The leader of a Christian cult who has been accused of encouraging his followers to starve themselves appeared in court in Mombasa, Kenya on Friday, telling CNN afterwards that the hearing is a “matter of intimidation” and time-wasting.
Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was arrested last month after police received a tipoff that his land on the Shakahola forest in the Kilifi County of eastern Kenya contained mass graves.
According to court documents, investigators have so far found 249 bodies and at least 10 mass graves in the Shakahola forest area.
Mackenzie who appeared before the magistrate’s court in Mombasa, told CNN’s David McKenzie that he had “never seen anybody starving” when asked about accusations that followers of his group had starved their children following his instructions.
In court documents dated Friday, the state prosecutor said it would seek to extend the respondents’ custody period by a further 60 days.
The prosecutor has maintained that the “extended period of 60 days is the least period possible within which investigations are to be completed under the prevailing circumstances.”
The prosecutor is also arguing that there are “compelling reasons” to deny the respondents bail, including evidence gathered thus far which “demonstrates a high likelihood of serious charges against the accused.”
The death toll linked to a doomsday cult in Kenya hit 201 Saturday after police exhumed 22 more bodies, most of them bearing signs of starvation, according to the coast regional commissioner. The bodies are believed to be those of followers of a pastor based in coastal Kenya, Paul Mackenzie. He’s alleged to have ordered congregants to starve to death in order to meet Jesus.
More than 600 people are still missing.
Mackenzie, who was arrested last month, remains in custody. Police plan to charge him with terrorism-related offenses. Hundreds of bodies have been dug up from dozens of mass graves spread across his 800-acre property, located in the coastal county of Kilifi. Mackenzie insists that he closed his church in 2019 and moved to his property in a forested area to farm.
Autopsies conducted on more than 100 bodies last week showed the victims died of starvation, strangulation, suffocation and injuries sustained from blunt objects. Local media outlets have been reporting cases of missing internal body organs, quoting investigators in the case.
Mackenzie, his wife and 16 other suspects will appear in court at the end of the month. Coast regional commissioner Rhoda Onyancha on Saturday said the total number of those arrested stood at 26, with 610 people reported as missing by their families. It is unclear how many survivors have been rescued so far from the search and rescue operations on Mackenzie’s vast property. Some of them were too weak to walk when they were found.
Cults are common in Kenya, a religious society. Police across the country have been questioning other religious leaders whose teachings are believed to be misleading and contrary to basic human rights.
President William Ruto last week formed a commission of inquiry to investigate how hundreds of people were lured to their deaths at the coast and recommend action on institutions that failed to act.
In the past, Mackenzie had been charged in connection to the deaths of children in his church in a case that is ongoing in court. Residents nearby had raised the alarm after his followers moved to the forested area.
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The commission of inquiry was announced on Friday by presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed even as cult leader Paul Mackenzie remained in custody.
Kenyan President William Ruto on Friday appointed a commission of inquiry into the deaths of more than 100 people believed to have starved themselves to death, while a court ordered that the cult leader remain in prison.
The commission of inquiry, announced on Friday by presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed, will examine whether administrative or intelligence lapses contributed to the deaths.
Kenyan authorities have said the dead were members of the Good News International Church led by Paul Mackenzie, who they said predicted the world would end on April 15 and instructed his followers to kill themselves to be the first to go to heaven.
The death toll stands at 111 but could rise further, in one of the worst cult-related disasters in recent history.
Mohamed said Ruto had also appointed a task force to review regulations governing religious organisations.
Mackenzie has not commented publicly on the accusations against him nor has he been required to enter a plea to any criminal charge. His lawyer George Kariuki told the press on Tuesday that his client could face “possible terrorism charges”.
Mackenzie appeared in court in the port city of Mombasa on Friday, where prosecutors asked a judge to hold him for an additional 90 days as their investigation continued.
The judge said he would deliver a ruling next Wednesday on the prosecution’s request and ordered that Mackenzie remain in custody until then.
Mackenzie, who was wearing a black and pink jacket and holding his two-year-old daughter during the hearing, told journalists at the court that he and some of his supporters were being refused food in prison. Prosecutors denied this and his lawyer had told the press on Tuesday that his client was eating.
“He eats and drinks,” Kariuki said. “He is healthy. I have met him personally. There have been rumours that he has refused to eat, and that is not true.”
In March, Mackenzie was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of the murder of two children by starvation and suffocation but was then released on bail.
Relatives of his adherents say that after he was freed, he returned to the forest where they lived and brought forward his predicted world’s end date – which had previously fallen in August – to April 15.
This has led to criticism by some Kenyan lawmakers that security services missed opportunities to prevent the mass deaths.
Police have now recovered 89 bodies from mass graves in a forest in eastern Kenya, believed to be linked to a cult that allegedly encouraged its followers to starve themselves to gain salvation, the country’s government said.
