Ugandan Music Video

A LITTLE BIT OF LOVE- UGANDA ALL STAR

Africa, home to 350 million people belonging to some 3000 tribes and speaking some 800 to 1000 distinct languages, is one of the most musically diversified regions of the world. The geographical variety of the continent - from the mountains and the vast desert of the north to the wide Savannah belt, the central rain forests and the fertile southern coast - is reflected in a multiplicity of musical styles.

Sudanese music & Ethiopian performing 10

String is a very important thing. Rope is thicker but string is quicker...thanks Spike...

Ugandan Music Video Somethin for everyone - Great Fun!

KIGALI (Reuters) - Earthquakes struck Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and seriously injuring up to 550 more, officials said.

The two quakes struck close together in Africa's Great Lakes region along the western Great Rift Valley fault.

The first quake, with a magnitude of 6.0 and its epicentre in Democratic Republic of Congo, happened at 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT), followed by another 5.0 quake in densely populated southern Rwanda at 1:56 p.m. (1056 GMT).

"The death toll (in Rwanda) has risen to 33 people and up to 400 are seriously injured," Deputy Rwandan Police Chief Mary Gahonzire told Reuters. She said rescue efforts were underway.

The acting governor of Congo's South Kivu province, Bernard Watunakanza, told Reuters by telephone from the eastern town of Bukavu that aftershocks were happening "every 20 or 30 minutes".

"Up to now there are five dead and 149 seriously injured. Many people are traumatised," he said.

Witnesses to the Congo quake told of scenes of panic.

"It was a fear that I cannot even explain. We thought we were already dead," said Bukavu resident Jacqueline Hachez.

"We have never seen a quake like that here before. Part of my house is on the verge of falling into the lake (Kivu)."

An official from Congo's U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as MONUC, said buildings had been destroyed in Bukavu.

"There is lots of damage. Many buildings have been hit. Lots of houses have completely collapsed," said spokeswoman Jacqueline Chenard.

Earthquakes are common in the western Great Rift Valley -- a seismically active fault line straddling western Uganda, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and neighbouring Tanzania.

In 1994, a magnitude 6 tremor in the foothills of western Uganda's Rwenzori mountains killed at least six people. In 1966, a magnitude 7 earthquake killed 157 people and injured more than 1,300 in the Semliki Valley, also in western Uganda.

Central African Republic (CAR)

President Francois Bozize has appointed the rector of the University of Bangui as premier. Faustin Archange Touadera will succeed PM Elie Dote who tendered the resignation of his cabinet last week. Touadera has been ordered to form a new cabinet to address the social crisis in the CAR. Government workers and teachers have been on strike since early this year to force the government to pay their back wages. Despite the change in government, the unions called for a national protest Jan. 23 and a general strike Jan. 24. Bozize has threatened to use violence if necessary to suppress the protests. (Radio Netherlands)

Congo (DRC)

World Bank forestry projects in the Congo (DRC) ignored the rights of indigenous pygmies and overestimated the benefits of industrial logging in reducing poverty, the bank itself said in a report that concluded internal guidelines had been breached. The report followed complaints by indigenous pygmy groups that the reforms had disregarded the rights of millions of forest-dependent people and ignored the existence of between 250,000 and 600,000 pygmies whose lives depend on the forests. The reforms, the complainants argued, would also lead to violations of their rights to occupy ancestral lands, and use their forests according to traditional practices. (IRIN)

Ethiopia

UN peacekeepers monitoring the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea may have to halt operations within weeks because Eritrea has cut diesel fuel supplies, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban said that as a result of the Dec. 1 stoppage, the mission had only enough fuel to last until early March. Ban called on Afwerki to address the issue "on an urgent basis," otherwise a U.N. decision would have to be taken in early February to begin withdrawing the 1,700-strong United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE). (Reuters)

Kenya

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has said for the first time that he is prepared to share power. On the German television station ARD, he says President Mwai Kibaki can stay in office as long as an opposition candidate becomes prime minister. Another condition would be a strengthening of parliament and the judiciary. Odinga's comments come as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is in Kenya in an attempt to mediate a solution to the crisis. He says people should not expect miracles from his visit. (Radio Netherlands)

