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Church Leaders accuse Government of mistreatment of Mau Evictees

Alphonce Oladipoh — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

The government has once again come under strong critism over its handling of the Mau forest evictions.

In a statement, the South Rift Church leaders are now blaming the Mau Taskforce for the humanitarian crisis being experienced in the evictions of South Western Mau.

Bishop Paul Leleito, who is a member of the taskforce, accused the taskforce of failing to accomplish its purpose which was the provision of basic necessities to the evictees.

“Of special reference to this case is taskforce objective Number b where we were to provide for the relocation of the people currently residing in the forest. The government is creating this unnecessary crisis and is rendering people homeless and without food,” Bishop Leleito said.

The clergy laughed off at the governments offer of 38 billion for the restoration of the Mau, terming it as a misuse of public funds.

“Why is the government feeding the very same people it evicted? This does not portray good stewardship of government resources and I even wonder if the people will be allowed back into the forest to harvest their food,”

On the Draft constitution, the South Rift Church leaders said it did not address the land issue adequately, and that the country is now courting a potentially explosive problem in the future noting that the June 2005 evictions in Maasai Mau caused the destruction of property worth more than Sh300 million yet the evictees were yet to be compensated.

“Seven public schools and three private ones were torched, more than 7,400 registered land owners displaced and their property destroyed and the government has not compensated any of them,” he said.

Earlier the gov’tcarried out phase 1 of the Mau rehabilitation programme which consists of recovery of land which had been parcelled or de-gazetted but never allocated to anyone; consequently the government has been able to recover the Leakey Extension (530 acres of land) and intends to recover LR 25/148 land which is about 1050 acres. In total the land that has been parcelled, de-gazetted but not allocated is about 5000 hectares.

The government is now in the second phase of relocation and rehabilitation (South West Mau where 19,000 hectares of land will be recovered). The third phase will target those who own land in the water tower legally and it will also evict them. However these settlers will either be compensated with money or alternative land.

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Profiling of Mau Forest evictees begins

Alphonce Oladipoh — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 20

Kenya Wildlife Rangers and their forestry counterparts on Friday began to profile the evictees from Mau Forest in an exercise meant to locate their original homes in the ongoing resettlement, despite accusations that the Government is abusing human rights in its efforts to rehabilitate the water tower.

Speaking to members of the press, The chairman of the Mau Complex Secretariat Hassan Noor Hassan said the evictees would be required to give details of their place of birth to trace their ancestral homes which is where they are expected to relocate to, adding that Kenyans should stop accusing the government of being inhumane in its relocation efforts and instead focus on the greater good that the country would get once the plans were fully effected and the restoration plans implemented.

“The profiling process is going to be done by Friday and as soon as it is complete we will be able to identify where every person comes from and be able to support him to reach his destination..

“If anybody is saying that we have not been humanitarian in our eviction plans then they are entitled to their own opinion. We have not moved people using askaris (police) and people moved out voluntarily. They heeded the government’s call when the relocation notice was given by Kenya Forest Service and we did not drag anyone out,” he explained.

It was also revealed that there are currently a total of 34,000 families who are living on about 120,000 hectares of the Mau Forest.

“The other thing we need to ask ourselves is why are we so concerned about the Mau? You need to understand that the revenue that comes from Mau through Maasai Mara and Lake Nakuru alone is about Sh5 billion; hydropower potential of the Mau is over 508 megawatts which represents 41 percent of electricity requirements in this country. Other than that it supports the tea sector in Kericho and Nandi districts where we get a total of Sh15.2 billion per annum,” Hassan noted.

“Aside from that, last year rice farmers earned Sh1 billion as a result of rice farming in Rivers Nyando and Yala swamps whose source of water is also the Mau. This forest feeds Lakes Victoria, Natron, Naivasha, Baringo and Turkana. Without the Mau we are doomed as a country,” he emphasised.

