Was white Kenyan aristocrat’s conviction fair?

It’s been almost three years since the son of the 5th Lord Delamere, Thomas Cholmondeley, first hopped down from a police  truck and entered into Kenya’s High Court to face murder charges  over the death of a local poacher on his estate.

Will Africa’s mega trade bloc take off?

Three African trading blocs comprising some 527 million people and with an estimated gross domestic product of $624 billion, have agreed to move towards a free trade area. It would span 26 countries from Egypt to South Africa, and would go a long way towards streamlining some of the continent’s numerous trading blocs. Africa is home to some 30 regional trade arrangements, and on average each nation belongs to about four groups, according to international financial institutions. This has led to conflicting and overlapping agreements.

So in a move to ease some of these issues, heads of state who chair the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC),  met in the Ugandan capital to draw up a pact on integration, and eventually hoping to have a unified customs union. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said at the meeting’s opening that: “The greatest enemy of Africa, the greatest source of weakness has been disunity and a low level of political and economic integration.” The meeting’s final communiqué said a timeframe for integration would be considered in one year. Rwandan President Paul Kagame cautioned delegates that African nations must make sure to enforce the protocols and treaties that they’ve adopted. Heads of state at the meeting stressed the need to create economies of scale, bigger markets equal more opportunities to grow, they said.

But many of the existing blocs have already run into trouble. The EAC’s integration, for example, has had some hiccups because some member countries felt their economies would be dominated by neighbours.

So, should Africa think bigger and bigger or try to work on existing institutions? Do you think the creation of a free trade zone spanning COMESA, SADC and the EAC will take off, or will it just remain on the drawing board? What do you see as the major challenges in implementing this agreement?

Will peace hold in northern Uganda?

Driving from Gulu town in northern Uganda to Kitgum, you’re struck by how normal it all seems now. People are walking up and down the main dirt road that connects the two towns, bicycles dodge potholes and passing cars with precision, and the occasional bus plows through, leaving billows of dust in tow. But before Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) signed a ceasefire in August 2006, the high bush grass and sparsely populated villages made good cover for ambushes, and easy access for rebels abducting new recruits. This road, now full of life, used to be almost empty, people had moved furtively and quickly from one place to another, always watchful, fearful of running into rebels, in a war that has claimed thousands of lives.

But more than twenty years since LRA leader Joseph Kony began his rebellion, northern Uganda is seeing the first effects of peace; both good and bad. Agriculture output is rising as people return to the fields — the north could become Uganda’s bread basket. At the height of the war, some 2 million people were forced from their homes. Now, the majority have returned to their villages or to transition areas. But, it hasn’t all been easy. In fact, many new problems are emerging. An outbreak of highly-infectious Hepatitis E has killed more than 100 people so far. Many northerners are returning to villages, which have rotted during the long course of the war. Aid groups say conditions were often better in camps than in home villages. Many residents are returning to areas with little access to clean water or good sanitation. And this breeds more disease and more suffering.

Adding to these problems, Kony’s rebels still haven’t signed a final peace deal to bring the conflict to a close despite a raft of agreements between LRA and Ugandan negotiators earlier this year. Many northerners say they are worried that peace will not hold. They keep one eye on the fields and another eye out in case the guerrillas return. Kony is now holed up and destabilizing the remote border regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan where the elusive leader has been accused of abducting children, killings and other mayhem. For these and other war crimes, the International Criminal Court in The Hague wants Kony. The rebels say they need more clarification about how Kony and two of his deputies will escape trial at The Hague before signing the peace deal. But Uganda says that Kony must first sign before the charges can be put aside. So the question of how to deal with returning rebels, who were notorious for using mutilation as a terror tactic, remains at the heart of peace efforts.  There have been other tries at peace before, but they have all fallen through, and the north returned to war. Will peace hold this time? Will Kony come out of the bush and sign the final agreement? Or will the north and the region once again be sucked into conflict?  

Will global crisis hurt remittances to Africa?

It seems everyone in Africa has family members living abroad.

Just stop someone on the street and ask if they have a cousin, a brother, or a sister living in Europe, the United States or elsewhere around Africa, and most likely they’ll say that they have two or three or more. Remittances from those loved ones total some $40 billion per year, according to the United Nations. In some countries, diaspora money makes up more than 20 percent of the gross domestic product, and analysts say, remittance cash may be as much as 50 percent higher than current estimates due to informal transfers.

But there is growing concern that this money could be a victim of a spiralling crisis in global financial markets.

It’s still too early to tell how much remittances from the estimated 30 million Africans living abroad have been impacted by the crisis, which, world financial bodies warn, could lead to a global slowdown. But some families have already been told to expect less money.