Liberia

One of Liberia's most notorious rebel commanders has returned home to confess his crimes, saying his fighters killed 20,000 people during the country's civil war.Joshua Milton Blahyi, also known as General Butt Naked, acknowledges the atrocities in an interview with the Associated Press published this past weekend. Blahyi returned from exile in Ghana to testify before Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission last week. The commission began hearing testimony on the civil war in 2006 with the goal of establishing a full account of wartime atrocities. (VOA)

Mozambique

The World Food Program (WFP) has begun relief flights to central Mozambique, where some 76,000 people have been affected by widespread flooding this month along the Zambezi River valley. A helicopter chartered by the agency flew its first mission yesterday morning, delivering 2.2 tons of mosquito nets, tents and plastic sheeting to the town of Mutarara for use and distribution by UNICEF. The helicopter transported its first consignment of WFP food assistance Jan. 22, carrying 2.5 tons of cereals and pulses to the town of Goligoli, where more than 13,000 people have been displaced from their homes because of floodwaters. (UN News)

Nigeria

Nigerian authorities are searching for the families of 105 abducted children found packed into a minibus. The children, aged between five and 13, were taken from Kano state in the north and discovered by anti-trafficking agents crammed into a 15-seat bus in the northern city of Kaduna, after the driver was stopped at a police checkpoint. The children were piled on top of each other "like sardines" say officials. It is the largest number of trafficked children the authorities have rescued in one incident since efforts began to stop the trade in 2003. (BBC)

Rwanda

Rwanda has launched a campaign to encourage all men to be circumcised, to reduce the risk of catching HIV/AIDS. A health minister told the BBC that soldiers, policemen and students would be asked to come forward first for circumcision. The U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) has said male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV infection. But correspondents say it is rare in Rwanda where the Christian population, who make up the majority, do not practice it. (BBC)

Senegal

Dubai World Group's Jafza subsidiary signed a USD 800 million deal on Jan. 21 to build and run a special economic zone in Senegal, the latest in a series of Arab investments in the West African country. Dubai World Chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem said construction would start before the end of the year on the first phase of the project, covering 650 hectares next to a planned international airport 45 km (28 miles) from Dakar. (Reuters)

Sierra Leone

A newborn in Sierra Leone has the lowest chance in the world of surviving until age 5, and the prospects are almost as bad for children in Angola and Afghanistan, UNICEF said in its annual report. In 2006, nearly 9.7 million children worldwide died before their fifth birthdays, mostly from preventable causes like diarrhea, malaria or malnutrition, it said, and on average more than 26,000 children under age 5 died each day. Sierra Leone had the highest child mortality rate, with 270 deaths per 1,000 births. Angola was second with 260 deaths, followed by Afghanistan with 257. (NY Times)

Sudan

Armed robberies and bandit attacks on aid convoys are threatening deliveries of food to more than 2 million people in Darfur, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Jan. 23. Around two-thirds of the population of Darfur depends on the world's largest aid operation, but a collapse in law and order in the vast region has made life difficult for humanitarian workers. Five years of fighting in Darfur has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives and driven 2.5 million from their homes. WFP officials are calling on the Sudanese government to make sure the roads are safe. (Reuters)

Zambia

Zambia has mobilized its army to clear drainage systems in major cities amid fears torrential rains and flooding may lead to outbreaks of cholera and other deadly diseases, a government official said on Jan 23. Zambia, like Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, has been lashed by heavy rains for several weeks. Swollen rivers have burst their banks, killing dozens and forcing thousands of villagers to flee flooded homes. Floods also have destroyed bridges and roads and swept away livestock and crops. (Reuters)

Zanzibar

Using a cocktail of drugs may help doctors more effectively treat three of the world's most common parasitic diseases, researchers working in Zanzibar reported on Jan. 23. The drugs treat elephantiasis, soil-transmitted worms and schistomiasis. All the treatments are known to be effective but the impact of delivering them all at once was not known. The WHO has long recommended the coordinated delivery of drugs to tackle neglected tropical diseases, but the number of treatments has so far been limited to two because of safety concerns over potential side-effects. (Reuters)

Zimbabwe

A Zimbabwe court on Jan. 23 upheld a police ban on an opposition demonstration to press President Robert Mugabe to adopt a new constitution ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for March. The court ruled they could hold a rally in a stadium, after police had said street protests could turn violent. Police released Zimbabwe's main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, hours after taking him away in the middle of the night for questioning about the planned demonstration, his lawyer said. His group, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), launched a legal challenge to the police ban. (Reuters)