All Articles Tagged "east africa"
Hundreds Killed in Incidents in Tanzania, Kenya
By Charlotte Young
In two separate but equally terrifying incidents, tragedy stuck East Africa’s Tanzania and Kenya this past weekend.
First in Tanzania, IPPmedia.com reports that a marine accident in Zanzibar killed 240 people on Saturday, with the death toll continuing to rise as bodies are pulled out of the ocean. An MV Spice Islander boat capsized in the Nungwi area of Zanzibar after loading its passengers. The passenger’s manifest states that 610 passengers boarded the boat at Zanzibar port and 166 boarded at Dar es Salaam. The boat has the capacity to carry about 600 passengers.
The Director of Zanzibar Port Authority, Mustafa Aboud Jumbe has accepted no blame for the incident, claiming that the authority is not responsible for supervising marine transport services of passengers or cargo.
“This is the duty of the Surface and Marine Transport Regulatory Authority (SUMATRA), which was established by the law to oversee marine and surface transport sectors,” Jumbe told Tanzanian newspaper Nipashe.
Mussa Ali Mussa, the Zanzibar Police Commissioners announced the death toll on Sunday. Many of the unidentified dead have been buried in the Kama area–west district. Recovered bodies are being buried immediately, although records will be kept for relatives seeking their loved ones.
To assist with the rescue mission, the National Social Security Fund (NSSSF) has donated funds to assist the government and burial activities. The government will hold a special prayer on Monday at the Maisara grounds in honor of the people who died in the tragic incident.
In neighboring Kenya, a leaking gasoline pipeline in Nairobi exploded on Monday killing at least 61 people and leaving over 100 injured. According to the Associated Press the flames spread about 300 yards from the pipeline incinerating everything in its path, “leaving charred bodies and blacked bones in the charred homes.”
Policeman Wilfred Mbithi, who is in charge of operations in Nairobi, told the AP that he’d lost count of the number of bodies. Many people had jumped into the now oil soaked river in attempts to put out their flames.
Report says that Kenyatta National Hospital is urgently in need of blood donors and blankets. At least 112 burn victims have arrived at the hospital so far. Many of them are children with more than a third of their bodies burned, some are unrecognizable.
The cause of the explosion on Monday is still unknown.
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accident, Africa, boat, death, east africa, explosion, kenya, kenya explosion, kenya pipeline, leak, oil, Tanzania, zanzibar ferrySouthern Somaila Suffers As Famine Worsens Over The Horn Of Africa
by Cynthia WrightThe famine that has been ravaging the Horn of Africa has spread into the sixth area, the Bay region in Southern Somalia. This has left approximately 750,000 people facing starvation with hundreds of people dying daily. The Bay region marks the sixth region to succumb to famine since July.
This has been the worst drought the region has faced within 60 years and it appears that it is far from over. While 12.4 million people across the Horn of Africa have been affected by the drought – Somalia has taken the brunt of its devastation.
Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s Humanitarian Coordinator has declared the Bay region an official famine area. Not only that, out of the hundreds of people dying every day, nearly half of them are children. With the child malnutrition rate in the Bay region hovering at 58 percent – aid organizations have become concerned that the percentage will increase drastically before adequate help can arrive.
A report issued by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network has noted that due to the two consecutive poor harvests grain prices have skyrocketed – leaving poor families in a bind. Even if the January harvest comes out normal – which is hard to gauge, until after the rainy season in October – it will take months for poor families to feel stable again.
“This crisis is not going away any time soon and we are still looking at, over the next 12 months, acute numbers of population in need. Part of the reason we are facing the situation that we are in now is that we didn’t get the money at the beginning of the year when we warned of the famine.” Grainne Moloney of the U.N.’s Food Security and Nutrition and Analysis stated.
It also doesn’t help that the al Qaeda affiliated group, al Shabaab is controlling the food shipments into the South, allowing aid agencies to only deliver food to 1 million of those currently suffering. In an attempt to make things better, agencies have turned to using food and cash vouchers, which families use in exchange for supplies at their local markets.
“We must remember that time is not on our side. Every minute, more people, mostly women and mostly children, are dying. They’re becoming sick. They are fleeing their homes. We must respond. We need to rise to the level of this emergency by acting smarter and faster than we have before to achieve both short-term relief and long-term progress,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented.
As it stands, the people living in the Horn of Africa will need about $2.5 billion dollars to make it out of this crisis. Currently, $1 billion has been pledged. The African Union has also committed to another $350 million, which marks the first time the union has come forward in this particular way.
The United States has pledged $600 million in aid, along with providing emergency help by securing long-term development assistance through the Obama Administration’s, Feed the Future.
Cynthia Wright is an avid lover of all things geeky. When she isn’t freelancing, she can be found on her blog BGA Life and on Twitter at @cynisright.
South Sudan Army Turns Over A New Leaf By Wanting To Assist Somalia’s Weak Government
by Cynthia Wright
Soon after joining the African Union, the controversial South Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) went under a complete reconstruction in order to become a more modern and conventional army. Afterwards, the reformed militia plans to contribute to the peacekeeping missions of the United Nations and the African Union. At the same time, an offering such as this can be seen as two-fold being that the offering of troops to peacekeeping missions happens to be a good way for some countries to earn more foreign currency.