Kithure Kindiki, the Kenyan interior minister, said three people were found alive and rescued on Tuesday.
In all, 34 people have been rescued since the graves were discovered last Friday at an 800-acre forest.
They are said to be members of the Good News International Church, which allegedly taught its members that they would go to heaven if they starved themselves.
Paul Mackenzie Nthege, the leader of the cult, was arrested after police received a tip-off that his vast land on the Shakahola forest in the Kilifi County of eastern Kenya, contained mass graves.
Nthege was seen shouting “Praise Jesus” as he was escorted by police following his arrest. His lawyer told CNN on Tuesday he was denied bail over investigation interference fears.
“The court is of the opinion that he might interfere with investigations,” Nthege’s lawyer George Kariuki told CNN.
Kariuki said prosecutors have been given 14 days to investigate the case, adding that Nthege has not been charged. He added that he had no permission from his client to comment on allegations that he encouraged his followers to starve themselves to death in order to go to heaven.
“I can’t disclose what my client is telling me without his express permission. I can’t know if there are people that died fasting … It’s only a post-mortem report that can advise that position, and of which none has been supplied.”
There are fears the numbers could rise as the Kenya Red Cross said more than 200 people had been reported missing to its staff in the coastal town of Malindi.
Hassan Musa, Regional Manager for Kenya’s Red Cross told CNN Tuesday: “The number of family members who have come to report people missing has increased from 210 in the morning to 259 now (as of Tuesday afternoon). Out of this 259, 130 of them are children,” Musa said, adding that a local morgue in Malindi has been stretched beyond capacity.
He added that survivors recovered from the site were “very weak and traumatized.”
Police clad in overalls have been scouring the site since Friday where they have found increasing number of bodies each day.
“The purported use of the Bible to kill people, to cause widespread massacre of innocent civilians cannot be tolerated,” Kindiki said, adding that he wanted to “assure the people of Kenya and the world, that we will do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this matter and establish the truth.”
“The government has nothing to hide,” Kindiki added.
The case has sent shockwaves through Kenya and the government has vowed tighter regulations on religious bodies and organizations.
President William Ruto branded Nthege a “terrible criminal,” whose actions were “akin to terrorists.”
Kenya is a deeply religious country and has had problems in the past with unregulated churches and cults.
Here is the situation on Saturday, April 22, 2023:
Diplomacy and law
Russia has announced the tit-for-tat expulsion of more than 20 German diplomats following the removal of Russian embassy staff from Germany. Berlin was destroying ties with Moscow, Russian state media said.
Jack Teixeira, the US Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents about the war in Ukraine to a small group of gamers, had been posting confidential material months earlier than previously known and to a much larger chat group, the New York Times has reported, citing online postings it had seen.
Fighting
Russia’s Defence Ministry has reported the capture of three more city blocks by Russian forces fighting in the western part of the destroyed Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
At least five Russian missiles have hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and surrounding districts late on Saturday night, causing some damage to civilian buildings, local officials said. Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Sinegubov said one missile hit a house in the village of Kotliary, while another sparked a major fire in the city.
Seventeen apartment buildings have been evacuated in the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border after an explosive device was found at the site where a bomb was accidentally dropped by a Russian warplane on Thursday. Russia has acknowledged that one of its Su-34 bombers had accidentally caused the explosion.
The son of Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has fought alongside the Wagner mercenary force in Ukraine, according to Wagner’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. Peskov’s son, Nikolay Peskov, who lived in the United Kingdom for several years and is also known as Nikolai Choles, previously told the tabloid KP in Moscow that he fought in Ukraine because he considered it his duty.
Aid and economy
A cargo of Russian fertiliser seized by Latvia last year is being shipped to Kenya by the UN World Food Programme, Latvia said. It was not immediately clear if Russia approved of the shipment.
Ukrainian state-owned gas company Naftogaz has held talks with Exxon Mobil Corp, Halliburton and Chevron about projects in Ukraine, the Financial Times reported.
There was double delight for Kenya at the 2023 Boston Marathon as Evans Chebet and Hellen Obiri won the men’s and women’s races respectively.
Chebet claimed his second consecutive Boston Marathon – the first man to defend his title since Robert Cheruiyot did so in 2008 – in an unofficial time of two hours, five minutes and 54 seconds, while Obiri took the honors in only her second official marathon.
Tanzanian Gabriel Geay came in second, finishing in 2:06:04, while Kenyan Benson Kipruto placed third in 2:06:06.
More than 30,000 athletes from all 50 states and more than 100 countries participated in the famed 26.2-mile course, starting in rural Hopkinton and finishing on Boylston Street.
This year’s race marked the 10-year anniversary of the double bombings that took place near the finish line, killing three people and injuring at least 264.
