It is my believe that most Kenyans all they want is a stable, peaceful and a prosperous nation.   These are the Kenyans I am referring as progressive.  Let us then gage our leaders with what they are going to achieve since we have so many problems afflicting us.

Both Raila and Kalonzo have very powerful positions let us now gage them on how much development they bring.   How many  Harambees they hold.  How many schools, health centers and Youth Vacational centers they build or equip.  How much effort they make to bring the Kenyan people together and how much they preach peace and unity.

Let us as progressive Kenyans support them whenever they engage on the above ventures and let us desist from insulting them and demeaning them, sometimes you get what you expect from people.

Let me remind Kenyans again and again it does not matter which tribe a president comes from so long as the president holds the principles of peace, unity and development.  Everybody will stand to gain, but if a president is divisive and retrogressive nobody will stand to benefit including his own family.  How many of you have uncles or relatives in high places and they cannot meet with you leave alone help you?  Many.   So I beg you people to start demanding performance and character.

Now those who do not see my point ask yourself this question we have 90 ministers and assistant ministers that means every tribe has an appointee have that increased sufurias of food in your homestead? Have that given you a job if you are jobless?  Have that given you school fees or scholarship if you are a student?  Have that brought you a tarmac road to your town or farm?  Have that brought you electricity to your house? Have that made you afford the high cost of food and living?  Now may that drive sense to the most thick skull.

Now the last and the most important thing of all, we must stop insulting, fighting, injuring and killing one another because of a politician or politics.  That is the most stupid thing a human being can do.  You fight, injure and kill one another for people who dine together, drink together and fly together.  What kind of an imbecile are you?  The word has to go around and be preached that fighting, injuring one another or killing one another for a politician or for politics is the most useless idiotic and senseless thing anything calling itself a higher mammal can do.

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African  Press International – api

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.PretoriaNews.SA.

President Thabo Mbeki has called on South Africans “to unite in action” to confront the “savagery of racism” and the challenges of high food and fuel prices.

Mbeki stressed that even 14 years into democracy, South Africans couldn’t be truly free while so many still live in poverty and racism persisted. “Indeed, we can’t claim to be truly free when insidious and blatant racism still exists in our society.

“We can’t claim to be truly free when racism still rears its ugly head in our institutions of higher learning, in the media, in the private sector, in the boardrooms and with the xenophobic occurrences that we observed in some communities in recent weeks,” he said on Sunday in Lansdowne, Cape Town in his last Freedom Day speech as president. Mbeki said the widespread condemnation of recent acts of racism and xenophobia showed that South Africans “will not tolerate people who want to drag us back into the savagery of racism and apartheid”.

He said if people suspected someone of attacks on foreigners, they should alert the police, and not take the law into their own hands. He said the fight against apartheid was hard, and described the detentions without trial, disappearances, exiles, assassinations, forced removals and the Group Areas Act as “testimonies that our freedom was never free”. So, the country had to work harder to defeat sexism, racism and xenophobia, particularly as there were “pockets of backwardness” in the country.

Mbeki said there were still too many people who were poor, unemployed and without proper houses. “There are other problems we must confront together as they impact negatively on the standard of living of the people. “These include the national electricity emergency, high food and fuel prices and high interest rates.” Opening the celebration, Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan also condemned continuing racism and xenophobia so long after the “mass action” on April 27 1994, when South Africans voted for freedom for the first time.

Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said people in the province should stop blaming one another for racism, an apparent reference to the ongoing spats between and within political parties, including the Western Cape ANC. Cape Town mayor Helen Zille did not attend the event, instead sending her deputy, Grant Haskin. She denied suggestions of a snub: she was in KwaZulu-Natal attending a family wedding and so spoke at a function there.

Also absent was the majority of the Western Cape ANC leadership, largely seen as anti-Mbeki. A fly past by the SA Air Force and a 21-gun salute greeted the crowd of about 2 000 people and 200 guests, including Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel.

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African Press International – api

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.dailynation.ke

Story by Rasna Warah.

Imagine you are from a war-torn country whose image as a tourist destination has been badly damaged by images of ethnic violence in the international press.

Now, imagine that you have been hired by the government of that country to fix the country’s image so that the tourists and the dollars can start flowing in again. Would you:
a) Send a bunch of shuka-clad Maasai men and women in all their regalia abroad to show potential tourists how Kenya’s tribes spend much of their day dancing and smiling for the cameras?
b) Showcase the country’s natural assets through a slick commercial that would reveal the country’s incredible physical beauty and game parks?
c) Start a campaign that would capitalise on the country’s achievements in the field of sports, business, science and the arts so as to show a side of the country that is not that well-known internationally?

