Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB) managing director Dr. Aloyce Nzuki
Newly appointed Tanzania ambassador to Egypt Mohammed Hamza has pledged to promote the country’s tourism potential in the Middle East market.
The promise was made recently during his courtesy call on Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB) managing director Dr. Aloyce Nzuki in Dar es Salaam, where he also promised to attract Egyptian businesspeople to invest in the local tourism industry and urge Egypt Air to increase flight frequencies to the country.
Hamza called on TTB to collaborate effectively with the embassy in organizing educational trips for Egyptian tour operators, investors and journalists to Tanzania in order to tap more into the Middle East market.
The ambassador noted that it was now high time Tanzania vigorously marketed itself in the Middle East as it was a market targeted by many other tourisism promotion bodies worldwide.
Regarding cultural and historical products, Hamza concurred with Nzuki’s request for assistance in getting some experts from Egypt who can help and impart knowledge on how to conserve and restore ancient ruins and historical sites, including those in Bagamoyo, Kilwa and Zanzibar, because Egypt was famous for its historical sites and monuments.
For his part, Nzuki requested the ambassador to arrange for the translation of the TTB website into Arabic and secure opportunities for TTB staff and others from the private sector to learn the Arabic language in order to effectively tap into the Mideast market.
Zanzibar President Dr Ali Mohamed Shein. (Photo by Ramadhani Othman)
The Zanzibar government has purchased a total of 4,466 tonnes of cloves worth 66.9bn/- through the Zanzibar State Trading Company since last July.
This was revealed by Minister for Trade, Industry and Marketing Nassor Ahmed Mazrui during his talks with Zanzibar President Dr Ali Mohamed Shein at the State House where he had gone to brief the president.
The minister led an entourage from his ministry in order to brief the president in a series of meetings in which the president has been receiving ministerial performance reports for the fiscal year 2011/2012.
The entourage told the president that since the onset of the clove harvesting season, the government had already sold a total of 1,500 tonnes of cloves worth USD 17.9 million, equal to 27.6bn/-, this month.
Furthermore, the minister explained that several measures had been taken in order improve clove marketing strategies, including holding talks with traders on new regulations and procedures of conducting business.
It was revealed that food prices were now being set after consultation between the government and the traders, which had made the prices a bit more manageable.
The minister further explained that the price of sugar in Zanzibar, currently standing at between 1,900/- and 2,000/-, was better compared to other countries in East Africa.
The ministry also informed the president that it had already finalized research geared to turning Zanzibar into a Special Economic Zone in the East African Community.
Dr Shein, for his part, commended the ministry for its impressive performance, saying clove production was on the increase because of the various initiatives being taken by the government.
He challenged the ministry to device methods of helping spice farmers to improve production while looking for markets for their products.
Dr Shein also met with the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training under its minister, Ramadhani Abdalla Shaaban, for the same purpose.
The president said the Zanzibar government was working hard to improve and strengthen the education sector, including improving the quality of education being offered by the State University of Zanzibar (SUZA).
Reading the ministry’s report, Shaaban explained that efforts were being made to rehabilitate Fidel Castro and Utaani secondary schools, saying the process would be completed in July, this year.
He also said that similar efforts were being made on Forodhani and Tumekuja secondary schools.
The minister also explained that efforts to obtain contractors for five secondary schools in Kiembesamaki, Mpendae, Kwamtipura and Kibuteni locations were in advanced stage.
NAIROBI, Jan 27 (Reuters) – The Kenyan shilling slipped against the dollar on Friday as importers snapped up dollars to meet their end-month obligations, but traders said they expected the shilling to firm in coming days aided by tight liquidity in the market.
Resigned Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta
The market shrugged off the resignation of Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta late on Thursday following his indictment earlier this week for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC), traders said.
At 0730 GMT, leading commercial banks quoted the shilling at 85.20/40 against the dollar, weaker than Thursday’s close of 84.80/85.00.
“We’ve seen some demand for dollars from clients meeting their end-month demand,” said Bhavin Chandaria, a trader at Imperial Bank.
“There was no change after the finance minister resigned because the market had already factored it in. At the moment liquidity is tight and we might see the shilling firm towards 84.”
Traders said they expected the shilling to trade in the 84.50-85.50 range during Friday’s session.
The shilling has been steady this year aided by the central bank’s consistent mopping up liquidity through repurchase agreements and injecting dollars to commercial banks to prevent a repeat of last year’s scenario where it was widely blamed for letting the shilling collapse.
Traders said they expected the central bank to hold its key lending rate at 18 percent at a rate setting meeting on Wednesday, as it did at its previous meeting after an aggressive series of rate increases late last year.
