THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER # 848 - 06/03/1999

ZIMBABWE TRADE UNIONS GET INTO THE LION'S DEN Leaders of Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) have decided to defy the increasingly authoritarian regime of head of state Robert Mugabe and to launch into the battle of the April 2000 general election by setting up an opposition political party. (...). [Total : 631 Words]. (8,2USD)

UGANDA / SUDAN DISCREET CONTACTS The government of Kampala has made discreet contact with the government of Khartoum via an emissary very close to Ugandan head of state general Yoweri Museveni. (...). [Total : 291 Words]. (4,7USD) SUDAN / LIBYA NO SADIQ VISIT TO TRIPOLI Ex-prime minister (and head of Oumma opposition party) Sadiq el Mahdi will not be going to Libya shortly as he had planned (ION 847). (...). [Total : 314 Words]. (4,7USD) MOZAMBIQUE TRANSIT POINT FOR HUTUS Nearly 300 Rwandan Hutus including many suspected of being implicated in the anti-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 have found refuge in the Republic of South Africa. (...). [Total : 268 Words]. (4,7USD)

KENYA KENYA AIRPORTS AUTHORITY IN A MESS The new managing director of Kenya Airports Authority, Stephen Mwangi Mureithi, had just recently taken up his functions when this state-owned body which runs the Kenyan airports was accused this week of having illegally granted the contract for modernizing Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi to the Belgian company L. (...). [Total : 249 Words]. (4,7USD) MADAGASCAR MAURITIAN FIRMS RACING FOR PRIVATIZATION Mauritian companies will be participating in the coming months in Calls for bids for privatizing the airline Air Madagascar, the sugar refinery Sirama, and the decontrolled telecommunications sector (with privatization of Telma and/or a licence for a second operator). (...). [Total : 147 Words]. (4,7USD) SUDAN CHINA IN ELECTRICITY An agreement has just been signed between a company in People's Republic of China and Sudan for the construction of an electricity power plant at El Geili, a small town some 50 km north of Khartoum, for an estimated cost of US$160 million. (...). [Total : 141 Words]. (4,7USD)

KENYA ELECTRICITY RATIONED Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) will introduce power cuts from March 8 onwards following Kenya Electricity Generating Company maintenance work on its power plants at Gitaru and Kiambere. (...). [Total : 66 Words]. (1,5USD) MADAGASCAR TECHNICAL OFFER FOR SOLIMA Of the 96 specifications sold for the Call for bids on privatization of Solima, Madagascar's oil refinery and distribution company, 55 bids for the 13 lots on offer had been filed by the February 26 closing date. (...). [Total : 114 Words]. (1,5USD) 618 AFRICA ESKOM ENTERPRISES To reinforce its activities on the African continent, South Africa's electricity utility Eskom has set up Eskom Enterprises under the chairmanship of Jan De Beer and under the responsibility of Thulani Gcabashe, one of Eskom's two new deputy CEOs with Bongali Khumalo. (...). [Total : 60 Words]. (1,5USD) SUDAN SUDATEL RAISES CAPITAL The US$20 million which the joint venture Sudan Telecommunications Company (Sudatel) wants to harvest in the framework of an increase of capital (ION 845) should be subscribed and perhaps topped. (...). [Total : 91 Words]. (1,5USD)

MAURITIUS PRIVATE SECTOR TESTED Following looting during three days of riots last week (ION 847), leaders of the Mauritian private sector have begun considering ways of regilding their image with the Creole community. (...). [Total : 281 Words]. (4,7USD) UGANDA ELECTRICITY ARM-WRESTLING CONTINUES After refusing to authorize the agreement covering the purchase by Uganda Electricity Board (UEB) of energy which will be produced by the future privately-owned hydroelectric power plant of Nile Independent Power (NIP), the Kampala parliament's committee on energy is now attacking the extension of the Owen Falls dam. (...). [Total : 322 Words]. (4,7USD) SOUTH AFRICA THE POINT ON PRIVATIZATION Several South African companies promised for privatization are in full restructuring. This is the case with the utility Eskom (See Pan-African firm in this issue) and Denel Aerospace where the government wants to sell off 20 percent of the shares before May 1999 to a strategic partner (the offer interests British Aerospace). (...). [Total : 237 Words]. (4,7USD) MADAGASCAR ABD UPS ITS AID At the end of a seminar in Antananarivo last month, African Development Bank presented the government of Madagascar with several recommendations to improve the Bank's strategic aid to that country. (...). [Total : 316 Words]. (4,7USD) MADAGASCAR CANDIDATES FOR SOFITRANS The advisory of the Call for bids on privatizing Air Madagascar is hardly published than there is an undercover battle between future companies tendering. (...). [Total : 312 Words]. (4,7USD)

