Igihe

Category: News

  • Nyagatare District on High Alert over Marburg Disease

    Nyagatare district authorities have cautioned residents to be on the lookout to the deadly Marburg disease that has brokenout in Uganda.

    Four Sectors of Nyagatare district including Tabagwe, Musheri, Rwempasha and Matimba border with Uganda.

    A district official Sabiti Fred told IGIHE, that there hasnt been any case of Marburg reported in Nyagatare but cautioned residents to be on the lookout.

    There is also constant crossborder activity on both sides thus high interuction of the citizens on both sides.

    In Uganda, Thirty-four people who are suspected to have had contact with the five killed by the deadly Marburg virus in Kabale district are being monitored by a team from the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation.

    Marburg disease that is caused by a virus, easily spreads through direct contact with wounds, body fluids like blood, saliva, vomitus, stool and urine of an infected person.

    A person suffering from Marburg presents symptoms such as high fever, vomiting blood, joint and muscle pains and bleeding through the body openings like eyes, nose, gums, ears, anus and the skin.

    It is a highly contagious disease that kills in a short time but can easily be prevented.

  • Botswana Military to Learn from RDF

    A 25-member delegation from Botswana including Senior military officials and students are in Rwanda where they will discuss Africas challenges.

    According to Col. Thomomo Makolo the Head of the Botswana Army and also head of the countrys Military Academy,said they chose Rwanda based on Rwandas military success in Conflict resolution and mantaining security.

    “We are in Rwanda for a Week so that we can learn from RDFs best practices. This will help us at the end of our tour,” Col. Makolo said.

  • Regional Police Officers to attend Senior Command & Staff Course

    About 31 senior police officers from thirteen African countries are in Rwanda attending the first ever training dubbed, ‘Senior Command and Staff Course’ due this year in Rwanda.

    he course attracted senior officers from Zambia, Somalia, South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Djibouti, Seychelles, Sudan and hosts Rwanda.

    The one year course will be officially launched in January next year at National Police Academy (NPA) in Musanze District.

    The International Academy Bramshill and the Center for Conflict Management of the National University of Rwanda is set to provide lecturers for the course.

    In a briefing presentation ceremony held on Monday at Rwanda National Police (RNP) headquarters in Kacyiru, Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIGP) Stanley Nsabimana noted that the course is in line with the current Rwanda National Police (RNP) and East African Police Chief Cooperation Organization (EAPCCO) training policies, whose aim is to produce highly qualified officers who are able to face policing challenges and exploit available opportunities in a professional manner.

    DIGP Nsabimana added that the course will enrich participants with contemporary policing skills in terms of emerging crimes and strategies of dealing with them.

    He said that at the end of the course, participants will have acquired enough skills that will help them to take strategic decisions in challenging situations, and apply leadership and managerial skills to ensure strategic goals are achieved.

    Tanzania Assistant Commissioner of Police Maulid Mabakila who attended the briefing presentation ceremony believes the course will help to find solutions which will address some of the security challenges faced by the African continent.

    Senior Superintendent Ireen K. Ngwira, from Zambia Police Force also noted that, the course portrays good cooperation among regional Police Forces.

    “There is a lot of conflicts in the region, it is important that the region comes up with a concrete strategy to address cross border crimes such as human trafficking and many others,” said Ngwira.

  • 7 Detained for Distilling ‘Kanyanga’

    Police in Ngoma district is holding seven men suspected of illegally engaging in distillation of illicit brew.

    During an operation Police seized distillation tools and fermentation products. Over 240 litres of by-products used to distil kanyanga were destroyed.

    The suspects whose names have been withheld are being detained at Sake Police station pending Investigation.

    They were arrested on Sunday and are being held at Sake Police Station.

    They are said to have distilled about 45 Litres of potent gin locally known as Kanyanga.

    Supt Benoit Nsengiyumva, Eastern Region police spokesman, said the suspects were arrested after a joint operation by Police, Rwanda Defence Forces and local council leaders of Kigesi and Shyembe cells.