Obiri won the women’s elite race to claim her first Boston Marathon title in an unofficial time of two hours, 21 minutes and 38 seconds.
An exuberant Obiri, who finished sixth in the New York Marathon in November, was greeted at the finish line by her proud daughter.
Obiri is a two-time Olympic silver medalist, coming second in the 5000 meters at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.
Ethiopian Amane Beriso came in second, finishing in 2:21:50, while Lonah Salpeter of Israel placed third in 2:21:57.
Below-normal rainfall is expected during the rainy season over the next three months in parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, a climate research centre says.
Drought trends in the Horn of Africa are now worse than they were during the 2011 famine in which hundreds of thousands of people died.
The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center said on Wednesday that below-normal rainfall is expected during the rainy season over the next three months.
“In parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda that have been most affected by the recent drought, this could be the 6th failed consecutive rainfall season,” it said.
Drier than normal conditions have also increased in parts of Burundi, eastern Tanzania, Rwanda and western South Sudan, the centre added.
While famine thresholds have not been reached, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that 8.3 million people – more than half Somalia’s population – will need humanitarian assistance this year.
Workneh Gebeyehu, the head of IGAD, urged governments and partners to act “before it’s too late”.
The drought, the longest on record in Somalia, has lasted almost three years and tens of thousands of people have died.
Last month, the UN resident coordinator for Somalia warned excess deaths in the country will “almost certainly” surpass those of the famine declared in the country in 2011, when more than 260,000 people died of starvation.
A camel carcass rots in the desert near the village of War Idad in Somalia [File: Scott Peterson/Getty Images]
Ongoing hunger crisis
About 1.3 million people, 80 percent women and children, have been internally displaced in Somalia by the drought sweeping the Horn of Africa. After five consecutive poor rainy seasons, the ongoing drought has already become the longest and most severe in Somalia’s recent history.
Close to 23 million people are thought to be highly food insecure in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, according to a food security working group chaired by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development.
Already 11 million livestock that are essential to many families’ health and wealth have died, Wednesday’s statement said. Many people affected across the region are pastoralists or farmers who have watched crops wither and water sources run dry.
The war in Ukraine has affected the humanitarian response, as traditional donors in Europe divert funding for the crisis closer to home.
“These prolonged and recurrent climate change-induced droughts will further worsen other existing, mutually exacerbating humanitarian challenges in the region, including the ongoing hunger crisis, the impacts of COVID-19, and internal displacement.
“We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to strengthen food systems, livelihoods, and climate resilience,” said Mohammed Mukhier, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies director for Africa.
Jill Biden is making her first trip to Africa as first lady and will visit Namibia and Kenya. Cameron Hudson. senior associate of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joined CBS News’ Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green to discuss what the trip means for the Biden administration and what the U.S. can do to strengthen relations in the region.
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — On the packed streets of Nairobi, Cyrus Kariuki is one of a growing number of bikers zooming through traffic on an electric motorbike, reaping the benefits of cheaper transport, cleaner air and limiting planet-warming emissions in the process.
“Each month one doesn’t have to be burdened by oil change, engine checks and other costly maintenance costs,” Kariuki said.
Electric motorcycles are gaining traction in Kenya as private sector-led firms rush to set up charging points and battery-swapping stations to speed up the growth of cleaner transport and put the east African nation on a path toward fresher air and lower emissions.
But startups say more public support and better government schemes can help further propel the industry.
Ampersand, an African-based electric mobility company, began its Kenyan operations in May 2022. The business currently operates seven battery-swapping stations spread across the country’s capital and has so far attracted 60 customers. Ian Mbote, the startup’s automotive engineer and expansion lead, says uptake has been relatively slow.
“We need friendly policies, taxes, regulations and incentives that would boost the entry into the market,” said Mbote, adding that favorable government tariffs in Rwanda accelerated its electric transport growth. Ampersand plan to sell 500 more electric motorbikes by the end of the year.
Companies say the savings of switching to electric and using a battery-swap system, rather than charging for several hours, are key selling point for customers.
“Our batteries cost $1.48 to swap a full battery which gives one mobility of about 90 to 110 kilometers (56 to 68 miles) as compared to the $1.44 of fuel that only guarantees a 30 to 40 kilometer ride (19 to 25 miles) on a motorcycle,” Mbote said.
Kim Chepkoit, the founder of electric motorbike-making company Ecobodaa Mobility, added that “electricity costs are going to be more predictable and cushioned from the fluctuation of the fuel prices.”
Ecobodaa’s flagship product is a motorcycle with two batteries, making it capable of covering 160 kilometers (100 miles) on one battery charge. The motorcycle costs 185,000 shillings ($1,400) without the battery, about the same as a conventional motorbike.
Other cleaner transport initiatives in the country include the Sustainable Energy for Africa program which runs a hub for 30 solar-powered charging stations for electric vehicles and battery-swapping in Kenya’s western region.