PORTUGAL / MOZAMBIQUE FREDERICO MONTEIRO DA SILVA The former chairman of Sonarep has returned as board chairman of the Portuguese company, which he had held in 1977 before the Mozambican government nationalized company assets, including the Matola refinery (the assets were transferred to the state-owned company Petromoc). (...). [Total : 40 Words]. (FREE!) SOUTH AFRICA / UGANDA PAUL MARE An executive of the South African electricity utility Eskom is seen as having the most chance of becoming managing director of Uganda Electricity Board (UEB). (...). [Total : 67 Words]. (1,5USD) MADAGASCAR CORSAIR'S BAD LUCK French regional airline Corsair owned by Jacques Maillot has recently had two successive refusals from the Malagasy authorities. (...). [Total : 64 Words]. (1,5USD) KENYA SALES SOAR ON STOCK EXCHANGE After the sale of part of its holding in Housing Finance Company of Kenya (HFCK) which will close on March 15, the government in Nairobi is considering also ceding its participation in Chemelil Sugar Company at the end of March and then in Kenya Wine Agencies Ltd (KWAL). (...). [Total : 140 Words]. (1,5USD) MAURITIUS KEEN MARKET FOR SMARTCARDS The new budget on Mauritius includes finance to introduce a national identity card for the social security ministry. (...). [Total : 95 Words]. (1,5USD)

KENYA PRETTY POOR COUNTER-NARCOTICS WORK Kenyan officials' lack of resources and political will and widespread corruption are the principal obstacles pinpointed to efficiently fighting drug trafficking in the country, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report for 1998. (...). [Total : 187 Words]. (4,7USD) MOZAMBIQUE RENAMO SHADOW CABINET The RENAMO party congress scheduled for May 25 in central Mozambique will get down to debating government responsibilities as part of preparations for the opposition party's possible victory in the general election in October. (...). [Total : 328 Words]. (4,7USD) KENYA OPPOSITION OFF INTO ACTION Following the recent collapse of constitutional review talks attended by representatives of KANU (government) and opposition parties represented in Parliament, the National Convention Executive Council (NCEC, non-parliamentary opposition) plans new action to press for constitutional reforms. (...). [Total : 227 Words]. (4,7USD) DJIBOUTI FIGHTING BEFORE THE BALLOT The Djibouti government got soundly told off before it finally accepted, on March 3, to register the application of opposition candidate Moussa Ahmed Idriss to run in the April 9 presidential election. (...). [Total : 362 Words]. (4,7USD) SOUTH AFRICA MECCA OF CANNABIS AND MANDRAX An important transit point for cocaine from South America (especially via Brazil) and heroin from Asia, the Republic of South Africa is also a heavy consumer of mandrax (perhaps the world number one) and one of the principal producers of cannabis on the planet. (...). [Total : 410 Words]. (4,7USD) 36

DJIBOUTI GOULED AND HEIR SUED In the framework of its campaign of denouncing the Djibouti regime, Association pour le Respect des Droits de l'Homme ą Djibouti represented by its chairman Jean Loup Schaal and a Djibouti (Afar) national living in France, Mohamed Ali (better known as Ali Couba), filed a legal complaint on March 4 before the High Court in Paris. (...). [Total : 97 Words]. (1,5USD) KENYA GIBSON KAMAU KURIA The vice chairman of Law Society of Kenya (LSK), who is also an official of National Convention Executive Council (non-parliamentary opposition), is standing in the election for LSK chairman. (...). [Total : 63 Words]. (1,5USD) UGANDA / DRC SETBACK FOR UGANDANS During a recent attempt to break the defences of forces allied with Democratic Republic of Congo's head of state Laurent Kabila, the Rwandan-Ugandan coalition which is backing the Congolese rebels suffered a serious setback. (...). [Total : 105 Words]. (1,5USD)

SOMALIA ABDULLAHI ALI OMAR The army chief of staff of Puntland, the autonomous region in north-eastern Somalia, comes from Galkayo, a region where a non-Darod clan, the Arab Salah (known under the name Meheri) live especially. (...). [Total : 223 Words]. (4,7USD) UNITED STATES / AFRICA BILL FRIST A surgeon who specializes in heart transplants and humanitarian questions and a Republican senator in Tennessee, Dr. Bill Frist, has been put at the head of the sub-committee on African affairs of the US Senate. (...). [Total : 200 Words]. (4,7USD) ETHIOPIA MAHAMOUD DIRIR GHEDDI One of the leaders of Ethiopian Somali Democratic League (ESDL, governmental) and of Ethiopia's Somali Regional State, Mohamoud Dirir Gheddi, was designated this week acting minister of transport and communications. (...). [Total : 186 Words]. (4,7USD) TANZANIA ALI SAID MCHUMO Tanzania's current permanent representative to the United Nations European Office, ambassador Ali Said Mchumo, has just been designated to head the World Trade Organization's general council in Geneva. (...). [Total : 206 Words]. (4,7USD)