ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – Ethiopia on Wednesday named a hospital and a street after Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa Bekele respectively who brought two gold medals each in the 5,000m and 10,000m games in the Beijing Olympics.

Kenenisa Street is located around the same street named after Haile Gebresilassie, another hero in athletics for over 15 years.

The Hospital named after Dibaba is located around the outskirt of Addis Ababa in Kality.

The Tirunesh-Beijing Hospital is under construction under a Chinese and Ethiopian government joint investment.

The Addis Ababa city administration also awarded various prizes to the athletes who won medals for Ethiopia. Dibaba and Bekele received $10,000 each.

By ohn Madeley, The Guardian

DERKA, ETHIOPIA – Fatima Muher Nur is one of the world’s marginal farmers. On two small plots in the Ethiopian village of Derka, South Wollo, Muher Nur grows sorghum and a little teff – the national staple – for herself and her family. On a village plot she also cultivates grass to feed her few animals and to sell within the community.

A widow with three young children, Muher Nur struggles to produce enough for the whole year. In a bad year her harvest lasts for just six to eight months. When it runs out, she may have to sell livestock to buy food. Or go hungry.

Marginal farms like Muher Nur’s make up the majority of farms in many developing countries. Varying in size from a quarter of a hectare to two hectares, these farms are home to most of the one billion people who live in absolute poverty. Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, marginal farmers, producing food mainly for their own families, are largely dependent on rain to water their crops. Few have irrigation. In good years they may have a surplus which they sell or barter in local markets. In bad years their food runs out long before the next harvest is ready.

The millions of farmers like Muher Nur have a limited impact on their country’s economic statistics. The food they produce only counts in national income statistics if they sell it.

Rising world food prices are hitting urban dwellers and the rural landless in developing countries, and benefiting better-off farmers with produce to sell. Farmers like Muher Nur are largely unaffected either way.

But marginal farmers are affected by changes in the global environment. Climate change is already hitting farmers, especially the poorest, who have little margin for survival. And its impact is likely to worsen.

Rainfall is becoming less dependable, posing a huge threat to marginal farmers. Anything that reduces rainfall, or makes it more erratic, can be life-threatening.

“Croplands, pastures and forests … are progressively being exposed to threats from increased climatic variability. Those least able to cope will likely bear additional adverse impacts,” says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report, Adaptation to Climate Change in Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Ethiopian farmers interviewed by the non-governmental organisation Concern Worldwide were unanimous that changes in rainfall patterns are one of the major challenges facing them. Most indicated that rain patterns had changed dramatically over the past 10 to 20 years. In the past, changes to the rainfall patterns happened every few years and were the exception rather than the rule, they said, but now each year is unpredictable.

The FAO report says that to help farmers cope with climate change a strategy is needed that emphasises “conserving diversity, adapting varieties to diverse and marginal conditions, broadening the genetic base of crops, promoting locally adapted crops and under-utilised species”.

Marginal farmers are at the heart of world poverty and hunger. But development aid for them has declined over the past 20 years. Supporting them seems essential if the goal of halving poverty is to be reached.

By Andrew Bagala and Tabu Butagira
Daily Monitor

KAMPALA, UGANDA – The Police Force has started arming senior traffic personnel following violent attacks on them in the line of duty by unruly motorists.

Lower cadre personnel, including Police Constables deployed to regulate traffic flow will later on also start wielding guns under the drastic administrative reforms intended to bolster their safety.

Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura, the inspector general of police, said the officers were routinely being brutalised by errant drivers and motorcycle riders; including armed robbers and petty thieves.

“Our traffic officers are operating in a dangerous environment. I think we should consider arming them,” he said early this month at Police headquarters.

Although the IGP appeared to simply suggest reactivation of the seemingly abandoned proposal to arm traffic officers in the capital and on highways, some of the traffic officers, including the commissioner, Mr Steven Kansiima, said they had already been given pistols for self-defence.

Last year’s scheme to arm traffic wardens was shelved amid public anxiety that some officers could misuse the weapons to victimise and forcibly extract money from motorists at fault, especially after a bunch of apparently ill-trained and trigger-happy Special Police Constables were implicated in killing civilians.

But an upswing in heinous onslaughts on hapless traffic officers, including physical assault and calculated knocks by speeding drivers, has emboldened the Police to press ahead with the unpopular move to arm its officers.

“People are becoming wild due to our extensive operation to restore sanity [on the roads],” said Mr Kansiima, the commissioner for Traffic, whom some motorists clobbered at the start of the ongoing traffic operation in April.

