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The Nyarugenge Intermediate Court, on Friday, June 3, upheld Kicukiro Primary Court’s decision to remand Dieudonne Ishimwe for 30 days, pending further investigations.

Ishimwe, or Prince Kid, as he is commonly known, is pinned on two charges- which are soliciting or offering sexual favours, and harassment.

The decision to send Ishimwe on 30 days remand was ruled by Kicukiro Primary Court on May 16, saying that there are reasonable grounds to suspect him of having committed the crimes he is being prosecuted for.

A bail hearing on appeal was held in camera (closed to the public) on May 26 upon request of the prosecution, arguing that it was for the protection of witnesses and that the case also has elements that can endanger public morals.

At court…

Around 1:40 PM, various journalists crowded before the court expecting to take pictures and videos of Ishimwe during the bail appeal ruling; however, he did not show up as expected; only his lawyer Emeline Nyembo was present.

In the courtroom however, many people were present including his family members and friends, among others.

At 2:08 PM, the case was mentioned and the judge took the audience through the case hearing which was held in camera.  The hearing went on briefly, and the judge pointed out some key factors presented by both sides.

Text messages and voices were presented by the prosecution, and these were pinning Ishimwe against crimes he is suspected of. His lawyer however defended him denying all crimes using various articles and testimonies.

During the bail hearing on appeal, prosecution requested to remand Ishimwe saying that he would jeopardize investigations in his case.

However, Ishimwe and his lawyer asked for bail arguing that there is no reasonable ground to remand him, adding how bail fees were ignored, among other factors.

The judge however said that the court’s main focus on his appeal was to examine the factors, which are reasonable grounds for pinning him.

The court also said bail fees, as a reason, has never been examined before by the lower court, noting that unless Ishimwe offered movable and immovable properties, he wouldn’t be granted bail by paying a bail fee with such a case.

The judge revealed that certain points will be discussed during the substantial. Factors which will be verified in a substantial trial include letters which were written during the investigation by former Miss Rwanda, Elsa Iradukunda among others.

Ishimwe was arrested on April 26, over charges related to sexual abuse towards contestants of the Miss Rwanda beauty pageant on various occasions, and he appeared before court for the first time on May 11.

He started organising Miss Rwanda in 2014 and had seen the annual event become one of the most popular in the country.

However, on May 9, the government announced the official halt of his company from organising the annual beauty pageant, following several allegations of misconduct and abuse towards contestants.

Ishimwe will be remanded at Nyarugenge prison, commonly known as Mageragera as he waits for the substantial trial to start. - Aurore Teta Ufitiwabo, The New Times

  • Photo Courtesy
  • Chief Justice, Martha Karambu Koome, has weighed in on Deputy President William Ruto's claims that at least one million voters from his strongholds were expunged from the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) voters register.

    Speaking on Friday, June 3, Koome noted that all processes running to the election day including voter registration, transfer of voters, verification, certification, and publication of the register of voters, should be done in a manner that promotes and ensures the complete and accurate and franchise of eligible voters.

    The Chief Justice further called on IEBC to address all the issues arising from the ongoing process by involving all stakeholder ahead of the August 9 polls. 

    "It is such a proactive approach to addressing concerns that might be raised by voters and stakeholders that ensures that the IEBC and all Kenyans become agents and champions of electoral integrity and also engenders the confidence of Kenyans in the credibility of the electoral process," Koome stated.

    Chief Justice Martha Koome speaking on Friday June 3, 2022
    Chief Justice Martha Koome speaking on Friday, June 3, 2022
    KOOME'S TWITTER

    Her sentiments come after Ruto claimed that one million voters had been deleted from the voter register, alleging that they were all from his strongholds. 

    The second in command noted that it was part of a larger ploy to rig him out in the presidential election.

    "We expect that everybody who is concerned including the EU to try and get as much detail as possible both from the electoral commission and these public officials on what all this is all about and how did close to a million names disappear from the register. And many of those names are from what we consider our stronghold. It is a clear attempt to try some monkey games," Ruto told European Union Envoys during a breakfast meeting on Thursday, June 2, at his Karen office.

