The budget speech was read earlier this month and while the big news was about the tax authorities now targeting landlords (who have always been required to pay tax, but don't), there's also a draft Value Added Tax (VAT) bill that's expected to lead to some price increases including of some food items. Here's a recap of the 2012 Kenya Budget Highlights (PDF) by financial firm Deloitte.

On to the index - comparing changes to March 2012, a year ago and three years ago.

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With the Cast of "Hell on Wheels"  Common Fab "Hell on Wheels" Theme Party

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talking about a revolution

the tables are for sure starting to turn in the sudan, it is about time!!!!

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written By Rhoda Omenya Best Practices. Inspiration. Networking. Hack space. Co-Creation These were the buzzwords at the first Open Data for Development Camp in Kenya held at the iLabAfrica, Strathmore University on Wednesday and Thursday. The event coincides with the first anniversary of the launch of the Kenya Open Data portal, through the Kenya Open [...]

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Its certainly interesting to hear that the National Pension Scheme Authority (NAPSA) has invested K5 trillion "in various sectors of the country's economy to enhance job creation". The Acting DG Yollard Kachinda recently pointed to the Levy Business Junction Park as one good example through which NAPSA had contributed to job creation.

And yet - the basic questions have never been asked with respect to NAPSA - where does it it fit in the Government agenda? Where should it be investing its money to properly contribute to real job creation? NAPSA is sitting on a huge load of cash (which of course belongs to the public). But it has failed to use it efficiently and talk of corruption is rife.

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  Nairobi, May 24, 2012... Armed with the success of the previous edition in 2011, Orange has launched the second edition of its Orange African Social Venture Prize. The goal is to promote social innovation that supports development through Information and Communication Technology (ICT). With this prize, Orange will provide a financial endowment as well as [...]

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I spent Tuesday on the crowded roads of the northern suburbs of Accra, catching up with old friends and marveling at transitions and transformations: those my friends have made, as well as the changes made to a city I love and dearly miss. When I lived in Accra, in the mid-1990s, the city proper ended [...]

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Amazing!

The Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. This is a huge step forward for the millions of people who will benefit directly from health care reform - that would be everyone who has health insurance and everyone who doesn't.

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En Français

Improving access to computer science education and training in Sub Saharan Africa is an important goal for Google in 2012. The Computer Science for High School project (CS4HS) is an initiative sponsored by Google to promote Computer Science teacher training and resources across the globe. With a grant from Google's Education Group, universities develop 2-3 day training workshops and curriculum development for local CS teachers.

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The UN Group of Experts on the DR Congo submitted the celebrated addendum to its interim report yesterday. The addendum (apparently the correct terminology) is due to be published later today or tomorrow, but, Security Council politics being what they are, leaked copies are already circulating. I have obtained one; here is a summary and a brief analysis.

The report deals exclusively with Rwandan support to armed groups and sanctioned individuals in the eastern Congo, and the findings are extremely damning. The Group finds that Rwanda is providing extensive support not just to the M23 rebellion, but to six other armed groups in the eastern Congo. Some of the support allegedly dates back to last year, although most of Rwanda's early involvement was aimed at assassinating individual FDLR ...

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I have a couple of newish pieces up elsewhere:

At Guernica, a critique of the Obama Administration's new Africa strategy, "Old Ideas for the New Africa."

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In her lucid opinion piece published in The New York Times last week, Séverine Autesserre argues that the international community has gotten it terribly wrong in the Congo. Drawing on an argument laid out in her popular 2010 book, The Trouble with the Congo, Autesserre says that this failure stems from our failure to understand the causes of violence. We have, she argues, for too long obsessed about the national and regional causes of the war, and neglected the local dynamics of conflict. She says about diplomats and UN officials:

They neglect to address the other main sources of violence: distinctively local conflicts over land, grassroots power, status and resources, like cattle, charcoal, timber, drugs and fees levied at checkpoints. Most violence in the Congo is not coordinated ...

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The UN Group of Experts on DRC interim report for 2012 was released on Friday evening. It's available here. I don't have time to comment now, but will do a post later this week on the report's significant findings.

The report was published without the controversial annex on Rwanda's alleged involvement in backing the M23 rebellion in North Kivu. My understanding is that this addendum is to be published within the next two weeks.

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Colum Lynch has the most in-depth coverage of the Group of Experts interim report annex fiasco to date at Foreign Policy's Turtle Bay blog. From it, we learn that:

The US mission to the UN (USUN) denies that it is blocking the report, but rather is "carefully studying" its findings "in anticipation of council discussions on June 26."

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The UN Group of Experts on DRC formally submitted the interim report to the Security Council on Tuesday, but without the controversial annex on Rwanda's alleged involvement in supporting the M23 rebel movement. Here's the latest from the few sources that are covering this strange story:

Jason Stearns discusses the reasons the annex is being blocked, noting that it might be submitted at a later date. He also makes the important point that we don't know what is in the annex.

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After a dramatic build-up, the UN Group of Experts report on the Congo was submitted to the Sanctions Committee of the Security Council yesterday. However, the bit that everyone was waiting for - an annex that addresses allegations of Rwandan involvement in the eastern Congo - has been separated from the report and has not yet been submitted.

Diplomats say that the reasons for the block are in part procedural - the annex was submitted after the bulk of the report, which has to be edited and translated into all UN languages, as the situation on the ground was evolving rapidly. But others suggest that the real reason for the block is that UN member states are worried that these allegations could further sour relations between Congo and Rwanda, and that they are best dealt with behind closed ...

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My favorite part of this series is that in several of the photographs, you can see exactly where DRC ends and Rwanda begins.

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Normally at this time of year, we have a plethora of new-to-us data about what's happened in the Congo over the last few months. That's because typically, in late May or early June, the United Nations Group of Experts on the DRC releases its interim report. This has been the pattern of the last few years, though certainly there are always variations in when the report is released, and, of course, what it contains.

The Group of Experts (GoE) reports are well-known as among the best sources of information about conflict in the DRC. It is fastidiously researched and documented, usually having annexes containing incredibly valuable (and damning) data (eg, receipts for illicit mineral transactions, photos of destroyed villages, load lists for cargo planes carrying weapons). The members of the ...

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