Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo have launched an offensive, shelling positions held by rebels near the eastern city of Goma.}}

The UN was responding to shelling from M23 rebels on Goma on Thursday, a UN spokesman said. Congolese officials say five civilians in the city died.

A M23 spokesman told media it had not attacked the city, blaming the army for provoking the fighting.

A new UN intervention brigade is deploying to the area to tackle rebels.

It has a mandate to neutralise and disarm rebel fighters. Its 3,000 soldiers are joining the regular UN peacekeeping force, Monusco, which has more than 18,000 troops on the ground with a mandate to protect civilians.

UN spokesman Lt-Col Felix-Prosper Basse said two UN helicopters were involved in the latest operation, which was being backed by the Congolese army, attacking rebel positions in Kibati about 15km (nine miles) north of Goma.

“Fighting has entered a new phase as Monusco is now engaging the rebels together with the government forces,” he told media.

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{{The U.N. Security Council on Friday urged Sudan not to shut down oil pipelines that are the sole conduit for crude exports from South Sudan, which relies heavily on oil revenues for its economy.}}

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced in May that the pipeline would be closed unless the government in Juba stopped supporting rebels active in Sudan. Juba has repeatedly denied providing any support.

“The Security Council urges the governments of Sudan and South Sudan to maintain dialogue to ensure continued transportation of oil from South Sudan, and the government of Sudan to suspend any actions to halt the transportation of oil from South Sudan,” the 15-nation council said in a statement.

Sudan announced earlier this month that it had delayed the shutdown until September 6 to allow an African Union team to continue investigating the complaints.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011. A shutdown of the oil pipelines from the South could have serious economic and political implications for Africa’s youngest country.

No official date has been set for a new round of talks between the two countries.

{{Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to cease mutual hostilities and halt any rebel support, including the pulling out of forces from their joint border.}}

In joint statement issued in Khartoum Thursday by their armies, the two countries confirmed they had also agreed on how to deal with their complaints.

“The two parties renewed their commitment to halt all forms of support and harbouring to the armed movements and groups and exchange of complaints and responding on them,” a statement issued after a two-day meeting of the Joint Security Committee of Sudan and South Sudan said.

“The Armed Forces and the People’s Army of South Sudan agreed on the pull out and re-deployment along the joint border in accordance with the map provided by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP),” the statement added.

The two sides also agreed to jointly bear logistics of their field teams expected to start work in a week.

The agreement, signed by the heads of the two country’s military intelligence, also included the possibility of creating sites to verify any claims of violations.

Meetings will resume on September 17 in South Sudan capital Juba.

Since July 2011, Sudan and South Sudan have accused each other of supporting rebels in their countries.

In September last year, the two countries signed a cooperation agreement to resolve issues that were unresolved after the secession of South Sudan from Sudan.

They included oil, border demarcation, external debts, the legal status of the citizens in the both countries and the question of Abyei and other disputed areas.

They also agreed on a 20 kilometre non- military area as buffer zone on their joint border, to be monitored by UN forces.

NMG

{{The head of the U.N. mission in Congo on Thursday ordered peacekeeping troops to act to protect civilians after shelling hit the city of Goma in renewed fighting between the army and M23 rebels.}}

The fighting close to Goma, a city of a million people on the Rwandan border, comes after a relative lull in the 18-month rebellion. Late last month, the United Nations pledged to keep the M23 rebels out of range of the town, which they briefly seized last year.

Rwanda accused the Congolese army of deliberately firing artillery into its territory. However, Kinshasa denied the reports.

Martin Kobler, head of the U.N. mission known as MONUSCO, said populated areas and U.N. positions had been directly attacked during the clashes on Thursday.

“I have ordered the MONUSCO Force to react and to take necessary action to protect civilians and prevent an advance by the M23,” he said, without elaborating.

Reporters in Goma said three shells landed in the town and saw the bodies of two children killed in one of the explosions. Another civilian was killed and four others wounded, officials at a local hospital said. Two Congolese soldiers were also wounded, they said.

Fighting initially broke out late on Wednesday

A senior U.N. official, who asked not to be named, said that on Thursday the rebels entered a security zone surrounding Goma, which was established by a new, robustly-mandated U.N. Intervention Brigade earlier this month.

{{Somalia’s government vowed Wednesday to deliver justice in the case of a local woman who alleged she was gang raped by African Union troops and Somali soldiers.}}

“My team and I are committed to getting to the bottom of this case, and all other allegations of sexual violence,” Somalia’s minster for human development, Maryan Qasim, said in a statement Wednesday.

“We want perpetrators of crimes to be brought to justice and to build a society where the rights of every citizen are protected.”

Qasim, the head of a government team probing the case, distanced herself from an audio recording in Somali media in which she appeared to angrily criticise rape victims for publicising their cases in the press.

Instead, she said she had been “misquoted and misrepresented”, and that she had instead been stressing the need to “protect each and every rape victim’s identity”.

“Rape in all its forms is totally unacceptable,” Qasim added. “The government cannot tolerate such incidents, no one should be allowed to violate the rights of Somali women.”

Late last week a Somali woman alleged she was kidnapped by three soldiers from the national army, blindfolded and forced into a car, before being handed over to African Union troops to be repeatedly raped.

The unnamed woman, in her late 20s with a young baby, told Somali media that she was unconscious during the attack and says she does not know how many men raped her.

AMISOM, the 17,700-strong United Nations-mandated force that supports the government in its fight against Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents, said it has launched an investigation together with the Somali army.

AMISOM, fighting since 2007 in Somalia and funded by the UN and European Union, insists it “strongly condemns … sexual abuse or exploitation”.

The force is mainly made up of troops from Uganda, Burundi and Kenya, with smaller numbers from Djibouti and Sierra Leone.

AFP

Tanzania lacks adequate number of competent directors, an expert has said, calling upon concerted efforts among various stakeholders to address the issue.

This unfortunate situation, according to the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) deputy governor Mr Juma Reli responsible for administration and internal control, results in poor performance of both public and private institutions.

Opening a corporate governance seminar organised by Institute of Directors in Tanzania, Mr Reli said poor performance in these institutions is caused by the negligence of the board of directors and the lack of general management principles.

Mr Reli said when a board of directors fails to play well its oversight duty, an institution must performs poorly. “Boards of directors are heads of those institutions if they fail to do their part as outlined in the rules and regulations, their organisations fail,” he said.

He said that IoDT is currently establishing itself and has aptly chosen to concentrate on developing a strong and sustainable director training programme to cater for the shortage. “Its work in this area is to provide guidelines for chairs and directors suffering from competence issues,” he said.

NMG

{{Kenyan commercial banks are earning the highest proportion of income from lending cash to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) compared to other African lenders, a World Bank survey has established.}}

More than a fifth (20.5%) of Kenyan banks’ net income is earned from lending to SMEs, nearly double the proportion that Nigerian banks make from the mid-sized enterprises according to the World Bank research released last week.

South African banks trace 15% of their income from lending to SMEs, Tanzanian lenders make 16%, while Rwanda comes closest to Kenya at 20%.

“The difference between Kenya and most other sub-Saharan African countries is that innovation started through a combination of microfinance-rooted institutions scaling up to becoming commercial banks and innovation with lending models and technology in the retail banking segment by other institutions, most notably Equity Bank,” states the report authored by World Bank researchers, Gunhild Berg and Michael Fuchs.

In Kenya, the research found that 17.4% of total bank lending goes to SMEs, whereas it stands at 17.0% in Rwanda. Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania lag behind in SMEs’ share of total bank lending at five, eight and 14% respectively.

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