Full Coverage: East Africa

30.07.2004 Tanzanian Internet users, whose Internet Services Providers are peering at the newly launched Tanzania Internet Exchange Point, are enjoying up to 60 times faster access to local content, said Suhail Sheriff, interim chairman of the Tanzania Internet Service Providers Association.

30.07.2004 The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced the commencement of formal investigation into war crimes in Uganda this week. The investigation, prompted by a request from the government of Uganda, will look at the conduct of both rebel and government forces in the 18-year conflict in the northern part of the country.

29.07.2004 Common challenges to collective rights and survival affecting the indigenous Arara in Brazil, Mursi and Bodi in Ethiopia, and Veddah in Sri Lanka have been reported by Survival. Conflict and competing claims over land rights are the key factor in all three cases, threatening the livelihoods and long-term survival of the communities concerned.

28.07.2004 The government of Zimbabwe plans to ban international human rights groups from the country and cut foreign funding to local organizations that promote human rights, according to a draft bill. Zimbabwe has long accused aid organizations of interfering in its internal affairs and has made repeated threats to restrict their activities.

28.07.2004 Recognizing the fact that many countries’ concerns about environmental protection are overshadowed by their need to alleviate poverty, a project by a U.S.-based international aid agency emphasizes the need to run economic interventions side-by-side with strong conservation education for longer-term benefits. Working with the East Africa Wildlife Society, the project has already succeeded in getting 16 areas set aside for conservation purposes.

28.07.2004 The government of Zimbabwe plans to ban international human rights groups from the country and cut foreign funding to local organizations that promote human rights, according to a draft bill. Zimbabwe has long accused aid organizations of interfering in its internal affairs and has made repeated threats to restrict their activities.

27.07.2004

Children at Nthombimbi Primary School, Zambia, a community school with no roof © United Nations Children's Fund

In 1991, the enrollment ratio for girls in schools in Ethiopia was less than 12 per cent. Working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors, the Ethiopian government designed a program to enhance access and quality of education, especially for girls. Today, more than a decade later and through reforms stretching from rural communities to the national level, the ratio for girls has increased to 47 per cent.

26.07.2004 Everybody loves an elephant from a distance, they are big, smart, even cute. However having them as neighbors is a very different experience. Elephants inspire animosity and fear in the people they share land with because they eat their food, decimate their sources of livelihood, and, sometimes, take their lives. Now conservationists from international oganizations are working with local authorities in six different parts of Africa to better manage the relations between man and beast.

23.07.2004 When a middle-school teacher in Philadelphia accepted an invitation to visit some schools in Rwanda, she did not know what to expect. But when she saw the boys tease the girls in a class of 13-year old students, she realized the students are just like those in her class back home.

22.07.2004 On July 11 2004, the Media Council of Zambia (MECOZ), a self-regulatory media council, was officially launched at a press briefing held at the Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka.

22.07.2004 Zimbabwe's independent Tribune weekly has lost its court bid to return to the newsstands, a month after it became the third newspaper to be shut down in a year. Justice Tendai Uchena of the Harare High Court ruled that the Tribune had committed irregularities and that the official media commission was entitled to revoke its licence.

22.07.2004 For young girls in some Tanzanian communities, the traditional initiation ceremony into womanhood is now a joyful experience, thanks to the work of non-governmental organizations working to eradicate harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation.

20.07.2004 Hundreds of thousands of Eritrean children are living in extreme poverty due to prolonged drought, the aftermath of border conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia and its impact on the country's economy, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reported.

20.07.2004 Record numbers of children in the Gulu district of Northern Uganda are fleeing their homes each night in fear of abduction and death as the country’s 18-year conflict worsens, reports Noah’s Ark, a Tearfund partner providing shelter and care for the children.

20.07.2004

A focus group discusses pilot programmes © Population Media Center

In a unique study spanning eight years, three institutions collaborated on a survey that produced unprecedented data on Ethiopian households. From 1989 to 1997, the institutions collected information on consumption, assets and income of 1,477 households in different villages across the country in order to study the responses of communities and individual households to the food crisis.

19.07.2004 Stifled by the Zimbabwean government's efforts to muzzle independent media, journalists who have been laid off or fired as a result of the clampdown have started up a new online daily newspaper. Zim Online seeks to "tell the other side of the Zimbabwean story which President Robert Mugabe fights to prevent the world from knowing." The website is registered in South Africa.
Visit ZimOnline.

19.07.2004 A coalition of international mainstream environmental, consumer and farmer groups has condemned the aggressive promotion of GMOs as a solution to hunger in the world. The condemnation was made public following an international conference held from 15 to 16 July in Maputo, Mozambique on the topic of hunger, food aid and GMOs.

19.07.2004 Zimbabwe is threatening to close down non-governmental organisations and arrest their employees if they do not obtain permission from the government for their activities, the state-run Sunday Mail reported.

19.07.2004 Should Kenyan authorities have been better prepared for the drought that has ravaged most of the country, prompting widespread food shortages? It’s a question that elicits a mixed response from analysts. Some say that on the basis of past experience, more could have been done.

14.07.2004 More than a quarter of the HIV-positive Tanzanian women enrolled in an ongoing study have been infected more than once, with different strains of the HIV virus, according to results presented at the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok. The phenomenon is known as "superinfection".