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East Africa

By JULIUS MBALUTO

Kenyans in the Diaspora have been waiting for long to exercise their right to vote. However, the waiting is coming to an end as IEBC has started the process of facilitating them to vote in 2022.

Speaking at Hilton Hotel in Luton to a group of Kenyan leaders, under the umbrella body KCCC (Kenyan Communities Chairpersons Council - UK), IEBC Chairman Mr Wafula Chebukati told Kenyans in the UK that they will be voting in 2022 elections.

Mr Wafula Chebukati IEBC Chairman Addressing Kenyans

 

KCCC is the umbrella organisation of the following Kenyan Community organizations in the UK, SEKK (South East and Kent Kenyan Group, Kenyans in Hertfordshire, KOB (Kenyan Oxford Community, UKAC(United Kenyan Community) Kenyans in the Highlands Scotland, Kenyans in Nottingham, KCS (Kenyan Community Slough), KUH (Kenyans United Hampshire), Kenyans in Reading, KAIB (Kenyan Association in Bristol), LDSKCF-Luton and Dunstable Surrounding Kenya Community),Kenya Women in the UK and Kenyans in Sheffield.

More groups include, Kenyans in Peterborough, ELEK (East London and Essex Kenyans), KCI (Kenyans in Channel Islands) KCB (Kenyan Community Bedford, Kenyan Community in Cardiff and Kenyans in Coventry

Officials from Kenya High Commission

 

The event was well attended and graced by IEBC and Kenya High Commission officials. It is not only in the UK that Kenyans will vote but also others from seven different countries including US, Canada, Qatar, UAE, UK, South Sudan and Germany.

Previously Kenyans within East African countries and South Africa voted.  Kenyans in Diaspora right to vote is being implemented in a progressive manner as per the constitution.

Mr Chebukati told Kenyans in the Diaspora not to always think about the amount of money they remit to Kenya as their qualification to vote because their right to vote was guaranteed in the constitution. Mr Chebukati told Kenyans that they will be voting  through Kenyan embassies.

Kenyans will apply for registration using a valid passport as per the law. Kenyans in East Africa have the chance to use either their passport or Identity card according to the laws passed in parliament. Currently, registration and voting is to take place within the Kenyan embassies.

This poses challenges to the IEBC like Kenyans living away from London or any other embassy within the seven countries where Kenyans will vote might have to incur expenses to come for their registration and polling centre.

Mr Chebukati said that IEBC will might explore other methods to facilitate more Kenyans to register. However, voting will happen only in the Embassy as IEBC can only gazette one polling station as per the law.

Proxy voting, online voting and registration is out of the question as the law requires that one must be present to provide biometric data. However, the IEBC Chairman said, these other options can be explored in the future and the law changed to accommodate them.

Kenyans who attended the meeting                                                 IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati and KCCC-UK Chairman Lukas Kamau

Kenyan leaders present from different locations in the UK praised IEBC for their efforts to ensure Diaspora votes.  Different community leaders raised different issues like facilitation of differently abled people to vote, distance from embassies to where all Kenyans live and the costs they might have to incur to register and vote, use of online systems to facilitate voting, the idea that some embassies like in London in central city and longer ques for voting might be a challenge.

IEBC Chairman promised that IEBC will work with the embassies to come up with solutions for all challenges faced. Mr Chebukati and his team from Nairobi urged Kenyans to register in big numbers.

 

More Photos below..

 

Rev Joseph Odima, Julius Mbaluto and IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati

 

 

 

NAIROBI, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Six bodies were on Sunday retrieved from a building in central Kenyan county of Murang'a that collapsed while under construction.

James Macharia, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development said at a briefing in Nairobi that the search for survivors in the collapsed four-story building had intensified.

He said the rescue operation was expected to end on Sunday, adding that the government will enhance inspection of residential and commercial buildings to ensure their structural integrity was not compromised.

The building was under construction when it collapsed on Friday, prompting a rescue mission. A search for more is ongoing. Macharia added that a building adjacent to the collapsed hotel was also under construction and will be demolished.

Macharia disclosed that 4,000 buildings had been identified as unsafe countrywide even as state agencies work on modalities of demolishing them to avert potential danger. - Xinhua

Top officials stress importance of holding 3rd Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit face to face despite pandemic

ISTANBUL

Hailing the large turnout at the ongoing Third Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit in Istanbul, the foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday said this participation shows Africa's trust in Turkey.

"This turnout is a sign of Africa's confidence in Turkey. Africa trusts the Turkish people. It also shows how Africa benefits from cooperating with Turkey," Christophe Lutundula Apala Pen'Apala said at the three-day summit, held under the auspices of Turkey's presidency, which wraps up on Saturday.