If you answered a), I’m afraid you have lost the plot.  For one, if you recall, the Maasai did not feature prominently in the ethnic violence that rocked the country in recent weeks. In fact, for the first time, people abroad got a glimpse of the other tribes of Kenya whose pictures do not normally appear on postcards or travel brochures. So going abroad and showing foreigners – who now know that Kenya has more than one tribe – that the Maasai represent the whole of Kenya is just plain stupid.

Yet someone in the ministry in charge of such things did exactly this last week – took a bunch of shuka-clad Maasai to New York to show Americans what a lovely tourist destination Kenya is. What made this show of stupidity even worse was that in the same week, not far from New York, Robert Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon for the fourth time, setting a record that has not been broken in years. Cheruiyot proved, as the American sports commentator noted, that despite having now joined the league of war-torn countries and despite persistent poverty, Kenya is capable of producing world-class athletes.

Having watched the Boston Marathon myself many years ago when I was a student in Boston, I know that it is considered one of the most prestigious events in the United States. Runners come from all over the world to compete and the city practically shuts down on the day of the marathon so that Bostonians can watch the runners go by. It is a gruelling feat, and if the spring is late, can take place in near-zero temperatures. The winner is lauded in the American press and the local papers usually carry an image of the winner on the front page the following day.

Not so in Kenya. Cheruiyot’s victory was buried in the back pages of the local dailies and barely made it to the sports news on television. Granted, Kenyans win so many marathons these days, they’ve almost become blasé about these victories. But these are the same Kenyans who will spend every weekend at sports bars watching Manchester United, Arsenal and all those other English clubs playing football.
After all that we have been through as a nation, the last thing we want is the world to perceive this country as a place that defines itself through its various ethnic groups. It’s about time that we stopped “selling” the Maasai as if they are an extension of the country’s flora and fauna.

An adorned Maasai may be beautiful to look at, but human development indicators show that despite all their cattle, the Maasai remain one of the most underdeveloped people in the country, with high mortality rates due to preventable diseases and high levels of illiteracy, especially among women and girls. Isn’t it time we moved away from the ethnographer’s obsession with the Maasai and looked at what it really means to lead a nomadic existence with little access to healthcare and education?

Kenya has enormous talent in every field, yet our athletes, artists, writers, scientists, academics, our entrepreneurs and even our Nobel Prize winner are more likely to receive accolades in a foreign country than they are here. In fact, there is no museum or archive in the entire country devoted to showcasing our talent. (Though one such new project called Generation Kenya is trying to do just that – but with no Government support).

No wonder our most talented people seek greener pastures abroad or obtain foreign citizenship. If we are to erase the image of Kenya as a violent, genocide-prone nation, we must stop “exoticising” our people as “noble savages”. It is not only insulting, but totally inappropriate at this time in our history. More importantly, if we want Kenyans to unite under one flag, we must support and reward all those people who make us proud to be Kenyan.

*Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.

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African Press International – api

Publisher. Korir, api africanpress@gtmail.no source.PANA.

Maputo (Mozambique) – The Mozambican government believes that the current international food crisis, while posing a short-term threat to the country, could become an opportunity for increasing domestic agricultural production and stimulating agro-industry.

The Mozambican News Agency (AIM) Sunday quoted Agriculture Minister Soares Nhaca , as saying that the government was designing a series of strategic actions to eliminate deficits in the production of basic foodstuffs, and to export a surplus once the domestic market had been satisfied. He described the strategy as the medium-term measures with a time limit of three years.

Some shorter-term measures are also under consideration to improve access to productive land, create food reserves and improve the transportation of food from where it is produced to where it is consumed, the minister said. A long-standing complaint is that grains rot in peasant barns because no one com es to buy them and take to consumers in the towns. The government also intends to speed up rehabilitation of the local roads linking productive areas with markets, and to increase the access of small farmers to the needed agricultural inputs.

