

    The report sounded the alarm. Attendees at high-level briefings that followed included Todd Park, the White House chief technology officer, and Brian Sivak, the HHS technology whiz brought in to jumpstart health technology systems.

    The consultants met with Tavenner and Jeanne Lambrew, Obama’s healthcare adviser who, two decades earlier, had worked on a failed healthcare overhaul spearheaded by then-first lady Hillary Clinton.

    Obama also was briefed on McKinsey’s findings, White House press secretary Jay Carney later acknowledged. White House logs show two McKinsey consultants arriving for a meeting on April 8, but the company would not comment on the visit.

    The first public hints of official concern about possible problem’s with Obamacare’s technology actually came on March 22 – before Tavenner and Sebelius had expressed their confidence to Congress and just as McKinsey’s findings began to make their way through the administration.

    At a forum sponsored by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the national trade association representing the health insurance industry, CMS chief technology officer Henry Chao noted that the launch of HealthCare.gov was about 200 days away.

    “I’m pretty nervous – I don’t know about you,” Chao told the group, according to Congressional Quarterly.

    “The time for debating about the size of the text on the screen, or the color, or is it a world-class user experience, that’s what we used to talk about two years ago,” Chao said. “Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience.”

    THINGS FALL APART

    By July, Chao’s concerns had escalated.

    A former Navy avionics technician once billed as a rising federal tech star, his reputation was tied up in the success of a website that was partially built and not yet fully tested.

    His agency already had paid the website’s prime contractor, CGI Federal Inc, nearly $88 million by March 2013. And costs were climbing.

    Chao wrote to colleagues on July 16 to say that he feared CGI could “crash the plane at takeoff,” according to e-mails released by Republican congressional investigators. CGI has declined to comment.

    Alarming assessments streamed in from CMS technical advisers.

    “We believe that our entire build is in jeopardy,” wrote one, referring to the elaborate website construction.

    E-mails flew back and forth between Chao and the contractors until a CGI vice president assured Chao, “I am on top of this.”

    For Chao, meeting the October 1 deadline to have the website functioning well had become a matter of personal honor. Along with Tavenner, he had given sworn testimony to a congressional committee and assured skeptical members that the agency was on track.

    On July 20, Chao urged his staff to redouble its effort and sent a link to his testimony.

    “I wanted to share this with you so you can see and hear that both Marilyn and I, under oath, stated we are going to make October 1,” Chao wrote. He urged them to “put yourself in my shoes” and help him make those words the truth.

    A MAD SCRAMBLE

    As October 1 approached, bleak assessments about the website surfaced everywhere – except from the Obama administration.

    Brett Graham, a partner at the healthcare consultant Leavitt Partners, predicted a rocky enrollment period.

    “The lack of testing and short timelines increases the probability of exchanges experiencing unexpected problems,” he told a House subcommittee on September 10.

    At CMS, system tests during the third week of September were “not good and not consistent at all,” one employee told Chao in an e-mail. At a time when the website should have been able to accommodate 10,000 simultaneous users, it was crashing with 500 simulated users on it – about a week before the site’s scheduled launch. Contractor CGI called the glitches “part of the tuning exercise.”

    Chao shot off an all-caps message to his staff, ordering that tests continue, just five days before the deadline.

    At the White House, technology officer Park questioned Chao about the website’s progress. If Park sensed disaster, he gave no hint.

    “Massive kudos again for the incredible progress the team is making!” Park wrote in an e-mail.

    THE RUSH TO FIX IT

    HealthCare.gov went live on October 1 amid a sea of error messages, blank pages and crashed applications.

    “We are making improvements as we speak,” Tavenner told reporters on a conference call that afternoon.

    The site’s meltdown continued, however. A frustrating month of up-and-down performance prevented many Americans from purchasing insurance. The administration brought in technical advisers to help with an upgrade.

    After a few weeks of stumbling explanations from top officials, Sebelius took responsibility during an October 30 congressional hearing.

    “No one indicated it could possibly go this wrong,” she said. “Hold me accountable for the debacle.”

    Obama apologized on November 14. Compounding the technical problems, Obama’s repeated promise that Americans could keep their existing insurance if they wished proved to be inaccurate. Millions of people with bare-bones policies that did not meet the minimum standards set in the Affordable Care Act lost them.

    Republican critics of Obamacare accused the administration of a lack of transparency.

    “The administration was on track – on track for disaster,” Rep. Fred Upton, the Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said on November 19. “But stubbornly, they stayed the course.”

