Category: News

{{This June 2012, the U.S. Department of State is hosting several events to promote economic growth throughout Africa by engaging women and youth, encouraging entrepreneurship, and strengthening U.S.- African economic partnerships.}}

The main events are the African Growth and Opportunity Act Forum, the U.S.-Africa Business Conference, the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program, the Innovation Summit and Mentoring Partnership with Young African Leaders, and Global Economic Statecraft Day.

The exchanges and opportunities for dialogue will bring economics to the forefront of the United States’ relationship with Africa and help us to build a stronger international economy together.

{{African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum}}

The United States Department of State is hosting the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum in Washington D.C. from June 11th to 16th.

Enacted in 2000, AGOA serves to support free markets, increase U.S.-African trade and investment, and promote economic growth to integrate Sub-Saharan Africa into the global economy.

The Forum will bring together U.S. and African ministers, members of Congress, private sector and civil society representatives. The policy focus of this year’s forum is the importance of infrastructure (power, transportation, communications, etc.) to business development, trade and economic growth.

{{U.S. Africa Business Conference}}

The State Department, in collaboration with several U.S. Government agencies, will host the U.S.-Africa Business Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 21-22.

The U.S.-Africa Business Conference aims at providing an opportunity to showcase U.S. business expertise to potential African clients, and to highlight trade and investment opportunities in Africa to U.S. exporters and investors.

In addition to an official Government of Rwanda delegation, 11 Rwandan companies will also attend the conference to discuss investment and partnership opportunities.

African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP)

The U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Visitors is hosting women entrepreneurs from across Africa from June 4-22, 2012 on its third “African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP).

AWEP is an initiative launched by the State Department in July 2010 to foster networks of female entrepreneurs across Sub-Saharan Africa who are qualified to transform and develop their communities by owning, running, and operating businesses.

{{Innovation Summit and Mentoring Partnership with Young African Leaders (YAL)}}

The State Department will host the Innovation Summit and Mentoring Partnership with Young African Leaders from June 13th to 30th, 2012.

This three-week professional development program, sponsored by the U.S. government in collaboration with Meridian International Center, is part of the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative to engage young African leaders who promote positive change in their communities.

The two-day Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C. will launch the program, connecting business leaders, speakers, and international and local civil society activists.

Participants will travel to various destinations in the U.S. for the Mentoring Partnership with American companies and non-profit organizations. Through this opportunity, young African leaders will gain hands-on experience in the American workplace to foster their own professional leadership skills.

The program focuses on social entrepreneurship as a tool for maximizing Africa’s potential to create jobs and opportunities and aim to enhance U.S.-African collaboration to promote innovation, investment, and social responsibility.

The U.S. Embassy in Rwanda is sending one young Rwandan, Clarisse Iribagiza, to participate. Clarisse Iribagiza is the winner of the East African reality TV show “Inspire Africa.

She is also at the head of HeHe Limited, a mobile applications development company founded in 2010 while she was a student at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

{{Global Economic Statecraft Day}}

Economic statecraft is one of the central pillars of American foreign policy. Through the Global Economic Statecraft initiative, established in 2011, the U.S. aims to increase U.S.-African trade and investment.

Global Economic Statecraft Day is a day set aside to highlight the United States’ support for business and to reflect on how to integrate better economics into our foreign policy.

To celebrate Global Economic Statecraft Day, the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda will host a Youth Entrepreneurship Program at the American Corner at the Rwanda Tourism University College in Gisenyi on June 14th at 2:00 p.m.

The event will feature a discussion on youth entrepreneurship in rural areas led by Charles Kayitana, a lecturer at the School of Finance and Banking (SFB).

Kayitana will lead discussions on best practices in “customer care” with students, small business owners, tourism employees and transport service professionals.

Participants from neighboring Goma in DRC are also invited.

{{In the ongoing Police-week activities, the national police have provided 5sewing machines to an association of youths that previously engaged in drug abuse.}}

12 bicycles were also donated to another association of youths united in the fight against drug abuse.

The supportive material was donated to the two associations in Busoro sector in Nyanza district.

IGP Emmanuel Gasana reminded residents that in the current situation, security and safety of citizens are not about crime prevention but also engaging in developmental activities; fighting poverty, fighting gender based violence all done in collaboration between police and citizens.

Local government minister James Musoni commended Nyanza district authorities for their efforts in containing drunkenness and drug abuse among youths in the district.