The weighted average interbank lending rate rose to 22.4 percent on Thursday, from 21.1 percent the previous day as banks competed for the few shillings in the market.
“Tight liquidity has killed dollar demand and that will help the shilling gain some ground next,” said a trader at a commercial bank.
The Nation was greeted on Thursday 26th January, 2012 with the sad news that some nursing students at Mampong in the Ashanti Region had been attacked at their hostel on Wednesday 25 January, 2012. Again, we are told that not only were they robbed, but raped and battered as well.
As NUGS condemns the act and calls for the immediate arrest of the perpetrators of this dastardly act, a careful examination of the concerns raised by the nursing students indicate that if only some persons/institution(s) had performed their duties well, this unfortunate incident could have been averted.
The students explained that the main door that leads to the hostel is not locked in the evenings to allow them use the washrooms which are located outside the premises, and a host of other problems that made it very simple for the robbers to gain access into the hostel. If only the accreditation board had done its job well, we could have avoided this calamity.
There have been several calls by well-meaning persons to strengthen institutions in the country; nevertheless these calls seem to have fallen on rocks. We are seemingly nearing a critical juncture where the relevance of the institutions in the country is being annihilated, albeit NUGS believes the time has come for our state institutions to wake up and take responsibility.
Should the precursor for acting responsibly always be a sad incident like the loss we have just witnessed? The humiliation suffered by these students cannot be quantified, only God knows what they may be going through. These young ladies will probably have to live with this trauma their entire lives; whereas the policy makers live in well protected facilities and take their wards to the best schools available. But we cannot continue to toy with people’s lives as if it did not matter what the outcome may be.
NUGS has on countless occasions cautioned the National Accreditation Board (NAB) concerning its modus operandi for granting institutions accreditation. NUGS cannot fathom what criteria NAB employs to award accreditation to some institutions to provide tertiary education. People’s homes are being converted into universities, with virtually no facilities to support that enterprise. The complaints reaching the Union as a result of lack of basic facilities on most campuses, particularly the private ones are becoming unbearable.
We cannot continue like this and expect different results. NAB has the express mandate to accredit institutions to run and they must exercise this mandate bearing in mind that they are exposing people in harm’s way when they accredit just any facility as a tertiary institution. It’s sad to see someone’s two bedroom house turned into a university where the basic facilities that should necessarily be present in a university are practically absent.
NAB must wake and be responsible! It is as simple as that. They must make sure they are awarding accreditation to only institutions that possess at least the necessary facilities like a decent accommodation facility for students, well equipped libraries, well ventilated lecture halls with excellent teaching aids, etc.
NAB must be made to appreciate the reason for their service, accreditation must only be given to institutions with adequate lodging facilities and enforced security. Let’s together ensure that this disaster today is not allowed to happen again. To our dear sisters, NUGS wishes you well.
NAB should not wait till blood is shed unnecessarily before doing the right thing.
Henceforth, men who accompany their wives to the antenatal clinic for four consecutive times in 2012 will qualify for an award, under a new scheme instituted by the Atiwa District Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
The award scheme, the details of which were not disclosed is part of efforts to reduce maternal deaths in the district.
Mr. Tei Djangmah, the District Director of the GHS who announced this at the 2011 Performance Peview Conference of the district on Wednesday, said the directorate had also instituted a GH¢2,000 reward for any member of the public who reports a guinea worn infection case in the district.
He charged health personnel in the district to ensure that the district does not record any maternal death this year and the years ahead.
Mr. Djangmah said between 2008 and 2010 it recorded three, which he described as unacceptable. ‘I, therefore, charge you t make sure that no pregnant mother or child dies in our district. Let us go back to our former state of zero percent maternal death,’ he said.
The Ga Traditional Council has expressed concern over the unnecessary political interferences in the activities of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).
“We are not happy with the frequent political interference and the political gimmicks that the AMA’s work is made to suffer,” the Council said.
They therefore demanded that the assembly be allowed to exercise its mandate.
At a news conference addressed on its behalf in Accra yesterday, by the Queen mother of the Ga State, Naa Dedei Omadru II, the Council said the demolition exercise embarked upon by the AMA with the aim of beautifying and raising the standard of sanitation in the capital city, were in the right direction and should not be halted to suit anyone’s parochial interest.
The Council called on politicians to allow the AMA Chief Executive, Mr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, to execute his programmes and activities to enable the capital city to meet the standard of other cities around the world. The Council said its support for the AMA boss was non-partisan and above political leanings, adding “it is about the survival of our city, it is about showing the world that 50 years on, we have moved up, not down”.
