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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 103
15 - 21 December 2001


CONTENTS:

TANZANIA: $40 million air system approved by UK
TANZANIA: ADB commits $48 million to Dar es Salaam water project
DRC: World Bank stresses need for political progress
DRC: Death rate for children catastrophic
DRC: Kabila demobilises 208 child soldiers
BURUNDI-DRC: $39 million pledged to eliminate river blindness
RWANDA: Adversaries protecting civilians better
KENYA: Tense calm restored after Tana River clashes
UGANDA: World Bank go-ahead for Bujagali hydro project
UGANDA: Museveni guard attacked by Karamojong warriors
EASTERN AFRICA: Smaller refugee numbers in Uganda, Sudan

TANZANIA: $40 million air system approved by UK

The British government on Thursday approved the sale of a controversial US
$40 million air traffic control system by a UK-based aerospace firm to
Tanzania, despite criticism from aid agencies and international financial
institutions. The deal has been at the centre of a political row in
Britain over the government's commitment to tackling poverty in Africa,
with Prime Minister Tony Blair backing the plan despite opposition from
International Development Secretary Clare Short and Chancellor of the
Exchequer Gordon Brown.

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa has said the country needs the new
system to replace obsolete technology, but the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) have previously criticised the proposed
system, saying it is unsuitable and over-expensive. The World Bank has
estimated that a suitable system should cost about $10 million. Despite
rules forbidding indebted countries taking out commercial loans, the IMF
has allowed Tanzania to finance the deal with a US $40 million loan from a
UK bank, Barclays, according to the Guardian newspaper in Britain.

Supporters of the deal argue that a Tanzanian air traffic control system
would raise $3 million to $5 million annually for the East African country
and boost its struggling economy. Minister for Foreign Affairs and
International Cooperation Jakaya Kikwete said the system would enable
Tanzania to charge duty on aircraft flying within its airspace, and would
help generate increased revenue from tourism, Radio Tanzania reported on
Thursday.

The international NGO Oxfam expressed deep disappointment at Blair
agreeing to the sale, which, it maintains, "put corporate profits before
fighting poverty". Mkapa promised in November that Tanzania's debt relief
under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative would be used to
"strengthen support for education, health, water, roads and other priority
sectors". Oxfam has noted that $40 million would pay for basic health care
for 3.5 million people. [full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18136]

TANZANIA: ADB commits $48 million to Dar es Salaam water project

The African Development Bank on Monday announced its approval of a loan of
some $46.77 million and a grant of $1.66 million to the government of
Tanzania to finance a water supply and sanitation project in the capital
city, Dar es Salaam. The five-year project, due to get under way in
September 2002, is intended to improve the accessibility, quality,
reliability and affordability of water supply and sanitation services to
the population of Dar es Salaam.

"Pit-emptying services are often inadequate, and most latrine users resort
to manual emptying, with heavy associated health risks. Cholera outbreaks
are common," according to the International Development Association (IDA),
a lending facility of the World Bank, which is also supporting the
project. The rationale for the Dar es Salaam project, then, is to help
establish a reliable, sustainable and affordable water and sanitation
service, improving public health and wellbeing in a city prone to cholera
and outbreaks of waterborne diseases. [full report at:
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17954]

DRC: World Bank stresses need for political progress

While the opportunity to attain peace in the Great Lakes region remains,
the process of the economic reform is still "very fragile", a follow-up
technical meeting of the donors to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
concluded on Thursday. The Brussels conference commended the DRC
government for its efforts at economic reform, but delegates reminded
Kinshasa that real progress would be judged within the larger frame of the
search for peace in the war-ravaged country.

Despite the "urgency of the situation" in the DRC, the donors said, the
World Bank was not planning a pledging conference anytime soon. Instead,
it would reconvene a programme review and resource mobilisation meeting in
March 2002. "If the interim reinforced programme of the DRC government
remains satisfactory, and if the political environment is favourable to
growth and economic stability, a three-year programme could be
implemented," Jean Clement, deputy director at the IMF, told reporters.
[full story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18134]

DRC: Death rate for children catastrophic

Death rates in the DRC are catastrophic, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF),
the international medical charity, reported in a study published on
Wednesday. In the report, "Violence and Access to Health in the DRC", MSF
finds that in Basankusu, an area in the north very close to the front
line, around 10 percent of the overall population had died over a 12-month
period. "This is five times higher than normally expected," it reported.
Children, it added, had been particularly affected by the war in this
zone. About a quarter of children aged under five years had died over the
12-month period, it said, noting that in a normal situation the mortality
rate for children of this age would be 3.6 percent.  [Full report at:
www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18054]

DRC: Kabila demobilises 208 child soldiers

President Joseph Kabila on Tuesday demobilised 208 government child
soldiers in a ceremony at Kibomango, some 50 km from the capital,
Kinshasa, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). "This is the
effective start of the demobilisation of all child soldiers," Kabila
stated. The DRC government has taken the step in conformity with UN
Security Council resolutions on the recruitment of child soldiers. The BBC
has reported that there are 6,000 child soldiers in the DRC.

