Libya’s Gaddafi takes the mantle from Bongo – The Gabonian president is the longest

LONDON, Tuesday

The death of Gabon’s President Omar Bongo after more than four decades in power means the mantle of Africa’s longest serving leader now falls to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who took power in 1969, two years after Bongo.

Here are some details of the longest-serving leaders in Africa and the year in which they came to power.

Muammar Gaddafi, 67,
Libya:

Colonel Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 and oversaw the rapid development of his poverty-stricken country. Previously known for little more than oil wells and deserts and regarded as an international outcast by the West, Libya improved relations with the West in 2003 when it gave up banned weapons programmes and again in 2008 when it agreed with the US to settle compensation claims for attacks including the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing.

President Gaddafi who holds no official state position, is keeping the world guessing over who might succeed him as Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution, if indeed the title survives him. President Gaddafi is current chairman of the African Union.

President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos, 66,
Angola:

Mr Dos Santos assumed the presidency in 1979, four years into a civil war with Unita rebels that ended in 2002. President Dos Santos, in power for 30 years, is widely expected to run and win the country’s first post-war presidential elections scheduled for 2009.

President Denis Sassou Nguesso, 66,
Congo Republic:

Mr Sassou Nguesso seized power in a 1979 coup but then lost the country’s first multi-party elections in 1992 to scientist Pascal Lissouba. He regained the presidency in 1997 after a civil war and was re-elected in 2004 for a further seven-year term.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo,67,
Equatorial Guinea:

Mr Obiang toppled his uncle Macias in a palace coup in 1979. A new constitution was adopted to usher in multi-party politics, nominally at least, in 1991.

In December 2002, Obiang was elected to a new seven-year term with 97.1 percent of the votes cast after his opponents had pulled out amid allegations of massive electoral fraud. The authorities thwarted a coup bid in 2004 by a former British special forces officer, Simon Mann.

President Robert Mugabe, 85,
Zimbabwe:

Mr Mugabe became Prime Minister in 1980 after independence elections. The former Marxist guerrilla became president in 1987 and has held fast to power despite a deep financial crisis that has almost ruined the country he fought so hard to free.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC formed a unity government with President Mugabe in February 2009 after months of wrangling but sharp differences remain.

President Hosni Mubarak, 81,
Egypt:

Mr Mubarak became president of the Arab world’s most populous country after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat by Muslim militants angered by his foreign policy and domestic repression. Mr Mubarak was sworn in as president in September 2005 for a fifth six-year term.

President Paul Biya, 76,
Cameroon:

Mr Biya took over in 1982 from President Ahmadou Ahidjo and won re-election for another seven-year term in October 2004. In April 2008, he signed into law a bill removing a two-term presidential limit allowing him to extend his 25-year rule by standing for re-election in 2011.

President Yoweri Museveni, 65,
Uganda:

Museveni declared himself president in January 1986 when he seized Kampala after a five-year guerrilla struggle. President Museveni banned multi-party politics shortly afterwards. He looks likely to win re-election in 2011 with little challenge to his rule.

King Mswati III, 41,
Swaziland:

King Mswati is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch and was crowned in April 1987. Political parties have been banned in Swaziland since 1973. The king introduced a new constitution in 2006, but the ban on political parties remained.

President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, 72,
Tunisia:

President Ben Ali has overseen successful economic reforms and crushed an Islamic fundamentalist opposition since he came to power in 1987. Supporters of Ben Ali have predicted he will seek another mandate when his latest term ends in October 2009.

NOTE: Age not precisely known.

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Meanwhile, Gabon’s security forces protected key administrative buildings in the capital Libreville today, but the city was calm with many residents staying home. Soldiers guarded the Prime Minister’s office, the state television headquarters and other key buildings as well as major junctions in the ocean–side city, but their presence was discreet.

The situation is calm. It’s a period of mourning people are observing. Maybe there will be more tension when they organise new elections, but right now there’s no need to panic, said one Libreville resident who gave his name as Tatus.

Analysts say factions within the ruling Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) will be jostling to work out who succeeds him, with his son, Defence minister Ali Ben Bongo, seen as a leading candidate.

The government has said it will respect the terms of the constitution, under which Senate President Rose Francine Rogombe, a Bongo ally in the PDG, is expected to take over as interim leader and organise elections within 45 days.

Risk of fractures

Although there have been some concerns about stability, analysts say that the ruling party is likely to tightly manage the transition at least initially and that Bongo’s successes in easing ethnic tensions will reduce the risk of turmoil.

So dominant was Bongo’s personality over four decades that the opposition has had little opportunity to build much popular support. But the potential for trouble lies more in the risk of fractures within the ruling elite, analysts say.

Ben Bongo could face opposition from his brother-in-law, Foreign Minister Paul Toungui, while African Union Chairman Jean Ping, a long-time Bongo ally, and Vice-President Didjob Divungi Di Ndinge have also been cited as possible successors.

source.natin.ke

Kenya: Immigration plan to allow dual citizenship

By LUCAS BARASA

In Summary Under the policy, people married to Kenyans will also have opportunity to become Kenyan citizens after fulfilling certain conditions. Kajwang: Government�s duty to make Kenya a destination of choice for everyone. Kenyans will soon enjoy dual citizenship if a new policy on immigration is adopted.

