(AFP (eng) 10/09/13)
CAPE TOWN, October 9, 2013 (AFP) - South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu warned African leaders against leaving the International Criminal Court on Wednesday, saying it would leave the world a "more dangerous place". In an online petition titled "Who will stop the next genocide?", the 82-year-old anti-apartheid hero said that in his lifetime he had seen "great gains made that protect the weak from the strong". He cautioned that "in just two days time, African leaders could kill off a great institution, leaving the world a more dangerous place." The 54-member African Union will meet on Friday to debate a possible withdrawal from the war crimes court over claims that it targets the continent. Adding to growing cautions...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/08/13)
KIGALI/KAMPALA | (Reuters) - The presidents of Rwanda and Uganda told U.N. Security Council envoys on Monday that their countries were not responsible for bringing peace to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile east, which has long been mired in conflict and is bristling with armed groups. Envoys from the 15-member council met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali and then President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala after spending two days in Congo visiting the United Nations' largest peacekeeping operation. Millions of people have been killed by violence, disease and hunger since the 1990s as rebel groups have fought for control of eastern Congo's rich deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and uranium. Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/08/13)
LONDON | (Reuters) - British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world's first malaria vaccine next year after trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children. The vaccine known as RTS,S was found, after 18 months of follow-up, to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial, and to have reduced by around a quarter the number of malaria cases in infants. "Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA)," GSK, which has been developing the vaccine for three decades, said in a statement. It added that the United Nations health agency, the Geneva-based...
(CNN 10/08/13)
(CNN) -- Sub-Saharan Africa's economic renaissance is fueling an investment drive by fast food joints looking to tap the continent's growing middle class. The likes of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and Domino's pizza are opening up in African growth markets from Nigeria to Angola to give consumers a taste of U.S. cuisine. Elias Schulze, managing partner of The Africa Group, a boutique Africa-focused investment consultancy, said U.S. takeout stores are rapidly becoming "aspirational brands" for cosmopolitan Africans with disposable income. He said: "An upwardly mobile, confident, Western-leaning and young consumer class bodes well for an American burger boom." And the battle for the African market is well underway. This year, Yum! Brands -- owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza...
(BBC News Africa 10/08/13)
Africa has 55 billionaires, far more than previously thought, Nigeria-based Ventures financial magazine says. They include three women - the mother of Kenya's president, a daughter of Angola's president and a Nigerian oil tycoon and fashion designer. The richest man is Nigeria's Aliko Dangote, with a fortune of $20.2bn (£12.5bn), Ventures said. The list is likely to reignite debate about inequality between rich and poor people in Africa, correspondents say. In April, the World Bank said the number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa had risen in the past three decades from 205 million to 414 million. 'Conservative estimate'. A report earlier this month by research group Afrobarometer suggested that economic growth in Africa was primarily benefiting a...
(Fox News 10/07/13)
Ocitti "David" Okech was just 17 when rebels invaded his tiny village in northern Uganda, beating his father to death as he watched, taking away the rest of his family and forcing him to become one of thousands of soldiers in the army of wanted warlord Joseph Kony. It was 2003, and Okech still vividly recalls his involuntary induction into a world of unfathomable brutality, back-breaking labor and hopeless misery. Rebels serving in Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, a violent cult that mixes a warped Christian fundamentalism with African mysticism and violence, swarmed the rural village of Pabbo. They rounded up the young -- some no more than 10 years old -- and started to break them down. “They asked me...
(Voice of America 10/07/13)
GOMA, DRC — In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the national army and United Nations peacekeepers are working to combat dozens of armed groups that have terrorized local populations. In North Kivu province alone, 1 million people - one-sixth of the entire population - has been displaced by violence. While combat rages, civilians are also fighting a daily battle of their own – the battle to survive. At the Mugunga 3 camp for internally displaced persons, a few kilometers outside of Goma, more than 16,000 people have sought refuge from clashes between the Congolese army and M23 rebels. Baraka Weja Marcel, a refugee in the camp, fled his home in Kibumba, about 20 kilometers from Goma, nearly two years...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/07/13)
(Reuters) - The United States and Britain pushed Democratic Republic of Congo officials to prosecute soldiers accused of raping some 130 women and girls in Congo's volatile east, U.N. Security Council envoys said during a visit to the country on Sunday. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant raised the issue during a meeting between the 15 Security Council envoys and Congo's defense, interior and justice ministers in Kinshasa on Saturday. "Nobody knows better than the Congolese the price of impunity, because the Congolese people have for years been the victims of armed groups who have been killing and raping their way through eastern Congo," Power told Reuters on Sunday. "On the...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/07/13)
JOHANNESBURG | Mon Oct 7, 2013 (Reuters) - Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth should increase to 5.3 percent next year, with strong private and public investment underpinning the region's robust performance, the World Bank said on Monday. The bank lifted its forecast for 2014 from the 5.1 percent projected earlier this year. The region was expected to grow 5.5 percent in 2015, up from a previous forecast of 5.2 percent, it said in its bi-annual 'Africa's Pulse' report. Growth for this year is forecast at 4.9 percent, higher than last year's 4.2 percent. The figure is more than double the bank's 2.3 percent estimate for global growth in 2013, underscoring the attractiveness of the continent for investors. But African countries could...
(AFP (eng) 10/07/13)
PARIS, October 7, 2013 (AFP) - Environmental campaigners WWF filed a complaint on Monday against a British oil company accused of intimidating the local population and endangering wildlife in the oldest nature reserve in Africa. The wildlife charity claims that Soco International's oil exploration activities in and around Virunga National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo put "people, animals and habitats at risk" and violate international guidelines issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in a complaint to that organisation. "The only way for Soco to come into compliance with the OECD guidelines is for the company to end all exploration in Virunga for good," said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of conservation at WWF International. "We...