The government admits that the country faces a serious deficit in several basic foods, therefore almost all the wheat consumed in Mozambique is imported – this year the country will need to import almost 470,000 tonnes of wheat. The rice deficit is 316,000 tonnes, and the country needs to import 169,000 tonn es of potatoes. The shortfall for vegetable oil is 50,400 tonnes, for fish 54,00 0 tonnes (though it is notoriously difficult to put a figure on the catches of the country’s artisanal fishermen), and for chicken, 24,000 tonnes.

“These measures are intended to reduce the country’s food deficit in three years rather than five (the time allotted in the Agriculture Ministry’s strategic pla n )”, Nhaca told reporters Saturday, promising that the government was also monito r ing prices to ensure that they did not reach the levels found in some other countries. He said Mozambique could seize the opportunity afforded by the crisis to increas e production. This is particularly the case with rice.

Nhaca said that of all the members of Southern African Development Community (SADC), Mozambique had the available land, the best climatic conditions, and the know-how to expand rice production, replacing imports, and perhaps eventually producing surplus for export.

On wheat, Nhaca argued that the current high world prices would compensate for e fforts to expand domestic wheat production. So far wheat is only produced on the Angonia plateau in the western province of Tete, but the government is convinced that several other parts of the country possess the appropriate agro-climatic conditions for wheat production.

Nhaca said rather than viewing cassava as a subsistence crop, much more of the country’s cassava could be marketed and turned into flour. (One project under study is to make cheaper bread, by using a mixture of wheat and cassava flour). The Minister argued that Mozambique was competitive in producing soya and sunflo wer, which could replace imports, and supply the national vegetable oil and anim a l feed industries.
The challenge, Nhaca admitted, is to ensure that producers respond to the opport unities.

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African Press International – api

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.IPS

Story by Sarah McGregor

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African Press Internationa

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.eastafricanbusinessweek.ug.

Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania) – A legal opinion by the Tanzania Attorney General’s Chambers on the purchase of a 28 million British pounds air defence radar system from BAE Systems in 2001 is central to the scandal that has led to the resignation of the former Attorney General.

Mr. Andrew Chenge, who resigned from government last week, is a former Attorney General and had been promoted to cabinet to head the ministry for infrastructure development. The multi-million pound sterling scandal is under both local and international scrutiny. Chenge was Tanzania’s Attorney General when the radar deal was sealed. East African Business Week has learnt that at the time the deal was negotiated, Tanzania had no money so it had to look for other sources to finance the project.

Reliable sources say the Tanzania government sought a legal opinion about the deal at which point the Attorney General office advised “to continue with the project and above all advised the government to borrow money from a British bank, Barclays.” According to a source within the ministry of legal and constitutional affairs, that legal opinion was by itself illegal because such a commercial debt was uncalled for as the World Bank and the International Civil Aviation Organisation had said the purchase was “unnecessary and overpriced.”

He said the Attorney General’s Chambers advised the government to borrow a huge amount of money well knowing that the price was on the higher side. “Apart from an inflated price, Tanzania being a HIPC country was not supposed to enter such a debt burden with a two-digit interest rate,” he said. “The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has shown concern after discovering that such a legal opinion was itself illegal, and could have been pushed by personal interests because the deal was wildly expensive,” he said.

Although reports that Chenge is under investigations came out recently, East African Business Week has established that the SFO started a follow up on the matter three years ago. The radar was manufactured by Siemens Plessey, which then had become a BAE subsidiary. The local Siemens agent then negotiated the sale with the Tanzanian defence ministry. The radar deal has a long history. It all started in 1992 during President Ali Hassan Mwinyi when negotiators had put the price tag at 11o million pound sterling.

The deal was blocked on reasons that it was unaffordable and the first Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere played a great role in discouraging it. However, when Nyerere died in 1999, the scheme was resurrected, with a smaller phase to be followed by the rest but both the World Bank and the International Civil Aviation Organisation were against the deal. In the UK, the then Development Secretary, Ms. Clare Short, temporarily blocked aid payments in protest and said openly that she suspected corruption.

“It stank and was always obvious that this useless project was corrupt,” she was quoted as saying. Short also made an attempt to prevent the sale by arguing that a British arms export license be withheld but was overruled in cabinet by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Britain’s Foreign Secretary then, Mr. Robin Cook and current prime minister Gordon Brown were also against the deal. The reasons put forward by both Short and Cook were that because Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world, there were no substantive reasons to enter into such an expensive deal.