    The political damage flowing from the website’s troubles is likely to continue through the 2014 elections. Control of Congress will be at stake, and Republicans have vowed to make Obamacare’s troubled roll out, as symbolized by the botched debut of Healthcare.gov, part of an assault on the healthcare program that they say is too costly and robs Americans of coverage choices.

    The website eventually found its footing.

    As of late Sunday, more than 1 million people had signed up for private coverage through HealthCare.gov, and hundreds of thousands more were expected to do so Monday and Tuesday, just before a deadline to get coverage that starts January 1.

    Even so, the administration’s initial goal of signing up 3.3 million people by the end of December seems out of reach.

    Reuters

  • Kenya’s economic growth unlikely to hit 5.6 per cent

    Kenya’s economic growth unlikely to hit 5.6 per cent

    {Kenya’s economy is unlikely to hit the 5.6 per cent economic growth rate in 2013 projected by the government earlier this year.
    }

    According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) the economy posted a 4.4 per cent growth in the third quarter of this year compared to growth rates seen in the previous two quarters. In the quarter to March, the economy grew 5.2 per cent and 4.3 per cent in the quarter to June, which adds up to an average growth rate of 4.6 per cent in the three quarters to September.

    The National Treasury has previously said it expects the economy to grow by 5.6 per cent in 2013 and well over 6 per cent in 2014, which would be a significant leap from the 4.6 per cent growth in 2012.

    {{Growth forecast}}

    Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich justified the growth forecast citing first quarter growth as an indicator of the country’s fortune going forward.

    Other financial institutions, however, maintained that the best that the Kenyan economy could do was a growth rate in the range of 5 per cent.

    The African Development Bank (AfDB) earlier this year projected the Kenyan economy to grow 4.5 per cent in 2013 and reach 5.2 per cent in 2014.The World Bank expects the country to grow 5 per cent and modestly rise to 5.1 per cent next year, on the back of low government spending and high interest rates.

    KNBS figures released Monday also showed a slight dip in the third quarter growth rate this year at 4.4 per cent compared to a similar quarter last year, which grew 4.5 per cent. It attributed this to slowed growth in the agriculture – which accounts for over 24 per cent of the GDP – and the tourism industry.

    standardmedia.co.ke

  • Rwanda awards five institutions accredited as EAC Centers of Excellence

    Rwanda awards five institutions accredited as EAC Centers of Excellence

    {Five institutions were awarded last Thursday by Rwanda’s Ministry of East African Community (EAC) after being accredited as EAC Centres of Excellence, the highest number in the region. The institutions include Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, Tumba College of Technology, National Examination Board, Institute of Science and Technology Research and Rwanda National Museum Institute.}

    In her remarks, Minister of East African Community Jacqueline Muhongayire explained that EAC Treaty provides for cooperation in education, training, science and technology. It is in this regard that the EAC Secretariat called for Partner States to apply for regional Centres of Excellence in 2009, to promote Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), tertiary education institutions, universities, research, ICT, culture, language and tourism institutions within the EAC.

    “These awards demonstrate Rwanda’s strong participation in East African related issues and particularly quality education that borrows on culture. All Rwandans should exploit the opportunities and benefits from EAC integration,” said Minister Muhongayire.
    The 15th Ordinary Summit of EAC Heads of State, on 30 November, awarded the above mentioned institutions as well as the best performing students in EAC Essay Writing Competition 2013. Maurice Mwiseneza, a student from Cornerstone Leadership Academy in Rwamagana came in fourth place.

    In addition to the five institutions, the team that led Rwanda’s successful negotiations for the establishment of the EAC Monetary Union were also awarded certificates of recognition.

    ARI

  • Somalia solutions at the end of the tunnel

    Somalia solutions at the end of the tunnel

    {Somalia has fallen into a hole of uncertainty after the collapse of the military government in 1991. The conflagration civil war has taken many colors and forms with devastation to the nation,, but surprisingly, in 1991, nobody could predict that Somalia’s chronic political stalemate, bloodshed and strife was going to be endless with everlasting nuances.}

    In reality, in Somalia, for the the layman and the ordinary person in the street, the prolonged civil war has never been and will never be beneficial for them but instead, it is a cause of death to every pillar and national characteristic holding the country together. Indeed, the longer the duration of the civil war, the longer it erodes the basic and paramount structure of the society. The Somali warfare claimed countless numbers of lives and inflicted a material loss of huge proportions. However, nobody can bring back the past to offset the loss of lives and material wreckage but the future is worth thinking about in order to find an answer for what went wrong in Somalia in the first place that until today sow the seeds of destruction in Somalia. Having said that, it is not a good thing to be preoccupied continuously with the past because the only time Somalia can find itself in is the present moment geared up towards the future: in order to solve the problem, you don’t have to think about the problem: instead of asking “what is the problem?”, it is worth asking “what is the solution?”.

