Tuesday 29, April  2024 {HMC} Everything feels sodden in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and beyond.

It seems as if the rain has been falling without respite for six weeks, and the impact has been devastating.

So far more than 120 people have lost their lives, including at least 50 in a deluge on Monday in an area about 60km (37 miles) from Nairobi.

This is the wet season, but there has been far more rainfall than what is normally expected, which has been put down to the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Rivers and sewers have overflowed, roads have become waterways and homes have been destroyed.

Flooding in Nairobi is not unusual but the sheer scale of this year’s deluge has exposed longer term problems with the way the city has developed.

“You can’t contain nature. It doesn’t work like that,” Prof Alfred Omenya, an urban planning and environment expert, told the BBC.

He says that much of the city sits on top the Nairobi River’s floodplain, which cuts through the capital. A number of other rivers and streams also flow through Nairobi.

A properly developed drainage system may have been able to cope, but as the city has grown over the last century from 100,000 residents to today’s 4.5 million the infrastructure has not kept up.

Compounding the problem is that less than half of the residents are connected to a sewage system. In slum areas, open sewers are common, which overflow when it floods.

EPA People inspect damaged houses at an area flooded by the Gitathuru river water, a day after it overflowed and broke its banks due to heavy rainfall damaging surrounding neighborhoods, in the Mathare slums, Nairobi, Kenya, 25 April 2024EPA
Slum settlements have been built on marginal land which is prone to flooding
Drains have also become blocked as people dispose of their household rubbish.

Open spaces have disappeared as more and more buildings have gone up – both in slums and planned areas.

As more concrete covers the earth there are fewer places to absorb the water, and it runs off – overwhelming the drains and rivers.

As a result the roads have become part of the drainage system, Prof Omenya said.

He blames “clueless leadership that started from the colonial times”.

Unplanned settlements have been allowed to develop around the rivers, sometimes disrupting their natural flow.

Many of the slum areas in the city, such as Mukuru and Mathare, have been built on marginal land along river valleys.

Last Wednesday, the authorities retrieved a dozen bodies of people who had drowned in the Mathare river following heavy rains the previous evening.

In the aftermath of the downpour, most of the houses in the area were flooded, with some residents trapped on the roofs of their houses.

Upmarket estates were also hit, including some that have not been prone to flooding in the past.

The man who runs the city, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja, said the rainfall levels have been very high, and blamed the encroachment on the land surrounding the rivers for the flooding crisis.

The governor has now suspended approvals for building developments and excavations.

But the bigger task might be clearing or improving the slum areas.

The government does have a plan to build affordable and decent housing, but past upgrading projects have not met the burgeoning demand.

Reuters A resident tries to clean his house marooned in flood waters after the Nairobi river burst its banks within the Mathare valley settlement in Nairobi, Kenya April 24, 2024Reuters
People’s homes have been caked in mud after water swept through them
In the meantime, residents have been asked to move to higher ground for their own safety.

President William Ruto has said that people living in dangerous areas around the country will be moved to land provided by the National Youth Service, while the government plans a long-term solution.

He said the military and the national government had been mobilised to work with counties to support those in distress.

Neighbouring Kiambu county, parts of which are on a river basin and have been affected by the floods, has also announced it will take measures to mitigate the situation, including building inspections.

In the past, buildings in and around the city have been demolished as a way to address irregular developments – but often with little effect.

Some of developments in the city and its environs have been criticised for impeding the flow of water, which then finds its way to other areas.

Construction of buildings on wetlands has also been a big problem.

In 2018, the multimillion-dollar South End Mall in Langata and the Ukay Mall in Westlands were demolished as part of a campaign to reclaim wetlands.

“Now we have many homes built next to rivers so flooded. Walls have collapsed all over… Don’t go against nature. It will fight back,” Robert Alai, a Nairobi county assembly legislator wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Reuters Residents wade through flood waters after the Nairobi river burst its banks and destroyed their homes within the Mathare valley settlement in Nairobi, Kenya April 24, 2024Reuters
Roads have been turned into waterways
Before the most recent floods, Mr Sakaja had defended the development of high-rise buildings in some residential areas, saying the only way Nairobi would develop was to build up.

His stance had come amid criticism that the developments were straining an already overwhelmed infrastructure. He has now issued a directive stopping all building development approvals “until we can review all those that have been issued and are continuing in the city”.

