Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{An Administration Police officer succumbed to injuries following Sunday morning’s grenade attack at a church in Garissa.

“We have lost an officer who was also the chaplain at the church,” a police officer in the region said.}}

14 other people were still admitted to the Garissa Provincial General hospital.

Police said six of them were set to be airlifted to Nairobi for specialised treatment.

Police said the AP officer who succumbed to injuries was the chaplain at the Utawala Inter-denominational Church which was attacked at about 10 am.

The attack occurred when people believed to be Al Shabaab militants hurled a grenade at the church through the roof.

“Most of those injured are police officers because the church is inside an Administration Police camp,” another police officer said.

North Eastern Provincial Police Chief Philip Tuimur confirmed the incident
and said a massive security operation was underway in the town.

“We have mobilised our officers to track down the attackers,” he said.

Police said witnesses had also reported hearing gunshots during the attack.

Police believe the attack is the work of Al Shabaab militants or their sympathizers who launched similar attacks in two churches on July 1, killing at least 18 people.

The attacks at the African Inland Church and the Roman Catholic occurred when masked gunmen shot hurled grenades at worshippers.

Two police officers deployed to guard the AIC were also gunned down during the attack.

Grenade attacks and other blasts have become common in Garissa and other border towns since Kenya sent its military to fight Al Shabaab militants in the neighbouring Somalia in October last year.

{{At least seven people have been injured in a grenade attack on a church in eastern Kenya, officials say.}}

The attack took place in the town of Garissa, near the border with Somalia.

Unconfirmed reports say that gunfire could still be heard at the scene of the explosion. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

{{The European Union has given Somalia 158 million euros ($200 million) to improve education, the legal system and security, its new envoy said on Saturday, as the Horn of Africa nation tries to recover from more than two decades of conflict.}}

The new aid programme follows the election in September of a new Somali president, the culmination of a regionally brokered, U.N.-backed effort to restore central government control and end fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, elected in the first vote of its kind since Somalia slid into civil war in 1991, is grappling with corruption, an Islamist insurgency and piracy along the country’s strategic Indian Ocean shipping route.

“After 21 years, the government is finally rebuilding the systems of a functional state at local, regional and central levels,” Michele Cervone d’Urso, the EU’s special envoy to Somalia, told Reuters.

“The EU is more committed to work directly and in partnership with Somalis. We will ask the implementing agencies to work more closely with the government and civil society.”

A suicide bombing in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday highlighted the challenges faced by the new Somali leader .

The development aid package, the largest EU programme ever approved for Somalia, will go towards strengthening the judiciary, broken state institutions, the Somali police force and the country’s blighted education system.

Some funds will be used to bring home Somali professionals abroad to help improve education standards.

In the past, Western and regional states have pumped in millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to help Somalis affected by conflict and frequent natural disasters. African governments have sent troops to combat al Qaeda-affiliated militants.

Somalia’s residents have complained that most aid organisations have operated from neighbouring Kenya with little involvement on the ground, which has bred resentment.

President Mohamud called for more aid, and for assistance to be channelled directly through the new government.

“Although there is global economic crisis, our new government has been requesting the world to increase funds and change the ways Somalia has been getting funds in the last two decades,” Mohamud told a news conference in Mogadishu after the launch of the aid programme.

“We requested them to have direct a relationship with Somalia.”

Despite being on the back foot, al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants still control swathes of rural southern and central Somalia. Pirates and local militia groups are also fighting for control of chunks of territory. ($1 = 0.7785 euros) (Additional reporting Abdirahman Hussein; Editing by George Obulutsa and Rosalind Russell)

{{Somalia’s prime minister said on Saturday that it could be a challenge for his country if Uganda withdraws troops fighting Islamist rebels in southern Somalia.}}

Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid said that Somalia had not yet received any official communication from Uganda on the issue of withdrawing from the African Union force known as AMISOM.

“We are not impressed with that message. We would like to work with AMISOM in that respect,” he said.

