East Africa

East Africa

Details: East Africa; 15 March 2021; 1087

IEA News Correspondent

Veteran Journalist Jennifer Itumbi has been found dead. This is just three days after she was reported missing. Kenya's DCI boss Fatuma Hadi said that Jennifer's body was found in Ngong Forest.

She said that preliminary probe showed she was strangled. Jennifer is a former Bureau Chief for Kenya News Agency(KNA) at Machakos. Her husband Joseph Komu said he dropped her at her place of work and was surprised when he found her handbag and her phone in their car later.

“I picked the car at around 11am and went to the garage, where I discovered my wife’s handbag and her phone. After the car was fixed, I drove to her office to drop the items but was shocked when her colleagues told me she had not been seen that day,” said Komu.

However, security footage retrieved from NLC's offices where she worked showed that she indeed reported to her place of work, 4th Floor ACK Annex building opposite Ardhi House.

Details: East Africa; 15 March 2021; 1061

IMPRESSED: Kilifi North MP Owen Baya addresses journalists in his office on August 22 Image: ELIAS YAA

In Summary

The deal was reached in secrecy and without public participation.
The agreement puts a strategic national asset at risk.

The government and any person who wants to develop can borrow. You cannot say that you will develop and become rich without borrowing.

It is good to borrow to develop yourself.

Government releases it assets to sovereign bonds. The government will do that and Kenya Ports Authority is a government asset.

But the problem is, there is borrowing and there is irresponsible borrowing. And the second thing is ,how well is the money that comes from the borrowing utilised?

Then the third aspect is whether the venture you are borrowing for is profitable or are you putting the asset at risk?

The Coast people are concerned because of three things. The money that has been borrowed we saw how it was used; the SGR project was exaggerated.

What the money was borrowed for is not making profit, so it is putting the asset at risk. This is a public asset – a strategic asset for the people of the Coast.

So they have put something that is a strategic asset of the Coast at risk. It is not just going to be a danger to the country but also to the people of the Coast and that is why the people of Coast are unhappy about it, because they were not involved in making the decision to borrow using that asset.

Even they ignored the principle of public participation in matters of borrowing. So people of the Coast are reading about it in the papers, that the asset was used for borrowing and nobody has come out to explain whether it is true or not.

We are asking why the secrecy if it was done in good faith? Or there was a deliberate attempt to sacrifice an asset at the Coast for the purposes of benefitting other people because the money was not properly used?

We know what happened to the Standard Gauge Railway project. The project was exaggerated. That is our concern as the people of the Coast.

We will hold this government responsible in case anything goes wrong. By Owen Baya, The Star

Details: East Africa; 15 March 2021; 1126

Photo Freethink

Crop-eating locust swarms are being turned into sustainable feed and fertilizer by Kenyan farmers, with the help of a startup called The Bug Picture.

One of the worst locust invasions in 70 years descended on East Africa in December 2019 and has come back in dramatic waves. Climate change and unusual weather patterns created ideal weather for the locust swarms. Now, clouds of insects are booming as warmer seas bring about heavy rains that wake the dormant eggs and create stronger, more frequent cyclones to disperse the insects.

"They destroy all the crops when they get into the farms. Sometimes they are so many, you cannot tell them apart, which are crops and which are locusts," said farmer Joseph Mejia, reports the World Economic Forum.

The Bug Picture, a local startup, pays Mejia and other farmers in the region to collect the locusts and grind them into a powder. Before the locust invasion, The Bug Picture launched operations in Rwanda and Kenya to support their core for-profit business: farming black soldier fly larvae as a sustainable, locally produced protein source for animal feed.

"They are incredible insects that consume any and all organic waste, which means that we are addressing feeding the future (humans and animals), while contributing to organic waste management challenges (and associated greenhouse gas emissions) in East Africa," Laura Stanford, founder of The Bug Picture said in an email.