    IEBC chairperson, Wafula Wanyonyi Chebukati, however, dismissed Ruto's claims noting that the process is still underway and the voter register will be made public in accordance with IEBC timelines.

    CJ Koome also addressed the issues that led to the nullification of the 2017 General Election, expressing confidence that the electoral agency will seal all the loopholes to avoid a repeat of the same.

    "Our expectation is that the IEBC is consciously working to ensure its processes meet the demands of the principles of our electoral system," she stated.

    "It is also our expectation that lessons from the past judicial decisions are being considered by the IEBC as it prepares to conduct elections."

     
     

    On the Judiciary's preparedness to address issues of electoral related disputes, Koome revealed that she has already gazetted 120 special Judges who will handle all disputes.

    She further noted that 3,000 police officers from the Judiciary Police Unit have been deployed to different parts of the country. 

    The CJ noted that the Judiciary had undertaken training for all judicial officers involved in hearing poll disputes as well as ensuring adequate security for the officers.

    Chief Justice Martha Koome receiving a surprise gift on her birthday party on Friday June 3, 2022
    Chief Justice Martha Koome receiving a surprise gift at her birthday party on Friday, June 3, 2022  FILE  By GEOFFREY LUTTA, Kenyans.co.ke
     
 

Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Gen Robert Kibochi with Rwanda Chief of Defence Staff Gen Jean Kazura at the Defence Headquarters in Nairobi on June 2- KDF

 

This comes in the wake of rising tension between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

In Summary
  • The discussions were centered on matters of mutual interest between the two militaries especially on cooperation and partnership in security matters, Department of Defence said.
  • Gen Kazura later held bilateral talks with the Cabinet Secretary for Defence Eugene Wamalwa in his office at the Defence Headquarters.

Rwanda Chief of Defence Staff Gen Jean Kazura arrived in Nairobi and paid a courtesy call on his Kenyan counterpart Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Gen Robert Kibochi at the Defence Headquarters in Nairobi.

Gen Kazura was accorded full military honours which included inspecting a Guard of Honour mounted by the Kenya Air Force and later held a meeting with the CDF.

Present during the meeting were Vice Chief of the Defence Forces Lt Gen Francis Ogolla, Service Commanders, General Officers and a delegation of Senior Officers from Rwanda Defence Forces. 

"The discussions were centered on matters of mutual interest between the two militaries, especially on cooperation and partnership in security matters," the Department of Defence said.

Gen Kazura later held bilateral talks with the Cabinet Secretary for Defence Eugene Wamalwa in his office at the Defence Headquarters.

This comes in the wake of rising tension between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) over Kigali’s alleged support for the M23, a notorious rebel group.

Kinshasa claims Kigali is backing the M23 – a primarily Congolese Tutsi group – after clashes between its fighters and the Congolese army broke out last week in the North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda.

On Monday, hundreds staged an anti-Rwanda protest in Kinshasa over the tensions.

Relations have been strained since the mass arrival in the eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

The demonstrators held candles and shouted slogans against Rwandan President Paul Kagame. 

RwandAir announced it was cancelling flights to the DRC after Congolese authorities suspended the carrier and summoned Kigali’s ambassador.

The Rwanda Defence Force later said two soldiers had been kidnapped on patrol and were being held by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, another rebel group active in eastern DRC.

The United Nations said on Friday the latest clashes had displaced 72,000 people and warned that those on the run faced constant violence and the looting of their homes.

Since May last year, Congolese security forces have run the administrations of North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province in a bid to crush the myriad rebel groups active there. By Cyrus Ombati, The Star

Carbon offsets have been criticized for failing to provide carbon savings and ignoring the needs of local communities. But in Tanzania, hunter-gatherer tribes are earning a good return for their carbon credits and protecting their forests from poachers and encroaching agriculture.

Deep in the Rift Valley of East Africa, close to some of the most ancient human remains ever unearthed, one of the continent’s last hunter-gatherer tribes is embracing 21st century environmentalism. The Hadza people, often called “the last archers of Africa,” are selling carbon credits generated from conserving their forests and using the revenues to employ their youths as scouts to keep forest destroyers away.