  • TTC Students Write,Read Stories for Primary School

    Thirty Teacher Training College (TTC) students read their own original stories to neighboring primary school students at Academie de la Salle in Byumba on Friday afternoon.

    They also encouraged the primary students to read and write their own stories.

    At the event, organized by VSO volunteer Dorothy Nelson, primary school students crowded together in small circles to listen to the TTC students’ stories.

    TTC students asked the children questions about the story before, during, and after reading to engage them in the story.

    “It is my hope that these stories will inspire these primary students to write their own stories,” says Nelson.

    TTC students wrote these stories in July at a writer’s workshop facilitated by VSO as part of the USAID-funded Literacy, Language, and Learning (L3) Initiative. For some, it was the first time they had ever written a story.

    “This writer’s workshop can stimulate our hidden talents,” says TTC student Themistocles Abayisaba, who has continued writing stories after the workshop’s completion.

    According to L3’s Technical Director Norma Evans, TTC students should be encouraged to use stories in their classrooms when they become teachers.

    “Children need constant exposure to written content to learn to read,” she says. “Stories show students that reading is meaningful, that it has a purpose, and it gets students interested in reading.”

    Not only is reading in the classroom essential, but so is writing. Evans also says that even from Primary 1 students should have opportunities for authentic writing—not merely copying from the board, but writing to express themselves.

    “Writing helps students figure out which letters represent the individual sounds they hear in words.” Evans says. “This helps them to be better readers.”

    The Kigali Institute of Education, with support from the L3 initiative, is revising TTC curricula to include a focus on writing and the importance of story in the classroom.

    VSO volunteers with specialization in literacy will support the implementation of the new curricula and will also organize activities such as writer’s workshops and writing competitions at the TTCs to encourage a culture of reading and writing.

    Jean Bosco Bigirimana, principal of TTC Byumba, is pleased with this focus on story. “This is the beginning. This is your first story,” he told the TTC students at Friday’s event.

    “Write many stories. Use the stories to teach your pupils when you leave school to be teachers.”

  • Africa:Building Sustainable Local Currency Bond Markets

    Tunisia is hosting the first African Financial Markets Initiative (AFMI) conference on “Building sustainable local currency bond markets for the future”.

    The Conference(October 22-24) has brought together policy makers and market participants to share experience on and contribute to critical issues facing the development of local currency bond markets in the continent.

    The audience includes representation from African central banks, government ministries, institutional investors, investment bankers, financial and legal advisors, credit rating agencies and other stakeholders, including high level speakers.

    The discussions are covering major topics including: Development of primary and secondary markets, and the impact and importance of liquidity; Expansion and diversification of the investor base; enhancing infrastructure for securities settlement and payment systems; strengthening the taxation and accounting systems as well as the legal and regulatory framework.

    Ideas, solutions and best practices will be presented and discussed extensively on how to assess the importance of sovereign credit ratings for issuers; improving bond market data, data collection and dissemination, which are prerequisites for the creation of bond indices.

    The role of infrastructure bonds in the development of local currency bond markets will also be heard. Opportunities for side meetings and networking will also be available.

    As part of the African Development Bank’s strategy to strengthen the financial sector in African economies, it has launched the “African Financial Market Initiative” (AFMI) which is targeted to further the development of domestic African capital markets.

    The objectives of the AFMI are to contribute to the development of local currency debt markets in Africa; to reduce African countries dependency on foreign currency denominated debt; to help enlarge the investor base in African domestic debt markets and to improve availability and transparency of African fixed income markets related data, among others.

  • Ethiopia Hosts 8th African Development Forum

    Experts and management of the African Development Bank Group are geared up for the eighth African Development Forum (ADF VIII) to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from October 23-25 on the theme “Governing and Harnessing Natural Resources for Africa’s Development.”

    The ADF, a biennial event of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), was created in 1999 and convenes in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and other partners.

    It serves as a multi-stakeholder platform for debating, discussing and initiating concrete strategies for Africa’s development.