“The Ugandans have contributed significantly and a lot, and this is now a critical moment and in light of that we are of the view, if the media reports turn out to be true, it may be a challenge.”

“Uganda’s withdrawal from regional peace efforts, including Somalia, CAR (Central African Republic) etc would become inevitable unless the U.N. corrects the false accusations made against Uganda, by bringing out the truth about Uganda’s role in the current regional efforts,” Uganda Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

{{ Fourteen youth from across East African partner states have vowed to sensitise members of the public on the ongoing integration in the region in a bid to deepen the process. }}

The youth dubbed EAC ambassadors converged at Naura Springs Hotel in Arusha for a three-day Training of Trainers workshop on Structures, Processes and Regional Integration which wound last Tuesday.

The Best Debaters of the first 2012 EAC University Students’ Debate signed a communiqué indicating their commitment to move forward and devote themselves to the sensitisation and awareness campaigns of the bloc.

The youth promise in their communiqué that they would carry out sensitisation and awareness programmes in collaboration with the EAC secretariat and relevant ministries in their partner states.

They will also partner with organised civil society, private sector and local governments to widen, deepen and strengthen the awareness campaigns, they said.

To begin with, they will establish a national and regional youth consultative roundtable for the Best Debater and Youth Leaders to coordinate, monitor and support sensitisation and awareness campaigns.

They call on the EAC Secretariat, the EAC partner states and development partners to consider mobilising resources required for the sensitisation and awareness campaigns.

The Best Debaters and Youth Leaders will, among others, identify and strengthen existing youth programmes whose pursuit contributes to the development of the region.

They will also promote joint and individual cross-border activities to enable East Africans become drivers of the regional integration process. They will further organise and roll out EAC Youth Clubs dubbed Model East African Community (MEAC) for secondary and university campuses in each partner state.

The EAC Youth Ambassadors programme, which is the brainchild of the EAC secretariat in collaboration with the GIZ and Gopa, aims at supporting the regional integration process through sensitisation and awareness campaign programmes.

The objective of the sensitisation and awareness programmes is to implement one of the fundamental principles provided for in Article 7 of the Treaty for the Establishment of the EAC which says the community is people-driven.

Youth being key stakeholders in the integration, they occupy an important place in the process and in the sensitisation and awareness programmes in particular.

Article 120 of the EAC Treaty also emphasises the need for developing and adopting a common approach towards disadvantaged and marginalised groups through rehabilitation and provision of, among others, foster homes, health care, education and training.

The groups in question include that of the youth themselves, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities. The participation of citizens is fundamentally interdependent on reinforcing a common East African identity and in deepening and widening the integration process.

The regional integration process entails four pillars namely Customs Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and ultimately, the Political Federation.

The road map for the integration process initially slated for this year could not be met as a result of, among others, lack of information and awareness among citizens and the youth in particular.

East African Cooperation minister Samuel Sitta was recently quoted as blaming the snail’s pace integration process on the partner state leaders’ fear for losing authority.

Observing the East Africans’ right to have timely and correct information and content regarding activities of the integration process, the youth advised the EAC secretariat and relevant ministries to collaborate with them in a bid to realise the people’s needs.

July 1, 2010 goes into the history of the East African integration as the day on which the Common Market came into force.

This is a second stage after Customs Union which aims at eliminating barriers retarding cross-border trade in the region.

Owing to the sensitivity of the stage, the EAC partner states have agreed to integrate gradually to ensure the protocol benefits for each country are sustained. They have devised a schedule to that effect.

{{The government has resolved to withdraw all UPDF troops in Somalia and other peace keeping missions in Africa and send the soldiers to protect Uganda’s western border with DRC, Premier Amama Mbabazi told Parliament on Thursday night.}}

The Prime minister made the statement while reading a response to the Leader of Opposition’s question on how Uganda is handling the Congo question in respect to the leaked UN report that Uganda was aiding the M23 rebels in the Democratic republic of Congo.

