Tag: GreatLakesNews

{Officials say the bodies were found along the banks of the Ndjili River in Kinshasa’s Limete commune.}

KINSHASA – The badly beaten corpses of six young men were found at the weekend at the edge of a river in Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, the United Nations said on Monday and called on authorities to investigate.

The bodies were found along the banks of the Ndjili River in Kinshasa’s Limete commune, the director of the UN Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) in Congo, Jose Maria Aranaz, told Reuters.

“We are concerned by the finding of six corpses of young men on the river banks and we offer all our support so that a transparent investigation takes place promptly to dispel rumours,” Aranaz said.

According to a 2014 UNJHRO report, police executed at least nine men in a 2013-14 anti-gang operation in Kinshasa, dumping some of the bodies into a river.

New York-based group Human Rights Watch said at least 51 people were killed in the operation with some of the bodies dumped in the larger Congo river.

Congolese authorities deny that it conducted the executions or dumped bodies. Last month, the government announced a fresh crackdown on Kinshasa’s notoriously violent street gangs, known as kulunas.

Kinshasa’s minister of security, Emmanuel Akweti, told Reuters that authorities will launch an investigation but that they did not yet have any theories to explain the deaths.

Witnesses and a local police officer said the bodies were discovered by fishermen on Sunday morning. They said the men appeared to be in their 20s and their faces and necks were swollen and severely disfigured.

Photographs of two of the bodies seen by Reuters show them lying on the river bank with apparent bruising on their necks and shoulders. Residents said drowning victims sometimes wash up on the shores but they have never seen so many bodies at once.

{“We are aware of Kenyans falsely registering as refugees in order to get free services and food” – UN refugee agency spokesman}

The United Nations on Monday launched a “verification exercise” to determine how many residents of the Dadaab complex are actually Kenya citizens posing as Somali refugees.

“We are aware of Kenyans falsely registering as refugees in order to get free services and food,” UN refugee agency spokesman Duke Mwancha told the Nation.

The UN currently has no estimate of the size of this segment of Dadaab’s population of 340,000.

But Mr Mwancha says his agency is aiming to specify within two months the number of Kenyans living in the camps under false pretences.

This effort to compile a “clean register” is part of a recent agreement involving the UN and the governments of Kenya and Somalia to facilitate the return of 150,000 Somalis to their homeland by the end of the year.

The three parties have also agreed that refugees from countries other than Somalia will be moved from Dadaab to the Kakuma camps.

About 16,000 refugees — mainly from Ethiopia — are expected to make that 1,200-kilometre journey from Garissa County to Turkana County.

Some Somalis have recently left Dadaab under circumstances that may not qualify as voluntary, says Ben Rawlence, author of a recently published book describing the lives of nine residents of the complex.

‘ATMOSPHERE OF HOSTILITY’

Contacts in Dadaab have informed him, Mr Rawlence relates, that “people are going now, apparently, because of threats and the prevailing atmosphere of hostility.”

The Kenyan government has pledged it will not violate its international obligations by forcing any refugees to leave the country.

None of the nine Somalis highlighted in Mr Rawlence’s book, City of Thorns, have left Dadaab, he told the Nation.

“They’re in the camps for a reason,” he said. “Somalia is not safe, especially not for women.”

Mr Mwancha said the UN has received no reports of refugees being forced back to Somalia from Dadaab.

The refugee agency spokesman added that he is not aware of what Mr Rawlence describes as “a desperate rush” by some Somalis in Dadaab to obtain false Kenya identity cards.

Mr Rawlence and other advocates for the refugees predict it will prove impossible to repatriate 150,000 Somalis by the end of the year without resorting to mass human rights violations.

“How are they going to get people onto buses who don’t want to go?” Mr Rawlence asks in regard to Kenyan and UN authorities.

“The only way to essentially halve the population of Dadaab is by doing it illegally.”

The UN refugee agency spokesman notes, in turn, that the goal of 150,000 returnees this year is “just a prospective figure.”

While “it is in the interest of the government of Kenya to have as people as possible return to Somalia,” the target number set in a joint communique issued last month may not be reached, Mr Mwancha says.

The UN points out that the number of Somali refugees known to be living in Kenya has dropped in the past five years from 519,000 to 413,000.

The roughly 100,000 who have left Kenya since 2011 are “believed to have spontaneously returned to Somalia,” the UN says.