    This year’s forum also presents an auspicious moment to further engage AfDB partners on its 2013-2022 Long-Term Strategy, which envisages Africa’s transformation into a stable, integrated and prospering continent.

    The forum gathers a large number of participants including Heads of State and Government, policy-makers, development partners, other UN agencies, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (IGOs/NGOs), academia, practitioners, civil society organizations (CSOs), the private sector, eminent policy and opinion leaders and other concerned stakeholders.

    The forum includes plenary and high-level parallel panel sessions as well as side-events featuring keynote/lead speakers and presenters, media representatives and other participants.

  • Italy Earth Quake: Scientists Sentenced to Jail

    Six Italian scientists and a government official were sentenced to six years in jail on Monday for multiple manslaughter in a watershed ruling that found them guilty of underestimating the risks of a killer earthquake in 2009.

    They were also ordered to pay more than nine million euros (almost $12 million) in damages to survivors in the devastated medieval town of L’Aquila in a case that has sparked outrage in the international science community.

    Seismologists in Italy and beyond were horrified by the unprecedented sentence and argued that all science was being put on trial.

    Under the Italian justice system, the seven remain free until they have exhausted two chances to appeal the verdict.

    Prosecutor Fabio Picuti had asked for jail sentences of four years for each defendant for failing to alert the population of the walled medieval town to the risks, days before the 6.3-magnitude quake that killed 309 people.

    “I am crestfallen, desperate. I thought I would be acquitted. I still don’t understand what I’m accused of,” said Enzo Boschi, who was the head of Italy’s national geophysics institute (INGV) at the time.

    All seven defendants were members of the Major Risks Committee which met in L’Aquila on March 31, 2009 — six days before the quake devastated the region, tearing down houses and churches and leaving thousands of people homeless.

    Picuti had slammed the experts for providing “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” analysis, which reassured locals and led many to stay indoors when the first tremors hit.

    “This is a historic sentence, above all for the victims,” said lawyer Wania della Vigna, who represents 11 plaintiffs, including the family of an Israeli student who died when a student residence collapsed on top of him.

    “It also marks a step forward for the justice system and I hope it will lead to change, not only in Italy but across the world,” she said.

    The bright blue classroom-sized temporary tribunal in L’Aquila — built on an industrial estate after the town’s historic court was flattened in the quake — was packed with lawyers, advisors and international media for the verdict.

    Four of the defendants were in court, as well as a small group of survivors.

    Aldo Scimia, whose mother was killed, welled up as the verdict was read out.

    “We cannot call this a victory. It’s a tragedy, whatever way you look at it, it won’t bring our loved ones back,” he said.

    “I continue to call this a massacre at the hand of the state, but at least now we hope that our children may live safer lives.”

    A historic legal precedent

    Some commentators had warned that any convictions would dissuade other experts from sharing their expertise for fear of legal retribution.

    “We are deeply concerned. It’s not just seismology which has been put on trial but all science,” Charlotte Krawczyk, president of the seismology division at the European Geosciences Union (EGU)

  • Obama Attacks Romney on Foreign Policy

    President Barack Obama had the best lines, but perhaps Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney had the best night. Not in the sense that he won the debate – it was a draw if you have to judge these things that way. This final debate probably won’t shift the opinion polls, but it saw a marked change in emphasis in Mr Romney’s foreign policy.

    Their debates now history, President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday open a two-week sprint to Election Day powered by adrenaline, a boatload of campaign cash and a determination to reach Nov. 6 with no would-have, should-have regrets in their neck-and-neck fight to the finish.

    From here, the candidates will vastly accelerate their travel, ad spending and grass-roots mobilizing in a race that’s likely to cost upward of $2 billion by the time it all ends.

    All the focus now is on locking down support in the nine states whose electoral votes are still considered up for grabs: Colorado, Iowa, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia. No surprise then, that Obama campaigns Tuesday in Florida and Ohio while Romney heads West to Nevada and Colorado.