A number of MPs also criticised the governor over city management, citing the sewage and flooding crisis.

Mr Sakaja has defended himself, saying the criticism was politically motivated.

Outspoken Senator Samson Cherargei from the ruling coalition said the governor was not to blame as “the problem we are having begun in 1963, you cannot resolve it now”.

Some of the problems can be traced back to the origins of Nairobi – meaning a “place of cool waters” in the Maasai language – and the fact that it was not considered a suitable place for large numbers of people to live in.

It started as a railway depot under the British colonial authorities in the late 1890s. The engineers who worked on the site called the area a “swamp”, with soggy land and “unsanitary conditions”.

Years later, colonial official Sir Charles Eliot said Nairobi sat in “a depression with a very thin layer of soil or rock. The soil was water-logged during the greater part of the year”.

Nevertheless, the city developed into an attractive city with good weather, a lot of greenery and a national park.

But its drainage problem has persisted.

An initial masterplan by the colonial authorities took into consideration the lay of the land and designed measures to prevent disasters. There have been at least two other blueprints post-independence to date – but they have mostly not been implemented.

This season’s floods show that as rainfall could get more intense as a result of climate change a new plan is urgently needed, Prof Omenya said.

But the ordinary city-dweller is left mopping up, hoping that the rains subside.

SOURCE BBC

Tuesday 29, April  2024 {HMC}  State TV in Mali says a senior Islamic State commander who had a $5m (£4m) US bounty on his head has been killed by a force including troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Abu Huzeifa had been linked to several high-profile raids in the Sahel region.

This included a 2017 attack which killed four American soldiers and several troops from Niger.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have all suffered from relentless attacks by jihadist fighters.

All three countries are under military rule and have been developing close links with Russia while cutting ties with Western allies including the US.

They have been welcoming Russian military help while forcing troops from other countries to leave.

Abu Huzeifa, who was also known as Higgo, was described by the report on Mali’s state TV as a Moroccan national and a commander in IS’s self-styled Sahel Province.

It said he was killed on Sunday in an operation in the northern town of Indelimane in the Menaka region, describing it as “a victory against a bane of evil”.

The US government said Hufeiza was wanted in connection to an attack on a US Special Forces team in Niger in 2017 which led to the deaths of four American and four Nigerien soldiers.

IS later claimed responsibility for the attack.

SOURCE BBC

Tuesday 29, April  2024 {HMC} A senior Islamic State group commander wanted in connection with the deaths of U.S. forces in Niger was killed in an operation by Malian state forces, the country’s army said.

Abu Huzeifa, known by the alias Higgo, was a commander in the group known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The State Department had announced a reward of up to $5 million for information about him.

Huzeifa is believed to have helped carry out an attack in 2017 on U.S. and Nigerien forces in Tongo Tongo, Niger, which resulting in the deaths of four Americans and four Nigerien soldiers. Following the attack, the U.S. military scaled back operations with local partners in the Sahel.

“The identification and clues gathered confirm the death of Abu Huzeifa dit Higgo, a foreign terrorist of great renown,” the Malian army said in a statement late Monday.

Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, the leader of a Tuareg armed group allied with the state, said that his forces participated in the operation and that it took place in the northern region of Mali.

A photo of Huzeifa on state television showed him in army fatigues with a long black beard and a machine gun in his hands.

Mali has experienced two coups since 2020 during a wave of political instability that has swept across West and Central Africa. The country has battled a worsening insurgency by jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group for over a decade.

The killing of the Islamic State group commander over the weekend “could mean less violence against civilians in the area, but the threat remains high since for sure there are leaders with similar brutality ready to take over and prove themselves,” said Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Center for the New South, a Morocco-based think tank.

Colonel Assimi Goita, who took charge after the second coup in 2021, has vowed to end the insurgency. His ruling junta has cut military ties with France amid growing frustration with a lack of progress after a decade of assistance and turned to Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group for security support instead.

Mali has also formed a security alliance with Niger and Burkina Faso, which are also battling worsening insurgencies and have also experienced coups in recent years.

Although their militaries promised to end the insurgencies after deposing their respective elected governments, conflict analysts say the violence has instead worsened under their regimes. All three nations share borders in the conflict-hit Sahel region, and their security forces are overstretched in fighting the jihadi violence.

SOURCE VOA

By Ben SpurrCity Hall Bureau
Tuesday April 30, 2024.