Harvest begins at night when the locusts are sleeping on shrubs and can't move. They collect, crush and dry the locusts. Then they grind them into a powder, for which The Bug Picture pays 50 Kenyan shillings ($.46) per kilogram. In the first two weeks of February, they collected 1.3 tons of locusts.

"The inspiration for the project came from Pakistan where a similar project was run with great success. And then watching videos of affected communities in northern Kenya who were in absolute despair watching their livelihoods being ripped away, with no call to action, no way for them to contribute to the response," said Stanford.

Desert locusts are widely regarded as the world's most destructive insect. When their numbers reach a critical mass, the locusts become crowded and form swarms. They go from a relatively innocuous solitary period to a more sociable phase, reports BBC Future.

The population size snowballs from there — multiplying 20 times in three months. The locust swarms can be as thick as 80 million locusts per square meter. A swarm that size can consume as much food as 35,000 people per day.

In other efforts to combat the locust invasion, NASA is providing satellite data to East Africa countries to help them predict when and where the next locust swarms will hatch. And researchers recently found the hormone that triggers the fast-paced swarms, hoping this new information will help them stop the swarming behavior before it begins.

The Bug Picture turns the threat into an asset. They offer farmers an additional financial incentive to kill and collect the locust swarms. They are simultaneously helping combat the pest problem while earning money and creating useful protein powder for livestock feed or fertilizer. Their work targets only small areas, less than 5 hectares, that are not suitable for spraying.

Stanford says that the locust meal is selling for $0.8 per kilogram, which is below the market level based on the protein, amino acid, and vitamin content.

"We are trying to create hope in a hopeless situation and help these communities alter their perspective to see these insects as a seasonal crop that can be harvested and sold for money," said Laura Stanford, founder of The Bug Picture.

"The communities have been very interested and easily mobilized for involvement in the project which has been a wonderful thing to witness. I think we underestimate the human desire to make a difference for ourselves and our neighbors," she said. - Teresa Carey, Freethink

Details: East Africa; 15 March 2021; 1153

15 soldiers have reportedly been killed following an ambush launched on a military convoy by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) faction of Boko Haram.

AFP reported that military sources said the incident occurred near Gudumbali in the Lake Chad region on Thursday March 11. It was also alleged that 13 government fighters, including 10 troops were wounded in the ambush.

A source said;

“We lost 15 soldiers and four civilian JTF (militia) in the terrorists’ ambush in the forest near Gudumbali.”

Another military source who gave the same toll, said the 10-vehicle convoy was on its way to Gudumbali from the town of Kukawa in Borno for a military operation against the insurgents when it came under fire.

SITE jihadist monitoring agency also reported that on Saturday March 13, ISWAP issued a statement claiming responsibility for the ambush. Gist

Details: East Africa; 13 March 2021; 1134

The Somali and Kenyan governments fear a resurgence by al-Shabaab as a result of the U.S. withdrawing its forces from Somalia. The exit was completed on January 15 in line with the deadline ordered by former President Donald Trump and involved about 600-800 U.S. soldiers under U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). They had been supporting African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops and training the Somali National Army (SNA) to battle al-Shabaab (East Africa, October 19, 2020).

AFRICOM’s mission in Somalia had more soldiers than any other UN mission in Africa. Its deployment occurred soon after Trump took office and comprised part of the 7,000 U.S. soldiers in Africa. They are deployed in more than ten other African countries ranging from Botswana to Niger, but especially in countries experiencing Islamist militancy (Garowe Online, October, 2020).

In Somalia, U.S. troops’ military actions, including drone strikes, had aided in disrupting the activities of al-Shabaab and a growing Islamic State (IS) faction in Galgala Mountains in Bari region in the northern Somali state of Puntland. In December, for example, the U.S. military said it carried out two airstrikes in an al-Shabaab compound of Qunyo Barrow killing three militants. Six buildings were also destroyed in the strike (africom.mil, January 2).