(AFP (eng) 10/07/13)
LAGOS, October 7, 2013 (AFP) - There are far more African billionaires than previously thought, Ventures magazine said Monday in a report on the continent's mega-rich, but the number of Africans living in extreme poverty has also shot up. Previous Africa-rich-lists named as few as 16 billionaires, but Ventures said its exhaustive research had identified at least 55 on a continent where the wealthy often fiercely protect details about their fortunes. The pan-African business magazine said it was able to uncover dozens of new billionaires by using "on-the-ground knowledge" to overcome hurdles that may have "hampered" other researchers. Of the 55, 20 are Nigerian, including several oil barons, while South Africa and Egypt boast nine and eight respectively. Ventures' supported...
(The Associated Press 10/05/13)
CAIRO (AP) — "For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability... We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations." — President George W. Bush in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 21, 2004. Almost a quarter-century ago, a young American political scientist achieved global academic celebrity by suggesting that the collapse of communism had ended the discussion on how to run societies, leaving "Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." In Egypt and around the Middle East, after a summer of violence and upheaval, the discussion,...
(Hrw 10/04/13)
(New York) – United Nations Security Council members should use their visit to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa to help end human rights abuses and impunity for the worst crimes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Security Council members sent on October 2, 2013. Security Council members are to leave on October 3 for a 6-day trip to Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, and Ethiopia. “Civilians in eastern Congo have suffered atrocities without end, but very few of those responsible are ever brought to justice,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director. “Security Council members should use their visit to press governments in the region to end all support for abusive armed groups and...
(AFP (eng) 10/04/13)
ADDIS ABABA, October 4, 2013 (AFP) - African leaders will debate the continent's "relationship" with the International Criminal Court at a special summit on October 11, officials said Friday, amid growing opposition to the tribunal. The 54-member African Union has accused The Hague-based ICC of singling out Africans for prosecution and has previously called for the court to drop crimes against humanity trials of Kenya's leadership. "They will discuss African relationship with ICC," the deputy head of the AU's executive branch, Erastus Mwencha, himself a Kenyan, told AFP. Diplomats say member states of the court, which was founded primarily to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, are expected to discuss a possible united pullout from the ICC. African...
(Voice of America 10/04/13)
UNITED NATIONS — A delegation from the U.N. Security Council is heading to Africa to visit the volatile Great Lakes Region and discuss implementation of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement signed in February, aimed at stabilizing the region. The U.N. Security Council delegation leaves Thursday on a trip that will take them to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Ethiopia. Their first stop is the DRC, where the ambassadors will meet in Kinshasa with President Joseph Kabila. Then they will travel to Goma, in eastern Congo, not far from where the Congolese army has clashed repeatedly with rebel group M23. The U.N. has about 20,000 peacekeepers in Congo, including a new element, called an “Intervention Brigade.”...
(Voice of America 10/04/13)
The boat accident near the Italian island of Lampedusa that resulted in what is feared to be more than 300 deaths is part of a broader problem involving African migrants who risk dangerous voyages to seek a better life. Jumbe Omari Jumbe, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, says there are four "gates" used by Africans who are trying to escape their homelands or the continent. Recent Maritime Accidents Involving Migrants. -October 3, 2013: Estimates of 300 people dead or missing after boat catches fires and capsizes near Italian island of Lampedusa. -September 27, 2013: At least 21 asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East, killed after boat bound for Australia sinks off Indonesia's coast. -December 18, 2012:...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/04/13)
Oct 4 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics is betting on a top-end refrigerator designed not to lose its cool in Africa as a way into the continent's consumer markets, where there is growing demand for prestige products which meet local needs. The refrigerator comes with a sticker saying it is "Built for Africa", meaning that while it is basically the same flagship product on sale elsewhere in the world it has been tailored to suit local conditions. The South Korean firm's strategy is simple, and increasingly followed by a number of multinational firms looking to sell in an expanding African market - lay off the cut-rate goods, launch major products in Africa at the same time as the rest of the...
(Voice of America 10/03/13)
An official of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) says peace talks between the government and the M23 rebel group in neighboring Uganda’s capital, Kampala could be concluded next week. Information Minister Lambert Mende also expressed hope that the conclusion of the talks could pave way for peace, stability and the protection of lives and property in the restive parts of the North Kivu province. “We are coming to an end because the facilitator the Uganda Minister for Defense [Crispus Kiyonga] has delivered a keynote on which we are going to give our remarks very soon and probably we can finish everything maybe next week,” said Mende. “I think a lot of things that we have said and the facilitator...
( FOROYAA Newspaper 10/03/13)
Recapping a week of debate by senior Government officials on crafting a new global development agenda integrating economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection, General Assembly President John Ashe said today it is now up to United Nations Member States to “find the common ground as a basis for moving forward with decisive action.” “In the real world in which we live, such healthy compromise is the best outcome of our joint effort. We are the ones responsible for finding such common ground,” Mr. Ashe said in his remarks at the close of the Assembly’s 2013 General Debate, for which he chose the theme, “The Post-2015 Development Agenda: Setting the Stage!” The General Debate, which opened on 24 September, provided...
(Reuters (Eng) 10/03/13)
BRUSSELS/MONTREAL | (Reuters) - European countries expressed support for an "imperfect" compromise to curb global aviation emissions on Wednesday but still face pressure to drop a key demand - to be able to apply the EU's carbon trading scheme to foreign air carriers. Delegates to the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are meeting in Montreal to try to hammer out a global agreement to set a path toward creating a global market-based mechanism by 2020 that would help limit growing carbon emissions in the sector. Debate at the U.N. body's triennial assembly on Wednesday focused on the most contentious aspect of a global deal - a framework to allow national or regional market-based schemes to apply to airlines before...