{{Britain’s ambassador to Libya was in a convoy of cars attacked in the eastern city of Benghazi, a British embassy spokeswoman has said.}}

The convoy was hit about 300m from the British consulate office in the city’s al-Rabha neighbourhood on Monday.

“A convoy carrying the British ambassador to Libya was involved in a serious incident in Benghazi this afternoon,” the spokeswoman said.

“Two close protection officers were injured in the attack but all other staff are safe and uninjured.”

She said the injured officers were receiving medical treatment.

The diplomatic convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, local security officials said earlier on Monday.

The embassy spokeswoman earlier said that all staff were accounted for following the attack. “We are liaising closely with the Libyan authorities,” she said.

{{Youths from Rwanda and East African member states have undergone training on advocacy and peer education to enable them deal with their challenges as youths.}}

The training was conducted at Hilltop Hotel recently coordinated by the East Africa Community secretariat.

The trainings on “Integrating Advocacy Components to Peer Education” are part of the joint EAC and DSW project “Invest in Adolescents.”

The project aims at building the individual competences, collective capabilities and overall capacity of adolescent and youth serving CSOs necessary to advocate effectively for the development and implementation of adolescent and youth sensitive SRHR policies, programs and budgets.

Adolescents’ and youth involvement in decision-making processes and advocacy strategies remains scarce. Often because young people lack the skills to comprehend, articulate and communicate their needs and their understanding of and ability to contribute to local and national civic processes.

However, involvement of knowledgeable and empowered adolescents is crucial to strengthen their sexual and reproductive health and rights and link and place them in decision and policy making processes. Young people remain an essential resource and potential force for change.

They are the most ideal agents to provide appropriate knowledge and information on decisions and policies to other young people as well as communicate the role and responsibilities of young people in implementation of decisions and policies.

The training “Integrating Advocacy Components to Peer Education Trainings” targets representatives of national youth organisations in the five project countries (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda)

The goal of the training was to ensure a wider and more sustainable participation of young people in meaningful dialogue as advocacy becomes an integrated component of peer education programs with youth organisations.

Objectives of the training targeted fostering skills on advocacy methods and process, including prioritizing advocacy issues.

The training also focused on increasing the understanding of pertinent approaches for young people’s participation in meaningful dialogue, including civic education and involvement in decision and policy making processes.

It also emphasised training youth organisations’ representatives on how to use the training modules and how to integrate it to peer education programs,

And training youth organisations’ representatives on criteria and procedures for selection of youth champions to participate in national trainings.

{{Meetings take up an ever-increasing amount of employee’s, and particularly manager’s time. Executives and managers I work with tell me that 40% to 50% of their time is taken up with meetings, that either they call, or they are asked to attend, leaving precious little time to get work done. }}

The result, according to The Center for Work Life Policy, is that the average professional work week has expanded steadily in the past decade, with many professionals logging between 60 and 70 hours a week. Some people even read their email messages in the bathroom.

A variation of Parkinson’s Law applied to meetings goes something like this: “Meeting activities expand to fill the time available.” Ergo, more time, more activities. If you set an hour for the meeting, people will use the hour, regardless of what is on the agenda. As renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

Plenty of studies come up with similar results. In a survey reported in Industry Week, 2,000 managers claimed that at least 30% of the time spent in meetings was a waste of time; a 3M Meeting Network survey of executives found that 25% to 50% of the time people spend in meetings is wasted; and a survey by Office Team, a division of Robert Half International, noted that 45% of senior executives surveyed said employees would be more productive if meetings were banned at least one-day a week.

Another study, reported by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times, by Microsoft, America Online and Salary.com concluded the average worker actually worked only three days a week, or about 1.5 hours a day, and the rest of the working time was “wasted,” with unproductive meetings heading the list of time-wasters.

Al Pittampalli, a former Ernst & Young executive and author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting, argues most meetings are mediocre and not necessary, “not about co-ordination but about a bureaucratic excuse-making and the kabuki dance of company politics.

We’re now addicted to meetings that insulate us from the work we ought to be doing.” He contends that traditional meetings create an unnecessary culture of compromise and kill our sense of urgency. He outlines three types of meetings: convenience, formality and social in which a false sense of urgency is created.