Electric mobility has a promising future in the continent but “requires infrastructural, societal and political systemic changes that neither happen overnight nor will be immune to hesitance,” said Carol Mungo, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute.
The move to electric transport “will require African governments to rethink how they deliver current services such as reliable and affordable electricity” and at the same time put in place adequate measures to address electric waste and disposal, Mungo added.
Some financial incentives are on the way.
Earlier in February the African Development Bank announced that it will provide $1 million in grants for technical assistance in Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.
The African continent records a million premature deaths annually from air pollution, according to a soon-to-be-released study by the U.N. environment agency, Stockholm Environment Institute and the African Union obtained by The Associated Press.
Studies by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition say a reduction of short-lived climate pollutants can cut the amount of warming by as “much as 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit), while avoiding 2.4 million premature deaths globally from annual outdoor air pollution.”
But Mungo warned that cleaning up transport is just one step of many toward better air quality.
“There are so many emission factors in cities,” she said. “E-mobility, however, looks broadly beyond the transport sector to infrastructure development and urban planning, which in the end can solve complex pollution issues on in Africa.”
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
On January 18, Time magazine published revelations that alarmed if not necessarily surprised many who work in Artificial Intelligence. The news concerned ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatbot that is both hailed as one of the most intelligent AI systems built to date and feared as a new frontier in potential plagiarism and the erosion of craft in writing.
Many had wondered how ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, had improved upon earlier versions of this technology that would quickly descend into hate speech. The answer came in the Time magazine piece: dozens of Kenyan workers were paid less than $2 per hour to process an endless amount of violent and hateful content in order to make a system primarily marketed to Western users safer.
It should be clear to anyone paying attention that our current paradigm of digitalisation has a labour problem. We have and are pivoting away from the ideal of an open internet built around communities of shared interests to one that is dominated by the commercial prerogatives of a handful of companies located in specific geographies.
In this model, large companies maximise extraction and accumulation for their owners at the expense not just of their workers but also of the users. Users are sold the lie that they are participating in a community, but the more dominant these corporations become, the more egregious the unequal power between the owners and the users is.
“Community” increasingly means that ordinary people absorb the moral and the social costs of the unchecked growth of these companies, while their owners absorb the profit and the acclaim. And a critical mass of underpaid labour is contracted under the most tenuous conditions that are legally possible to sustain the illusion of a better internet.
ChatGPT is only the latest innovation to embody this.
Much has been written about Facebook, YouTube and the model of content moderation that actually provided the blueprint for the ChatGPT outsourcing. Content moderators are tasked with consuming a constant stream of the worst things that people put on these platforms and flagging it for takedown or further actions. Very often these are posts about sexual and other kinds of violence.
Nationals of the countries where the companies are located have sued for the psychological toll that the work has taken on them. In 2020, Facebook, for example, was forced to pay $52m to US employees for the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) they experienced after working as content moderators.
While there is increasing general awareness of secondary trauma and the toll that witnessing violence causes people, we still don’t fully understand what being exposed to this kind of content for a full workweek does to the human body.
We know that journalists and aid workers, for example, often return from conflict zones with serious symptoms of PTSD, and that even reading reports emerging from these conflict zones can have a psychological effect. Similar studies on the impact of content moderation work on people are harder to complete because of the non-disclosure agreements that these moderators are often asked to sign before they take the job.
We also know, through the testimony provided by Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen, that its decision to underinvest in proper content moderation was an economic one. Twitter, under Elon Musk, has also moved to slash costs by firing a large number of content moderators.
The failure to provide proper content moderation has resulted in social networking platforms carrying a growing amount of toxicity. The harms that arise from that have had major implications in the analogue world.
In Myanmar, Facebook has been accused of enabling genocide; in Ethiopia and the United States, of allowing incitement to violence.
Indeed, the field of content moderation and the problems it is fraught with are a good illustration of what is wrong with the current digitalisation model.
The decision to use a Kenyan company to teach a US chatbot not to be hateful must be understood in the context of a deliberate decision to accelerate the accumulation of profit at the expense of meaningful guardrails for users.
These companies promise that the human element is only a stopgap response before the AI system is advanced enough to do the work alone. But this claim does nothing for the employees who are being exploited today. Nor does it address the fact that people – the languages they speak and the meaning they ascribe to contexts or situations – are highly malleable and dynamic, which means content moderation will not die out.
So what will be done for the moderators who are being harmed today, and how will the business practice change fundamentally to protect the moderators who will definitely be needed tomorrow?
If this is all starting to sound like sweatshops are making the digital age work, it should – because they are. A model of digitalisation led by an instinct to protect the interests of those who profit the most from the system instead of those who actually make it work leaves billions of people vulnerable to myriad forms of social and economic exploitation, the impact of which we still do not fully understand.