Over 100 government ministers and 16 presidents from Africa are attending the summit, whose theme is “Enhanced Partnership for Common Development and Prosperity."

Besides the growing trade between Turkey and Africa, Pen'Apala also pointed to how the number of Turkish diplomatic missions abroad has soared in recent years – from just a dozen in 2002 to 43 in 2021.

He stressed that strategic partners of the continent should consider the priority of industrialization for Africa.

Albert Muchanga, the African Union commissioner for trade and industry, stressed the importance of holding the summit face to face despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Saying Africa is determined to curb the virus, Muchanga said no one should be left alone to face the pandemic, as no one is safe until everyone is vaccinated.

So the delivery of vaccines to all is necessary, he added.

The first Turkey-Africa Partnership Summit was held in Istanbul, the second in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, and the third at the Istanbul Congress Center in Turkey’s commercial capital.

Under the government’s outreach to Africa policy, Turkey’s engagement with Africa has gained speed in recent years, including President Recep Tayyip’s groundbreaking visits to multiple countries on the continent.

Turkey has said its African policy, which encompasses political, humanitarian, economic, and cultural ties, is part of its multidimensional foreign policy and is pursued in the spirit of win-win relations. By Tuba Sahin, AA

 
 
 

Source: AP Photo/Sarah Blake Morgan

Imagine knowing that the very act of going to a religious service would likely result in violence and death. In Nigeria, churches have been sent warning letters instructing them to shut down or face "ferocious" attacks. That's some Christmas card! In a perhaps not unrelated event, just before Thanksgiving, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to arrive in Nigeria as part of his tour of Africa, the country was cruelly and infuriatingly de-listed from the roster of Countries of Particular Concern for Religious Freedom by the U.S. State Department.

 

Christians in Nigeria rightfully feel abandoned by the United States. In a distressing new video released by the Religious Freedom Institute, Bishop Stephen Dami Mamza of Northeast Nigeria says Christians are disheartened by the perplexing move. "All Christians in Nigeria are feeling bad" about it, he says, fearing an upswing in anti-Christian violence.

In 2014, much of Bishop Mamza's diocese was devastated by Boko Haram marauders. As the region was occupied by the Islamist terrorist group, members of his flock fled, leaving their whole lives behind. Some of them were able to go back in 2016, but there was nothing there for them. Their homes and farms had all been destroyed.

Mamza says he is hard-pressed to find a family that has not lost someone to that murderous violence -- he lost his elder brother, cousins and uncles. He says people are traumatized -- and they remain surrounded by people who hate them. 

 

The religious-freedom designation exists for countries where there are "systematic, ongoing egregious violations of religious freedom, among other cruelties to the human person because of religion. The bipartisan United States Commission on Religious Freedom (USCRF) immediately said it was "appalled" by the move. The USCRF exists in part to advise the U.S. government about the list, and the State Department ignored its recommendation to keep Nigeria on the list.

"How is Nigeria different than the Nigeria of two years ago?" Mamza asks. "The persecution here is more intense now than ever." He asks the U.S. State Department to explain what data they used, because it's not reflective of the facts on the ground. He is saddened that the Biden administration didn't actually talk to Christians in Nigeria before making its move.

Eric Patterson of the Religious Freedom Institute also warns against explaining away the violence in Nigeria as something other than religious. Listen to the perpetrators, he says -- they say their motivation is religious -- they want Christians dead.

The Religious Freedom Institute recently held a virtual panel that should embarrass all Americans. It was called "America's Indifference to the Plight of Nigerian Christians: A Conversation about U.S. Policy."

"There are a set of overlapping catastrophes happening in Nigeria," Patterson said. "For more than a decade, Boko Haram, Islamic State of West Africa and criminal and terrorist organizations have murdered 90,000 of their fellow citizens -- their fellow Sunni Muslims, the Shia minority and Christians." 

The U.S. ambassador to Nigeria has dismissed concerns about the violence against Christians. During the Religious Freedom panel, Nina Shea from the Hudson Institute pointed out that we are watching "a growing spreading, bloodied disintegration of northern Nigeria." If it continues unabated, it will both destabilize the country and radicalize it, and "create incalculable human misery."

Rebecca Downs

"This is a U.S. national security threat," Shea says, "that the United States is completely missing." She says the delisting of Nigeria is a "betrayal" for what we stand for as a country.

