Month: July 2024

Heavy rains in eastern Afghanistan have killed at least 40 people and injured nearly 350 others, Taliban officials said Tuesday. Separately, at least 17 died when a bus overturned on a main highway, official media said.

Sharafat Zaman Amar, a spokesperson for the Public Health Ministry, confirmed that 40 people had died in Monday’s storm and that 347 injured people had been brought for treatment to the regional hospital in Nangarhar from Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, and nearby districts.

Among the dead were five members of the same family who were killed when the roof of their house collapsed in Surkh Rod district, according to provincial spokesperson Sediqullah Quraishi. Four other family members were injured.

About 400 houses and 60 electricity poles were destroyed across Nangarhar province, Quraishi said. Power was cut in many areas and there were limited communications in Jalalabad city, he said. The damage was still being assessed, Quraishi said.

Abdul Wali, 43, said much of the damage occurred within an hour. “The winds were so strong that they blew everything into the air. That was followed by heavy rain,” he said. His 4-year-old daughter received minor injuries, he said.

In May, exceptionally heavy rains killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan, according to the World Food Program.

Separately, the official Taliban news agency Bakhtar reported that at least 17 people were killed and 34 others injured when a bus overturned Tuesday morning on the main highway linking Kabul and Balkh in northern Baghlan province.

The cause of the accident wasn’t immediately clear, but poor road conditions and careless driving are often blamed for such incidents in the country.

President Paul Kagame has won 99% of the vote in provisional results from Monday’s presidential election in Rwanda, electoral authorities said, an outcome that was widely expected as the country’s long-time ruler aims to extend this three-decade grip on power.

Kagame’s opponents — Frank Habineza of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda and independent candidate Philippe Mpayimana — were collectively getting under 1% of the vote in provisional results accounting for 79% of all ballots cast.

The result mirrored the outcome in 2017, when Kagame took nearly 99% of the vote.

Final results are expected by July 27, although they could be announced sooner.

The 66-year-old Kagame, who has held power since the end of the country’s genocide in 1994, was running virtually unopposed. Two of his stronger critics were blocked from running for high office.

There were long lines at some polling stations in the capital, Kigali. Election authorities said 9.5 million Rwandans were registered to vote in the country’s population of 14 million.

“This is going to be my first time to vote. I am voting for President Kagame because I have never seen a leader like him before,” said passenger motorcyclist Jean Claude Nkurunziza.

Kagame has led the East African country since he seized power as the head of rebels who took control of the government and ended the genocide in 1994. He was vice president and de facto leader from 1994 to 2000, when he became president.

He has been condemned by many as a violent authoritarian but praised by others for presiding over impressive growth in the three decades since the genocide.

Kagame is among African leaders who have prolonged their rule by pursuing changes to term limits. In 2015, Rwandans in a referendum voted to lift a two-term limit.

Now Kagame could stay in power until 2034.

On Saturday he told journalists that his mandate comes from the people.

“The ruling party and Rwandans have been asking me to stand for another mandate,” he said. ”At a personal level, I can comfortably go home and rest.”

Rwanda’s election took place amid heightened fears of insecurity in Africa’s Great Lakes region. Rebels known as M23 are fighting Congolese forces in a remote area of neighboring eastern Congo.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan forces are fighting alongside M23, United Nations experts said in a report circulated last week. The U.S. government has described the group as being backed by Rwanda.

Rwanda accuses Congo’s military of recruiting fighters who were among the perpetrators of the genocide.

Rights groups continue to raise alarm over harsh restrictions on human rights, including freedom of association, in Rwanda.

Amnesty International in a recent statement expressed concern over “threats, arbitrary detention, prosecution on trumped-up charges, killings and enforced disappearances” targeting the political opposition. It said the suppression of dissenting voices, including among civic groups and the media, “has a chilling effect and limits the space for debate for people of Rwanda.”

The ballooning debt in East Africa’s economic hub of Kenya is expected to grow even more after deadly protests forced the rejection of a finance bill that President William Ruto said was needed to raise revenue. He now warns “It will have huge consequences.”

Facing public calls to resign, Ruto has said the government will turn to slashing a $2.7 billion budget deficit by half and borrowing the rest, without saying from where.

After anger over bloated bureaucracy and luxurious lives of senior officials helped to fuel the protests, Ruto also has promised funding cuts in his own office and said funding would stop for the offices of the first lady, the “second lady” — the wife of the vice president — and the wife of the prime Cabinet secretary. Almost four dozen state enterprises with overlapping roles will be closed.

Ruto has become deeply unpopular in his two years in office over his quest to introduce taxes meant to enable Kenya to repay its $80 billion public debt to lenders including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and China.

The public debt makes up about 70% of Kenya’s gross domestic product, the highest in 20 years.

How Ruto’s administration will find the money to pay off debt without further angering millions of Kenyans barely getting by, and without slowing down the economy, is the key question. The economy grew 5.6% in 2023.

Economist Mbui Wagacha, a former adviser to previous President Uhuru Kenyatta, said Kenya needs a professional budget and management body like the Office of Management and Budget in the U.S. Currently, Kenya’s treasury makes budget estimates and forwards them to the parliamentary finance committee, which creates the finance bills.

“Parliament has abdicated its mandate on the public finances in the Constitution and it’s looking after its own interests,” Wagacha said in an interview.

He said further borrowing by Kenya could be “disastrous” and proposed a strategy of using diplomacy to attract investment and restructuring the debt in an attempt to get creditors to write off some of it.

Another economist, Ken Gichinga, agreed that government borrowing will slow down Kenya’s economy. Businesses still haven’t recovered from the effects of the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine, he said.

“When the government borrows more, interest rates go up. And when interest rates go up, businesses slow down, the economy slows down, due to the high cost of repayment,” Gichinga said.

Kenya’s president has advocated self-sustainability, saying the country should raise more revenue instead borrowing. “If we are a serious state, we must be able to enhance our taxes,” he said in May.

But Kenyans have rejected attempts to raise taxes as they struggle with rising prices on basic goods, even storming parliament during the recent protests.

Last week, days after announcing he would not sign the finance bill he once championed, Ruto said he had worked hard “to pull Kenya out of a debt trap” and that huge consequences lie ahead.

Wagacha said economic growth must come before the government increases revenue targets and tax collection.

“You create an expanded economy with employment and with investment, and people have money in their pockets. It’s much easier for them to hear about your request for taxes,” he said.

He suggested making access to low-interest credit easier for businesses in key sectors like tourism and agriculture, saying small businesses hold the key to Kenya’s economic growth as they tend to absorb many employees. That could help address high youth unemployment.

The government should incentivize businesses to create jobs with low taxation and lower interest rates, Gichinga said: “At the end of the day, we need a jobs-centered economic policy. That’s what we’ve been lacking.”

The IMF, which had suggested some of the controversial tax changes, has been a target of Kenya’s public dissatisfaction. Some protesters had posters with messages such as “IMF stop colonialism.”

In a statement late last month, the IMF said it was monitoring the situation in Kenya, adding that its main goal was to help it “overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the well-being of its people.”

The IMF needs to do more for Kenya beyond focusing on debt sustainability and be a “strong development partner,” Gichinga said.