He also explained that the third phase of the Mau rehabilitation efforts would focus on land that was formerly handed over to civilians by government.

“In the third phase we will focus on people who got title deeds and letters of ownership of forest land from government. That is the direction that we will take next to see how Kenyans can be helped to restore their forests and at the same time protect their rights to ownership of property,” he said.

Mau Forest photo: BBC World Service Flickr photos

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Government to act on illegal firearms after isiolo massacre

Alphonce Oladipoh — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Nairobi, Kenya

Just a week after 14 people were mowed down by alleged cattle rustlers in trouble prone Isiolo, the government has announced a new radical plan to rid the country off illegal firearms.

The minister for state in charge of internal security and provincial administration Prof. George Saitoti termed the recent killings in Isiolo as merciless and wont go unpunished.

Addressing the Press in Naivasha, The minister anounced that the government will soon embark on an operation to root out all illegal firearms in the insecurity prone areas of North Rift and Upper Eastern parts of the country in order to improve security in those areas.

Saitoti said the country had experienced proliferation of small and light fire arms due to its porous borders with Somalia and Sudan.

The Minister vowed to bring the perpetrators of the recent Isiolo attacks to justice. He also explained the factors leading to the proliferation of small arms in Kenya,”We are surrounded with countries that have experienced instability in one way or another and this has made it possible for small arms to filter into the country. Policing our vast boarders has also been a challenge due to inadequate security personnel we have,”

The Minister was speaking today, when he officially opened a peace and security meeting for Arid and Semi - Arid areas (ASAL) at a Naïvasha hotel.

The meeting was told that since July this year, there has been over 90 banditry attack in the North Rift and Upper Eastern.

The meeting was attended by cabinet Ministers; Ibrahim Elmi Mohammed (Ministry of Development of Arid and Semi -Arid land) and Yusuf Haji (Defense Ministry) , Assistant Ministers and MPs from the ASAL region, the senior director for Internal Security; Mr . Mutea Iringo, Permanent Secretary, Francis Kimemia, AP Commandant Kinuthia Mbugua and Provincial Administrators from around the community.

Prof. Saitoti said the meeting is a follow -up of an earlier meeting which came up with Naivasha Action Plan 1 which made a number of recommendations, including disarmament.

“This meeting is basically meant to find out the progress meant on the recommendations made after the first meeting” the minister said.

On Policve reforms, the minister said the Government was ready to reform the police force as per the recommendation of the Task force on Police reforms.

“We want the police force to be guided by the principle of accountability where internal checks are enhanced to ensure discipline and external checks also put in place to ensure complaints against the police are addressed” he said.

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Five more indicted in Virginia fraud case

kenyanobserver — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:16:02 +0000

US District Court, Southern District, Charleston, West Virginia. Photo: US District Court, Southern District

Five more people have been indicted at the US District Court, Southern District (Charleston, West Virginia) in an international fraud scheme that siphoned millions of dollars from the auditor’s office in West Virginia some of which ended in bank accounts in Kenya.

Michael Ochenge, 33, Robert Otiso, 36, Paramena Shikanda, 35, Albert Gunga, 30 and Collins Masese, 20 all of Minnesota, were yesterday indicted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern district for the various roles they played in the elaborate scheme and face long sentences if found guilty. One other person, Angella Chegge Kraszeski, has already been indicted for participating in the scheme and is awaiting trial while locked in jail in Virginia.

sources:

West Virginia Metro News

WRAL.com

WOWK CBS 13

Charleston Daily Mail

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Kenya recruits Somali refugees to fight Islamists back home in Somalia

Alphonce Oladipoh — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:15:43 +0000

Sourced from: Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Date: 16 Nov 2009

(Hagadera Refugee Camp, Kenya) For months, 18-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi had dodged the mortar shells that whizz daily through Mogadishu, the war-ravaged capital of Somalia. The one that finally drove him from Somalia tore though his family’s house and ripped a cousin to bits, splattering Ahmed with blood and body parts.