It advised politicians to avoid playing political gimmicks with the work of the AMA and support the assembly in its efforts towards the betterment of the capital city. The Council expressed support for the developmental agenda of government and advised that the Mayor be allowed to do his work without undue interferences. “The effort of the Accra Mayor is for the future improvement and development of Accra. If we allow politicians to interfere in his work, it will not get us anywhere,” it stated.
The Council referred to the recent demolition exercise embarked upon by the AMA at Odawna, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and said it did not warrant the castigations Mr. Vanderpuije received from sections of the public because the action was in the supreme interest of the people themselves.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan challenged the violent Islamist Boko Haram sect on Thursday to identify themselves and state clearly their demands as a basis for talks, while acknowledging that military confrontation alone will not end their insurgency.
In an interview with Reuters at the presidential villa in the capital Abuja, Jonathan said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.
The sect killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks in Africa’s top oil producer, Human Rights Watch said this week.
Coordinated attacks in the northern city of Kano killed 186 people on Friday in its most deadly strike to date, prompting the president to visit surviving victims.
“If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties … then there will be a basis for dialogue,” said Jonathan.
“We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they don’t identify themselves, who will you dialogue with?”
Jonathan, who won an election last year that observers said was Nigeria’s cleanest since the end of military rule in 1999, has been criticised for dealing with the insurgency in the north using purely military means.
But in this interview he pledged to bring development to remote, semi-arid corners of the country where high youth unemployment has provided easy recruits for extremists.
“Military confrontation alone will not eliminate terror attacks,” he said, adding that an “enabling environment for young people to find jobs” was also needed.
“Our commitment is to make sure our irrigation programmes are all revitalised so most of these young people are engaged in productive agriculture and … will not be free for them to recruit,” Jonathan said in an ornate diplomatic meeting room adorned with pictures of Nigeria’s heads of state since independence in 1960.
“WITHOUT A FACE”
As well as coming under fire for his handling of the crisis in the north, Jonathan suffered a week of vitriolic anti-government protests this month when he tried to scrap fuel subsidies, part of efforts to cut the fiscal costs, but was forced to partly reinstate it.
That prompted the oil ministry to announce a raft of measures aimed at defusing public anger about the extent of corruption and mismanagement in the sector, including setting up a new committee to hurry along the stalled Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
Jonathan said he was confident that a final version of the PIB, which aims to completely overhaul the country’s shambolic oil industry, would be put before the national assembly by the end of February.
Wearing a dark grey kaftan and his trademark fedora hat, the former zoology lecturer and governor of Bayelsa state in the oil rich Niger Delta said the Boko Haram crisis would be much harder to resolve than the southeastern Delta conflict, which was largely defused in 2009 under an amnesty he helped broker.
That was because the Islamist militants do not have a clear public figurehead or negotiable aims, he said.
“If anybody invited Osama bin Laden (to talks), he wouldn’t have appeared … Boko Haram, if you invite them, they will not come. They operate without a face, they operate without a clear identity, so it is difficult to interface with such a group.”
“That is the greatest difference between Boko Haram … and the Niger Delta issue,” he said, flanked by a larger-than-life portrait and Nigeria flags.
Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is sinful”, was formed in 2003 in the remote, northeastern city of Maiduguri. It launched an uprising against the government in 2009 that security forces crushed in days of fighting with the sect that killed around 800 people.
Its leader Mohammed Yusuf was captured and died in police custody during those battles, triggering vows of revenge from other members of the sect which they now seem to be honouring in attacks on security forces and authority figures.
The group’s members have said they want to impose Sharia law across Nigeria, although Jonathan doubted they had clear aims. “There is no clear thing to say: this is what we want,” he said.
LINKS TO AL QAEDA
Security experts say there is growing evidence the group, or some members within it, have received training and support from other jihadist groups such as al Qaeda’s north African wing.
Jonathan refused to be drawn on specific details on this.
“There is a lot of evidence there is linkages … no doubt about that. Meetings are being held in north Africa, the movement of people in these places have been monitored and noticed. The level of involvement and probably in terms of funding and equipment, I do not know,” he said.
The increasingly violence in the north, including a spate of high profile attacks on Christians, has led commentators like Nigerian author Wole Soyenka to predict a fresh civil war, 40 years after the secessionist Biafra conflict killed more than 1 million people and caused mass starvation.
“There is no way Nigeria will go into civil war. These are different situations,” Jonathan said, adding that violence in modern day Nigeria was conducted by “pressure groups” using it to intimidate and threaten rather than full blown armies.
Jonathan sacked his chief of police and six other officers on Friday because of a string of defeats against Boko Haram.