Children born outside the country by Kenyan mothers with non-Kenyan fathers also stand to benefit. Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang was present during the debate by stakeholders of the draft policy at Laico Hotel in Nairobi on Tuesday. If accepted, the draft developed through the assistance of International Organisation for Migration (IOM) will be taken to Mr Kajwang�s ministry before being forwarded to Cabinet and Parliament. “There is no right moment other than now when we should address the issue of dual citizenship that continues to bother our diaspora population,” Mr Kajwang said. He added that the policy will also support broad national economic, social and human interests through effective border policing while still encouraging international trade, foreign investments, social interaction and regional integration. Under the policy, people married to Kenyans will also have opportunity to become Kenyan citizens after fulfilling certain conditions. An advisory committee on citizenship is also envisaged under the new policy.

The department of Immigration has operated without a government policy on immigration since 1950. Mr Kajwang, who was accompanied by the IOM regional representative Mr Ashraf El Nour, said his ministry has developed an integrated “one stop shop border management concept backed with up to date technology that will enable all border agencies share information and process data within the reasonable times.” “The credibility of our performance in this front shall be measured by a simple yardstick: Ensuring that people, who should get in, do get in cheerfully; people who should not get in are kept out zealously; and people who are judged deportable are returned gracefully,” he said. He said the government�s duty was to make Kenya a destination of choice for everyone.

He restated plans by his ministry to compile a data base with photographs and fingerprints of all children above 12 years “so that when they get 16, they will get national identification cards automatically.”

“This is the reason why we are developing an integrated population data base so that we can easily know who our citizens are and curb cheating,” he said.

Mr Kajwang has previously announced plans to reduce the age at which Kenyans can acquire national IDs from 18 to 16 years.

source,nation.ke

AFRICA: Agriculture an underestimated “safety net” – Most of Africa’s workforce are farmers

Photo: CARE

Most of Africa’s workforce are farmers

JOHANNESBURG, Investment in agriculture in developing countries, where most of the workforce consists of small-scale farmers, is akin to beefing up a “safety net” as the world struggles to limit the impact of the economic crisis, a UN agency head told IRIN ahead of the three-day World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Cape Town.

Kanayo Nwanze, president of the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) pointed out that 80 percent of the workforce in Africa consisted of small farmers, and agriculture accounted for 40 percent of the region’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The World Bank’s 2008 report, Agriculture for Development, commented that the sector was “‘farm-financed social welfare’ when there are urban shocks”, and pointed out that three out of every four poor people in developing countries lived in rural areas.

Instead of pouring money into “subsidising imported food to keep urban populations happy, fearing the possibility of a social unrest”, Nwanze said governments should realize that “there is no safety net like food security,” and funding agriculture helped alleviate rural poverty.

He cited the World Bank report which found that in China, the world’s fastest growing economy, agricultural growth was 3.5 times more effective in reducing poverty levels than expansion in other sectors.

Nwanze told IRIN that job loss trends prompted by the economic slowdown had shown that “reverse migration of people from the urban areas to rural areas is taking place”, which strengthened the case for investment in rural economies.

There is no safety net like food security

With remittance flows and official development aid set to decline, Africa should look to forging private-public sector partnerships. “The most important aspect should be to organize the small-scale farmers and improve and provide linkages to commercial markets, and provide access to financial services,” he said.

In Kenya, small-scale farmers exporting cut flowers to Europe had put “the horticulture industry … on a par with Kenya’s traditional hard currency earners – tea, coffee and tourism – in revenues,” according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), although the global economic downturn has since caused a contraction in the industry.

Vietnam, which was importing food only two decades ago, had become the world’s fourth largest producer of rice, largely on the shoulders of its small-scale farmers, Nwanze pointed out. Investment in agriculture in Burkina Faso, in West Africa, had also seen food production double in the last decade.

Investment opportunities

The IFAD official said he considered the large-scale acquisitions of farmland in Africa, described as “land-grab deals”, as opportunities to draw much needed resources into agriculture. Governments should become proactive to ensure that investment in land deals maximised their contribution to sustainable development and were transparent.

Nwanze said IFAD was involved in a process, led by FAO, to develop Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Land and Other Natural Resources, which would examine land ownership and distribution reform, and provide guidance for “land-grab” deals. Many small-scale farmers in Africa have insecure property rights, which these deals have underlined.

According to the World Bank report, land reform could promote the entry of small-scale farmers into the market, reduce inequalities in land distribution and increase efficiency.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank are to address some of these issues in a Framework and Guidelines for Land Policies in Africa, being developed under the leadership of the African Union.

Nwanze said investment in agriculture was now an imperative. The World Bank has projected that food imports into Sub-Saharan Africa will more than double in two decades.

The new Food Outlook by FAO noted that a combination of falling incomes and declining real exchange rates in much of the past 12 months had eroded purchasing powers worldwide, affecting the affordability of food.

jk/he source.www.irinnews.org