Dodging bullets and bandits, Ahmed fled with his mother across Somalia’s southern border to Hagadera, one of three refugee camps in the deserts of Dadaab, in northeast Kenya. Ahmed obediently fetched firewood and water for his mother but couldn’t find a job. Then one day in early October, he vanished. Friends said a recruiter had lured him into a covert force of Somali refugees that the Kenyan government is training to help Somalia’s internationally backed transitional government fight the extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

In recent weeks hundreds of young men and boys from the Dadaab refugee camps have been secretly recruited for the force, lured with false promises of lavish pay and claims of backing from the United Nations and the United States. By the time the refugees learn their pay will be a fraction of what they were promised, and that they will be hastily trained for frontline combat, their cell phones and identity papers have been confiscated.

The recruitment drive is being organized by Kenyan government officials–who have issued numerous but contradictory denials about their role–as well as exiled Somalis living in Kenya. Many western and regional governments share the goal of routing Al-Shabaab, a group with some links to Al-Qaeda. But in addition to luring recruits through deception, the covert program directly contravenes principles of international law that bar military activity in refugee camps. Such camps are meant to be purely humanitarian spaces where refugees can escape the violence that drove them to flee. And some recruits said children under 15 appear to be among the ranks, which would be a war crime. The covert recruitment drive also targets Kenyans of Somali heritage in marginalized, northeast Kenyan Somali communities such as Dadaab town, located near the refugee camps.

Who is funding the secret force remains a mystery. What is clear is that some of the world’s most vulnerable and traumatized refugees are being lured back to the very conflict they narrowly escaped.

“After all that we went through in Somalia, I never thought that that my son would come to a peaceful country like Kenya only to face the same dangers here,” said Ahmed’s mother, Miryama. (As with all refugees in this article, we have changed her name to protect her from possible reprisal). “This is the same as kidnapping our sons,” said Miryama’s friend Fatima, whose son also joined the force.

What is also clear is that the drive could backfire and broaden the already significant regional and international dimensions of the conflict in Somalia, where 18 years of conflict have killed thousands of civilians, displaced millions of others and left the country stateless and ravaged. Al-Shabaab has already threatened retaliation if Kenya recruits Somalis to fight against it. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab and other Islamist insurgent groups are also recruiting in refugee camps and in other Somali immigrant communities in Kenya.

Al-Shabaab, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, is importing fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, and even young Somali-Americans from Minnesota and Washington State to bolster its forces. Along with other Islamist insurgent groups such as Hisbul Islam, it has trapped the country’s UN- and US-backed Transitional Federal Government into a tiny sliver of Mogadishu. The Transitional Federal Government would probably lose even that scrap of turf within days if it weren’t protected by a UN-sponsored force of African Union peacekeepers called AMISOM, which sometimes fires indiscriminately at opposition-controlled northern Mogadishu, killing civilians, when Al-Shabaab attacks it.

In recent years the US has stepped up involvement in Somalia, using drones and helicopters to conduct targeted killings of alleged terrorists, including a key Al-Qaeda suspect in September. In what it called a reprisal, Al-Shabaab days later staged a suicide bombing at the AMISOM base in Mogadishu, killing 21 people. The Obama administration also has shipped arms to the transitional government’s beleaguered soldiers, obtaining a UN exemption from an international ban on weapons sales to Somalia, despite questions as to how the weapons are being used and evidence that many of them end up on the open market. Ethiopia, Somalia’s most powerful neighbor, carried out a bloody, two-year military intervention in Somalia in a failed effort to entrench the Transitional Federal Government. Its forces withdrew from Somalia in late 2008 but still cross the border.

Kenya has been the victim of Al-Qaeda attacks in the past and its government has become increasingly fearful of Shabaab incursions across its porous northeast border. But as one worried UN official put it to Human Rights Watch, “Recruiting Somali refugees and sending them back to Somalia to fight Al-Shabaab is an open invitation for reprisal.”

