KENYA: WFP in $61 million donor appeal
The WFP on Friday warned that food shortages
were still very serious in at least 13 districts of Kenya, and said millions
of people needed food aid as drought continued to grip large portions of
the country. "Thousands of families are destitute and unable to feed
their children. It is crucial we continue to feed them until the harvest
early next year," said David Fletcher, acting Country Director for
WFP Kenya. Fletcher was speaking in support of an emergency appeal approved
this week in which the agency called for 124,000 mt of food, at a cost
of US $61 million, to feed 3.1 million people through March 2002. "In
view of the good harvest in areas of Kenya, donors are especially urged
to provide cash to buy locally produced maize," Fletcher added.
Among the communities worst affected were pastoralists in the north, northeastern and Rift Valley provinces, where the rains were late, erratic and insufficient for the regeneration of pasture for livestock and for food crops, WFP reported. "Young and able-bodied men are being driven as far afield as Ethiopia and Somalia to find pasture for their livestock, leaving behind the women, children and the elderly," it said. Women represented about 51 percent of the population in these areas and, without milk or meat, they and their children were particularly vulnerable, it added. Cattle herdsmen had already suffered high livestock losses, and reports from aid groups on the ground indicated that many more animals continued to die or were in poor condition, particularly in Mandera District, according to the WFP.
The overall food supply situation in kenya had improved considerably following favourable short-rains harvests and improved pasture in several central and western pastoral districts, but most pastoral districts in the east and north had yet to recover, the FAO's Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) reported on Wednesday. The country's food import requirement for this year of almost 2.2 million mt was 152 percent of the average annual requirement, it said.
[for the full FAO report on "Food supply situation and crop prospects in Sub-Saharan Africa", go to: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/faoinfo/economic/giews/english/eaf/eaf0108/httoc.htm]
KENYA: MPs claim slain colleague was assassinated
Kenyan members of parliament claimed on Thursday that Tony Ndilinge, the Kenya African National Union (KANU) MP murdered that morning, was the victim of a political assassination, according to media reports. Police said that Ndilinge, KANU MP for Kilome, had been dragged from his car and shot twice in the head at close range at around 5 am on Thursday morning. The killer drove off in Ndilinge's four-wheel drive vehicle - the only car spotted at the murder scene - which has since been recovered. Nairobi police chief, Geoffrey Mwathe, told the 'Daily Nation' that it seemed clear that Ndilinge's killer or killers were his passengers. Ndilinge was the first politician to be murdered in Kenya for over a decade.
The 'Daily Nation' quoted Yatta MP Francis Chole as saying that robbery could not have been the motive for the killing as more than Ksh 20,000 (over US $250) was found on Ndilinge's body. Recent pleas by Ndilinge that his life was in danger had been ignored, Chole added. However, Reuters quoted Mikewa Ogada, programme officer at the Kenya Human Rights Commission, as saying: "This killing today may well have been an ordinary crime with no political ramifications whatsoever. It was 5 am and it was in a bad area." Ndilinge was killed in the Githurai suburb of Nairobi, one of the city's most dangerous places, Reuters reported.
Ndilinge had twice said he feared for his life at the hands of political rivals during the current parliamentary session, according to news reports. He first claimed his life was in danger in May 1999, after being sacked from his post as junior minister for trade. He had been a member of parliament since 1992 and was once a prominent rebel in President Daniel arap Moi's ruling KANU party, the BBC reported.
KENYA: Business leaders warn of capital flight
Industrialists have called on the government to improve Kenya's business environment by tackling corruption, improving the infrastructure and reducing taxes, Reuters news agency reported on Thursday. "We became a kind of spoilt boy and we took things for granted, whereas in fact Kenya is no longer a favoured destination for investment," it quoted Suru Tanna, chairman of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers as saying. Tanna said that 50 companies were planning to move from Kenya to other countries within the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) to take advantage of lower input costs. He cited duties on raw materials, bad roads, an ineffective and expensive telephone system, and the comparatively high cost of power as deterrents to foreign investors. Kenya's economy, the most industrialized in East Africa, actually shrank last year as a result of drought and a collapsing infrastructure, Reuters reported. In the manufacturing sector, which accounts for 14 percent of the economy (in terms of Gross Domestic Product), 20,000 jobs were being lost annually, according to Tanna.
UGANDA: First arrest for Bwindi park killings
Police in Uganda on Friday reported having made their first arrest in connection with the 1999 massacre of eight foreign tourists and a Ugandan national in Bwindi National Park, southwestern Uganda. Elizabeth Kuteesa, acting Director of Kampala's Criminal Investigation Department, named the man as Akim Byorugaba, the BBC reported. The attack had always been blamed on Rwandan Interahamwe militia members but the man arrested was Ugandan, it said. On 1 March 1999, a group of armed men abducted 14 tourists and their guide from Bwindi National Park, a sanctuary for rare mountain gorillas. The group was marched through the jungle toward the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) before nine of the captives - four Britons, four Americans and a Ugandan park warden - were butchered to death with clubs and machetes.
The massacres devastated Uganda's tourist industry and a year after the attack, President Yoweri Museveni made a well-publicised visit to Bwindi in an attempt to convince visitors that the park was now safe, the BBC reported. Bwindi is one of the few places where tourists can see the mountain gorillas. There are only about 600 left in the world and they live in the bamboo thickets on the slopes of the Virunga volcanoes, which straddle Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC.
[ENDS]
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