    There is a Somali saying that goes, “Somalis don’t say a false proverb”, which means the Somali culture is rich with sayings of wisdom that cannot be proven wrong: there is another saying that goes, “Wisdom does not come overnight”: it is very clear and without doubt that Somalia needs sound solutions but it is not easy to discover those solutions overnight: potential solutions to the mess should be extricated from the brilliant minds of the millions of Somalis worldwide: and this time, politicians must cease to have the monopoly of the ideas, but every Somali no matter what level they are at in the nation should be given equal voice: maybe how to quell the fire of anarchy in Somalia is not that complicated but it needs a spark at the right time and in the right place by Somalis with nationalism and country love, free from tribalism and bias: we live in the 21-first century and the world is undergoing swift changes in terms of human capital and human thinking: and Somalis are part of the global changes.

    It is the human nature to give up in the face of endless adversaries. Somalia suffered so badly. Its people suffered so badly too. It has been drifting towards 30 years since the civil war in Somalia begun. People are tired, displaced and hungry. They need a change, not every change but a change of peace. A change of hope. A change of prosperity. A change of a new Somalia. But it seems many Somalis especially those in the country have not seen a break in the mayhem for a long time. Their faces are full of sorrow and dejection. Their tongues regularly taste iron flavors of death. If you look at them from another angle, from an angle of hope, they are still alive despite the everyday hell they live in. Their stomach is empty and burning, but their bellies are full of pessimism: they feel forgotten by the world. But optimism can crop up if their fellow Somalis with the means to do it come up with strategies to save the country from its fail state sobriquet.

    The Somali Diaspora is not free from entanglement with the affairs in Somalia both in the positive form and the negative form. I do not want to focus on the negative form of their involvements but I have the urge to look at the positive side which I think outweighs the negative components of the whole thing: the Somali Diaspora has grown into a very powerful throng in terms of demography. It is a force to be reckoned with. They are scattered in vast territories of the world: United States, United kingdom, Australia and Canada, just to name a few countries in the Western world. It is quite hard to pinpoint the exact number of the Somali Diaspora in the world: but the unofficial statistics indicate that about 3 million Somalis fled Somalia since 1991 due to the civil war and they are now living outside the country. So, in this context, the Somali Diaspora in the West, the most important one outside Somalia, can be estimated as nearly as one million. This one million Somali Diaspora in the Western world can make a huge positive contributions to their motherland. They can take part in the process. They can create the kind of ownership expected from great people with endeavors to save their country. In a nutshell, the Somali Diaspora living in other countries other than in the West are also a significant part with a paramount role to play.

    Once and for all, politicians immersed in the politics of Somalia consist of too many groups, too many individuals with different backgrounds and strategies. However, the Somali politicians are not blameless when you examine more than two decades of ravaging wars and shattering fights. They are still blamed for their chronic habits of selfishness and self-interest. They are like heavy smokers that find it hard to quit smoking. They behave like a bunch of hungry lions always ready to molest the skinny flesh of the country, a country already lost most of its fats of being a country during years of inanition.

    The Somali politicians need to change course. They have to look at their dead plans again.They have to set aside their personal whims. They need to drive back to the empathy they overlooked. They have to see the pain of the ordinary Somalis with caring eyes. They have to solve the problem rather than dancing around it.

    The Somali women are the backbone of the nation. They are the mothers, the farms from which every baby grows. The Somali women cannot be blamed for decades of violent pandemonium. All this can be blamed on the Somali men and the Somali men should confess their evil misbehaviors that engulfed the country like tsunami.