It’s time to lay to rest the myth that digitalisation led by corporate interests is somehow going to eschew all the past excesses of mercantilism and greed simply because the people who own these companies wear T-shirts and promise to do no evil.
History is replete with examples of how, left to their own devices, those who have interest and opportunity to accumulate will do so and lay waste to the rights that we need to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.
We have to return to the basics of why we needed to fight for and articulate labour rights in the last century. Labour rights are human rights, and this latest scandal is a timely reminder that we stand to lose a great deal when we stop paying attention to them because we are distracted by the latest shiny new thing.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Kenya has suffered attacks for a decade as retribution for joining the peacekeeping force fighting al-Shabab in Somalia.
Kenyan security forces have killed 10 fighters from the Somalia-based al-Shabab group in eastern Kenya, a government official says.
They also recovered rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices after fighting the group on Wednesday in the village of Galmagalla in Garissa county, Thomas Bett, deputy county commissioner of the Bura East sub-county, said on Thursday.
“The operation to flush out the Somalia militants’ group in the region was carried out by our multi-agency team, … and [it] managed to neutralise 10 Islamist group militants and recovered assault weapons,” he told the Reuters new agency.
Spokespeople for al-Shabab could not be reached for comment.
The al-Qaeda affiliate has made incursions into Kenya for years to pressure the country into withdrawing its troops from the African Union-mandated peacekeeping force helping Somalia’s central government fight the group.
Al-Shabab has targeted security forces, schools, vehicles, towns and telecommunications infrastructure in eastern Kenya although the frequency and intensity of their attacks have declined in recent years.
A 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall Nairobi, killed 67 people.
Al-Shabab has been fighting for more than a decade to topple Somalia’s central government and establish its own rule, based on its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Last week, the group killed four workers from Kenya’s highway authority when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Garissa county. On Tuesday, one person died when a convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the same region, police said in a report.
Kenyan police have discovered the body of a prominent LGBTQ rights campaigner stuffed inside a metal box in the west of the country, local media reported on Friday.
Motorbike taxi riders alerted police after they saw the box dumped by the roadside from a vehicle with a concealed number plate, The Standard and The Daily Nation newspapers reported, quoting police sources.
Activist Edwin Chiloba’s remains were found on Tuesday near Eldoret town in Uasin Gishu county, where he ran his fashion business, independent rights group the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) said.
“He was brutally killed & dumped in the area by unknown assailants,” KHRC said on Twitter.
“It is truly worrisome that we continue to witness escalation in violence targeting LGBTQ+ Kenyans.”
Research suggests acceptance of homosexuality is gradually increasing in Kenya, but it remains a taboo subject for many. The country’s film board has banned two films for their portrayals of gay lives in recent years.
Kenya National Police Service spokesperson Resila Onyango said she would comment at a later time. Uasin Gishu County Commander Ayub Gitonga Ali declined to comment.
“Words cannot even explain how we as a community are feeling right now. Edwin Chiloba was a fighter, fighting relentlessly to change the hearts and minds of society when it came to LGBTQ+ lives,” GALCK, a Kenyan gay rights group, said on Twitter.
Under a British colonial-era law, gay sex in Kenya is punishable by 14 years in prison. It is rarely enforced but discrimination is common.
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya’s President William Ruto has expressed concern over the fighting in neighboring South Sudan and airlifted a donation of food stuffs to those affected.
South Sudan’s northern Upper Nile and Jonglei states are experiencing renewed fighting between rival armed militias.
The fighting has threatened the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement between President Salva Kiir and his former rival Riek Machar.
Ruto said he spoke to Kiir on Saturday and urged him to facilitate dialogue for all involved parties to stop the fighting.
Kenya has also asked the international community to intervene and help in the growing instability in South Sudan.
“As a neighbor and grantor of the South Sudan Peace process, I, on behalf of Kenya, bring these concerning developments to the attention of the wider international community and call for a focus and immediate intervention geared towards de-escalation, peaceful resolution and coexistence among the parties involved,” Ruto said.
The fighting has displaced thousands of people and left many in dire need of water, food, shelter and medical aid.
This is the second time Kenya is sending food and medical aid to South Sudan following a similar donation on Nov. 25.
The larger east African region is facing the worst drought in decades with some areas experiencing five failed consecutive rainy seasons while others have below average rainfall.
Kenya shares its northern border with South Sudan and plays a key mediation role in the implementation of the country’s peace agreement.
There were high hopes when oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long conflict. But the country slid into civil war in December 2013 largely based on ethnic divisions when forces loyal to Kiir battled those supporting Machar.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the war, which ended with the 2018 peace agreement. But the terms of that accord have not been fully implemented, and persistent violence is weakening it even more.
BERLIN — The German government says it will provide Kenya with 112 million euros ($118 million) to help the East African nation close the gap to 100% renewable energy and produce hydrogen.
