s name was on a list of seven people claimed in a blog run by Rwandan dissidents to belong to a hit squad sent to South Africa to eliminate Karegeya. Karegeya is suspected by police to have been strangled. A bloodied towel and curtain cord were found in a safe in the hotel room. Opponents of the Rwandan government say he was murdered at the behest of Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame. Earlier this week...
m terrified of walking along roads because I don't want to be raped for the third time," she told World Vision, which has interviewed more than 100 children in camps and communities in North and South Kivu. These provinces have borne the brunt of the violence that has killed and displaced millions of people for more than 20 years in the DRC. More than a third of respondents told the charity they were...
s peace and security council, the continental equivalent of the UN security council. The aim was to produce a rapidly deployable force and that by 2012 two units, each 2,500 strong, could be operational within just 14 days. This was highly ambitious but badly needed. When, in 2002, the AU replaced the OAU, its badly discredited predecessor, it was specifically mandated to prevent a repetition of the...
s president, Paul Kagame The Michelangelo Towers hotel is a favourite haunt of international jet-setters, South African old money and the new black elite. Lulled by a grand piano, guests graze on Norwegian salmon and Mozambican prawns while looking out on a giant statue of Nelson Mandela in Africa's wealthiest district. Come New Year's Day, denizens of the Johannesburg hotel could scarcely have dreamed...
s opposition party blamed on the government. Patrick Karegeya, who once headed military intelligence in his homeland, fled to South Africa in 2007 after allegedly plotting a coup against President Paul Kagame with former Rwandan army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who was also exiled there. Karegeya's body was discovered on New Year's Day on a bed at Michelangelo Towers, an upscale hotel and apartment...
OneDollarGlasses founder Martin Aufmuth is inspired by book on poverty to create inexpensive reading glasses It took Martin Aufmuth three years to bring to fruition his idea to produce a device that makes cheap glasses. Aufmuth, who won top prize at the Siemens Stiftung award in October, said his OneDollarGlasses project was inspired by the book Out of Poverty by Paul Polak , which he read in 2009....
t have to be. And let me tell you something I have learned after years and years of this toil at the coalface of sparkle: there is literally no celebrity who does not cook the Christmas dinner. Not. One. Every one of those gilded creatures gets up at 4am, manhandles some beast of a bird into a giant tin, and spends the next seven hours worrying about its progress and whether they ought to have...
s rights when I realised that I was facing cultural stereotypes about my inability to work in the sciences," says Celeste Dushime, 18 In Rwanda, we have one of the most encouraging governments when it comes to empowering women. However, the ties that keep women down are mostly cultural. There isn't a lack of opportunities for women in Rwanda; there is a lack of will among Rwandan women to use those...
s New Vision newspaper. Writing in Kenya's biggest newspaper, the Daily Nation , Rwanda's Paul Kagame also sought to make some domestic points. He praised the former South African leader as "an uncompromising enemy of injustice, an unwavering fighter for freedom, a man whose spirit and resolve were unbroken by the harshest prison conditions and deprivations of a normal life, patient and hopeful of...
s launch: "Rwanda is the first country to launch non-surgical adult male circumcision with an aim of reducing HIV infection." The ministry said it aimed to circumcise 700,000 males between the ages of 15 and 49 across the country by the end of 2016. It is receiving support from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the US and the UN. Non-surgical circumcision involves the use of...
s Suicide , was created after the pair listened to a recording of a 16-year-old South African girl, Kgopotso Mere, talking about the discovery that her father, an Aids sufferer, had committed suicide shortly after being discharged from a hospital stay. Their painting will be auctioned on Wednesday, along with that of 10 other leading artists. Recalling how happy she was to hear that her father was...
s image of a smart city is of high-tech digital infrastructure and perfect public transport. Indeed much of the Smart City World Expo on show in Barcelona does little to dispel that. Among the exhibits you can ride an electric bike, sit in the latest electric car models and even talk to a robot assistant. What relevance can any of this have for the developing world? Pieter van Heyningen, programmes...
s ethos has evolved – it's now as much about developing the riders as individuals Nathan Byukusenge, tired after a long training ride, casts his mind back. "Before cycling I did many different jobs. Sometimes I worked building houses, sometimes taxi bike … I was racing two years before Team Rwanda . When I start cycling, I hoped to win many races. I hoped to change my life." In 2007, Byukusenge, now...
s 4,250-mile length, an omission Levison Wood intends to rectify and hopes he can do it in a year. Setting off from dense forest in the highlands of Rwanda on 1 December, Wood, 31, a former parachute regiment captain from Putney, south London, will work his way through up to seven countries – depending which side of the river he takes – some of which have been riven by civil unrest and war. Wood will...
s too showy. But I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life. "I think people here don't understand art as a whole concept. They don't know what art can do for a country." Mugabo and friend Candy Basomingera, 30, launched their women's range, Afrikana Exquisiteness, in August. LDJ Productions, the company that runs New York fashion week, believes Rwanda has the potential for a strong fashion industry....
s anniversary a new exhibition aims to remind public of its founding ideals – and put paid to immigration myths The simple symbol has become a byword for neutrality and humanity, a mark of compassion amid some of the worst suffering that human beings can inflict on one another. The insignia of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement was first seen 150 years ago this month, the idea of...
s brutal 20-month uprising in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has been hailed as a rare glimmer of hope in a mineral-rich region plagued by seemingly perpetual war, costing millions of lives. Makenga, 39, and his men were disarmed and being registered by the Ugandan military in Mgahinga, a forested national park near the Congolese border, an unnamed Ugandan military official told Associated...
dramatic collapse follows offensive by revamped UN force and mounting international pressure Congolese rebels surrendered on Tuesday to end a bloody 20-month uprising offering tentative hopes of peace in one of the world's deadliest conflicts. The M23 rebel movement capitulated under an onslaught from a renewed Congolese army backed by 3,000 UN fighters. Captured or forced to flee, the rebels declared...
s summit, each government is expected to announce new pledges towards greater openness, drawn up in partnership with NGOs. David Cameron has stressed the importance of governance in the development framework after 2015 . Hurd's advice was well received at Wednesday's gathering of civil society activists at the University of London Union as they held forth on their concerns and exchanged ideas on how...
re a wee bit down-in-the-dumps feel better about themselves since 1884 Christina Aguilera, ambassador for World Food Program, recently went to "war-torn Rwanda" People Magazine tells us . Well, thankfully she made it back home safely. War is not an easy thing. Although, I'm not sure exactly which war People Magazine is referring to – last I checked, the civil war and genocide in Rwanda ended 20 years...