    In order to solve the problem of Somalia, the Somali men should involve the Somali women. If they participate in the political landscape, the women can make a difference, politically and economically. Men need women. It is not optional. It is compulsory. The Somali women should engage in the political future of their country: they should not be guests but stakeholders

    The president, the prime minister and the parliament are the three branches of the Somali government. If I put here a bit of analogy, those branches are like sadex dhardhaar (three cooking stones) that hold up the Somali traditional cooking pot. So that it is very important for the three branches of the government to work together with checks and balances, without one of the branches overshadowing the others. The rule of law must be respected. And it is a good news that the Somali parliament approved the new prime minister, Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed. I’m very hopeful that Somalia will rebound again with integrity and respect in the eyes of the world.

    midnimo.com

  • Ban Ki-moon Meets Tanzania’s Kikwete, Seeking Troops for South Sudan

    Ban Ki-moon Meets Tanzania’s Kikwete, Seeking Troops for South Sudan

    As Ban Ki-moon Meets Tanzania’s Kikwete, Seeking Troops for South Sudan, No UN Answers on FDLR, Central African Republic

    By {{Matthew Russell Lee}}

    UNITED NATIONS, December 24 — To try to move to South Sudan five battalions of soldiers from UN Mission in the DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Abyei, Darfur and Liberia, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been working the phones.

    Ban’s Spokesperson Martin Nesirky has refused to hold a briefing for the past two days and ignored written questions for 72 hours. So when at 12:21 pm on December 24 the UN announced that Ban would meeting with Tanzanian president Kikwete at 12:30 pm, Inner City Press ran to cover it.

    Upstairs in Ban’s 38th floor conference room sitting across from Kikwete were Ban, his chief of staff Susana Malcorra and Department of Peacekeeping Operations deputy Edmond Mulet. Inner City Press tweeted photographs here and here.

    While it seems that the 12:30 meeting with Kikwete only came together at 12:05, Ban’s spokesperson’s office rather than hold a briefing sent out a list of countries and leaders Ban has spoken to about “bolstering the capacity of the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (UNMISS)” —
    “Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission; Hailemariam Dessalegn, Chairperson of the African Union and Prime Minister of Ethiopia; Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda; Joyce Hilda Mtila Banda, President of Malawi; Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of Tanzania; Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan; Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh; and Khil Raj Regmi, Prime Minister of Nepal.”
    So Kikwete was included, 24 minutes after his meeting with Ban began. But not included, among Asian countries, was India — one wondered, because of the two killed Indian peacekeeers in the Akobo camp last week?
    It’s one thing to ask the Troop Contributing Countries. But as Inner City Press reported yesterday, Cote d’Ivoire ambassador Bamba back in July 2013 said his government disagrees with pulling UN peacekeepers out of his country before 2015. Cote d’Ivoire is not listed among Ban’s conversations; nor is the Kabila goverment of the DRC. There, pulling out a battalion may impact the pledged “neutralization” of the Hutu FDLR militia. But, Congolese sources suggest, maybe Kabila is OK with that — he is sending 850 of his “elite” troops to the Central African Republic.
    More than 24 hours ago, Inner City Press asked Ban’s spokesperson Martin Nesirky a series of still unanswered questions, including:
    “Given that the SG said ‘we are now actively trying to transfer our assets from other peacekeeping missions, like MONUSCO [the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo] and some other areas’ — which assets is he / the UN trying to transfer out of the DRC? How does this relate to the UN’s pledge to now move to neutralize the FDLR?”
    And
    “In Central African Republic, please confirm civilian(s) killed by Chad troops in MISCA force, and state whether there is any UN support to this unit and if so how the UN’s Human Rights Due Diligence Policy applies.”
    Now, having still no answer to these, Inner City Press has asked Nesirky:
    “In the Central African Republic, please confirm or deny that Chadian peacekeepers fired on protesters (and that the UN will do about it), and engaged in a skirmish with Burundian peacekeepers.”

  • Mining activities to implove living conditions in Nyamasheke

    Mining activities to implove living conditions in Nyamasheke

    {Nyamasheke district is one of districts with a high concentration of the mining companies which carrying out exploration and mining of minerals occurring in the area which are mainly Cassitelite, Coltan, Wolfram, Gold and Sapphire. In recent past few years, mining companies have been sensitized to improve mining techniques leading to the increase in mineral production where by increasing company revenues and increase surrounding people liverhood. In these days, tangible results are being observed all around mining areas. CODINYA cooperative has very quickly adopted the approach and their achievements are of great importance to the surrounding community.}

    CODINYA cooperative started mining operations in 2007, mining Cassitelite and coltan illegally as they had no mining licensed. At that time, they used the authorization of the executive secretary of the sector Cyato. After they get information from the Nyamasheke district assistance, that they need to have a legal personality, they used the RCA certificate to keep mining until 2010 where they have got the Mining prospection licence. In 2012, they have got a Mining licence of Cassitelite, Coltan, Wolfram. Actually, CODINYA cooperative has 24 members and actually employing a minimum of 170 casual labor in periods where there is not a lot to do. Besides that, they have themselves bought their excavator helping them to shift from 2 tones per month to 6 tones of minerals per month with hope of increasing the production achieved so far.