Another driver offered him Shs20,000 as ‘lunch’ in a mocking public show that appeared calculated to cast the traffic officer as a greedy and easy-to-bribe lot, which is the dominant perception among the public.

In the same month, a group of commercial motorcycle riders, locally called boda boda, pelted Lawrence Nuwabiine, the Kampala Extra Traffic Officer, with stones.

Three weeks ago, some boda boda cyclists attacked traffic policemen on Queensway in downtown Kampala, prompting them to call for reinforcement from a nearby police post.
Earlier, a bus had run over a female traffic officer on the Masaka-Mbarara highway.

Mr Kansiima said, “If there is a threat to our [traffic officer’s] lives, [then] we need to carry guns.”
Three traffic officers have, since last year, reportedly died as a result of harsh beating or deliberate head-on accidents caused by wayward motorists they waved down in attempts to verify their driving permits and inspect the vehicle’s road worthiness and insurance cover.

Records show that 27 other traffic officers were assaulted within the same period, the latest being on Tuesday, when a group of boda boda riders, whose motorcycles had been seized by police, pounced on and beat four of the officers severely.

The suspected assailants; Mr Alex Ngagala, Mr Wasswa Katongole, Mr Joseph Ssemukasa, Mr Paul Kiwanuka and Mr Davis Wamala have since been arrested and are still in police custody, pending further investigations.

Their victims, whom police have declined to name, are said to be receiving treatment from city hospitals.
The public has been griping that the civilian security authority was using highhanded – sometimes crude – methods to enforce traffic compliance in the nationwide clampdown crafted to rid the streets of mechanically defective vehicles and unqualified motorists.

Ms Judith Nabakooba, the Police spokeswoman, last Tuesday said attacks on their staff, which are on the rise, are inexcusable, necessitating heightened protection.

Currently, regular constables who patrol streets and urban neighbourhoods offer sporadic guard services to lower cadre traffic officers. Many of the SPCs, who kept watch as auxiliary forces at city road intersections, have since been transferred to upcountry stations, creating a vacuum.
Ms Nabakooba said traffic officers are conversant with gun handling but had not been armed due to the nature of their work.

“It isn’t easy to handle an AK47 gun while directing motorists,” she said. It is still unclear how the Police Force plan to assuage public fears that traffic officers holding assault rifles would not be a menace on the road.

Since traffic officers work during the day and night, it would be difficult for commuters to distinguish between genuine police personnel and masquerading robbers, when flagged down, especially at lonely road stretches.

Ugandan police officers say their counterparts in Indonesia, Thailand and the US carry guns but still do decent jobs and that is why they need arms to tackle rogue elements.

(Reuters) – Britain’s Sun Biofuels plans to grow about 5,500 hectares of the biofuel plant jatropha in Tanzania in the next 10 years, the firm’s local subsidiary said on September 18. Sun Biofuels Tanzania is in the final stages of acquiring 8,000 hectares of land west of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

Peter Auge, Sun Biofuels Tanzania’s managing director, said that the company planned to plant 70 percent of that with jatropha, while the rest would be left as forest or game parks. “If we plant 1,000 hectares a year, it will take us five to six years to plant the land,” Auge said on the sidelines of a regional biofuels conference. “We are almost a year away from planting. It will take us five years to plant, then it will take us five years to get into full production, so effectively we will only be getting full production in 10 years.”

Soaring fossil fuel costs and concerns over carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming have led investors to turn to cleaner energy sources like biofuels. Many are focusing on Africa.

Sweden’s Sekab also plans to start producing 100 million litres of ethanol a year in Tanzania by 2012 at a cost of between $200 million and $300 million. It also hopes to set up several more plantations in the country in the coming years.

Auge did not give the exact price of establishing Sun Biofuel’s plantation, but he said it would cost about $1,000 per hectare — or $5.5 million in total — to get the farm up and running. He said his company was interested in acquiring more land in Tanzania, and that it would use its current acreage as proof that the company could take on more tracts successfully.

Sun Biofuels also operates in Ethiopia, where it has grown 1,000 hectares of jatropha and will start biofuel production in 2008/2009. The company is also active in Mozambique, where it has 5,000 hectares of land and expects to plant jatropha on 2,000 hectares beginning in November.

Sun Biofuels is majority owned by Trading Emission Plc, a London-listed renewable energy investment firm.