Army spokesman Philip Aguer released a statement late on Monday, where he detailed that the SPLA would soon be ready to go anywhere and help out as much as possible.
Even though, the UN has several peacekeeping missions around the world, the AU chips in to handle the missions in Somali and Sudan’s Darfur region. The South Sudan’s army would be a welcome contribution to the AU and Somalia with the SPLA averaging around 180,000 fighters. Yet, Aguer has also stated that the sending of South Sudanese troops is not “an immediate possibility.”
Sadly, for Somalia, that reasoning has been nothing new with few African nations willing to contribute troops to the 9,000 AU force permeating their country. With Somalia being upfront with needing 20,000 troops in order to detain the Islamist, group, al-Shabab, what will happen still remains a mystery.
Being that, Al-Shabab – a devout Islamic group with ties to al-Qaeda currently controls a large portion of south and central Somalia (which happens to include those locations adversely affected by the drought) – the situation is already in dire straits.
At the same time, South Sudan’s foreign officer, Deng Alor Kuol admitted that the new state was more than willing to lend a hand despite what others might think.
“It is part of our responsibility to help our Somali brothers and sisters to achieve peace,” Kuol told the BBC’s Focus on Africa program.
Last year, the UN Security Council approved 12,000 AU troops to enter Somalia, even though the AU specified that they needed 20,000. Even with that, there has been no word on whether that request will ever be fully granted. With Somalia being one of the few countries willing to lend support with Malawi and Nigeria both failing to fulfill obligations due to not wanting to be dragged into the long-standing Somalia and al-Shabab feud. With how it stands today, all the troops deployed in Somalia are made up from citizens of Uganda and Burundi.
Unfortunately, the issues surrounding Somalia seem to be ever growing, being that the country has been without a stable central government since the Siad Barre regime failure in 1991. Now that the country lacks sufficient military care, along with handling a severe famine since June, there appears to be no end in sight.
Cynthia Wright is an avid lover of all things geeky. When she isn’t freelancing, she can be found on her blog BGA Life and on Twitter at @cynisright.
Mother Teresa of Somalia Fights Famine With Her Own Means
By Alexis Garrett Stodghill
Dr. Hawa Abdi began her humanitarian efforts in her native Somalia by opening a one-room hospital for women on her 1,300 acre farm. Twenty years later, her home is now a sprawling camp supporting 100,000 people seeking refuge from the country’s war-torn, famine-ravaged surroundings. Children are tragically facing the highest risks there, as seven youngsters a day die under Dr. Abdi’s care from starvation. No humanitarian organization will come to her aid, because of the extreme danger of the region.
Despite these challenges, Mama Hawa — as her flock calls her — persists in trying to feed and provide medical care to the families under her protection. She and her two daughters, both medical doctors, administer to these needy by teaching farming and fishing, providing education and day care, and even giving free water and space those near her hospital. Such services are available only at a price in most of Somalia today, as anarchy and conflict have made the preservation of life a luxury most people choose to profit from.
While she has maintained the camp successfully until now, Dr. Hawa Abdi’s challenges might become insurmountable if financial aid is not forthcoming soon. A worsening drought in East Africa has killed all the animals on the farm, and it is feared that the people are next. The Daily Beast reports:
Right now, however, the camp, and the country, have reached a new level of crisis. Hawa needs help—a lot of it. She is receiving no food help—none—from any international organization. In the past, the International Red Cross and World Food Program have helped supply food when things get bad. Doctors Without Borders, and others, have run a clinic and supplied basic medicine.
Every international aid organization has now abandoned her, in part because of the political challenges of reaching the camp, which is located in an area under the control of the militant forces of the al-Qaeda inspired group, al-Shabaab. However, for the most part, since Hawa successfully defended the camp from their attack in May 2010, the militants have left her largely alone.
Hawa’s work is not political. It’s entirely humanitarian, and even the militants seem to get that. Or perhaps they’re a bit scared of this 64-year-old lawyer, doctor, survivor of brain cancer: a force of nature who buried more than 10,000 people during the famine of the 1990s.
Back then, she says, they had international help. Now, she’s on her own.
According to Democracyinaction.org, a group called Vital Voices has joined with “Glamour magazine to help support Dr. Hawa Abdi’s cause through their Women of the Year Fund initiative.” Through their web site, you can make a contribution that will help Dr. Hawa Abdi prevent 49 children a week from dying of malnutrition, while granting countless life-affirming opportunities to others. She and her daughters have remained in their struggling land to assist those who cannot fend for themselves, risking their lives in the process. If the international aid community will not contribute to their cause, citizens of the world who care can and should.
5 East African Countries Create Common Market
(AP) — Five nations in East Africa implemented new economic rules Thursday to boost cross-border employment and trade. The new steps push forward a larger plan to integrate the economies of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, which together form the East African Community. When most African countries gained independence from European colonial powers in the 1950s and 1960s, Africa’s founding fathers wanted the entire continent to become one economy as a way of achieving self-reliance and better negotiating power in international markets.
Navy Frees Somalis Seized After Pirate Shooting
(ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The EU Naval Force freed six Somalis seized after their companion was shot dead by a private security contractor during an attempt to hijack a ship off the East African coast, a naval spokesman said Thursday.
The navy let the six go after the captain of the MV Almezaan said he could not identify the men detained by the Spanish navy as the group of pirates who attacked him, said Cmdr. John Harbour.