The children were handed over to the National Bureau for Demobilisation
and Reintegration, or BUNADER, which will be responsible for their
psychological and social welfare, and will maintain contact to assure that
they are not re-recruited until they reach a certain age. BUNADER, a
grouping of five international humanitarian aid agencies, has asked UNICEF
to help it look after the children. [full report at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18009]

BURUNDI-DRC: US $39 million pledged to eliminate river blindness

Burundi, the Central African Republic and the DRC are among 19 African
countries due to benefit from a US $39 million pledge by donors to support
a new programme for the control of river blindness. The pledge was made on
Friday (14 December) at the annual meeting of the Global Partnership to
Eliminate River Blindness. The programme, which builds on the "highly
successful results" of a river blindness campaign in West Africa, is
intended to rid Africa of the disease, scientifically known as
onchocerciasis, by 2010, according to the World Bank. River blindness is
caused by a parasitic worm passed on by a black fly that breeds in
fast-flowing rivers. The worm develops in the human body and causes
serious skin lesions, constant itching and, eventually, blindness. [full
report at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17953]

RWANDA: Adversaries protecting civilians better

Government and rebel troops in Rwanda battling each other in the northwest
of the country have given greater protection to civilians in 2001 than in
previous years, Human Rights Watch reported on Thursday. "Both sides have
shown that they can make their combatants respect the rules of war when
they believe it is in their interest to do so," Alison Des Forges, senior
adviser to the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said.

In its report, "Rwanda: Observing the Rules of War?", the rights body said
government and rebels forces had imposed new rules restricting attacks on
civilians, "enforcing these through disciplinary measures". These rules,
however, did not apply to the Rwandan army and its proxies when fighting
in eastern DRC's Kivu region or to the rebel Army for the Liberation of
Rwanda on that territory. [Full report at:
www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18033]

KENYA: Tense calm restored after Tana River clashes

The security of some 3,000 people displaced by recent violent clashes in
Tana River District, eastern Kenya, improved significantly over the
previous week, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday. Over 50 people
have been killed in the latest outbreak of violence in Tana River, which
began on 20 November when Pokomo farmers and Orma pastoralists clashed
over rights to land and water resources. "There is quietness now, because
people are weary of hitting one another," Pius Murithi, Assistant
Development Coordinator for the international NGO Caritas, told IRIN.

Some families who had fled villages around the town of Hola had begun
returning to their homes, the Daily Nation newspaper reported on Monday,
but many who had been displaced by the fighting had no homes to which to
return, according to Murithi. While the Pokomo accuse the Orma of allowing
livestock to encroach on their farms and of destroying their crops, the
Orma complain that Pokomo farmlands are too close to the banks of the Tana
river and prevent the herders from using the river to water their cattle.
A land adjudication process is scheduled to resume once calm returns to
the region. [full report at:
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17956]

UGANDA: World Bank go-ahead for Bujagali hydropower project

The World Bank on Tuesday approved financial assistance totalling up to
$225 million to support the building of a large-scale dam near Bujagali
Falls on the River Nile near Jinja, southeastern Uganda. The Bujagali
hydropower project would consist of a 200-MW hydropower station and would
be a "key investment" in poverty reduction in a country where less than 3
percent of the population had access to the national grid, the World Bank
stated.

The project has been widely criticised by environmental groups, who say
the dam could cause irreversible social and environmental damage to the
area. The hydropower plant would create a "socially and environmentally
destructive reservoir, and would drown the spectacular Bujagali Falls",
according to the US-based nongovernmental organisation International
Rivers Network.

But the World Bank defended the Bujagali scheme as "a first-class
development project" that would provide "an efficient, low-cost, and
well-managed electricity generation facility that promises substantial
economic benefits to Uganda". The power plant would reduce the need for
public investment in the power sector, enabling the government to deploy
more funds to address critical social needs in other areas, it added.
[full report at: http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18023]

UGANDA: Museveni guard attacked by Karamojong warriors

Armed Karamojong pastoralists on Thursday attacked guards protecting
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on the Moroto-Nakapiripirit road at the
end of his two-week mission to oversee a disarmament programme in the
Karamoja subregion, northeastern Uganda, news agencies reported. Three
injured officers were flown to the capital, Kampala, for treatment," the
government-owned New Vision newspaper said on Saturday (15 December).
Museveni had been in Karamoja overseeing a disarmament programme aiming to
remove some 40,000 illegal firearms from the area.

Museveni has now concluded his mission in Karamoja, but will return to the
area in February to assess progress in the disarmament exercise. Anything
between 4,000 and 10,000 illegally held weapons have been handed by
Karamojong warriors since the disarmament exercise began on 2 December,
according to diverse reports. Museveni has also undertaken to start
developing the marginalised Karamoja subregion

The Karamojong have been widely criticised for carrying out armed cattle
raids against neighbouring districts in eastern Uganda, most notably in
Katakwi District, where some 80,000 people have been forced into - and to
remain in - displacement camps. [full report at:
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=17829]

EASTERN AFRICA: Smaller refugee numbers in Uganda, Sudan

Uganda and Sudan, along with Tanzania and Ethiopia, were among the
countries that registered "an important decrease in the refugee
population" between January and the end of September this year, the office
of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on Wednesday.
The refugee population was down by 59,000 in Uganda, by 31,000 in Sudan
and 28,000 in Tanzania at the end of September compared to 1 January,
according to UNHCR's latest provisional quarterly study. Ethiopia also
recorded a drop in the refugee population of 27,200 between January and
September.

The reduced number of refugees in Uganda and Tanzania were mostly down to
re-registration and verification exercises clearing up statistics, while a
great proportion of the reduction in Sudan was accounted for by the
repatriation of Eritrean refugees, agency sources told IRIN on Friday.

Voluntary repatriations from Ethiopia during the first nine months of the
year included 41,100 Somali refugees, but the net decline in the number of
refugees Ethiopia hosted was only 27,700 because of new arrivals - almost
all from Sudan early in the year. [full report at:
http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18128]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001


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