Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Much of the world takes daily weather forecasts for granted. But most of Africa’s 1.3 billion people live with little advance knowledge of what’s to come. That can be both deadly and expensive, with damage running in the billions of dollars.

NAIROBI, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Kenya's transport minister apologised on Saturday after a widespread electricity blackout the previous night left passengers at the main airport in Nairobi grappling in darkness.

Power went off in many parts of the country at 9.45 p.m. (1845 GMT) on Friday, the electricity distribution company Kenya Power (KPLC.NR) said in a statement, attributing the loss to "a system disturbance".

NAIROBI, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Some 14 km from Garissa town, located in northeastern Kenya, sits one of the country's hidden gems in the energy sector.

Known as the Garissa Solar Power Plant, the 55 megawatts (MW) facility is the "largest grid-connected solar power plant in east and central Africa," according to Kenya's Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Corporation (REREC).

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — An airstrike on a crowded town square in Ethiopia’s restive Amhara region killed at least 26 people and wounded more than 55 others, a senior health official said Monday, days after authorities asserted that calm had been restored in the area.

Local militia members have been clashing with Ethiopia’s military over efforts to disband them, and last week the military retook key Amhara towns by force.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan police official said Tuesday that dead bodies were planted to accuse police officers of using excessive force during recent anti-government protests, which rights groups say left dozens of demonstrators dead.

Japhet Koome, the national police inspector general, told reporters that “people were hiring dead bodies and parading them to the media to taint the police’s image.”

He did not provide evidence or details to support the claim.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations World Food Program is slowly resuming food aid to Ethiopia nearly five months after taking the extraordinary measure of suspending aid to millions of people after the discovery of a massive scheme to steal donated grain. WFP said it’s testing small-scale distribution in some areas but acknowledges that the government still plays a role in the process.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — As the U.S. government was considering Kenya to lead a multinational force in Haiti, it was also openly warning Kenyan police officers against violent abuses. Now 1,000 of those officers might head to Haiti to take on gang warfare.

NAIROBI, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Kenya's interior ministry said on Wednesday that it had suspended the local activities of cryptocurrency project Worldcoin while government agencies assess potential risks to public safety.

The project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched last week. It requires users to give their iris scans in exchange for a digital ID, and in some countries users also get free cryptocurrency as part of plans to create a new "identity and financial network".

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Not everyone is hostile to the coups in Niger and other African nations in the past few years that have worried the West. In the “family photo” for last week’s Russia-Africa Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood next to Ibrahim Traore, the young military officer who seized power in Burkina Faso in September.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — African leaders have left two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little to show for their requests to resume a deal that kept grain flowing from Ukraine and to find a path to end the war there.

Putin in a press conference late Saturday following the Russia-Africa summit said Russia’s termination of the grain deal earlier this month caused a rise in grain prices that benefits Russian companies. He added that Moscow would share some of those revenues with the “poorest nations.”