Remember these long-suffering people this Christmas. You can watch a short video on the YouTube of the Religious Freedom Institute -- look in the faces of some of the people we have abandoned -- and witness the courage of Bishop Mamza, who says God will bless you for your prayers. Keep an eye on what is happening and educate people to create moral pressure for our government to undo this injustice. By Kathryn Lopez, Townhall.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York. She can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The formation of the AMA is a milestone for drug safety and trust in Africa

Girls stand in a truck during a campaign to raise awareness about illegal and false drugs in Abobo, a suburb of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on October 11, 2018.
Girls ride in a truck as they participate in a campaign to raise awareness about illegal and false drugs in Abobo, a suburb of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on October 11, 2018. REUTERS/Luc Gnago

The African Medicines Agency will require strong government partners to build trust

Established by a treaty that the Africa Union Assembly adopted in 2019, the AMA will work to harmonize regulations across the continent, with the aim of improving reliable access to safe and effective medicines. The appeal of the idea is easy to understand. Tackling the issue of fake and substandard drugs—which in the African context includes imported fake medication, counterfeits generated on the continent, and well-established trafficking networks—is clearly a transboundary undertaking that could benefit from a coordinated approach. is clearly a transboundary undertaking that could benefit from a coordinated approach.

Fighting Fake Drugs

Africa has the highest prevalence of falsified, outdated, and substandard medicines of any region in the world. These dubious drugs are killing people; some estimates suggest that more than 280,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa die every year due to the use of falsified or substandard medicines for pneumonia and malaria. The COVID-19 pandemic has generated even more fake drugs and medical supplies.

In June, South African authorities seized 2,400 doses of fake vaccines and counterfeit 3M-branded N95 masks worth almost $450,000; national and international health authorities have also sounded the alarm about fake COVID vaccines in NigeriaKenya, and Uganda. In addition to outright fakes, substandard medicines can also enable the rise of drug-resistant strains of disease. These counterfeit, expired, and defective drugs give the public good reason to doubt the veracity of scientific claims about the safety and value of medicines. Experience teaches many in Africa that medicines cannot be trusted.

A History of Distrust in Medicine

Skepticism is the result of more than just dodgy drugs. There is also a history of unethical medical practices in Africa, and no new institution can restore the trust eroded in this regard. From German experiments on people from Namibia and South Africa in the early 1900s to Pfizer’s notorious 1996 clinical trial of an experimental antibiotic given to children in Kano, Nigeria—that a panel of experts hired by the Nigerian government later concluded was illegal and did not meet standards of informed consent—the historical record does not inspire confidence in the ethics of high-income countries, or their respect for African lives.

This history informs concerns so powerful that they helped to shape former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous flirtation with AIDS denialism—leading to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in one of the world’s HIV hotspots—and feeds into Africans’ hesitancy when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines today.

Distrust has spilled over into how people view COVID-19 vaccines. When Afrobarometer conducted surveys in fourteen African countries earlier this year, they found that on average only 37 percent of citizens trusted their government “somewhat” or “a lot” to ensure the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. Part of this is about experience and history, but another is about how African citizens feel about their own governments and officials. Polling shows that levels of trust in government authorities vary widely from country to country, but they are consistently tied [PDF] to whether people believed an institution to be corrupt or self-serving.

Official misuse of funds intended for combatting COVID or relieving the economic strain caused by the pandemic has generated headlines in many African countries, including Malawi, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Onerous restrictions on daily life, combined with economic hardship and the spectacle of people in positions of public trust enriching themselves in the midst of crisis, have dealt a real blow to public confidence in health governance.

This matters for the AMA, because ensuring that standardized regulations deliver for Africa will require effective and predictable enforcement of those regulations by the very governments that have been sowing mistrust among their populations. Governing capacity, which varies quite widely among African Union member states, depends on the integrity and competence in the civil service and law enforcement agencies within countries. There are places where this is in abundant supply, but in many states the civil service is overstretched and under-resourced. These public servants are up against the forces behind the world’s most lucrative trade in illegally copied goods, estimated to be worth some $200 billion annually. The AMA can help harmonize rules across countries, but they will remain aspirational without meaningful investments in and attention to state-level capacity to follow and enforce them.

80 Percent

Africa imports more than 80 percent of its medicines and medical supplies

Despite the challenges and limitations, the creation of the AMA is a significant step forward that can be an important part of the effort to strengthen Africa’s health sector. The most optimistic vision for the AMA it is that it will incentive more robust pharmaceutical supply chains in Africa, thereby creating jobs and opportunity for innovation closer to home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed glaring inequities in global access to new vaccines—nowhere more so than in Africa, where only 8 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated to date. These disparities have reinvigorated efforts to increase pharmaceutical manufacturing on the continent. Room for growth is vast: Africa currently imports more than 80 percent of its medicines and medical supplies.

Capital outlays to help build the infrastructure for more robust African pharmaceutical production become far more commercially attractive when one set of standards and regulations apply, rather than over fifty different rulebooks. By Michelle D. Gavin, Think Global Health

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