Pittampalli argues that informal conversations, group work sessions and brainstorming sessions are not meetings, and shouldn’t be treated as such. The book presents seven principles to make necessary meetings, good. The most striking are:

Meet only to support a decision that has already been made; do not use the meetings to make decisions;

Produce a committed action plan;

Never hold a meeting for informational purposes.
If you absolutely must have meetings, here’s some suggestions to help make them more productive:

Always start the meeting on time, regardless of people who are late;
Do not review the contents of the meeting with the people who are late;

-Reduce the length of meetings to one hour maximum, and preferably less — try 30 minutes, even 15 or 10 minutes;

-End the meeting on the agreed-upon time, even if the agenda is not finished;

-Invite fewer people — productivity decreases as participants increase;

-Allow the right for employees to decline their attendance, without having to justify themselves and without penalties;

-Reward employees who show up on time and even early with some kind of small gift;

-Don’t let people who are late to the meeting by more than 15 minutes join the meeting;
-Don’t allow individuals to hijack or dominate meetings by frequent and endless conversation. It’s the responsibility of the meeting leader to control this;
-End meetings early. People will be more positive about participating as a result;

-Do not allow laptops or cellphones to be on or open during meetings. Allowing people to be interrupted or diverting their attention lowers the value of the meeting;

-Don’t tolerate meeting participants working on other things during the meeting. Ask them to leave;

-The meeting leader should enforce only one person speaking at a time, and to the point;

-Ask each participant to prepare for the meeting;

-At the beginning of the meeting, ensure the desired outcome(s) are stated clearly;

-Limit the action items of your meeting to no more than three;
-Interrupt people who either repeat what they have said, or repeat what someone else has covered. These are time wasters.

-Whoever calls the meeting should “own” the meeting; don’t allow someone in the group to try to take it over;

-Table any discussion that is not relevant to the agenda.

{article was published in FINANCIAL POST}

{{A five-member team has been appointed to conduct an inquiry into Kenya’s Chopper crash that killed Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, his assistant Orwa Ojode, alongside two pilots and two bodyguards.}}

The team includes former Kenya Armed Force Commander Major General Harold Tangai, Charles Mutinda, George McOwenga and Faith Irari. The team will be led by Appeal Judge Kalpana Rawal.

Transport Minister Amos Kimunya, while making the announcement on Monday evening, said the team will act as a platform for all stakeholders engage in discussion on how to avert similar tragic crashes in future.

Meanwhile, the United States has expressed willingness to help in the investigation into the helicopter crash.

US ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration told local media that his country would come in “if requested to do so” by Kenyan authorities.

“I have asked my people to lean forward, but we are not going to push. The Kenyan government has to request because we are guests in this country,” he said.

Maj-Gen (Rtd) Gration was speaking of the Sunday’s crash saying the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) would be ready to help.

NTSB is the US agency that mainly investigates air crash disasters.

{{EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT}}

“I watched the helicopter, it looked like it was burning while up in the air, a few minutes later we heard a loud bang and we rushed to the scene to find the wreckage and the bodies,” said Elijah Mucheru, who was among the first people at the scene.

Julius Mochai, another witness, said they tried in vain to put out the fire. “The problem started while it was up in the air, I could see smoke from it even before it crashed.

“After the crash, we tried to put out the fire using soil but after every few minutes an explosion would occur and people would run away for safety, making it difficult to put it out,” said Mochai.

The explosions are suspected to have been from a bodyguard’s pistol recovered at the scene. Prof Saitoti and Ojodeh were flying to Nyarongi Catholic Church in Ndhiwa District in South Nyanza for a {harambee} (fundraising).

{{After switching to English as a language of instruction in Rwanda, many schools have opened their doors to teach English.}}

However, the lack of teachers and lack of learning as well as teaching materials are hinder attainment of the Government’s target says one head of Kigali English School.

Switching is that Rwanda officially joined East African Community in 2007, and later on in October 2008 switched from French to English as one of the languages of instruction.

In November 2009, another change occurred when Rwanda was officially admitted into the Commonwealth group of nations.

Living and working in these blocs require a certain level of knowledge in English language.

Rwanda being a francophone country for many years needed Rwandans to adapt to English to compete within the dominantly Anglophone regional bloc and in the world. This has encouraged people to learn English.

Since then many public and private English language schools have been founded in Rwanda.

Meanwhile Jean Fiacre Haliyamutu a headteacher of an English Language School (IELS) notes that there are still some challenges to achieve this goal.

“Despite some challenges including; shortage of qualified teachers, lack of teaching and expensive learning materials, most of the people learning English don’t feel comfortable when they have an opportunity of using such language.