Starting this March, some 1,300 Hadza and members of the cattle-herding tribes with whom they share the Yaeda Valley of northern Tanzania, began receiving the first payments of what will be nearly half a million dollars annually from a local social enterprise, Carbon Tanzania, for protecting woodland hunting, and grazing grounds across an area larger than New York City.

The project will radically extend an existing decade-old carbon-offsetting initiative on Hadza land north to the edge of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, one of Africa’s most iconic wildlife havens. But, unlike the Ngorongoro reserve, which was in part created by expelling local people, this project will embrace the skills of the hunting Hadza as custodians of the forests and friends of their wildlife.

Many believe that this form of community-based conservation can, besides its climate benefits, unlock new possibilities for protecting Africa’s wild places and the people and wildlife who depend on them. And they see it as a potential model for carbon offset projects not only in Africa but in other parts of the world.

In Tanzania, the locals are enthusiastic. They say the existing project helps them push back against outsiders keen to grab land for farming. “We are seeing a steady increase of some animal species like elephants passing through and in forest growth compared to the beginning,” says Christopher Shija, a scout recruited from Jobaj village. Moshi Isa, another scout who is from Mongo wa Mono village, notes, “The carbon project has strengthened our rights. And increased forest density is sustaining our hunting and gathering life.”

Foreign experts familiar with the checkered history of carbon offsetting agree. Carbon offset projects based on forest conservation are often criticized for failing to provide real carbon savings and simply shifting deforestation elsewhere; for riding roughshod over local forest communities; and for allowing Western companies to put off cutting their emissions. In Tanzania, most such projects have been “largely unconcerned” with the wellbeing of the local communities whose lands host them, according to Sebastién Jodoin, an environmental and land-rights lawyer from McGill University in Montreal. But of those he analyzed, the Yaeda Valley project was “the sole and important exception … designed and implemented in a manner that recognized the traditional rights and knowledge held by Indigenous Peoples.”

  
A Hadza scout on patrol.
A Hadza scout on patrol. Roshni Lodhia / Carbon Tanzania/Photo Courtesy Grist

Without the projects, “the Hadza would really be on the brink. With it, they are in a more secure position than they have been for decades,” says Fred Nelson, CEO of Maliasili, an organization that supports community conservation projects across Africa. It is “probably the best such project in Africa.”


The Hadza have lived in northern Tanzania for at least 40,000 years. Their ancient ways of living off the land have become a magnet for researchers ranging from anthropologists to those studying healthy eating. Linguists are intrigued by their “click” language, which is spoken nowhere else.

Their land is a patchwork of wet grasslands and craggy hills covered in acacia and water-holding baobab trees. It harbors leopards, lions, gazelles, giraffes, antelopes, wild dogs, and Cape buffalo. The Hadza harvest wild fruits, tubers, honey, natural medicines, and bush meat, says Moshi, and visit sacred sites such as Dundubii, a hill topped with three stones that chime notes when struck.

But these territories have long been under threat. The Hadza have lost more than three-quarters of their traditional lands in the past half-century. Pastoralists bring their livestock onto the grasslands, especially in the dry season, and farmers clear forests to plow.

“Shifting agriculture is the primary driver of deforestation in the region, as in much of Tanzania,” says Jo Anderson, the co-founder and director of Carbon Tanzania. “It threatens the very existence of forest communities as well as Tanzania’s iconic wildlife.”

In the past, invasions have often been officially encouraged, says Anderson. Both in British colonial times and since the country’s independence in 1961, the nomadic ways of the Hadza were regarded by urban elites as an embarrassing cultural leftover. In the 1970s, they were subjected to a national policy of enforced settlement known as “villagization.” In 2007, the government announced plans to lease most of the Yaeda Valley to a hunting safari company from the United Arab Emirates.

But the tide has turned. Unexpected heroes in the story have been three American brothers — Daudi, Mike, and Thad Peterson. Raised in Tanzania, they had operated an early ecotourism business, Dorobo Safaris, before, in the 1990s, setting up and funding the Ujamaa Community Resource Team, or UCRT, an NGO helping villagers and Indigenous groups using Tanzanian land laws to secure legal title to their territories.