By SARAH EL DEEB

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Kidnappers seized 11 European tourists and eight Egyptians during a Sahara desert safari to Gilf al-Kebir, a plateau famed for its prehistoric cave paintings. Egypt’s foreign minister said Monday the tourists had been freed unharmed.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in New York that the group was captured by “gangsters.” He did not say how he knew of their release, or whether a ransom was paid.

The five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian were seized Friday along with their Egyptian guides and drivers while camping near the Sudanese border, Egyptian Tourism Minister Zoheir Garana said. Government spokesman Magdi Rady said it was feared the kidnappers had taken the captives into Sudan.

Only a few intrepid visitors make the daunting trek of more than a week in 4X4s across the desert to the Gilf, which lies near Egypt’s borders with Libya and Sudan beyond a vast plain of dunes known as the Great Sand Sea. It is one of the most arid places on Earth.

Gilf al-Kebir has become increasingly popular among adventure and eco-tourists drawn by the stark desert landscapes and the prehistoric paintings in caves that dot the plateau. They include the “Cave of the Swimmers,” immortalized in the 1996 movie “The English Patient.” The cave features 10,000-year-old paintings of people swimming, a hallmark of a time when scientists believe parts of the Sahara were covered by lakes and rivers.

The unpopulated region is a crossroads for ethnic African tribesmen — including smugglers — from Libya, Sudan and even Chad, further south. It borders Sudan’s Darfur region, where raging conflicts have given rise to armed bandits who have become notorious for robberies and hijackings.

Rady said the abduction was not connected to Islamic militants, who have previously attacked tourists in southern Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. “This is a criminal act. They are seeking a ransom,” he said.

Garana said the tour company that organized the trip negotiated with the kidnappers, who demanded up to $6 million in ransom. He said the German government was involved in the talks but the Egyptian government was not. Germany’s Foreign Ministry said only that it had formed a “crisis team” on the abduction.

The kidnapping was only discovered because the Egyptian owner of the tour company, who was on the trip, was able to call his German wife by mobile phone, Garana told state television. The group included eight Egyptians, he said.

The tour owner told his wife that a group of armed men, who appeared “African,” drove up to the group while they were setting up their tents, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media. It was not clear when that phone call took place.

Italy’s Foreign Ministry said the owner called his wife in Cairo again on Monday night and told her their captors had taken the group to Sudan.

The kidnapped Italians included three women and two men from the Turin area, Italy’s ANSA news agency said.

A tour guide who operates in the area said colleagues in the Western Desert told him the kidnappers were tribesmen. Mohammed Marzouk said there have been previous robberies in the area, most recently in May, when tribesmen seized two tour company SUVs during a desert trip.

Tourism is Egypt’s biggest foreign currency earner. The industry was devastated in the 1990s when Islamic militants waged a campaign of violence, including attacks on tourists. The campaign was suppressed in a fierce crackdown by the government of President Hosni Mubarak and the industry has since been rebuilt.

Since 2004, attacks on foreigners shifted to the beach resorts of the Sinai peninsula in northeastern Egypt, with a total of 121 people, including tourists, killed in a series of bombings.

But there have been no major attacks in the capital, Cairo — home of the Pyramids — or the main antiquities sites in the south in more than a decade. There have been no known Islamic militant attacks in Egypt’s Western Desert, where the Gilf al-Kabir is located.

The Gilf al-Kabir, some 550 miles southwest of Cairo, is one of the last frontiers in Egypt, explored by a few Egyptian and European expeditions in the early 20th Century. The Cave of the Swimmers was discovered in a niche in the cliff face in 1933 by Hungarian explorer Laslo Almasy. Since then, the Gilf has largely been ignored until it gained the recent notice of adventure travelers.

The Gilf is a giant limestone and sandstone plateau — bigger than Delaware or the island of Cyprus and nearly 1,000 feet high at some points. It is separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast sea of sand dunes.

The plateau is creased with wadis, or dry river valleys, producing dramatic landscapes of dunes washing up against high black cliff faces. The wadis are pockmarked with caves holding one of the richest troves of Neolithic cave art in Africa. Rock faces are covered with red and black paintings of lions, gazelles, bullocks, giraffes and people hunting, as well as silhouettes of hands. Tour guides still boast of discovering new cave paintings.

Tourists are required to get permits from the military to visit the site and must travel in tour groups with at least one security guard. The tour, done in desert 4X4s, can take more than 12 days.

But, as in other places, expanding adventure tourism may be moving closer to zones of instability. Earlier this year, the annual Dakar Rally through the Western Sahara was canceled because of al-Qaida threats of attacks.

Associated Press reporters Paul Schemm and Katarina Kratovac contributed to this report.