A total of 16,524 Somalis have been formally assisted by the UN in returning to Somalia from Dadaab during the past 18 months.

Of that total, 10,413 have gone to Somalia during the first six months of this year, Mr Mwancha reports.

But the full tally of returnees for 2016 is still likely to fall well short of the UN goal of 150,000 for this year.

Funding for accelerated repatriation of Somalis is also not close to meeting pledged amounts.

Donors said last year they would give $110 million to help expedite repatriation, but as of June only $7.2 million had been allocated.

{Over 1,000 students, including Tanzanians, have graduated with Masters of Mathematical Sciences at the five centres of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences-Next Einstein Initiative (AIMS-NEI) in the continent.}

In Tanzania, the AIMS-Next Einstein Initiative’s Chief Academic and Research Officer, Prof Barry Green conferred 47 students from 13 African countries with the degrees over the weekend in Bagamoyo.

“Mathematical science is crucial in solving problems facing the African continent as it covers a wide range of disciplines,” Prof Green explained. AIMS is a pan-African network of centres of excellence for postgraduate and teacher training, research and public engagement in the mathematical sciences.

It started in South Africa in 2003 and then, through its Next Einstein Initiative (NEI) opened centres in Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon and Tanzania. The Tanzanian centre started in 2014 in Arusha before moving to its permanent campus in Bagamoyo last year.

AIMS plans to establish a sixth centre in Kigali, Rwanda as it aims to open 15 centres by the year 2023. “Last year, there were 37 graduates at the centre out of whom 13 were Tanzanians whereas this year 16 of the 47 graduates are Tanzanians,” the AIMS Tanzania’s Deputy Rector, Dr Mahera Charles, said.

He further explained that before the AIMS Tanzania opened in 2014, a total of 16 Tanzanians were conferred with the Masters Degrees from the AIMS centre in South Africa.

“We have so far recruited 61 students to start the programme this year but we may trim down the number since we have the capacity to host 55 students,” Dr Charles noted.

For his part, the Rector of AIMS Tanzania, Prof Mark Roberts, said the centre was looking for new ways to start in-service training for mathematics and science teachers in Tanzania to curb the shortage of the teaching professionals.

“There is a programme currently undergoing in Mtwara region which is being funded by the BG Group aiming at training more teachers for mathematics and science subjects,” Prof Roberts explained.

He thanked the government of Tanzania and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), among other partners, for supporting AIMS Tanzania.

Giving a speech on behalf of fellow graduates, Ms Najat Said, said the one-year Masters programme has provided them with valuable skills to transform the African continent.

Apart from Tanzania, other students were drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in addition to Rwanda, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Sudan.

The establishment of AIMS Tanzania follows former President Jakaya Kikwete’s meeting and subsequent discussions with AIMS Founder and Head, Professor Neil Turok in Canada’s University of Guelph, where Mr Kikwete received an Honorary Doctorate Degree of Laws.

{AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, July 04, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO), the world leader in digital security, has won an international tender to supply CENI, the National Independent Electoral Commission of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with 22,000 mobile biometric voter enrollment kits to support a comprehensive update of the country’s national voter register. Gemalto’s fully portable Coesys Mobile Enrollment stations will enable 18,000 enrollment centers to rapidly acquire digital photographs, fingerprint and signature records of citizens, and instantly issue personalized voter cards for upcoming general elections. Gemalto will also ‘train the trainers’ for CENI and provide comprehensive maintenance and support for this voter registration project, which represents one of the largest ever.}

Gemalto’s Coesys Mobile Enrollment stations feature a ruggedized, suitcase-style design and can be deployed virtually anywhere across the country. CENI will use the Coesys Mobile Enrollment stations to ensure efficient and quality acquisition of voter’s personal details and biometric data that will be used to add new eligible voters, as well as clean and update existing records in the national voter register ahead of the elections. In particular, the use of irrefutable biometric data will help identify and eliminate duplicates. CENI is responsible for managing and operating the entire enrollment process, and consolidating the voter registry.

“We needed a reliable partner to facilitate our ambitious program, which we expect will enroll up to 45 million voters,” said Corneille Nangaa, President of CENI. “With a wealth of experience in enrollment and voter registry applications in Africa and beyond, Gemalto offered an excellent technical fit, and the ability to react quickly to our requirements.”