Kenya already gets about 90% of its electricity from renewable sources including hydropower, geothermal and wind. It aims to phase out entirely the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation by 2030.
Germany’s Development Ministry said Monday that 51 million euros will be earmarked for new energy infrastructure and hydrogen production, while about 30 million euros will be used for training programs. Efforts to make Kenya’s agriculture more resilient to drought will get a further 30 million euros and 1.5 million euros will be spent on anti-corruption programs.
The funds — 76 million euros of which will be in the form of loans — are part of an agreement that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Kenya’s President William Ruto reached at the U.N. climate conference last month.
Hydrogen produced with renewable energy can be exported or used to make much-needed fertilizer for Kenya’s domestic agriculture industry.
Members of the royal family are raised to conduct themselves with a graceful temperament that rarely allows for emotional disclosure. In a rare personal statement online, however, Prince William publicly paid tribute to a friend — who died in a plane crash Thursday.
“Yesterday, I lost a friend, who dedicated his life to protecting wildlife in some of East Africa’s most renowned national parks,” William tweeted Friday. “Mark Jenkins, and his son Peter, were tragically killed while flying over Tsavo National Park while conducting an aerial patrol.”
The 40-year-old continued: “Tonight, I’m thinking about Mark’s wife, family and colleagues who’ve sadly lost a man we all loved and admired.”
William and Jenkins first met during his gap year after graduating from Eton College in 2000, per People. The young prince had foregone family tradition as royals usually attended Gordonstoun in Scotland, but Princess Diana wanted him to follow in her father’s footsteps, per Town & Country.
Yesterday, I lost a friend, who dedicated his life to protecting wildlife in some of East Africa’s most renowned national parks. Mark Jenkins, and his son Peter, were tragically killed when flying over Tsavo National Park while conducting an aerial patrol.
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) December 9, 2022
Jenkins was so inspired by William and his African wildlife conservation work with the Tusk charity that he pursued the same endeavor in 2005. Jenkins eventually became a ranger, conservationist and professional bush pilot, according to Hello Magazine.
Thursday, however, Jenkins and his son were conducting an aerial patrol in a Cessna 185 for the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust — for which they volunteered — and crashed at around 7:15 a.m. while trying to drive cattle out of the expansive Kenya park.
“Kenya Wildlife Service and David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (DSWT) teams are at the scene to investigate the circumstances of the crash,” the service told Hello in a statement. “KWS wishes to express our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families of the deceased.”
“Passionate, principled, and strong-willed, Mark was never afraid to speak his mind and stand for what he believed in,” said his obituary from the Frankfurt Zoological Society. “He was a commanding presence and made an indelible impression wherever he went.”
Bitcoin payments app Strike said in a statement Tuesday that it had launched Send Globally, a new feature that lets U.S. users instantly and cheaply send money to Africa.
“With exorbitant fees to transfer funds in and out of Africa and incumbent providers halting services, payments companies are struggling to operate in Africa and people cannot send money home to their family members,” said Jack Mallers, Strike founder and CEO, in a statement. “Strike offers an opportunity for people to transfer their US dollars easily and instantly across borders.”
The remittances service is initially enabling people in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana to receive money from the U.S. and instantly convert it to their local currency. The feature is made possible thanks to a partnership between Strike and local Bitcoin app Bitnob.
“The current financial system isn’t set up in a way that ensures equal access for people and institutions from Africa,” said Bernard Parah, founder and CEO of Bitnob, in a statement. “What we have built reduces the pressure on our financial institutions in sourcing USD liquidity. People can now easily exchange value from the US to people in Africa in the cheapest way possible. We can now save people sending money back home to Africa billions of USD in transfer fees.”
Strike and Bitnob bridge the two continents by connecting local financial institutions with the universal Lighting network, Bitcoin’s overlay protocol for cheap and fast payments.
“Now, using Lightning rails under the hood, Strike’s Send Globally feature provides users in the U.S. a cheaper, faster, and more innovative way to instantly send payments to Africa,” per the statement. “Payments are instantly converted into naira, cedi, or shillings, and deposited directly into a recipient’s bank, mobile money, or Bitnob account.”
Strike said it plans to enable Send Global in more African countries in the future.
The transatlantic reset between Brussels and Washington is on life support.
After four years of discord and disruption under Donald Trump, hopes were high that Joe Biden’s presidency would usher in a new era of cooperation between Europe and the U.S. after he declared: “America is back.”
But when senior officials from both sides meet in Washington on Monday for a twice-yearly summit on technology and trade, the mood will be gloomier than at any time since Trump left office.
The European Union is up in arms over Biden’s plans for hefty subsidies for made-in-America electric cars, claiming these payments, which partly kick in from January 1, are nothing more than outright trade protectionism.