In addition, in Southern Somalia, al-Shabaab has lost some of its key leaders and fighters in the air strikes. One of the latest leaders to be killed in such an airstrike was Abdulkadir Osman Yarow a.k.a Abdulkadir Commandos, who was killed in near Saakow in the Middle Juba region of southern Somalia (Militant Leadership Monitor, October 6, 2020). In 2020 alone, AFRICOM carried out over 50 airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia (Nation, September 10, 2020).

Somalia’s Concerns About the U.S. Withdrawal

Al-Shabaab remains a lethal militant force, despite the disruptions by AMISOM and U.S. air strikes. Its ability to carry out deadly attacks was demonstrated on January 31, when the group killed at least five people, including a former Somali army commander and two civilians, in an attack on a hotel in Mogadishu.

The hotel, which is located near the main airport in Mogadishu, is frequented by Somali government officials, members of the security forces, and community leaders. The militants exploded a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) at the front entrance of the hotel before armed fighters stormed in. It became the deadliest attack in the weeks since the United States removed its forces from Somalia (Africanews, February 1).

The U.S. withdrawal may also embolden al-Shabaab, which has remained resilient since launching its insurgency in 2006. The Somali government fears that without the U.S. troops’ aerial surveillance and drone bombardments, AMISOM will be less effective. With Somalia and its neighbors remaining at high risk of attack by the militant group, government officials in both Somalia and Kenya appealed to the U.S to reconsider the decision to remove the troops while Somalia remains unstable (The East Africa, October 19, 2020)

Stressing the U.S. as Somalia’s key ally in the fight against al-Shabaab, President Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed (a.k.a. Farmajo), for example, highlighted that U.S. troops had been instrumental in securing the Horn of Africa after they aided in the removal of al-Shabaab from several strategic locations in country. Al-Shabaab was forced out of the capital Mogadishu in 2011 and strategic port city of Kismayo in 2012, for example. Farmajo indicated that Somalia still needs continued U.S. military and capacity-building support for Somali troops (Garowe Online, October, 2020; FTLSomalia, October 17, 2020).

Kenya’s Concerns about the U.S. Withdrawal

Kenya is also concerned about the U.S. withdrawal. Kenyan Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Macharia Kamau warned the U.S. troop withdrawal would create a space that would aid the resurgence of al-Shabaab and cautioned that the withdrawal would be a costly mistake. His concern was that the gains made against the militant group over the past several years could be lost, especially with al-Shabaab gaining ground in regions where it had been retreating (Garowe Online, October, 2020).

Meanwhile, the U.S. troops are now likely to be stationed in other countries in Africa, such as Kenya itself and Djibouti, where the United States maintains a permanent military base. A Pentagon statement explaining the changes in Somalia indicated that the U.S. was not disengaging from Somalia. Instead, it would retain the capability to conduct targeted counter-terrorism operations and collect early warning indicators on threats to the United States from bases outside Somalia (AfricaNews, December 5, 2020).

The U.S military in Kenya trains security forces and helps in the fight against al-Shabaab. Camp Simba and Manda Bay airfield, which are located in the coastal county of Lamu, Kenya, are used for such activities and host both U.S. troops and the Kenya Defense Forces. On January 5, 2020, al-Shabaab raided the camp, killing three Americans, including a U.S. service member and two Department of Defense pilot contractors, when al-Shabaab’s fighters struck a U.S. surveillance plane with rocked propelled grenades. They also destroyed a fuel storage area, making a nearby airstrip unusable (KTNnews, January 15, 2020; The East African, January 22, 2020).

Conclusion

Although U.S. troops have withdrawn from Somalia, the United States has not disengaged from Somalia. That fact provides sufficient confidence to Somalia and Kenya. The much-needed support to the African troops and Somali army through surveillance and airstrikes against al-Shabaab will likely continue under the Biden administration. By: Sunguta West, The Jamestown Foundation