Recruiting for the Transitional Federal Government is difficult inside Somalia because its forces are poorly organized and rarely paid. But pickings are plentiful in the sand-swept desolation of the Dadaab refugee camps, which contain the largest single concentration of refugees in the world. Built to house 90,000 refugees in the early 1990s, the camps overflow with more than triple that number. Most are Somalis. More than two-thirds are younger than 35. The overwhelming majority are unemployed.

Children, restless teens, pregnant women, war wounded, the elderly and the mentally impaired spill from houses of mud, tin, and sticks that are ringed by fences of thorn. While many are fleeing indiscriminate bombardments by all sides, as well as drought, forced recruitment and lawlessness, large numbers say they left because of Al-Shabaab.

Bras, along with television, western music, unusual haircuts and Scrabble, are prohibited in many swaths of south-central Somalia that Shabaab has grabbed in the last few years. But those taboos, punishable by jail time and public floggings, are the least of Somalis’ fears. In interviews at Dadaab, one mother said Shabaab forces had snatched her 12-year-old son and nephew from a madrasa and killed her brother when he tried to find them. A wife said Shabaab had murdered her husband because they suspected he supported the Ethiopian military intervention that ended in late 2008. A teenage girl said the group had shot dead an octogenarian grandmother as a transitional government sympathizer after she visited an ailing granddaughter in an AMISOM hospital.

Recruiters for the secret transitional government force capitalize on fears of al-Shabaab, along with many young Somalis’ idealism about rebuilding their country.

“They said the fighting is meant for you to kill the dirt and the mess that is in the country right now, the Al-Shabaab,” said Daud, an 18-year-old refugee who initially jumped at the offer but later changed his mind.

Speaking warily for fear he would be forced back into recruitment, Daud said a recruiter had approached him inside the Dadaab camps and promised him $400 a month–a fortune in his eyes–and said he would be a policeman, not a soldier. An hour later, Daud said, he boarded a private shuttle van that dumped recruits in a remote desert clearing where scores of other enlistees were already waiting. Late that night, the recruits were placed on Kenyan military and National Youth Service trucks headed for a remote government paramilitary training camp outside the eastern coastal city of Mombasa.

En route, Daud and other recruits heard a different story. They would only receive $200 a month, a portly man who identified himself as an exiled Somali general told them, adding that after just three weeks of training they would head to the front lines.

“At that point my wish to go to Mombasa totally disappeared,” Daud said. “The message was totally different from what I first heard.” But since recruiters had confiscated all the conscripts’ cell phones, along with their identity cards or ration papers (often the only identification refugees possess), he had no way to call for help.

Finally, when the truck slowed at a town, Daud and three friends cut through the canvas siding with a razor and escaped. They walked through the night until Daud was able to borrow a cell phone to call his father, who hired a car to fetch him miles away in the desert.

“I found him lying under a tree. He was tired and starving and traumatized,” the father, Ahmed, told Human Rights Watch. “These boys are vulnerable and it is easy for anyone to overcome them psychologically.”

Ahmed is among the few refugees who have “movement passes” allowing them to leave the camps. Lacking such papers, most parents whose sons went missing in the recruitment drive can’t even try search for them.

Some conscripts looked 15 or younger but recruiters encouraged them to lie about their age, according to several defectors and a driver. “If somebody said, ‘I am 15,’ they said, ‘No, from now on you are 20 years old,’” one recruit said.

Several recruiters also told the refugees they would be joining a force that was backed by the United Nations, the United States or the European Commission. That supposed seal of approval proved highly persuasive among not only recruits but some parents. “My son is educated and he told me that the UN is recruiting an army, so I gave him my blessings and he has my total support,” one ethnic Somali father in the town of Dadaab told us. “Please tell the world what he is doing.”

