African Press Review Week 10: Friday 9/3/07



|Country |Title/Theme |Newspaper |Categories |

|Zim |Problems with army funding |Financial Gazette |Macro-economy, Defence |

|The Zimbabwean military is suffering from severe under-funding. Soldiers wages are too low and there are not sufficient funds |

|available to pay them until the end of the year. Lack of funds has also led to a shortage of food and other supplies and the |

|Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) has disconnected water supplies to military instalments due to non-payment of bills. |

|Claudius Makova (ZANU PF, Bikita West), Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Home Affairs, immediately warned of |

|the consequences on national security if the situation is allowed to continue. |

|Kenya |Graft Drives the Wheels of Justice |The Nation |Corruption |

|More than half of Kenyans view the Judiciary as corrupt and have lost confidence in it. According to the latest global report on |

|corruption released by Transparency International, Kenyans still yearn for positive changes in the Judiciary. Reports of graft in |

|court registries were a pointer to the resurgence of corruption in the Judiciary. "Of particular concern was the Government's |

|failure to act where graft had been reported," the TI report said and accused the Government of failing to act on a report submitted|

|to it by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) which investigated judicial corruption in 2003. |

|South Africa |Four years added to Telecoms monopoly |Business Day |ICT, Privatisation |

|Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, Communications Minister, told Parliament yesterday she was giving Telkom until November 2011 to unbundle the |

|so-called “local loop”, which links the national telecommunications network to individual homes and businesses. Critics of this |

|decision say that this will hamper the government’s drive to reduce the costs of doing business in SA. Analysts said the four-year |

|completion target would give Telkom sufficient time to “establish its client base”, limiting the potential for rival, second network|

|operator Neotel, to take advantage of the unbundling. |

|Nigeria |EU urged to withhold Nigerian aid |Business Day |Diplomacy, Aid, Elections |

|The European Parliament yesterday urged the EU to withhold all financial aid to the Nigerian government until it holds new |

|elections. The EU said last month’s federal elections in Nigeria, won by the governing party, fell short of basic standards and |

|could not be considered credible, free and fair. The EU has earmarked nearly $674,5m over the past five years for different projects|

|in Nigeria, most of them focused on good governance, health and water supply and sanitation. “EU aid to Nigeria should not be given |

|to federal or state structures until new, credible elections have been held,” the European Parliament said in a nonbinding |

|resolution. |

|Cote d’Ivoire |Dismantling of militias in western Cote |Jeune Afrique |Peacekeeping, Corruption |

| |d’Ivoire | | |

|The government has declared that the dismantling of western militias has been achieved and that the ceremony of last Saturday, at |

|which former militiamen placed 1027 weapons at the feet of President Laurent Gbagbo, was the end rather than the beginning of the |

|process. They acknowledged, however, that there had been a problem with the distribution of a presidential gift to the militiamen of|

|280 million FCFA (428,000 Euros) as one of their leaders had absconded with a portion of the gift. The militiamen have been |

|occupying his family concession in Duekoue since Tuesday to demand that the gift be distributed. A government spokesman said that |

|the government has asked him to return to Duekoue to deal with the problem. |

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