Chenge, resigned on April 20, 2008 after the Guardian newspaper of the UK said the minister has stashed away $1 million in an offshore account and that the team investigating the sale of the military radar to Tanzania was tracing the account. Also discovered, was a $ 500,000 transaction shown to have been made (from Chenge’s offshore account) to one of the senior officers of the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco). Two weeks ago SFO conducted an in-depth search at both Chenge’s offices and residence in Dar es Salaam.

Chenge is now the fourth minister to resign in a period of two months. Edward Lowassa (Prime Minister), Nazir Karamagi (Minister for Minerals and Energy) and Ibrahim Msabaha (EastAfrican Cooperation) resigned in February after they were implicated in the irregular awarding of a multi-billion shilling tender to generate emergency electricity in 2006. The tender was awarded to a shadowy American company, Richmond.

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African Press International – api

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.sudantribune.

Sudan (Khartoum) — The Sudanese government today signed a contract with two Chinese firms worth 396 million U.S. dollars for the project to elevate Roseires Dam in eastern Sudan, funded by a number of Arab funds.

The new project is intended to increase the height of the dam by an additional 10 metres resulting in an increase in the irrigation potential and power generation capability of the structure. The signing ceremony of the contract with the Chinese State-owned Sinohydro Corp and CWE firms was attended by the Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir. The contract includes Hydromechanic equipment and reconstruction.

The initial capacity of the dam is 3.4 md. c.m. however the accumulated silt in the dam lakes has reduced the storage capacity by 25%. The project aims to heighten Roseires dam to increase the storage capacity to 7.3 md. c.m. CWE is involved in the construction of the controversial Merowe dam in northern Sudan, where at least four people were killed in June when police dispersed residents protesting the project.

Minister of Finance and Economy Sudanese Awad Al-Jazz praised the financial institutions that have provided the necessary funds for the project, especially the Arab Fund for Economic Development and the Islamic Development Bank and the Kuwaiti Fund for Economic Development in addition to the OPEC Fund and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. The Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) will extend Sudan a 58-million Kuwaiti Dinar (USD 212 million) loan for heightening the Roseires Dam,

The minister congratulated the Chinese companies winning the contract of the project and the two Australian and French firms which won the advisory contract calling on them to quickly work and complete the project in its time limit. The Australian SMEC International, in association with Coyne et Bellier of France, has signed a contract with the Dams Implementation Unit of the Government of Sudan to undertake the design review and preparation of contract documents for heightening of Roseires Dam.

Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Sudanese Mohammed Kamal explained in a speech delivered during the ceremony of the signing of the contract that ” Roseires Dam comes in implementation of the strategic national plan observes the convention related to the sharing of Nile water signed with Egypt in 1959.

He pointed out that the amount of stored water will rise from three billion to 3.7 billion cubic meters and will double the production of electricity by 50 percent from the amount produced now. He also said that it will double the production of electricity 100 per cent by Sinnar Dam. Arab investors from the oil rich Gulf and Egypt are investing huge amount of money in agriculture infrastructure in northern and central Sudan to produce vegetables and cereals. Sudan also will receive some thousands of Egyptian farmers.

The dam, built during the 1960s, is located on the Damazin rapids in the Blue Nile, about 520 kilometres south-east of the capital Khartoum and about 150 kilometres downstream from the Ethiopian border.

It consists of a 1000 metre-long central concrete buttress section with earth embankment sections on each fl ank, 8.5 kilometres and four kilometres in length. A 280 MW hydroelectric plant located at the dam supplies nearly half of Sudan’s power output. The dam also provides irrigation water for the Gezira Plain.

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African Press International – api

Publisher: Korir, api africanpress.getmail.no source.eastafrican.ke

story by Philip Ngunjiri.

Prospects of negotiating a political solution to the Darfur crisis have become more remote as both the Sudanese government and rebels appear determined to pursue a military solution, says a United Nations report.

According to the Report of the Secretary-General on the Deployment of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur, the primary obstacle is the lack of political will among all the parties to pursue a peaceful solution to the Darfur crisis. “If both sides had mustered the necessary will and agreed to cease hostilities, to co-operate with the deployment of Unamid, to work sincerely with the Special Envoys towards launching the substantive negotiations and to commit to the protection of civilians, we would by now have started to witness significant progress towards a lasting solution,” said UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon while releasing the report.

