African press review 11 April 2015

Queen Victoria goes green in Port Elizabeth, as the US and South Africa fight a chicken war. Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan continue to make progress on the Renaissance Dam project. Surprises as police authorities in Kenya investigate in the wake of last week's Garissa University massacre.

The main story in the Kenyan Standard reports that detectives investigating the Garissa University College terrorist attack are now trying to identify the local operatives who worked with the Somalia-based Al-Shebab militia group which murdered 142 students and half-a-dozen security officers in last week's attack.

Security chiefs in Nairobi and Garissa are also pursuing some of the attackers suspected to have been trained by Kenya to help Somalia’s government, but who ended up as tribal militia for a clandestine secessionist movement in northern Kenya.

The Standard also reports that the fate of the Garissa campus remains to be decided. Currently registered students will be accommodated at other public universities, and there will be no new intake at Garissa this academic year.

The main story in The Daily Nation reports that the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has bowed to pressure and allowed the National Police Service Commission to resume the recruitment of officers across the country.

Recruitment was halted on suspicion that some candidates for officer training had obtained their places through cheating or by paying bribes. The president has been under pressure to boost security in the wake of the Garissa terror attack.

Police training intake in July last year was declared null and void by the high court after a legal challenge by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority. The judge found the process to have been riddled with corruption.

The Daily Nation also reports that the Nairobi government has admitted that there were lapses in the security response to the Garissa University College terrorist attack.

The Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery and Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet arrived in Garissa before the security forces. The first group of special officers arrived in Garissa at 1.56pm, nearly eight hours after the alarm was raised.

Kenya has denied claims that the British government shared intelligence with the Nairobi authorities on a potential attack.

In a welcome change from stories about the removal of statues of colonial-era heavyweights, South African financial paper BusinessDay this morning gives prominence to the ongoing chicken war involving poultry farmers on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

According to the Johannesburg-based daily paper, South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies is optimistic that the current deadlock in the negotiations between South African and American poultry producers will be overcome.

US producers want South Africa to lift the import duties on their chicken products which they say put them at a competitive disadvantage.

A resolution of the chicken battle is vital to ensure the full backing of the US Congress for South Africa’s inclusion in the renewal of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allows duty-free access to a range of products from sub-Saharan countries into the US. The act expires at the end of September.

The statues have not gone away however, with BusinessDay reporting the tragic news that Queen Victoria‚ standing outside the public library in Port Elizabeth‚ minding her own business, has been the latest victim.

Old Queen Vic was covered in green paint on Friday morning.

The Cairo-based Egypt Independent reports that Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan have picked two firms, one French, one Dutch, to carry out studies on the potential impact of Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam on the flow of the Nile.

The leaders of the three countries signed a co-operation deal in Khartoum in March, paving the way for a joint approach to regional water supplies.

Cairo and Addis Ababa had previously been locked in a bitter war of words over Ethiopia's 3.8-billion-euro project.

Egypt, which relies almost exclusively on the Nile for farming, industry and domestic water use, has sought assurances the dam will not significantly cut supplies to its rapidly growing population.