Rwandan President Paul Kagame has poured cold water on Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), calling it “a big sham and a rip-off.” Speaking at the sidelines of an international seminar at Kigali, Kagame said it was “extremely disturbing” that Kenya’s ruling Jubilee Regime would escalate the costs of the SGR to astronomical levels so as to fleece Kenyan taxpayers of their sweat “for the benefit of a few people at th e top.” “They are now trying to excite Kenyans with the refurbished trains that weres used in China in 1950s, running on diesel engines. Terrible!” Kagame said. Tanzania’s SGR is four times longer than Kenya’s but only two times as expensive. Rwanda and Uganda recently shunned the Kenyan SGR, choosing instead to connect their countries to a railway line running from the Tanzanian port of Tanga through to Kigali and then up to the Ugandan capital, Kampala. High level corruption being perpetrated by Kenyan top officials, leading to inflated costs, was mainly blamed for the ...

In this file photo taken on June 8, 2000 Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe clenches his fist as Zanu PF party praises him at a rally in the village of Mupandawana, some 230 km South of the capital Harare. Robert Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe with an iron fist from 1980 to 2017, has died aged 95, the country's president announced on September 6, 2019. / AFP / Odd ANDERSEN Former Zimbabwean President Robert Gabriel Mugabe on Friday passed on at the age of 95, ending the life of one of the most prolific figures in African history. His death is another point of reflection and debate on the complicated legacy of the strongman who ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years which were preceded by three decades of independence struggle. The western media preferred to refer him as a tyrant, a dictator, a human rights abuser whose regime “ brought Zimbabwe to its knees”. This article is inspired by the teaching of Nigerian writer  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie  who has warned us of the danger of ...