Officials from the UN Political Office for Somalia, the US government and the European Commission have strongly denied any role in interviews or statements to Human Rights Watch.

Publicly, nearly all top Kenyan and Somali government officials, including Kenya’s foreign minister and defense minister and Somalia’s transitional president, have denied involvement in the program as well. “We are not involved in any such operation–it is propaganda,” the Kenyan military spokesman, Bogita Ongeri claimed, saying that only Somali militia groups such as Al-Shabaab are recruiting in Kenya. But last week, Transitional Federal Government Gen. Yusuf Dhumal, the group’s top military commander, held a press conference in Mogadishu to “confirm” that Kenya and Somalia “had agreed” to recruit 1,500 young soldiers from northeast Kenya, the heartland of ethnic Somali communities. and were training most of them outside of Mombasa. The Kenyan defense minister then admitted a training program existed but said it was actually for Somali police, contradicting what numerous recruits and one recruiter told Human Rights Watch.

No Kenyan or Somali official has admitted to recruiting in refugee camps, which contravenes fundamental principles of refugee law. Both UN Security Council resolutions and the UN refugee agency’s governing body have repeatedly stated that refugee camps should be free from any military recruitment and “exclusively civilian and humanitarian in character,” to avoid placing an already vulnerable population at increased risk. Refugees who join armed groups also risk losing their refugee status.

One Kenyan government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said both governments were not only scouting for recruits in Northeast Kenya but were telling conscripts to pretend they had been recruited from specific areas of Somalia.

Parents, deserters and community leaders in the refugee camps said the recruiters were operating brazenly from tea kiosks and public squares. “I was told that the Kenyan government was aware of this and I did not have any problem with the police,” one recruiter told Human Rights Watch. “Our biggest problem was the parents of the recruits, not the police.”

Many parents said both recruiters and police appeared unwilling to help find their sons. “I know who one of the recruiters is here. I went to him and I was wailing and crying; I could not stand the news,” said Saadiya, the mother of a 20-year-old who went missing. “But he said, ‘Your son is gone and he is not coming back.’ ”

© Copyright, Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA

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Kenya Constitution: The draft is finally here!

Alphonce Oladipoh — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:12:47 +0000

Twenty years of hurt and failed promises of a new Kenyan constitution now look set to be over. This follows the unveiling today of a new draft constitution proposing that the president be the head of state and creating a post of prime minister who will be the head of government.

The new draft is being touted as the savior to the country’s perennial tussles that have repeatedly plunged this country into bloody clashes, with most observers pointing an accusing finger to the current situation where the president who is both head of state and government as a source of intense election tussles.

DOWNLOAD THE NEW DRAFT CONSTITUTION BY CLICKING HERE

More on the new is outlined below in a summary. But to point at some of the highlights of the new draft, the president will be directly elected and will name a premier from the largest party or coalition of parties in parliament and who will be confirmed by parliament.

Speaking at the unveiling of the draft constitution today by the committee of experts, committee chair Nzamba Gitonga said: “Kenyans were unanimous that the era of an imperial president must come to an end and there must be an elaborate system of checks and balances running throughout the entire government structure.”

The draft law also proposes a decentralised government, introducing regional and county governments, sets limits on the size of the cabinet and introduces a senate.

Kenyans will debate the draft for the next 30 days and make suggestions to the experts. The final draft will be voted for in a referendum in April 2010.

Here are some highlights from the draft constitution document:

* The draft proposes a State President to be directly elected by voters and who will have some executive powers with sufficient authority to oversee, unite and protect the country.

The position will be without the responsibility of the day-to-day running of government which previously exposed the office to abuse and misuse of power.

* A Prime Minister will not be elected directly but will be the leader of the political party or coalition with greatest representation in parliament. The prime minister he will also be the head of government, taking over the day-to-day running of government from the president.

* The draft proposes a new system under which parliament will consist of a Senate and a National Assembly.

