Category: News

{{Malawi is now banking on British legal expertise to ensure it wins the border row with Tanzania over the ownership of Lake Nyasa.

Lilongwe government says they will hire British lawyers to help make their case both in negotiations with the government of Tanzania and in a possible international arbitration. }}

The Solicitor General and Principal Secretary for Justice, Mr Anthony Kamanga, confirmed this development to a section of the Malawian press but did not name the British lawyers.

They will reportedly work with their Malawian counterparts on a legal paper to back that country’s claims that it owns the entire lake, officially known in Malawi as Lake Malawi, based on the 1890 treaty between the two colonial masters, Britain and Germany.

The Malawi legal team will also comprise the Attorney General and Justice Minister, the Solicitor General, a senior lawyer from the Justice Department and a law expert from academia.

Malawi hopes the legal paper will give it the upper hand in the talks with Tanzania that are expected to resume soon.

Negotiations screeched to a stop early this month after Malawi accused Tanzania of provocation by publishing a new map that showed the boundary bang in the middle of the lake. Tanzania was also accused of harassing Malawian fishermen.

Tanzania then frantically tried to woo Malawi back to the talks with a new round scheduled for October 27.

The Permanent Secretary of the Tanzanian ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr John Haule, told The Citizen last week that Malawi was invited for the talks but had yet to respond.

On Wednesday, Malawian minister for Foreign Affairs Ephraim Chiume told The Citizen there had been no official communication between the two countries on the October 27 meeting.

“We have not received any communication from Tanzania,” he said, “and we cannot go to talks based on media reports.”

Once protocol matters were resolved, he said, they would prepare a formal response. When pressed to confirm whether Tanzania actually sent the invitation for the talks, Mr Haule referred The Citizen to the country’s representative in Lilongwe.

He added: “The High Commission should be in a better position to confirm the issue because it is the official channel we use to reach the Malawian government.”

The Tanzanian High Commissioner to Malawi, Mr Patrick Tsere, referred The Citizen to the minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Bernard Membe. Efforts to reach Mr Membe bore no fruit.

In another development, the British government has said it favours the Organisation for African Unity’s decision that colonial era borders should be respected. The OAU is the predecessor organisation of the African Union (AU).

Responding to queries on where the British government stood on the matter, Mr Philip Gilbert, the officer in charge of the Tanzania docket at the Africa Directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said the UK could not get entangled in the dispute between two sovereign states.

“Although the UK has historical links with the region,” he said, “we believe that the OAU’s decision that colonial era borders should be respected marked a definitive end to any vestigial UK responsibility for such matters.”

The two countries should resolve the dispute bilaterally or through a regional or international body, he added.

Malawi claims it owns all of Lake Nyasa on the basis of the 1890 treaty which, it says, was later reaffirmed by the OAU when the country gained its independence in the early 1960s.

But Tanzania says the Anglo-Germany Treaty that gave Malawi sole ownership of the lake was flawed and it has every reason to demand a review.

{Citizen}

Guinea-Bissau authorities say they are searching for Captain Pansau N’Tchama believed to have commanded the recently failed coup.

The Country’s military source said the country’s northern borders with Senegal were being “strictly controlled”.

“Some fugitives could cross into this neighbouring country. We have put all our units on alert,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

N’Tchama was the head of a commando unit that assassinated president Joao Bernardo Vieira in 2009. He returned last week from Portugal where he had been undergoing military training since July 2009, security sources said.

It was not immediately clear why N’Tchama might have carried out the assault, but the captain is also a former associate of the government overthrown in the April coup.

“The government considers Portugal, the CPLP (the Community of Portuguese Language Countries) and Carlos Gomes Junior as the instigators of this attempt at destabilisation,” said a statement read by Communications Minister Fernando Vaz.

Its aim was “to overthrow the transitional government undermine the political process that is under way with one objective, to bring Carlos Gomes Junior back to power and justify an international stabilisation force”, it said.

{{Nigerian Leader Goodluck Jonathan has assured Nigerians that the federal government will make available adequate food supply in the country, despite threats of scarcity occasioned by the recent flood disaster, which affected many States of the Federation.}}

He gave the assurance yesterday when the Minister of State for Federal Capital Territory, Olajumoke Akinjide led a delegation of FCT residents and clerics to pay Sallah homage to the president and Vice President Namadi Sambo at the Presidential Villa.

The President stated that the Federal Government had enough grains in the National Strategic Reserve, which would be released into the system.

He said: “Nigerians should not be afraid that there may be hunger in the land or shortage in food supply as a result of the food incident. We have enough grains in our strategic reserves.

The percentage of the farmlands that have been affected by the recent flood is not so high.

“We have enough grains in the National Strategic Reserves that we will release if the nation is threatened by food shortage. But we are not threatened.

The people hoarding grains are doing so at their own risks and not in the best interest of the country.”

{{A group of Egyptian men had a mission for this year’s Eid al-Adha, Islam’s biggest holiday, which began Friday.

They wanted to make some effort to stop sexual harassment of women, which in past years has spiked in Cairo during the holiday celebrations with the crowds of rowdy men in the streets.}}

Their idea was simple: to patrol downtown Cairo and shame men who harass women by cornering them and spray-painting “I’m a harasser” on their backs.

That proved pretty much impossible, however. The small group was outnumbered by boys and men who mocked them, some of them blaming women for bringing harassment by the way they dress.

Gathering on Friday afternoon on Tahrir Square, the epicenter of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, about 20 men — mostly university students — donned neon yellow vests marked “Anti-Harassment.”

{{About 1,000 African students will benefit from a wide range of scholarships offered by the Australia Government.}}

Australian High Commissioner to Mauritius Sandra Vegting said his country was extending the $460 million gesture to boost Africa’s educational capacity.

The scholarships are to be awarded annually to individuals who have demonstrated “leadership” qualities that can positively affect social and economic policies in their countries.

Over 27 African countries are represented in the project, including Mauritius and Seychelles.

The students are expected to commence their studies in January 2013.

“The Australian Government’s objective is to provide high-quality education and training to talented African professionals, who will be in a position, on their return home, to make an important contribution to national or regional development,” Ms Vegting said.

Currently, 25 per cent of Australia’s development scholarships were focused on Africa alone, with around $625 million last year handed over to Africa.

The amount is expected to rise to $900 million in the next two to three years, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade annual reports.

Over13,000 African students are already studying in Australian universities, with the highest numbers coming from Kenya, Mauritius and Nigeria.