The UCRT’s Indigenous activists successfully campaigned against the planned Arab takeover of the Yaeda Valley. And in 2011 they secured title to about 50,000 acres, later expanded to 84,000 acres, of the Hadza’s ancestral lands, giving them the legal right to rebuff encroachers. The rights also brought responsibilities, and the UCRT then helped the Hadza, in consort with their pastoralist neighbors, to draw up land-use plans required by the Tanzanian government as a condition of title, zoning the territories for farms, housing, pastures, meeting grounds, cattle enclosures, water collection, and hunting grounds and setting aside some lands for nature.

A Hadza scout tracks illegal cattle grazing.
A Hadza scout tracks illegal cattle grazing. Roshni Lodhia / Carbon Tanzania/Photo Courtesy Grist

The UCRT today takes in money from other donors, including The Nature Conservancy, and has achieved land rights on more than 1.5 million acres of pastures and forests for around a hundred local communities across Tanzania.

Along the way, the UCRT’s work attracted a young British volunteer, Jo Anderson, who proposed helping the Hadza earn money from their newly acquired land rights by protecting the forests from invaders and selling the resulting carbon credits in the UN-backed market known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries or REDD+.

In partnership with the UCRT and the Hadza representatives it had cultivated, Anderson, with colleague Marc Baker, set up Carbon Tanzania and started to sell carbon credits from the Hadza’s titled land in 2013. The initial project employed 20 youth as scouts who gathered data on their forests and policed incursions. Many of the offsets were purchased by travel companies, including Africa-based ecotourism outfits looking to offset the emissions produced by their customers. In the first seven years, independent auditors estimated that the project captured an average of 22,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and channeled $490,000 in revenues from carbon-credit sales to communities.

In 2016, the UCRT succeeded in increasing the titled area to 590,000 acres of forest and pasture, divided between the Hadza and their sometimes-rivals for land, the pastoralist Datoga people. In December that year, the country’s then minister of lands, William Lukuvi, traveled to Hadza country to issue the titles in person, a move widely seen as signaling that the government now saw the Hadza as a valuable and treasured part of the nation.

This became the basis for an expanded 273,000-acre Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD+ Project, involving nine other communities and stretching from the Yaeda Valley north, beyond Lake Eyasi to the edge of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, part of the Serengeti savanna ecosystem. It now employs 57 people, mostly scouts trained in forest protection, wildlife monitoring, and using smartphones for mapping. Anderson says it should prevent the felling of more than 170,000 trees annually, resulting in some 177,000 tons of avoided emissions for sale as carbon credits. The main buyer of the credits in the expanded project is MyClimate, a German offset company.

Demonstrating the environmental gains that justify the sale of the carbon credits has been a challenge, says Anderson. It involves assessing both changes in the carbon in the forests and what would have happened without the project. “Measuring the carbon is easy,” he says. “The hard bit is modeling the counterfactual baseline, and demonstrating that deforesters did not just go somewhere else, with no overall carbon benefit.”

Two Hadza scouts joined by two elders on patrol.
Two Hadza scouts joined by two elders on patrol. Roshni Lodhia / Carbon Tanzania/Photo Grist

At least 60 percent of the revenues from credit sales go directly to the communities, with the remainder going for project monitoring and overhead. In the Hadza case, their money arrives into village bank accounts and via mobile-phone money transfers to the scouts. In March this year, Anderson handed over to the 12 villages involved in the expanded project area a down payment of $90,000 on an anticipated annual payment of $450,000.

The communities meet twice each year to decide how to spend the money, says Hadza project manager Isack Bryson, a local villager who gained a biology degree before returning to work for Carbon Tanzania. Priorities for the Hadza, he says, include paying for school fees and medical care, sending new scouts for conservation training, buying maize meal to supplement their hunter-gatherer diets, and running village administration. There are building projects too, including supplying sanitation and electricity for local schools.

Datoga cattle herders have used the money for water troughs and dams to supply their animals, says their project manager German Sedoyeka from Qangdend village.