In April, council took made an important move toward addressing the community’s sense of exclusion when they voted to work with advocates to create a Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation.

After a decades-long struggle, Toronto’s Somali residents could soon officially get a place in the city to call their own.

Less than one per cent of the population traces its origins to the East African country, but the community has made outsized contributions to everything from local language — Raptors fans labelled their 2019 playoff opponents the Milwaukee “Bucktees,” after a Somali insult — to music — Mogadishu-born Toronto rapper K’naan won a Grammy this year — to politics — Minister of International Development and York South-Weston MP Ahmed Hussen arrived from Somalia as a refugee.

But despite all they’ve brought to the city, members of the predominantly Black and Muslim diaspora say they have faced discrimination, and aren’t afforded the same social and economic advantages enjoyed by other Torontonians.

This month, council took an important step toward addressing that exclusion when they voted 22 to 1 to negotiate an agreement with local advocates to advance work on a Somali Centre for Culture and Recreation (SSCR). The new facility would deliver culturally appropriate social services, and give residents of Somali descent a place to celebrate their heritage.

“I have never been more proud to be Torontonian than in that moment,” Zakaria Abdulle, chair of the SCCR, said of the vote. Council “stood up for a community that has been standing up for itself for a very long time.”

Not everyone is on board with the plan, however, at least not yet. Coun. Stephen Holyday cast the lone vote against the proposal on April 18, citing a lack of consultation.

The city’s shortlist of potential locations for the facility has not been made public, but according to sources, it includes a site in his Etobicoke Centre ward.

Holyday wouldn’t confirm that to the Star, but said in an interview that his vote had nothing to do with the group behind the plan, who he described as passionate advocates “working to do something positive.” However, he predicted the community centre could prove “controversial” if nearby residents don’t feel “there is a selection process that involves the community’s input.”

Coun. Amber Morley (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) called Holyday’s position “disappointing.” She warned that holding up the proposal could “feed into that feeling of exclusion that many members in the Black community continue to navigate.”

There are about 20,000 people of Somali ancestry in Toronto, many of whom settled in Rexdale and elsewhere in the West End as the country slipped into civil war in the 1980s and 1990s.

Abdulle said the idea for a Somali centre was already in the air by then, having been proposed by members of the local community in the 1970s. Finally making it a reality would allow Somali-Canadians to take part in a “Canadian rite of passage” that has seen previous waves of newcomers from Europe, South Asia, and elsewhere carve out permanent footholds for themselves in Toronto, he said.

It would also help address an imbalance in Toronto’s social infrastructure; the SCCR says that just three per cent of recreation and community centres are Black-led and Black-serving.

“Communities need spaces to feel like they are part of Toronto’s growth,” Abdulle said.

In consultations, residents said the centre should include a multi-purpose recreation space, indoor basketball court, theatre, child care spots, a library and exhibition space to showcase Somali culture.

Hopes for what the centre could do for the community are high.

Obo Hassan, who helps run the popular Istar restaurant at Westown Plaza, said that while many Somali immigrants and their children have become doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, some young men still have limited opportunities and have become involved in crime. Others struggle with poor physical and mental health.

Recreation programs could help stop young people from falling in with a bad crowd, while social workers working out of the centre could provide mental health support, Hassan said. “We need to have a place where the kids can enjoy going.”

That hope was echoed by Sahra Siyaad, who sells dresses and other goods at a market near Martin Grove Rd. and Rexdale Blvd. For almost a decade she has been organizing with other Somali mothers to prevent youth violence in the community. Their work has inspired Mayor Olivia Chow, who frequently quotes a proverb referenced by the group that asserts when individuals come together they have the power to “mend a crack in the sky.”

“It helps the children,” Siyaad said about the potential for basketball and other recreation programs that could be run out of the centre.

Under the council-approved plan, the SCCR is hoping the city will provide land for the facility at a nominal cost, while the group would secure money to build and operate it through fundraising and from the provincial and federal governments. Programming would be geared to the Somali community but the centre would be open to all residents.

Chow told council this month that she is “wholeheartedly” backing the SCCR’s funding request, and has advised the other levels of government “this is a very important community for you to invest in.”

City staff are expected to report back to council in June prior to executing a formal agreement with SCCR, to provide an update on the proposal. Chow has promised robust consultation as the project moves forward.