“Our secure mobile enrollment solution will enable CENI to establish a reliable and respected voter registry, based on undisputable biometric data, and provide all the flexibility required to set up voter registration bureau all across the country,” said Frederic Trojani, Executive Vice President for Government Programs at Gemalto. “Above all else, it provides the Democratic Republic of Congo with a trusted foundation towards free, fair and transparent elections.”

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{Arusha — The East African Community (EAC) will next month assess security situation in Burundi.
}

The decision has come at a time when the scheduled second round of mediation talks among warring parties in Burundi under retired President Benjamin Mkapa is hanging in the balance.

The mission to Burundi will comprise representatives from all EAC partner states. The Secretariat said on Friday after a meeting of the Sectoral Council of ministers responsible for EAC Affairs and Planning that the team would be required to update the regional leaders on the security situation in the EAC member country which has been rocked by violence since April last year.

In March this year, the EAC appointed Mr Mkapa as chief mediator to assist President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda in the reconcilliation efforts. The first round of dialogue was held in Arusha early in May and was to continue end of last month but that did not happen.

“The team that will be sent will strictly abide by the Terms of Reference,” said a statement from the Arusha-based Secretariat at the end of the meeting which also called for urgent resumption of the Burundi peace talks.

The ministerial meeting took place only a few days after the EAC secretary general Liberat Mfumukeko acknowledged the contribution of the development partners in the Burundi peace process, among them China. He made the remarks when he spoke to the Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Dr Lu Youqing, when the latter presented his credentials to the EAC boss. China joins more than a dozen countries and international organisations now accredited to EAC.

The deepening security concerns in Burundi by the EAC partner states has come at a time the authorities in Bujumbura have repeatedly announced that an internal dialogue to resolve the crisis was underway.

President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose decision in April 2015 to vie for the presidency sparked the crisis, was quoted by media as pleading to his countrymen and women to support efforts already underway to mediate the warring parties.

He called on Burundians who have fled their country to return home and join hands with those inside the country to rebuild their country. Over 250,000 of them have fled to Tanzania and Rwanda.

Scores of opposition leaders are living in exile.

The Bujumbura authorities have, however, insisted that they would never sit in a negotiation table with the opposition groups, saying they were behind the violent protests that rocked the capital for much of last year until recently and those behind the attempted coup against President Nkurunziza in May last year.

The East African Legislative Assembly is another EAC organ which announced recently that it would once again send a delegation of regional MPs to the troubled country.

{Ministry of Energy officials from Uganda and Tanzania will pitch camp in Hoima District for two days starting tomorrow to review progress of implementation plan for development of the proposed crude oil export pipeline.}

The Ugandan team is led by Energy minister Irene Muloni while the Tanzanian team is led by Muloni’s counterpart Prof Sospeter Muhongo. The talks will also have representatives from the three oil companies—Tullow, Total and Cnooc.

Following the April’s pronouncement by the regional heads of state that Uganda will develop the pipeline to the Indian Ocean coast via Tanzania, officials from the two countries have been holding back and forth meetings to harmonise legal regimes and policies that will impact the project.

The director of downstream (refinery, pipelines) in the ministry, Mr Robert Kasande, told this newspaper at the weekend that the Hoima meeting is intended to review progress and provide officials from all sides with status updates.
Mr Kasanda also explained that since April, the two countries have since ratified “a draft inter-government agreement” the main document that guides the project.

“There has been a lot of progress and the meeting [today] is one of those in the implementation plan,” he said.
Mr Kasanda said environmental baseline surveys have been conducted and more surveys are ongoing.

In the earlier studies the pipeline had been allocated a 20-metre wide right of way but it is being narrowed down. The 1,403km pipeline will run from Hoima to down south to Tanzania.

From Hoima, according to an insider, the crude oil pipeline will use the same allocated right of way with the proposed finished product pipeline, which will end at the distribution terminal in Buloba, Wakiso District. This pipeline running from the Greenfield oil refinery is estimated at about 210 km.

The government in July last year hired Ramboll Group A/S, a consulting engineering company from Denmark, to conduct “an early phase” detailed route and environmental study for the Hoima-Buloba pipeline, studies which have been completed.The initial corridor/pipeline reserve proposed was about 110 metres but it was revised.

Meanwhile, while the governments are working on harmonising the requisite policies and laws, the oil companies this newspaper understands are yet to embark on negotiations for project financing.