Whether the payments continue as planned depends, of course, on the village scouts and their ability to police the land and stem deforestation. They cheerfully accept the role. “My job is to ensure forests and wildlife are secured and safe, and stop illegal migrants to the forest area. I report to the village executive officer for fines and evictions,” says Shija. But he in turn relies on the eyes and ears of villagers and hunters out in the forests. “The community inform me of any forest damage. They perceive me a very important person,” he says with some pride.

The scouts say they have seen the benefits for wildlife since the original carbon project began. “The abundance of wild species such as giraffes, zebra, elephants, and cheetahs, has been progressively increasing,” says Moshi. Academics agree. A detailed four-year study of the Yaeda Valley, carried out by Tanzanian and American researchers and published in 2019, found, in particular, rising numbers of giraffes and other browsers of woody vegetation.

As well as benefiting local biodiversity, the growing number of antelopes and other bush meat species helps maintain and revive Hadza hunting traditions. “Hunting is greater than a few years ago,” says Moshi. Does he ever hunt while out on his conservation patrols? “No, I never hunt during our official days on patrol,” Moshi insists. Preventing poaching by outsiders is, after all, one of his main tasks. “But when I am not doing my official job, you can see me going to hunt, because it is my tradition. I very like.”


The outside world continues to encroach. Tourists increasingly drive south from Ngorongoro, which has an estimated 750,000 visitors annually, to see the colorful tribe they have read about. Some anthropologists have questioned whether these visits are turning the communities they visit into demeaning exhibits. But a more optimistic scenario holds that, with secure land rights and income from selling carbon credits, the Hadza and their neighbors will be more in charge of events. “Tourism offers opportunities for community benefits,” Bryson says.

The Yaeda Valley plain.
The Yaeda Valley plain. Roshni Lodhia / Carbon Tanzania/Photo Courtesy Grist

However it plays out, the conservation going on in the Yaeda and Eyasi valleys is very different from traditional methods built around banishing pastoralists and other communities or severely curtailing their means of living off the land. Here local people are the custodians of their land and its wildlife, rather than being seen as a threat.

Anderson says Carbon Tanzania’s methods can expand the agenda of conservation beyond national parks and biodiversity hotspots. He remembers that “as a young naturalist traveling in Tanzania, I saw massive areas of bush outside areas deemed worthy of conservation. Mostly they were community-run forests amid the farms and pastures — vital to local communities but undervalued by outsiders.”

Beside the Yaeda Valley, Carbon Tanzania runs carbon-offsetting projects based on community conservation in Tanzania’s Makame grasslands and Ntakata Mountains. Now it is eyeing another neglected area of bush in the country’s remote southern borderland, between the Nyerere National Park and Mozambique’s giant Niassa Nature Reserve. Together, the two protected areas cover more than 17 million acres, but between them there is a gap of more than 5 million acres of unprotected woodlands occupied by people.

Back in the Yaeda Valley, nobody can be sure how the new area inaugurated this year will work out. “Yes, we are twitchy right now about whether it will deliver the carbon gains we hope for,” admits Anderson. “But after one year, it looks good.” Source Grist

Amir Abdollahian made the remarks in a phone call with Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Kenya Raychelle Omamo.

Referring to the progress in the process of holding a joint commission of the two countries, he stressed the importance of relations with Africa, especially Kenya.

He stressed the importance of cooperation between the two countries in regional and international bodies, noting that there is great potential for expanding relations in all fields

He also stressed the need for creating synergy between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kenya on some common threats in the international arena, such as terrorism and piracy.

He stressed the importance of cooperation between the two countries in regional and international bodies, noting that there is great potential for expanding relations in all fields, including trade and the private sector between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Omamo emphasized the important position of Iran, called for the developing relations between the two countries and expressed hope that the holding of the joint economic commission would develop Tehran-Nairobi relations.

She emphasized developing cooperation between the two sides in regional and international bodies is emphasized as much as possible.

The two sides reviewed the latest developments in the negotiations for the lifting sanctions and the issue of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency. APO

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