Security forces have come under fire for failing to protect civilians in the north and elsewhere.
Some question whether civilian Jonathan, who as vice president first took power in May 2010 when his predecessor Umaru Yar’Adua died, can lead Nigeria out of this crisis.
“They are trying,” Jonathan said, seeming relaxed throughout the interview. “Terrorism is new in Nigeria, and since its new, the security services have to change their methods. You cannot change methods overnight. But we will do more.”
Many Nigerians believe Boko Haram has become a cover for northern politicians disgruntled at the election of a Christian southerner to try to destabilise his government.
They note that Boko Haram stepped up its bombing campaign hours after he was sworn in on May 30.
He was northerner Yar’Adua’s running mate in a shambolic election in 2007, but his campaign to run himself after Yar’Adua’s death was controversial because of an informal pact within the ruling PDP party that the presidency should rotate between the north and the south.
Jonathan said there may be some northern politicians using Boko Haram militants for intimidation. He reiterated that there were sympathisers with the group at all levels of government.
“I will not rule out that maybe some politicians get close to some members of Boko Haram, but I will not say that Boko Haram is a political group trying to undo Goodluck Jonathan,” he said. “I cannot say it’s because a southerner and a Christian is president that the Boko Haram saga comes up.”
A week of protests against a hike in government subsidised fuel prices this month revealed massive public anger at endemic corruption, which has siphoned billions of dollars of the country’s oil riches.
Jonathan said reports of corruption in the oil ministry and elsewhere were being investigated but that he could not sack anyone in the ministry until he sees proof of misconduct.
“Nigerians are angry about certain things government has not been able to conclude very quickly … You cannot sentence a person without trial,” he said.
He said efforts were being made to hurry the PIB.
“I believe that before the end of February, I’m very hopeful, we’ll submit it to the national assembly … But of course … The president has no powers over the national assembly.”
Ivory Coast maintained their 100 percent record at the 2012 African Cup of Nations with a 2-0 win over Burkina Faso on Thursday.
The win guarantees Ivory Coast a berth in the quarter-finals in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, while Burkina Faso have been eliminated from the tournament after failing to secure a point from their opening two Group B matches.
Salomon Kalou scored the first goal for the Ivorians with a left-footed shot after a cross from Didier Drogba that was tipped forward by Yaya Toure on 16 minutes.
Chelsea striker Drogba beat his man on the right flanks and sent a dangerous ball into the area, which was touched on by Toure before Kalou rifled it home on the volley.
Burkina Faso had their chances to equalise, including striking the crossbar in the second half, but their good work amounted to nought when Bakary Kone’s attempted clearance in the 82nd minute went horribly wrong and ended up in the back of his own net.
Earlier, Angola maintained their unbeaten record in Group B after playing out a 2-2 draw with Sudan in Malabo.
Manucho twice gave Angola the lead, only for Mohamed Bashir to equalise on both occasions to keep Sudan’s slim knockout stage hopes alive.
The match was just starting to settle when Sudan defender Najm Eldin Abdullah took a heavy touch at the back and allowed Manucho to snatch the ball and drive forward before lashing a well-placed strike into the bottom left corner after five minutes.
Sudan recovered from the setback well, however, and were rewarded through a goal in the 32nd minute.
Mudathir El Tahir took advantage of acres of space down the right wing to drive forward and whip an excellent cross into the box, where Bashir shrugged off the challenge of two defenders to glance a header into the far corner.
The second half started in the same vein as the first period, with Angola grabbing another early goal.
Porto striker Djalma Campos showed impressive trickery to cut inside from the left, only to be fouled by the trailing leg of Hamad Nizar, and Manucho stepped up to dispatch the resulting penalty.
Sudan were not to be denied though, and a error from Angola defender Jose Vunguidica gifted possession to Bashir, who lashed home a half-volley from 10 yards out.
Ivory Coast lead Group B with six points, ahead of Angola (4), Sudan (1) and Burkina Faso (0).
Rapper Dmx was taken to hospital on Wednesday during a bad bout of food poisoning.
The hip-hop star tells TMZ.com he began feeling unwell after eating some “bad shrimp” shortly before boarding a plane from Miami, Florida to Charlotte, North Carolina.
He began vomiting during the flight and was immediately taken by limousine to Gaston Memorial Hospital in Charlotte upon landing.
DMX spent four hours receiving treatment in the emergency room before he was discharged and sent home to recover.
Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis.
The additional flexibility is likely to raise fears that Twitter’s commitment to free speech may be weakening.
It comes as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money.
But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or “tweets”, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a maze of different laws around the world.
Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweets containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.
Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed.