The Senate will provide an institution through which devolved governments share and participate in formation of national legislation and will protect the interests of devolved governments.

* The draft constitution introduces devolved governments consisting of a regional government for each region with an assembly and an executive committee.

This is to give powers of self-governance to people at all levels and enhance participation of people in the exercise of powers of state.

* Regional governments will have their own reliable sources of revenue and autonomy to govern.

* It suggests that Kenya’s cabinet should be shrunk to 15-20 ministers and deputy ministers, from about 60 currently.

* It also reduces the term of office for the Attorney General to one six-year term. The present Attorney General has been in office for 18 years.

Kenya flag photo - Rich Bowen

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Mutua Makau is promoting moral decadence

kenyanobserver — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:39:24 +0000

Sunday Nation Columnist Mutua Makau’s article dated November 1 2009, about Daniel Chege and Charles Ngengi’s same sex marriage in Britain deserves to be challenged.

As a nation, we must strive to promote and uphold our moral dignity and values while accommodating modern trends that are good for our society.

Under the aegis of freedom of choice, we cannot justify homosexuality. Those of us vehemently opposed to it are not trying to conclude that gay and lesbianism are the only sins that God hates.

What we mean is: homosexuality is immoral, unnatural, and against all religious tenets. Even many non believers and atheist don’t condone it.

Professor Mutua is a man of excellent academic standing and by trying to justify same sex marriage and going a head to ask if the union is worse than those who looted the Kenyan economy, is a very weird argument coming from a man of his intellectual standing.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. If politicians are committing “political immorality,” does it mean the citizens should also have a right to commit social “immorality,” the way Mutua is trying to imply?

All Kenyans abhor injustice, corruption and thievery and besides these, we need to protect and defend what is contrary to our moral standing especially that which will leads us to moral decadence.

Majority of Kenyans expected Professor Mutua to come up with tangible arguments on Chege and Ngengi’s marriage that will accommodate our tradition, morality and cultural tenets and not trying to defend what the two gentlemen did.

He knows very well that Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman and therefore, same sex marriages will put the process of procreation in jeopardy and erode the morality of our nation.

There is no way whatsoever to justify homosexuality. I want to remind Professor Mutua that he and I live in America and he should know better that 70% of the American people are not for homosexual marriage.

In fact, we have many isolated cases where gays are physically attacked and even killed. Mutua should therefore stop branding Kenyans as homophobic.

Being against homosexuality is not being hateful. We hate corruption, injustice, murder and tribalism but as a nation, have not risen up to kill those who propagate these vices?

Therefore, it’s our responsibility to abhor any western styles that will dent the moral fabric of our society. However, foreign styles that will catapult our social, political and economic wellbeing as a people must be accommodated and emulated.

I am not trying to imply that we don’t have homosexuals in Kenya . It’s indeed sad when a respected intellectual like Mutua Makau tries to justify one of the most condemnable behaviours in our society.

I therefore challenge him to tell us how he will feel if he woke up one morning and his son told him of being engaged with another man. Will he say congratulations or smile about it?

I further challenge any Kenyan who is a sympathizer of homosexuality to tell us why for instance gay men, if they are truly attracted to men tries to imitate femininity especially on modes of dressing, braiding their hair, wearing makeup, poise, poses, walking, gesturing and even voices?

The same applies to lesbians who imitate masculinity; trying to talk like men and avoiding all forms of make ups and beautifiers, yet they also argue they are attracted to women. According to me, these are signs of a confused population who needs psychological help.

What we need to ask ourselves is: When shall the Western World embrace African cultural styles? These days, our women are more Americanized than the American themselves.

Many men and women in our urban centres are not different from what you will see in Chicago and London . Young people have copied American talking accents; thinking that ours is primitive. Are these the kind of habits that our children should copy under the aegis of modernity and freedom of choice?

As a nation, we need to remember that we are a conservative society that leans towards values that are pegged on our culture, morals and traditions. This has served us well.

