Donation Amount. Min £2

East Africa

The fire started around 2:00 a.m. in one of the mabati houses and quickly spread to nearby homes. Five people, including two children, have died in a fire that swept through part of Mathare in the early hours of Monday morning.

The fire also destroyed eight homes and two churches, leaving many families with nothing.

 

The fire started around 2:00 a.m. in one of the mabati houses and quickly spread to nearby homes. Police say they received a report and rushed to the scene.

Two fire trucks from the Nairobi County Government joined the effort and helped bring the fire under control after several hours.

Unfortunately, five people died in the fire three adults and two children. Four others were injured and taken to MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) Hospital for treatment.

Police visited the scene, took photographs, and moved the bodies to the Nairobi City Morgue. A post-mortem will be carried out, and investigations into the cause of the fire are still ongoing. By Irene Mwangi, Capital News

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his visiting Central African Republic (CAR) counterpart Faustin-Archange Touadera. [Photo: Courtesy]

In his speech during the celebration of Uganda’s 62nd Independence Day, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni announced bold plans for strengthening trade and infrastructure links between East Africa and Central Africa.>

Speaking on October 9, President Museveni emphasized the importance of building key road networks to facilitate trade and connectivity across the region, especially with South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Central African Republic (CAR).

 

“Central Africa, particularly the Central African Republic, holds tremendous potential as a trading partner for East Africa,” Museveni declared.

He highlighted a recent meeting in Entebbe where discussions were held regarding road construction projects that would link Uganda, South Sudan, and CAR.

“We need to persuade the government of South Sudan for a road through Yei, Maridi, and Yambio up to the Central African Republic. This will ensure East Africa is linked by road, at least with Central Africa, and beyond,” Museveni added, signaling a major shift towards integrating regional economies.

Additionally, the Ugandan President invited Ugandan Airlines and air cargo companies to explore new air routes to Bangui, the capital of CAR. “Even if it is not daily, flying to Bangui a few times can link us with our brothers and sisters,” he suggested, underlining the potential benefits of air connectivity for enhancing regional commerce.

While, this initiative is expected to significantly boost trade between East Africa and Central Africa, creating new opportunities for businesses, traders, and farmers across Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC, and CAR. By improving road and air links, the flow of goods and services across these borders will be easier, faster, and more efficient.

Citizens in Uganda, South Sudan, and CAR will see increased economic opportunities as regional trade barriers reduce and new markets open up.

The development of road networks through key border points like Yei and Yambio in South Sudan will also provide much-needed infrastructure for local economies, improving access to markets for agricultural and industrial products.

Economists predict that such initiatives could lead to greater trade and commerce and stimulate economic growth in remote regions that have previously struggled due to poor transportation links.

Local traders have hailed President Museveni’s announcement as a game-changer for business.

“This will cut transportation costs and reduce delivery time for our goods to Central Africa. It opens a completely new market for us,” said James Katongole, a trader based in Kampala. Many in the business community echoed these sentiments, seeing the move as a catalyst for boosting trade volumes.

However, economists, are cautious but optimistic as Dr. William B, an economist in Yambio, stated, “While the vision is commendable, the success of this initiative will depend on effective collaboration between the governments involved. Road construction and maintenance require significant investment, and political stability in South Sudan will be crucial to ensuring the roads stay operational.”

Nevertheless, with Uganda taking a leading role, the proposed infrastructure projects have the potential to reshape trade dynamics across Central and East Africa, fostering deeper economic integration and improving the livelihoods of millions. By Emmanuel Mandella, City Review

Suicide bomber targets queue of young recruits registering at a military base in the capital.

A view of slippers outside a military camp after a suicide bomber blew themselves up in Mogadishu, Somalia [Abuukar Mohamed Muhidin/Anadolu Agency]

The attacker on Sunday targeted a queue of young recruits lining up outside Damanyo base, killing at least 10 people, Reuters news agency quoted witnesses as saying.

Teenagers were lining up at the base’s gate when the suicide bomber detonated their explosives, they said.

Medical staff at the military hospital told Reuters that they had received 30 wounded people from the blast and that six of them had died immediately.

Separately, an official told Anadolu the attack had killed at least 11 people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

 

More to come…

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies
The bodies were moved to the mortuary pending autopsy.
 

At least five people, including two children, lost their lives early Monday morning when a devastating fire swept through the Mathare B section of Nairobi’s Mathare slums.

According to police, four others sustained serious injuries and were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. 

The blaze, which broke out around 2:00 am, also left dozens of residents homeless as it tore through the tightly packed informal settlement. 