“I advise people to reset their minds and understand that when learning a foreign language making mistakes is a natural thing, however, to overcome this challenge people need to practice a lot. Look for the best schools before joining any to learn English”.

IELS started in 2004 offering general English courses, Business English, and Professional courses such as Medical English, Military English, Aviation English, Tourism English and Legal English.

The school coach’s people who want to take TOEFL and IELTS the IELS has a language laboratory equipped with software of teaching English.

{{Lack of designate cargo planes greatly affects Rwandair clients’ businesses, because goods for exports are usually delayed, leading to high transportation costs.}}

This among other challenges were highlighted during the Prime Minister’s recent guided tour of activities of the national carrier-Rwandair.

Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi was also showed different sites and units such as ICT department, the arrival and departure terminals, and where perishable goods such as flowers to be exported are stored.

Presently Rwandair boasts of 41 pilots of which 14 are Rwandan nationals.

Rwandair CEO John Mirenge, told the Prime Minister that the company faces among other challenges, lack of modern equipments and small operating space due to the size of the airport.

Mirenge also said Rwandair aircrafts at Kigali international airport face a challenge of an outdated fueling system explaining that aviation fuel is transported to the planes by trucks and filled manually by fuelers, because the pipes are worn out.

He says this outdated process risky as it can bring about accidents.

In modern fuelling processes, aircrafts are filled with aviation fuel using a big pipe straight from stationed tanks to the aircraft.

Rwandair has a customer base of 250,000 anually , but targets to increase to over 1 million clients in the next ten years.

Rwandair has an annual turnover of close to US$47 million(approx. Frw 29 Billion). The company however, targets to raise to US$ 49 Million.

The national carrier has established 13 flight routes within Africa, but intends to add more 17 routes in Canada, Europe and USA, in the next ten years.

Rwandair administration says it wishes to acquire a carrier cargo plane with capacity of 30 tonnes.

The Premier commended various reforms implemented by Rwandair in 2008.

{{The Republic of Malawi has cancelled hosting of the African Union Summit Next Month arguing that they would not accept Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir to step on their soil because of his indictment on international war Crimes charges.}}

“After considering the interests of Malawians, I want to inform Malawians that the Cabinet met today (Friday) and decided it was not interested to accept the conditions by the African Union, therefore Malawi is not hosting the summit,” Vice President Khumbo Kachali said on state radio.

Kachali said the country had received a communication from the AU commission that as a host country Malawi was required to invite all presidents including Bashir.

“The commission said if Malawi was not willing to host al-Bashir, the venue should be shifted to another country,” he said, adding that the summit would be hosted by Ethiopia.

Sudan on Thursday said it had urged the pan-African bloc to shift the summit to its Addis Ababa headquarters after the host nation’s refusal to welcome Bashir.

In response, the commission had written Malawi commanding it to either accept al-Bashir or forget hosting the summit.

“While we have obligations to abide by the decisions of the African Union we are also under an obligation to abide by international laws including the Roman Statute,” said Kachali.

Sudan’s president is wanted by The International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the country’s troubled Darfur region.

Malawi’s new president, Joyce Banda, said in May that she wanted Bashir to stay away from the summit scheduled in Lilongwe on July 9-16, to avoid straining ties with key donors for her impoverished country.

Under current ICC rules, its members including Malawi have a duty to arrest Bashir, who has visited several countries, including some court signatories, without any action being taken.

Earlier this week, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council that failure to detain him and other Sudanese officials accused of war crimes and genocide was “a direct challenge to the council’s authority.”

{{The Deputy Special Representative of Secretary-General of the UN in the DRC, Leila Zerrougui, has announced support Armed Forces of DRC (FARDC) in a campaign to neutralize armed groups operating in North Kivu.}}

She made the announcement on Friday 8 June, following the visit with members of the central government in the town of Bunagana, in Rutshuru (North Kivu).

This visit was to assess the security situation in the province characterised by armed violence in all jurisdictions.

Zerrougui noted armed groups constitute a threat to civilians in North Kivu and should put them out of harm’s way.

“Our soldiers (Monusco) have received clear instructions to give full support to the FARDC as part of our mandate. We will consider the protection of civilian populations in areas that are most at risk to neutralize the armed groups,” she said.

She added that the UN mission working with the FARDC to act against armed groups that destabilize the region.

“Whether it is the FDLR, Raya Mutomboki, Cheka Group, we believe that all are negative groups that target civilians. And therefore, they must be neutralised and Monusco will support the FARDC to do, “she said.