{At least 11 tea factories in Nandi County have been shut as the week-long strike over the implementation of salary increments continues to bite.}

Farmers have said they are losing approximately Sh300 million weekly.

Some of the factories whose operations have stalled include those managed by Eastern Produce Company, namely Kapsumbeiywo, Kipkoimet, Kipchamo, Savani, Kibware, Chemomi, Sitoi and Kibabet.

Machines have also gone quiet at Kapchorwa, Kaimosi and Tinderet, which are run by Williamson Tea.

Yesterday, the more than 10,000 tea producers demanded the arrest of the top leaders of the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union whom they claimed were out to bring down the tea industry in Kenya.

The workers have demanded the effecting of a 30 per cent salary increase as awarded a week ago by the Industrial Court.

On the other hand, farmers and owners of tea plantations are reluctant to implement the court order saying it will run them out of business.

At least 50,000 tea pickers face job losses over the impasse.

Farmers who supply tea to the Siret Tea Company, claim they are losing Sh60 million per day due to the tea which goes to waste.

The chairman of the Siret Tea Outgrowers Company Wilson Tuwei now says the farmers would be forced to hire new workers from today to pluck tea as those under the union had declined to resume duty.

“Over 10,000 small scale tea growers from Siret have been pushed to the wall due to the unrest in the tea industry and have suffered huge losses. Unless the situation improves, we will have to hire new tea pickers,” Mr Tuwei said.

AGAINST TEA PLUCKING MACHINES

The workers are also against the introduction of tea-plucking machines in a bid to reduce costs. The small scale farmers say the machines will lower their costs by 75 per cent.

They argue that out of the Sh22 per kilogramme of tea sold, Sh15 goes to the worker and Sh3 covers transport.

“When you factor in fertiliser and pesticides, this leaves the farmer with absolutely nothing,” Mr David Sum, a farmer who has a two-acre tea farm in Nandi Hills, told the Nation last week.

The current strike has seen mature tea go to waste with anti-riot police officers engaging the workers in running battles most of last week.

On Friday, police were forced to lob teargas at the protesting workers to disperse them after they hit streets of Nandi Hills Town in numbers.

Attempts by some of them to storm tea factories were thwarted by the officers.

The farmers also protested against the cancellation of a farmers’ meeting in Nandi Hills on Saturday that was called to seek solutions.

Nandi East Security Committee called off the meeting after intelligence reports indicated it could degenerate to violence.

However, three factories – Siret Tea, DL-Koisagat and Nandi Tea – remain open.

Burundi has celebrated its 54th independence anniversary in low key, with a military parade, in the presence of representatives of several African leaders.

The venue of this year’s event was semi-deserted as the public failed to turn up for the country’s Independence day celebrations due to heightened insecurity in some parts of the capital, Bujumbura.

An ally of President Nkurunziza and former president of Tanzania assured the people that the present hard times will soon come to an end.

President Magufuli has the pleasure to announce to you that Tanzania will be with you, as well as all the people of Burundi, under the sun, rain, morning or evening.
“ President Magufuli has the pleasure to announce to you that Tanzania will be with you, as well as all the people of Burundi, under the sun, rain, morning or evening.“he said.

Burundi’s Foreign Minister, Alain Nyamitwe had on Thursday led a delegation of foreign diplomats on a tour of some parts of the country as part of the east African nation ‘s diplomatic day.

The annual event gives diplomats a chance to see activities across the country firsthand and engage with senior government officials.

However,Critics said the government-organized tour was a face-saving publicity stunt aimed at convincing the diplomats that the country is at peace.

They complained it was prompted by a recent U.N. human rights report that expressed concern on the arbitrary arrests of opponents in the country.

But government had rejected the accusations saying they are aimed at undermining the administration of the country and to make president pierre Nkurunziza and his government globally unpopular.

Opponents reiterated that government should have allowed the diplomats to explore the country on their own to examine if it is peaceful or not as claimed by Bujumbura.

Rwanda, Burundi mark 54 years of Independence as Somalia celebrates its 56th on July 1 #HappyIndependence pic.twitter.com/aBCT52mlbg

— The EastAfrican (@The_EastAfrican) July 1, 2016
Demonstrations started in the country when Nkurunziza declared his intention to stand for a third term in the June elections, which opponent claims is unconstitutional.