Mr Mbabazi said that Uganda has sent ICT minister Ruhakana Rugunda to the UN with a protest letter dismissing what he termed as “a UN amateurs report” on Uganda’s involvement in the DR Congo and failure by the western powers to recognise Uganda’s contribution to peace in the region.

It is in the letter that Uganda said it will withdraw from all peacekeeping missions to protect itself from possible invasion from Congo and UN sponsored terrorists.

“Why should we continue involving Uganda where the only reward we get is malignment? Why should the children of Ugandans die and we get malignment as a reward? Why should we invite retaliation by the al-shabaab by standing with the people of Somalia, only to get malignment by the UN system?” he asked.

“Since there are actors in the UN who are not able to understand that there can be principled actors in Africa and who think that all actors are looking for minerals like the imperialists did, we have now decided, after due consultations with our African brothers in the AU and ICGLR, to completely withdraw from regional peace efforts,” Mr Mbabazi said.

{{The East African Community and the People’s Republic of China today held discussions on partnerships to promote trade, investment and infrastructure development during a meeting at the EAC headquarters in Arusha.}}

Mr. Cao Jiachang, Deputy Director General of the Department of West Asian and African Affairs of China’s Ministry of Commerce led a 30-member delegation comprising government officials and Chinese entrepreneurs to the meeting with the EAC, whose delegation was led by the Deputy Secretary General in charge of Finance and Administration Mr. Jean Claude Nsengiyumva.

The two parties deliberated on a number of areas that offer the potential for collaboration between EAC and China including the energy, infrastructure, customs and trade, industrialization and tourism sectors.

Also discussed was the potential for building partnerships in the gender and youth segment, political affairs as well as developing the resources of Lake Victoria and its basin.

EAC’s Director for Infrastructure Mr. Philip Wambugu said the meeting was about deepening cooperation between EAC and China and would determine the pace of collaboration between the two.

He said the bloc valued China’s role in the development of the Partner States, noting that this was why China had been invited as a presenter at the EAC Summit Retreat on Infrastructure due in late November this year.

The Director briefed the delegation that included representatives from several reputable Chinese firms about the progress registered in the integration process so far, while the delegation was also apprised of opportunities for investment and partnership in areas such as ship and ferry building, pharmaceuticals, petro-chemicals, development of ports and development of regional road infrastructure, notably the Arusha-Holili-Voi Road.

Similarly, EAC highlighted potential for partnership with China in the areas of energy, customs and trade, development of markets, tourism, as well as countering terrorism and other crime through support towards the establishment of forensic and counter-terrorism centres in the region.

Mr. Cao Jiachang, the head of the Chinese delegation, on his part welcomed the talks and affirmed that China attaches great importance to its relationship with the EAC. Mr. Jiachang expressed China’s interest in supporting initiatives in energy, mining, industrialization, infrastructure, agriculture, human capacity development and security, among others.

He reiterated China’s readiness to support infrastructure development projects as well the industrialization of the region, saying, “We want to turn the EAC’s resource strength to industrial strength to increase the currently low trade volumes from EAC to China accounting for only 3% of trade between China and Africa”.

Mr. Jiachang added that China was open to scaling up trade with EAC and in that vein extended an invitation for a business delegation from the EAC Partner States as well as holding an EAC-China investment forum in the near future.

He announced a contribution of another grant contribution by China of US$ 100,000 for this year to support the EAC in developing cooperation programmes with China.

He proposed that the second meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee on Economy, Trade, Investment and Technical Cooperation planned for Beijing in 2013 be held towards the end of the second or the beginning of the third quarter of next year.

Closing the meeting, EAC’s Deputy Secretary General in charge of Finance and Administration Mr. Jean Claude Nsengiyumva appreciated the Chinese for their role in infrastructure development in the EAC Partner States and specifically for their support to the EAC Secretariat.

He invited the country to join the EAC’s Partnership Fund, which is a basket fund mechanism that supports various projects and programmes.

The talks were held in the context of the Framework Agreement on Economy, Trade, Investment and Technical Cooperation that the EAC and the People’s Republic of China signed in November last year.