And, just because it’s happening in the West, it doesn’t mean it’s suitable for Kenya or Africa . We are not a perfect nation in terms of morality and none is, but when the top cream of our society like Professor Mutua avoids pertinent issues that bedevils our nation and goes a head to justify immorality, it’s so tragic especially to the young generation.

The good professor should understand that we have many human rights violations that need to be addressed in our nation but not about a confused section of our society who needs psychological help.

Joseph Lister Nyaringo

New Jersey-USA

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Cool Picture: Pretty models in Kangas - no need to say more

kenyanobserver — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:38:05 +0000

These pretty models were part of the Swahili fashion Week in Dar es Salaam

Independent article - Kangalicious

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Sybase 365 and MobiKash Afrika Launch First Intra-Region Mobile Commerce Solution for East and Southern Africa

kenyanobserver — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:08:22 +0000

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Nov 11, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE)

Sybase 365, a subsidiary of Sybase, Inc. (NYSE:SY), the global leader in mobile messaging and mobile commerce, today announced its partnership with MobiKash Afrika, an independent Kenyan mobile commerce services provider, to deliver the first intra-region, mobile network and bank agnostic, mobile commerce solution for East and Southern Africa.

The companies will deliver mCommerce solutions to increase the current level of financial inclusion of the unbanked and semi-banked, via a greatly simplified registration process for opening mobile wallets, as well as rapid bank account opening processes. An individual’s accessibility to financial institutions – whether banks, micro-finance institutions (MFIs) or savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) – is significantly increased while offering tailored financial products beyond the now mainstream person-to-person mobile money transfer services found in Africa. The mCommerce services are designed for major enterprises, small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs), cooperatives, insurance, medical and pension schemes, schools, disbursement channels, government agencies and international remittance channels.

“Integrating financial institutions and other stakeholders into a single mobile commerce platform makes it a great deal easier for individuals, governments and businesses to manage finances. The ultimate goal is to also make it effortless for people to progress towards opening a fully integrated bank account,” said Duncan Otieno, CEO of MobiKash Afrika. “As the most comprehensive of its type in the world, the Sybase 365 Mobiliser platform has the track record and robust functionality required to ensure the project’s success.”

The initial deployment is being piloted this year in Kenya with a combination of banks, MFIs and bill issuers utilizing USSD as the mobile communication channel. In parallel, the MobiKash business model is being established in various other COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) territories where several project contracts have already been signed and deployment work has commenced.

“The MobiKash project represents a significant step forward in delivering the necessary integrated infrastructure required to ensure that the unbanked can now move towards seamless transactions via an exceptionally advanced mCommerce portal service,” said Matthew Talbot, vice president, mCommerce, Sybase 365. “With many similar projects already being deployed by Sybase 365, the African continent will eventually become an integrated single mCommerce ecosystem using a common architecture and product set.”

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Kenya Airways purchases Full Flight Simulator

kenyanobserver — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:24:31 +0000

A full-flight simulator. This is a file photo sample and not the actual simulator sold to Kenya Airways

CAE (Montreal, Canada) has sold a CAE 5000 Series Boeing 737NG FFS and related training devices to Kenya Airways. This marks the first time that CAE has sold simulation equipment to Kenya Airways, which is building a new training centre in Nairobi to house the simulator. The FFS, along with CAE Simfinity(TM) virtual maintenance trainers (VMTs), will be delivered in mid-2010. In addition, CAE will assist Kenya Airways with developing the new training centre and their B737NG pilot training program.

“The simulator will greatly increase our capacity and self-reliance in the training of our pilots,” said Titus Naikuni, Chief Executive Officer of Kenya Airways. “The simulator will reduce our training costs because we will no longer have to send our pilots abroad for this purpose. It will also position us as a training centre for other airlines in the region, presenting Kenya Airways the opportunity to make some revenue to repay faster for the investment we have put in.”

photo: av8pix

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