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The visiting head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, yesterday toured the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where she called for love and tolerance to end global atrocities that are on the rise.

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{A defining moment in the life of Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s new regional director for Africa, came when she was 9 and her father realized that her little sister’s mathematics textbook was below even the level he had studied as a poor child on a South African farm.}

He and his wife had both graduated from one of the country’s top medical schools, the University of the Witwatersrand, but the National Party that came to power in 1948 had imposed “Bantu education” on blacks, preparing them only for subservient jobs under apartheid.

“My father decided right then that we would move to Botswana so his children could get a better education,” Dr. Moeti, 60, said in a telephone interview on Monday from Geneva, where on Tuesday she was appointed to the new W.H.O. post that will put her at the forefront of an international effort to stop the spread of Ebola.
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Her parents’ determination, coupled with her own — she earned her medical degree at the University of London’s Royal Free Hospital, ran tuberculosis and H.I.V. programs in Botswana and has worked for three United Nations agencies — made her a much-praised choice for a job that is, for once, a focus of world attention.

The W.H.O.’s Africa office has long been criticized as a cozy sinecure for officials with political connections but little drive, and its slow reaction and initial resistance to direction from the Geneva headquarters in the early months of the Ebola outbreak have been held partly to blame for the epidemic’s getting out of control.

“There is no question that, as a region, we need to up our game,” Dr. Moeti said. “The W.H.O. is reforming, and one of my intentions is to fast-track reform in the region, too.”

Competence tests for the staff and audits of job performance by outside consultants will be among the changes, she said. The W.H.O.’s big donors, including the United States, have been demanding that the agency be more efficient and effective.

During the selection process, Dr. Moeti said, she was not pressured to promise jobs to anyone in return for any country’s vote, which is known to have happened in the past.

“Things have moved on from that,” she said.

Several prominent public health leaders expressed confidence in her.

“C.D.C. pledges to support her and her objectives,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has sent hundreds of its employees to Africa to fight the outbreak. “She gives hope that she’ll lead in a fully constructive direction to address the challenges the Ebola epidemic highlighted.”

Dr. Peter Piot, a discoverer of the Ebola virus who is the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a critic of the W.H.O.’s Ebola response, said Dr. Moeti was “very experienced and technically very competent.”

“I do think she can reform the office,” he said. “As long as she has the support of the member states.”

Besides an overhaul, Dr. Moeti said, her priorities will be ending the Ebola outbreak and working to get more African countries to adopt health insurance for basic medical care, as has been done in Rwanda and Ghana.

She said her interest in public health was inspired by her parents, who saw patients in a room attached to their four-room house in KwaThema, South Africa.

“My father liked to boast that I was the first child in our township to be immunized against TB,” she said.

Two of her three siblings are doctors; one is a civil engineer.

Dr. Moeti also credited a boyfriend with starting her down the path to her new job, and described the decision in medical terms. She joined the W.H.O., she said, because he was working for it as a doctor in Zimbabwe.

“I did it to give the relationship a chance,” she said. “Since we are now married, it was a results-based career move.”

{{Source: New York Times}}

{Two officers in Rwanda’s military Tuesday pleaded not guilty to charges of inciting insurrection against the government.}

Brig. Gen. Frank Rusagara and Col. Tom Byabagamba, who were arrested in August 2014, appeared before a military tribunal in Kigali to answer charges of inciting insurrection among citizens, engaging in activities aimed at tarnishing the name of the country, its leadership and illegal possession firearms.

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KIGALI ({{Reuters}}) – {International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde has warned that African economies could be hurt by a slowdown in China’s economy and an imminent hike in United States interest rates.}

Lagarde, speaking on Tuesday on a visit to Rwanda, said IMF’s global economic forecasts have been revised down over the past few months despite a huge fall in oil prices.

Lagarde called for “vigilance” across Africa and added this slower growth has implications for a continent that is now more integrated into the global economy than ever before.

“Momentum is slowing in many advanced and emerging economies, including China — one of Africa’s main trading partners,” Lagarde told Rwandan lawmakers in the capital Kigali.

Lagarde said the overall outlook for sub-Saharan Africa was promising at close to 5 percent, but growth forecasts for the region have been trimmed due to lower oil and commodity prices.

African countries such as Nigeria and South Sudan depend on oil for the majority of their revenues.

Lagarde said some African oil exporters will struggle in case oil prices remain low and warned of instability once the United States starts imminent “monetary policy normalization”, a move that is expected to see the U.S. raise interest rates.