The report also says the international community’s failure to supply vital helicopters, transport and other logistical support is undermining the work of the seriously understaffed African Union-Unamid to pacify a region where five years of fighting have killed more than 200,000 people and driven nearly 2.5 million others from their homes. Unamid was set up at the end of last year with a target strength of 26,000 military and police personnel to replace a seriously undermanned and underequipped African Union mission, but at present only has some 10,600 personnel in the field, 1,400 of them civilians.

The implications of the current security situation for the people of Darfur are grave. Violence in western Darfur during the reporting period has significantly impaired the humanitarian community’s ability to provide the civilian population with the critical assistance they require and has increased the vulnerability of thousands of civilians. Additionally, the ongoing attacks on food convoys throughout Darfur have hampered the capacity of agencies on the ground to provide food aid to the population.

Reports of a build-up of forces on the Chad-Sudan border during the reporting period offer a deeply troubling sign that the violence and instability will continue, to the detriment of the civilian population on both sides of the border and in clear violation of the Ceasefire Agreement. Unamid continues to work towards the full implementation of its mandate and has increased its capacity and visibility with the limited personnel and resources currently at its disposal.

It is critical that the international community recognise its own central role in supporting the mission, so as to enable it to effectively implement its mandate and contribute to improving the lives of the civilians of Darfur. In that respect, more must be done to secure the necessary aviation and logistical capacities for a full and effective deployment.  “Creative solutions must be found for those shortfalls, and they must be found quickly. I call once again on member states to pledge the necessary capabilities for Unamid or to prevail upon others who may be in a position to do so,” said Mr Ban.

Tensions between Chad and the Sudan during the reporting period have increasingly demonstrated the regional dimensions of the conflict and the devastating impact that it could have on civilians and peacekeepers on both sides of the border. In that context, a disturbing incident occurred on March 3, when a European Union-led peacekeeping force vehicle mistakenly crossed from Chad into Sudan (Western Darfur) and was fired at by the Sudanese Armed Forces. During the exchange of fire that ensued, one French soldier was killed and another injured.

That particular incident, added Mr Ban, is deeply troubling for the missions on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border, and therefore strongly urged all parties to exercise the utmost restraint. In that regard, he welcomed the agreement reached on March 13 in Dakar between the President of Chad, Idriss Deby, and President Omar Al-Bashir, to normalise relations and work to prevent further violence.

However, the letter dated March 27 from the permanent representative of the Sudan addressed to the president of the Security Council, which alleges that Chad has already violated the Dakar Agreement, was a worrying signal of the climate of mistrust between the two countries. Too many agreements between Chad and the Sudan have gone unimplemented, he noted. Therefore, there is need for both states to take definitive steps to normalise their relations and ensure the full and expeditious implementation of the Dakar Agreement.

Humanitarian operations in Darfur also continue to be constrained by targeted attacks against humanitarian workers and their assets. During the reporting period, 73 vehicles were hijacked, including three Unamid vehicles and 45 trucks contracted by the World Food Programme. Twenty-three of the drivers whose trucks were hijacked are still missing. In the same period, 18 humanitarian facilities were broken into by armed persons, including four humanitarian compounds that were systematically looted and destroyed during the military offensive by the Sudanese Armed Forces in western Darfur.

The recent military campaign by the government of Sudan to drive out non-signatory factions from western Darfur has worsened the situation as it has resulted in indiscriminate killings and other grave human-rights abuses against civilians.  The signing of the status-of-forces agreement between Unamid and the government of the Sudan on February 9 was a positive step in the relations between the government and the mission.
However, the fact that Unamid has not been afforded complete freedom of movement, particularly in areas affected by the ongoing violence in western Darfur, demonstrates the need for all parties, including the government and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), to co-operate fully with Unamid and respect the provisions of the agreement both in letter and in spirit.

Despite the government’s declared commitment to a political solution, and its unilateral declaration of a cessation of hostilities and its readiness for peace talks, its recent military actions in western Darfur and the widespread use of force against civilians in the region are fundamentally at odds with the creation of the environment of trust necessary to initiate meaningful dialogue.  JEM, according to Mr Ban, must also be held accountable for the role it has played in creating those circumstances. The use of military force by the parties has overshadowed the political process and created an environment in which the prospect of negotiations has become ever more remote. In addition to the undue suffering that such fighting creates for the civilian population, the ongoing violence sends a strong signal that the parties are not ready to end the conflict through dialogue.

The report is submitted after every 90 days to the Security Council on developments, the status of the political process and the progress made in the implementation of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur.

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African Press International – api