s newest country said talks had been "promising" but admitted that it was not clear when a ceasefire might be agreed. Following nearly two weeks of fighting which has left thousands dead, a high-level delegation including the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Ethiopia's prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, landed in the capital Juba to meet President Salva Kiir on Thursday. Kenya previously hosted...
unions finally agree on negotiators Civil servants' unions finally agreed on nine representatives to negotiate salaries for public sector workers after days of in-fighting and an ultimatum from the government. The unions previously failed to agree on who should represent them in salary talks with the government, despite meeting in Harare for more than seven hours. There were 12 civil service unions...
s trial was due to begin in February, but prosecutor says she needs more time to collect evidence The international criminal court's prosecutor has asked judges to postpone the trial of the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, to give her more time to collect evidence. The development is a major setback to the court, which has seen a string of high-profile cases collapse, but it could help defuse tensions...
s rise . More Africans were seduced by them in 2013 than ever before. But the mall was also then the logical target for terrorists seeking maximum impact on their perceived enemies and the world beyond. In September al-Shabaab , an Islamist militant group from Somalia, brought mayhem to the upmarket Westgate shopping centre – one of the temples of Africa's 21st-century consumer capitalism – in neighbouring...
s hard to know where to look in the crowded interior of the Murenju general store. The entrance is flanked by multicoloured mattresses stacked like surreal sandwiches. Rolls of linoleum flooring stand under shelves groaning with speakers, while cooking pots hang from the rafters amid the bunting of adverts for a pay-TV service. Sally Kayoni, the shopkeeper, stands on tiptoe to be seen over a counter...
Police say device exploded in a crowded minibus as it headed towards the city centre At least four people have been killed in a suspected bomb attack in Nairobi. Police said a device exploded in a crowded minibus as it headed towards the city centre. Benson Kibue, chief of police in Nairobi, said Saturday that the minibus was travelling from the Eastleigh suburb of Nairobi to the city centre when...
s been branded 'silicon savannah'. In the social media stakes, Kenyans are second only to South Africans in Africa for the quantity of tweets they put out. The hate speech that had been spoken on Kenya's streets and led to post-election violence in 2007 and 2008, by 2013 had migrated online, with the 18 million-strong internet population congregating in Facebook groups, behind Twitter avatars, and...
The 50 years since Kenya won independence from Britain have been a mingled yarn of good and bad, with border tensions and government authoritarianism counterbalanced by progress on HIV and Aids and steady economic growth ...
British travellers escape attack near the city of Mombasa after grenade fails to explode A grenade has been thrown at British tourists in Kenya, it was reported on Thursday. The Foreign Office said it was urgently looking into reports that a number of British travellers had escaped the attack near Mombasa after the grenade failed to explode. According to Sky News, Mombasa police chief Robert Kitur...
t healed and reconciliation is still some way off. But this is a journey of faith that will take some time. As Africans, we should draw our inspiration at this time from Nelson Mandela, working to ensure that reconciliation truly brings our country together. The world celebrates this global icon because of the strong values of reconciliation he bequeathed his country. So, Kenya@50 . What do we have...
s future. Some say the September attacks on Nairobi's Westgate mall , and the charges facing President Uhuru Kenyatta at the international criminal court, have cast a pall on the festivities. We've pulled out the data on a number of key development indicators to look at how Kenya has changed over the past 50 years. However, no set of statistics can fully capture the changes the country and its citizens...
From Glastonbury-headliner Mick Jagger to one of the heroes of the Westgate siege in Kenya, we talk to those who made the news in 2013 Paddy Allen ...
s mall – and began to fight back against the gunmen • See the Observer's faces of 2013 in full here Abdul Haji is finishing his coffee in the Yaya Centre. It's one of Nairobi's less glitzy malls, but it is in malls that the suburban capital's residents arrange their meetings, do their shopping or take their children to a weekend movie. "I was here, having a business meeting, when I got an SMS from...