African press review 13 June 2011

Teachers and gnus and table-top dancers on the African continent, all covered in today's African papers...

The Daily Monitor reports that the Ugandan government has given mobile phone companies a slap on the wrist, barring them from lowering call rates too much.

If phone companies don’t comply, the Uganda Communications Commission could ask them to pay a fine as high as 10 per cent of the annual profit. Phone operators aren’t happy with the news.

They say they don’t understand why the government- and not the market- should decide on the price of anything.

Speaking of money, the Daily Monitor in Uganda also reports that the country’s education ministry failed to spend its budget of 49,000 euros. The money had supposedly been earmarked for recruitment, but no one was hired.

That’s also because the government has put a cap on how many teachers the country is allowed to employ. The education sector is suffering. The student-teacher ratio is extremely high, even though education is mandatory in Uganda.

Moving on to South Africa’s The Star; “No place for table-dancers” reads the headline.

The comment was made by Africa National Congress Youth League Chief, Julius Malema. He was referring to a previous conference during which people danced on tables and exposed themselves “improperly.”

He did not, however, object to being greeted by fully clothed dancers and singers the previous day.

In Rwanda, the NewTimes leads with a story on local farmers. The agricultural exhibition there has come to an end with people calling for more storage facilities. New technology was also on the agenda. The government awarded a tractor to the country’s three most successful farmers who attended the function.

“US opposed to Serengeti road project,” The East African in Kenya reports. It says the White House is urging Tanzania not to build a road through the wildlife reserve, since it could threaten the migration of Gnus into Kenya.

Although the paper reports that the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, avoided the question on whether or not she was going to press Tanzania to change its plans, simply saying that Tanzania is one of the US’s strongest development partners.

We end with a story in The Guardian Nigeria. The paper leads with a statement made by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She says Washington helped with Nigeria’s recent presidential election.

According to the article, she condemned the post-election violence but did praise the country for appointing “honest people to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”