Nairobi Police Commander George Sedah confirmed that at least eight homes and two nearby churches were destroyed in the fire.

He said the inferno is believed to have started in one of the iron-sheet houses before spreading rapidly to adjacent structures. 

“The firefighters have managed to put off the fire that broke out at 2 am. We are yet to establish the cause of the fire. The injured are currently receiving medical attention.”

Fire engines from both the military and the Nairobi County Government were deployed to the scene and helped contain the flames before further destruction could occur. By Mate Tongola, The Standard

In March 2006, Uganda’s Supreme Court convened to begin adjudication of disputes over the presidential election that occurred the previous month in the country. Voting took place on February 23. Two days later, on February 25, the electoral commission announced the results, giving the incumbent, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, 59.28 per cent of the valid votes cast. In second place, with 37.36 per cent of the votes, the commission announced Kiiza Besigye, a medical doctor whose military career began as part of the bush war that brought Museveni to power 20 years earlier in 1986. 

In his petition against the announced result, Colonel Besigye argued that the electoral commission did not validly declare the results in accordance with the Constitution and the Presidential Elections Act; and that the election was conducted in contravention of the provisions of both. His evidence was compelling.

Yet, the impression that the petition process was a ritual performance with a predetermined outcome pervaded the process. Leading the legal team for the Electoral Commission of Uganda, also a defendant in the petition, was Lucian Tibaruha, solicitor-general of Uganda. In reality, he also led the lawyers for the president, also a defendant alongside the Electoral Commission. Handling election petitions for a party political candidate was not supposed to be part of Lucian’s job, but there he was. 

Presiding was Benjamin Josses Odoki, Chief Justice of Uganda since 2001 and the author of the 1995 Constitution that incrementally made Museveni a life president. Idi Amin, Uganda’s infamous military dictator, elevated Odoki to the bench as a 35-year-old in 1978. Amin’s nemesis, Museveni, elevated him to the Supreme Court eight years later and made him Chief Justice in 2001.

Announcing its reasoned judgment in January 2007, the court found that there had been non-compliance with the Constitution of Uganda and the applicable laws in the form of “disenfranchisement of voters by deleting their names from the voters register or denying them the right to vote” as well as “in the counting and tallying of results.”

The court equally found as a fact that the “principle of free and fair elections was compromised by bribery and intimidation or violence in some areas of the country” and also that “the principles of equal suffrage, transparency of the vote, and secrecy of the ballot were undermined by multiple voting, and vote stuffing in some areas.” 

Despite these findings, Chief Justice Odoki and his court ruled by a majority of four votes to three to uphold the election and grant President Museveni another five years in power. Two years after this decision, in 2009, when the Chief Justice’s son, Phillip Odoki, got married, Museveni’s son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, was the best man

In 2010, it emerged that Chief Justice Odoki never harboured any doubts about the outcome. Questioned about the role of judges in deciding elections in Africa, Odoki “smiled when commenting that to nullify a presidential election would be suicidal.” He lived to see his peers in Kenya and Malawi do just that in 2017 and 2020, respectively. It proved not to be suicidal.

According to former law teacher Olu Adediran, the role of judges in these kinds of cases is, in reality, “a compromise between law and political expediency.” Jude Murison is more direct in calling it “judicial politics.” Judges are not instruments of change or revolution, and when they are called upon to adjudicate between sides in a political dispute, they are more often than not likely to treat that not as an opportunity to change political paymasters, except when the bell has already tolled undisputedly for an incumbent. 

Politicians are supposed to sell themselves to the people through their programmes and through campaigns in a contest of both ideas and vision. In return, the people, through their votes, endorse the politicians and programmes that they believe best advance their interests. An electoral commission is a referee supposedly engaged and maintained at the public expense to administer this contest. 

This is where things begin to break down. Although engaged in the name of the people, every electoral commission is appointed by people in power who never wish to relinquish it. When a dispute emerges as to the kind of job done by the electoral commission, it ends up before judges. However, the same people who appoint the electoral commission also usually appoint the most senior judges to office. In the maelstrom of party political competition, guardrails break down as politicians struggle to casualise the popular electorate in order to prosper a judicial selectorate.  

The more election disputes end up in court, the more it becomes evident to politicians that it is easier to make deals with the judges. The people are and can be unpredictable, unlike most judges. Increasingly, therefore, politicians seek to judicialize the site of decision-making on elections, relocating that from the polling booth to the courtroom. 

If a politician can get their spouse appointed to become a judge, they can even make the site of decision-making in elections more intimate, relocating it from the courtroom to the bedroom. 