“Even if this process is well-managed and well-communicated – and I believe that it has been and will be – there could be negative effects for emerging markets and global financial stability. African economies could also be impacted,” she said.

Hurt by cooling investment, manufacturing and a sagging housing market, China’s economy grew 7.4 percent last year, a level not seen since 1990 when the country was hit by sanctions after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

A Reuters poll in January showed China’s economic growth was expected to slip to 7 percent this year before dipping to 6.8 percent next year.

{The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) strongly condemns the killing of eleven civilians, five of them journalists, in a roadside ambush while travelling to Raja in Western Bahr El Ghazal State on Sunday, 25 January 2015.}

Unidentified gunmen reportedly opened fire on a two-car convoy which was transporting the new County Commissioner of Raja, James Benjamin, including a team of local journalists.

The vehicles were returning to Raja when they came under attack between Sepo and Magaya. It was the second roadside ambush in the country in less than two weeks.

UNMISS extends its condolences and sympathies to the families of the deceased for the loss of their loved ones.

The mission calls upon local, state and national authorities to investigate the incident and bring those responsible to justice.

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UNITED NATIONS

{The Church of England ended centuries of male-only leadership today as Libby Lane became its first female bishop in a ceremony briefly disrupted by a traditionalist priest’s protest.}

Around 100 bishops gathered around the 48-year-old to perform the traditional “laying on of hands” at the ceremony’s climax in the Gothic splendour of York Minster, northern England.

The congregation of some 2,000 people broke into applause and cheers and some shed tears.

Highlighting the divisions which dog the Church despite a painstaking reconciliation process, a lone conservative opposed to women as bishops had earlier disrupted the ceremony.

When asked by Archbishop John Sentamu if it was their will that Lane become a bishop, the congregation responded: “It is!”, but one man shouted out: “No, it’s not in the Bible!”

In a statement which had been pre-prepared in anticipation of a possible protest, Sentamu then told the man that his challenge had no basis in law and continued with the ceremony.

Church spokesman Arun Arora described the man, conservative clergyman Paul Williamson, as a “serial protester”, adding: “It’s a contrast between a lone voice protesting and a sea of voices in affirmation.”

Bishop Lane, dressed in black, white and violet vestments, swore oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience during the two-hour ceremony also attended by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the top bishop in the Church of England.

At the end, she was handed a pastoral staff by Sentamu, who told her: “Keep watch over the whole flock in which the Holy Spirit has appointed you shepherd.”

Moderates hope Lane’s appointment will be the start of a new chapter for the Church as it struggles for relevance in a multi-cultural society where only six percent of the population regularly attends an act of worship.

‘OF A PRAYER AND OF PARTY’

After the ceremony, she said she was thrilled to have shared a day “of prayer and of party” with so many people.

“I cannot properly express how encouraged I have been in the weeks since the announcement of my nomination by the thousands of messages I have received,” Lane said.

“Many of those who have been in touch have little or no contact with the Church of England.”

Her optimism was shared by the dozens of female clergy who attended the consecration along with their male counterparts and members of the public.

“It’s absolutely wonderful — we have been working towards this since 1994,” Canon Cynthia Dowdle, canon chancellor of Liverpool Cathedral, told AFP, referring to the date when female priests were first ordained.

“Tears were streaming — I have a pocketful of damp tissues here.” Fran Wakefield, a vicar in Stamford Bridge near York, said she had witnessed “history being made”.

“I hope it says there’s a place for absolutely everyone in the church, whatever their status,” she added.

The Church of England is seen as the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has some 85 million followers in 165 countries.

Anglican churches in countries including the United States, Canada and Australia have already appointed women bishops. The General Synod voted in July to allow female bishops, after decades of disagreement. (AFP)

But under a reconciliation process led by Welby, parishes which do not want to be led by a woman because of their theological convictions will be able to vote to be tended by a man instead.

The scale of the divisions was highlighted when the Christian Today website reported that the bishops who laid hands on Lane will be asked not to do the same for a conservative priest being made a bishop later this month.

The bishops have been asked to show “gracious restraint” as traditionalists believe that they should not be touched by those who have touched a woman in a sacramental context.

Moderates in the Church hope that Lane’s appointment will soon be followed by that of more female bishops.

Asked if she expected more women to be appointed this year, Dowdle said: “Goodness yes, it will have to be or there will be a big protest.” ({{AFP}})