At the same time, the U.S. is increasingly frustrated the 27-country bloc won’t be more aggressive in pushing back against China, accusing some European governments of caving in to Beijing’s economic might.
Those frictions are expected to overshadow the so-called EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC) summit this week. At a time when the Western alliance is seeking to maintain a show of unity and strength in the face of Russian aggression and Chinese authoritarianism, the geopolitical stakes are high.
Biden may have helped matters last Thursday, during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron, by saying he believed the two sides can still resolve some of the concerns the EU has raised.
“We’re going to continue to create manufacturing jobs in America but not at the expense of Europe,” Biden said. “We can work out some of the differences that exist, I’m confident.”
But, as ever, the details will be crucial.
It is unclear what Biden can do to stop his Buy American subsidies from hurting European car-markers, for example, many of which come from powerful member countries like France and Germany. The TTC summit offers a crucial early opportunity for the two sides to begin to rebuild trust and start to deliver on Biden’s warm rhetoric.
Judging by the TTC’s record so far, those attending, who will include U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will have their work cut out.
More than 20 officials, policymakers and industry and society groups involved in the summit told POLITICO that the lofty expectations for the TTC have yet to deliver concrete results. Almost all of the individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be attending the TTC | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Some officials privately accused their counterparts of broken promises, particularly on trade. Others are frustrated at a lack of progress in 10 working groups on topics like helping small businesses to digitize and tackling climate change.
“With these kinds of allies, who needs enemies?” said one EU trade diplomat when asked about tensions around upcoming U.S. electric car subsidies. A senior U.S. official working on the summit hit back: “We need the Europeans to play ball on China. So far, we haven’t had much luck.”
Much of the EU-U.S. friction is down to three letters: IRA.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to “Buy American” when it comes to purchasing electric vehicles, has infuriated officials in Brussels who see it as undermining the multilateral trading system and a direct threat to the bloc’s rival car industry.
“The expectation the TTC was established to provide a forum for precisely these advanced exchanges with a view to preventing trade frictions before they arise appears to have been severely frustrated,” said David Kleimann, a trade expert at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.
Biden’s room for flexibility is limited. The context for the subsidies and tax breaks is his desire to make good on his promise to create more manufacturing jobs ahead of an expected re-election run in 2024. The U.S. itself is hovering on the edge of a possible recession.
In addition, the U.S. trade deficit with the EU hit a record $218 billion in 2021, second only to the U.S. trade deficit with China. The U.S. also ran an auto trade deficit of about $22 billion with European countries, with Germany accounting for the largest share of that.
Washington has few, if any, meaningful policy levers at its disposal to calm European anger. During a recent visit to the EU, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, urged European countries to pass their own subsidies to jumpstart Europe’s electric car production, according to three officials with knowledge of those discussions.
“It risks being the elephant in the room,” said Emily Benson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, when asked about the electric car dispute.
After a push from Brussels, there were increasing signs on Friday that the TTC could still play a role. In the latest version of the TTC’s draft declaration, obtained by POLITICO, both sides commit to addressing the European concerns over Biden’s subsidies, including via the Trade and Tech Council. Again, though, there was no detail on how Washington could resolve the issue.
Politicians across Europe are already drawing up plans to fight back against Biden’s subsidies. That may include taking the matter to the World Trade Organization, hitting the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs or passing a “Buy European Act” that would nudge EU consumers and businesses to buy locally made goods and components.
Officials and business leaders pose for a photo during the TTC in September 2021 | Pool photo by Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images
Privately, Washington has not been in the mood to give ground. Speaking to POLITICO before Biden met Macron, five U.S. policymakers said the IRA was not aimed at alienating allies, stressing that the green subsidies fit the very climate change goals that Europe has long called on America to adopt.
“There’s just a huge amount to be done and more frankly to be done than the market would provide for on its own,” said a senior White House official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “We think the Inflation Reduction Act is reflective of that type of step, but we also think there is a space here for Europe and others, frankly, to take similar steps.”
China tensions
Senior politicians attending the summit are expected to play down tensions this week when they announce a series of joint EU-U.S. projects.
These include funds for two telecommunications projects in Jamaica and Kenya and the announcement of new rules for how the emerging technology of so-called trustworthy artificial intelligence can develop. There’s also expected to be a plan for more coordination to highlight potential blockages in semiconductor supply chains, according to the draft summit statement obtained by POLITICO.
Yet even on an issue like microchips — where both Washington and Brussels have earmarked tens of billions of euros to subsidize local production — geopolitics intervenes.
For months, U.S. officials have pushed hard for their European counterparts to agree to export controls to stop high-end semiconductor manufacturing equipment being sent to China, according to four officials with knowledge of those discussions.
Washington already passed legislation to stop Chinese companies from using such American-made hardware. The White House had been eager for the European Commission to back similar export controls, particularly as the Dutch firm ASML produced equipment crucial for high-end chipmaking worldwide.