Instead of the usual soapbox, increasingly elections in many countries can be decided by good old pillow-talk. Former federal legislator, Adamu Bulkachuwa, whose wife, Zainab, headed Nigeria’s Court of Appeal for six years until 2020, published the manual on this model of electoral ascendancy in his parliamentary valedictory remarks as a senator in June 2023.

This is why the judicialisation of African politics increasingly represents a huge risk to the popular will as the basis of government. First, it vitiates the right to democratic participation and suppresses the popular will as the foundation for democratic legitimacy. Second, it enables the courts to deprive the people of their democratic rights, accomplishing that under the alluring pretence of the rule of law. 

Third, it provides perverse incentives for politicians to capture the courts, making the judiciary in many African countries a battleground for the pre-determination of election outcomes. Fourth, it has the capacity to alter the character of the judiciary from an independent institution to a plaything of political insiders.

This trend in consigning elections to the care of a judicial selectorate around Africa now endangers judges and their independence. In Malawi, in 2020, the president attempted to remove the Chief Justice in order to secure a Supreme Court panel more solicitous of his interests in the lead-up to a presidential re-run, following a rigged electoral contest that had been struck down by the courts. 

The following year, in September 2021, the ruling party in Zimbabwe pressured the Constitutional Court to overrule an earlier decision of a high court that blocked an extension of the tenure of the chief justice after he had reached the official retirement age. This allowed the chief justice to serve still, but on a contract that made him more subject to presidential whim. 

Ahead of contentious national elections two years later, the same president advanced $400,000 to all serving judges in Zimbabwe in “housing loan” with no repayment obligations. One of the beneficiaries was the chair of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), herself a serving judge. Unsurprisingly, she announced her benefactor, the incumbent president, as the winner in the ensuing election. 

Even worse, this trend now also endangers entire countries, if not indeed regions. This was evident in April 2020, when Mali’s Constitutional Court overturned the results of 31 parliamentary seats won by the opposition. Its decision to hand these seats over to the ruling party sparked an uprising that led first to the dissolution of the Constitutional Court, and later the overthrow of the government in a military coup. 

Mali’s twin crises of governmental legitimacy and state fragmentation are a tragic reminder of the dangers of judicial overreach in election adjudication. But the crisis in Mali has also become a regional crisis for West Africa. To adapt an expression familiar to new-age Pentecostals in West Africa: what judges cannot do does not exist. By , People's Gazette

About IEA Media Ltd

Informer East Africa is a UK based diaspora Newspaper. It is a unique platform connecting East Africans at home and abroad through news dissemination. It is a forum to learn together, grow together and get entertained at the same time.

To advertise events or products, get in touch by info [at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447957636854.
If you have an issue or a story, get in touch with the editor through editor[at] informereastafrica [dot] com or call +447886544135.

We also accept donations from our supporters. Please click on "donate". Your donations will go along way in supporting the newspaper.

Get in touch

Our Offices

London, UK
+44 7886 544135
editor (@) informereastafrica.com
Slough, UK
+44 7957 636854
info (@) informereastafrica.com

Latest News

IEBC Denies Plans to Remove Over 2 Million Ghost Voters From Register

IEBC Denies Plans to...

Kenyans vote at Rongai Constituency, Nakuru County during the August 9, 2022, General Election. Pho...

South Sudan parliament stuck in recess

South Sudan parliame...

South Sudan's parliament speaker Jemma Nunu Kumba- Courtesy July 4, 2025 JUBA As South Sudan approa...

Willis Otieno reprimands Ruto over plans to build a church at State House

Willis Otieno reprim...

The outspoken constitutional lawyer Willis Otieno has unleashed a blistering attack on President Wil...

Will DCI boss produce missing blogger Kinyagia, 12 days later?

Will DCI boss produc...

The Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Mohamed Amin was on Thursday expected to appear in cou...

For Advertisement

Big Reach

Informer East Africa is one platform for all people. It is a platform where you find so many professionals under one umbrella serving the African communities together.

Very Flexible

We exist to inform you, hear from you and connect you with what is happening around you. We do this professionally and timely as we endeavour to capture all that you should never miss. Informer East Africa is simply news for right now and the future.

Quality News

We only bring to you news that is verified, checked and follows strict journalistic guidelines and standards. We believe in 1. Objective coverage, 2. Impartiality and 3. Fair play.

Banner & Video Ads

A banner & video advertisement from our sponsors will show up every once in a while. It keeps us and our writers coffee replenished.