    As the production increases, local people praise relationship which is between the cooperative and the local communities as the Cooperative has built a nursery school in Cyato sector, Murambi cell Muremure village. Local residents and CODINYA employees are reported to earn money helping them to pay basic need as around 2/3 of the total amount of the cooperative income due to mineral exploitation is coming back to the local community. In addition, CODINYA has also managed to build a 1.5 Km of potable water captured from Gakenke water source which is being benefited by Muremure and Kamonyi village.

    During the Hon. Minister of State in charge of mining, Imena Evode ’s visit to the cooperative, He haired the achievement of the cooperative and recommended to think about sustainable mining by improving techniques of mineral extraction from the soils as it is actually manually done causing a big loss in thin minerals. The environment has also to be seriously protected by stabilizing the mined soils as the area is very vulnerable to the soil erosion. He urged cooperative members to keep strengthening a good relationship with local residents and help them toward a better future.

  • How to Celebrate Christmas

    How to Celebrate Christmas

    {Christmas is one of those holidays that just seems to be filled with cheer and wonder. Whether you are celebrating a secular or religious Christmas, your day is sure to be filled with happiness, especially with a little help from wikiHow. Read some helpful tips on how to celebrate a secular, religious, kid-friendly, or consumer-free Christmas after the jump. Happy Holidays!}

    1. Spread cheer. When you hear Christmas songs, instead of being grumpy (ever heard of Ebenezer Scrooge?) smile and whistle along. Being cheerful during the Christmas season really will help in spreading Christmas spirit to those around you, plus it helps you enjoy it more too.
    Wish others a Merry Christmas if you know they celebrate Christmas. If you’re not sure, just say Happy Holidays! Either way, you are spreading the holiday cheer.

    2. Enjoy your country’s Christmas traditions. Let yourself be a kid again and enjoy the holiday spirit. Whether it’s leaving cookies out for Santa Claus, watching for Baba Noel out the window, or leaving your clogs by the fire for Sinterklaas, indulge in a little holiday tradition and give into the magic.

    3. Decorate your house for Christmas. The possibilities for decorating are nearly endless. Put Christmas lights on your house. Hang mistletoe in the doorways (particularly if you know that special someone is coming over,) hang a homemade wreath on your door, or put Christmas figurines like Santa or Rudolph out on your counters.

    4. Buy and decorate a Christmas tree. Go with your family to your local Christmas tree farm to cut your own or head to a lot selling pre-cut Christmas trees. Pick out a Christmas tree that fits your house. After you’ve gotten your tree situated, wrap it in lights and begin hanging the ornaments. Don’t forget to water it occasionally and safeguard it from pets!

    You can decorate your tree with family heirloom ornaments or try something new by decorating a tree with Star Trek or superhero themed ornaments, or with little trains, or with Disney characters for example. It’s really up to you–be as creative or traditional as you like.

    5. Join up with friends and family. For many people, Christmas is about gathering with friends and family to enjoy each others company and celebrate the holiday. The day is a national holiday and most folks get a day off work. Take advantage of this time to reconnect with friends and family. Create your own traditions or celebrate with the traditions that have been passed down in your family.

    6. Invite your friends or family over for Christmas dinner. Make it a potluck if you want to keep expenses (and the workload) manageable. The important thing is just to get together with people you love and make the winter a little warmer by sharing the warmth of caring with them. Consider making a traditional Christmas dinner complete with roast turkey, or create your own traditions by branching out and making whatever you want!

  • SA soldiers spending Christmas in DRC

    SA soldiers spending Christmas in DRC

    {More than 1 200 South African soldiers will spend Christmas on a peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.}

    They are part of a SADC deployment in the volatile Eastern DRC, under the auspices of the UN Mission, MONUSCO.

    Peacekeeping has been a key feature of a post-94 democratic South Africa. Since 2001, SANDF members have been deployed to the DRC. This follows agreements between Pretoria and Kinshasa, and peacekeeping under UN auspices.

    Twelve years on, various regiments are still in the DRC and they include engineers, medics, pilots, military police and ground forces operating on the frontlines.

    Christmas will be a “special day” away from home for the soldiers. They have been hailed as agents of peace and have received a pat on the back from deputy defence minister, Thabang Makwetla.

    Most of the soldiers are expected to be home after April.

    Agencies