Yet EU officials preparing for the TTC meeting said such requests had never been made formally to Brussels. The draft summit communiqué makes just a passing reference to China and threats from so-called non-market economies.
Unlike the U.S., the EU remains divided on how to approach Beijing as some countries like Germany have long-standing economic ties with Chinese businesses that they are reluctant to give up. Without a consensus among EU governments, Brussels has little to offer Washington to help its anti-China push.
“In theory, the TTC is not about China, but in practice, every discussion with the U.S. is,” said one senior EU official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “If we talk with Katherine Tai about Burger King, it has an anti-China effect.”
Gavin Bade, Clea Caulcutt, Samuel Stolton and Camille Gijs contributed reporting.
A resort in Nairobi, Kenya, is known as one of the most Instagrammed properties in the world because the guests are treated to close encounters with the world’s tallest animals — giraffes. But Giraffe Manor isn’t just about the thrills, it also plays a role in conservation efforts.
The Giraffe Manor Hotel on March 20, 2009 in the giraffe park Nairobi, Kenya.
Getty Images
Environmentalist Cecilia Mueni said people have no idea giraffes are fighting for survival. She called it a silent extinction.
“So the giraffe is basically under threat from all corners, from people themselves, from predators, from climate change,” Mueni said.
A Rothschild subspecies giraffe stands in its habitat at Nairobi’s giraffe conservation centre “The Giraffe Centre.”
Tony Karumba / AFP via Getty Images
Poachers hunt them for bush meat and even their tails, believing it gives them power. Humans have also encroached on giraffe habitat.
Exacerbating this extinction is the devastation caused by the Horn of Africa’s worst drought in 40 years. The number of Nubian giraffes have dwindled to such an extent that they are on the critically endangered list, Giraffe Manor’s Mikey Carr-Hartley said.
A giraffe at Tsavo National Park amid drought near the town of Voi in the Taita-Taveta County of Kenya.
Andrew Wasike / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“You know, in many countries throughout Africa, they’ve actually disappeared,” he told CBS News.
As a result, the money being made by the resort funds conservation and supports a breeding program run by Giraffe Manor and the Kenyan government. Most of the giraffes born at the resort have been reintroduced into the wild, with numbers rising from just 76 in the 1980s to 1,200 today.
A resort in Nairobi, Kenya, is known as one of the most Instagrammed properties in the world because its guests are treated to close encounters with the world’s tallest animals. But Giraffe Manor isn’t just about the thrills, it also plays a role in conservation efforts. Debora Patta shares more.
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Top military commanders from Ethiopia and its embattled Tigray region have agreed to allow unhindered humanitarian access to the region and form a joint disarmament committee following last week’s truce.
Both parties have agreed to protect civilians and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the region of more than 5 million people, according to a copy of the agreement seen by The Associated Press.
The agreement states that disarmament will be “done concurrently with the withdrawal of foreign and non-(Ethiopian military) forces” from Tigray.
The lead negotiator for Ethiopia, Redwan Hussein, told the AP that Saturday’s signing event created a conductive environment for ongoing peace efforts, noting that the next meeting of military leaders will “most likely” be held in Tigray in mid-December before a final meeting in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, in January.
In a separate statement late Saturday, Ethiopia’s federal authorities said that “efforts are being made to deliver humanitarian assistance to most of the Tigray region which is under (Ethiopian military) command.”
That statement noted that representatives of Ethiopian and Tigrayan militaries meeting in Kenya discussed “detailed plans for disarmament” of Tigray forces, including an agreement on the entry of Ethiopian forces into the Tigrayan capital of Mekele.
The African Union-led talks in Nairobi followed the cessation of hostilities agreement signed by Ethiopia and Tigray leaders in South Africa last week.
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is helping to facilitate the talks, said Saturday that “humanitarian aid should have resumed like yesterday.” Former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, who is also involved in the talks, thanked the commanders for their commitment to peace.
The Tigray conflict began in November 2020, less than a year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for making peace with Eritrea, which borders the Tigray region and whose fighters have been fighting alongside Ethiopian federal troops in Tigray.
Eritrea is not explicitly mentioned in the peace papers, and a diplomat who attended the talks in Nairobi said the issue of Eritrea was a sticking point this week.
The brutal fighting in Tigray, which spilled into Amhara and Afar regions as Tigrayan forces tried to break the military blockade of their region, reignited in August after months of lull that allowed thousands of trucks carrying humanitarian aid into Tigray.
The war in Africa’s second-most populous country, which marked two years on Nov. 4, has seen abuses documented on both sides, with millions of people displaced and many near famine.
Phone and internet connections to Tigray are still down, and foreign journalists and human rights researchers remain barred, complicating efforts to verify reports of ongoing violence in the region.