    Neither candidate scored a knockout punch in their third and last debate Monday, as both men reined in the confrontational sniping that had marked their last testy encounter. And though the stated topic this time was foreign policy, both kept circling back to their plans for strengthening the fragile U.S. economy — Job 1 to American voters.

    Closing out their trio of debates, Obama concisely summed up this pivot point in Campaign 2012: “You’ve now heard three debates, months of campaigning and way too many TV commercials. And now you’ve got a choice.”

    The president framed it as a choice between his own record of “real progress” and the “wrong and reckless” ideas of Romney.

    Romney countered by sketching “two different paths” offered by the candidates, one of decline under Obama and one of brighter promise from himself.

    “I know what it takes to get this country back,” he pledged.

    With polls showing the race remains incredibly tight, first lady Michelle Obama made a prediction before the candidates left Florida that neither side would dispute: “This election will be closer than the last one — that’s the only guarantee.”

    Obama made it look easy in 2008: He won 365 electoral votes to 173 for Republican John McCain. And he got 53 percent of the popular vote, to 46 percent for McCain.

    With 270 electoral votes needed for victory, Obama at this point appears on track to win 237 while Romney appears to have 191. The other 110 are in the hotly contested battleground states.

    The candidates’ strategies for getting to 270 are implicit in their itineraries for the next two weeks and in their spending on campaign ads.

    Obama and his Democratic allies already have placed $47 million in ad spending across battlegrounds in the campaign’s final weeks, while Romney and the independent groups supporting his candidacy have purchased $53 million, significantly upping their buys in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. And both sides are expected to pad their totals.

    After Obama and Vice President Joe Biden campaign together in Ohio on Tuesday, the president splits off on what his campaign is describing as a two-day “around-the-clock” blitz to six more battleground states. He’ll be in constant motion — making voter calls and sleeping aboard Air Force One as he flies overnight Wednesday from Nevada to Tampa, Fla.

    The vice president is midway through a three-day tour of uber-battleground Ohio, and Obama’s team contends its best way of ensuring victory is a win there.

    The campaign says internal polling gives Obama a lead in the Midwestern battleground state, in large part because of the popularity of the president’s bailout of the auto industry.

    But even if Obama loses Ohio, his campaign sees another pathway to the presidency by nailing New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado.

    Romney and running mate Paul Ryan are picking up the pace of their campaigning as well, and their schedule reflects an overarching strategy to drive up GOP vote totals in areas already friendly to the Republican nominee.

    The Denver suburbs. Cincinnati. Reno, Nev. They’re places that typically vote Republican, but where McCain fell short of the margins he needed to defeat Obama. To win in all-important Ohio, the GOP nominee must outperform McCain in typically Republican areas.

    Romney and Ryan start their two-week dash in Henderson, Nev., then hopscotch to the Denver area for a rally with rocker-rapper Kid Rock and country music’s Rodney Atkins at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

    Then Romney heads back to Nevada, on to Iowa and then east to Ohio for three overnights in a row. By week’s end, he’s likely to be back in Florida.

    The following week brings a significant uptick in Romney’s schedule. Aides say he’ll touch down in two or three states a day, or hold that many daily events in big states like Florida.

    Both candidates are done holding fundraisers — no doubt a happy thought for the two of them.

  • DRC-Rwanda Border Won’t Open 24hrs

    The DRC government has instituted new changes that will regulate the opening and closing of its borders with Rwanda.

    The Borders have been open 24hrs daily. But with the new changes, the Borders will always open at 6AM and close at 6PM.

    In a statement released Sunday, October 21, the governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku evokes a “redevelopment” opening hours and closing the borders between Goma and Gisenyi.

    The border of the Great and Little gates open now 06hoo morning and close at 18hoo local.

    However,the statement does not explain the reasons for the decision, merely indicating that the measure is “in pursuance of instructions from the Government dated 19 October 2012”.

    Congolese Civil society in North Kivu welcomed the decision. Their spokesman, Omar Kavota, considers that the measure could help to further secure the city of Goma.

    Rwandan authorities have not yet responded to this measure.