Kenya and the rest of East Africa experience major floods every year, with disastrous effects.
Such floods are a setback to a nation’s security and development because they destroy key infrastructure. Unfortunately, previous measures to mitigate the floods have had little effect.
Successful mitigation actions will involve some form of tried and tested technology.
The recent violent clashes between forces loyal to rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda and the Congolese army in the Eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo could help the Rwandan rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda to regroup.
The Rwandan army is now pushing for dialogue between the two parties after holding talks with top Congolese military officials last week.
Forces loyal to General Bosco Ntaganda are forcefully recruiting Congolese of Rwandese origin to fight for them in the ongoing renewed conflict in the Eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, The EastAfrican has learnt.
“Militia groups have been forcefully recruiting men and boys and those who resist are threatened to be killed,” Eric Nkurunziza, one of the Congolese refugees who is of Rwandese origin told The EastAfrican, after arriving at the Rwandan town of Gisenyi from Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC).
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki sought to allay regional anxieties in his “state of the nation” speech on Tuesday last week, promising a peaceful transition in next year’s general election.
Fears have been growing that a fresh round of election violence in Kenya could destabilise East Africa.
President Kibaki said the government had put in place necessary institutions and measures to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
Scientists are predicting that artemisinin-resistant malaria found on the border of Thailand and Myanmar could now spread to India and then Africa as resistance to other antimalarial drugs has done before. Artemisinin was recently adopted as the first line treatment for malaria.
According to a new study, if the artemisinin-resistant malaria does spread, eliminating the disease could prove impossible and will threaten initiatives to reduce its global burden.
The East African Community is experiencing steady growth in trade volumes among member countries in a context of deepening integration and increased international investor interest, but this is not necessarily translating into a better standard of living of the people of East Africa.
On April 7 Rwandans marked the 18th anniversary of the 1994 genocide that lasted 100 days, leaving up to a million people dead. It was a sombre occasion, as many survivors of that terrible tragedy continue to seek justice.
Eighteen years after, not only do key masterminds of that crime against humanity remain at large, with at least 65 fugitives in hiding, but some survivors also feel the justice offered by the traditional Gacaca community courts has not been sufficient.
Twenty one-year-old Millicent Mwangi has been battling multi-drug resistant TB for nearly two years. MDR TB is a lethal infectious strain which is resistant to two of the common or first-line drugs for treating TB — isoniazid (INH) and rifampicin (RMP).
She is among more than 500 patients that have been diagnosed with MDR TB in Kenya alone, 390 of whom are on the government’s free treatment programme at the Kenyatta National Hospital — the country’s largest referral hospital.
Millions of East Africans face starvation. Food security is rapidly deteriorating yet necessary interventions are not being made
The poor performance of the long rains is likely to result in extensive crop losses. Low household food stocks will result in significant food deficits, particularly for the very poor households throughout the year.
On Sunday, heads of state from across the continent convene for the annual African Union Summit in Addis Ababa. Africa’s most pressing concerns will be discussed this week, but one looming crisis is missing from the agenda.
War continues in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions of neighbouring Sudan, where a humanitarian catastrophe is in the making. Experts predict some conflict areas will reach extreme levels of food insecurity — barely shy of a famine designation — just one month from now.
Pauline Okello’s farm is jammed with customers seeking confectionaries she makes from orange fleshed sweet potato and quality protein maize flour. The farmer in Aywe, Gulu is doing booming business selling cakes, bhajia, doughnuts. She earns $8 from 70 cakes, and $14 from 70 doughnuts that sell out in two days. The orange-fleshed sweet potato is now a big time source of nutrition and income for farmers in the area.
Kenya’s child mortality rate has gone up by 21 per cent over the past one year while maternal deaths have risen by a similar margin, a signal that the billions of dollars being pumped into the health sector are yet to bear fruit.
Maternal mortality went up 18 per cent, new statistics released by World Health Organisation show, linking this to low access to contraceptives and poor healthcare.
WHO says Kenya could reduce these deaths by up to one-third with adequate investments.
Tanzania was last week left nursing heavy losses after heavy rainfall wreaked hundreds of homes and towns, crippling transport, catching Dar es Salaam off guard and exposing the country’s frail disaster management mechanisms.
The government said it is fearing there could be more casualties from the disaster even as the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) warned of more floods.
In yet another development that brings South Sudan closer to the East African Community, the country has become the newest state to join the regional agricultural research network.
The world’s newest country was unanimously accepted to become the 11th member of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (Asareca) during its first general assembly that was held in Entebbe, Uganda, a week ago.
Dr Lucy Ngina got into medicine because of a tragic family experience in her teens.
“I was 17 when my twin brother died of complications from sickle-cell anaemia,” she says.
“My parents are both in the medical field— my mother is a nurse, and my father is a clinical officer. My brother’s illness meant that medical care was an everyday reality at home,” she says.
The EU has offered to finance the construction of a new base for the Uganda People’s Defence Force to give impetus to the hunt for the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in East and Central Africa.
The $1.2 million base will act as the co-ordination centre for ongoing joint operations by a coalition of forces from Uganda, DR Congo, South Sudan and the US, which has deployed its Special Forces to the hunt.
TANZANIA HAS halted the resettlement of naturalised Burundi refugees to selected regions over security concerns.
Shamsi Nahodha, Minister for Home Affairs, said the government needed more time to discuss the issue with regional authorities following frequent incidents of weapon smuggling and armed robbery in the country.
The naturalised Burundi refugees are supposed to be living among the general population.
Uganda's national Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory will soon become a reference laboratory for the entire East African region.
The facility will in 2012 become the second TB supranational laboratory in sub-Saharan Africa after a similar laboratory in South Africa.
The World Health Organisation granted Uganda candidate status to join the TB Supranational Reference Laboratory Network, which will make testing of drug resistant TB easier and bring the service closer.
Rwandan refugees living in Uganda are facing the possibility of involuntarily returning home as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees begins the process of withdrawing their status.
The UN agency had hoped to begin defining exemption categories for the refugees in August 201 as the first step in the road map to the withdrawal of their status, what is technically termed invoking the cessation clauses, to compel them to return to their country.
There are 16,075 Rwandan refugees on record with the UNHCR in Uganda.
SOUTH SUDAN’S promise to send peacekeepers to Somalia could help bolster its standing in regional politics but critics argue that the country is not yet ready for such an undertaking.
Moments after Africa’s 54th state was inducted into membership of the African Union on August 15, Foreign Affairs Minister Deng Alor Kuol announced that South Sudan was ready to contribute troops to the AU Mission in Somalia, Amisom.
