Uganda had deployed special forces in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, to ‘secure it’, said Uganda’s military chief on Tuesday, as tensions between South Sudan’s president and first vice-president stoked fears of a return to civil war.
The 90-day foreign aid freeze, ordered by US President Donald Trump after taking office on 20 January, has upended the global supply chain for medical products to fight HIV and other diseases. It is also blocking the distribution of drugs that long ago reached their destination countries.
Ghana’s new government would make steep spending cuts this year to recover the economy, said Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson on Tuesday as he announced wider than expected deficit and debt figures for 2024, particularly in the cocoa and energy sectors.
Uganda deploys troops in South Sudan capital
Uganda had deployed special forces in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, to “secure it”, said Uganda’s military chief on Tuesday, as tensions between South Sudan’s president and first vice-president stoked fears of a return to civil war.
A Ugandan military spokesperson said the deployment was at the request of the South Sudan government.
Tensions have risen in recent days in South Sudan, an oil producer, since President Salva Kiir’s government detained two ministers and several senior military officials allied with First Vice President Riek Machar.
One minister has since been released.
The arrests in Juba and deadly clashes around the northern town of Nasir are widely seen as jeopardising a 2018 peace deal that ended a five-year civil war between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar in which nearly 400,000 people were killed.
“As of 2 days ago, our Special Forces units entered Juba to secure it,” said Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, in a series of posts on the X platform overnight into Tuesday.
“We the UPDF [Ugandan military], only recognise one President of South Sudan, H.E. Salva Kiir ... any move against him is a declaration of war against Uganda,” he said in one of the posts.
Felix Kulayigye, the spokesperson for the Ugandan military, said the troops were there with permission from the South Sudan government.
“Yes, we did [deploy them] and they are there on the invitation of government of South Sudan. The situation will determine how long we’ll stay there,” he said.
He declined to give details of troop numbers.
After the civil war erupted in South Sudan in 2013, Uganda deployed its troops in Juba to bolster Kiir’s forces against Machar. They were eventually withdrawn in 2015.
Ugandan troops were again deployed in Juba in 2016 after fighting reignited between the two sides but they were also eventually withdrawn.
Uganda fears a full-blown conflagration in its northern neighbour could send waves of refugees across the border and potentially create instability.
Kenya HIV patients fearful as US aid freeze strands drugs
The health clinic where Alice Okwirry collects her HIV medication in Kenya’s capital Nairobi has been rationing supplies of antiretrovirals to one-month refills since the US government froze foreign aid.
On the outskirts of the city, meanwhile, millions of life-saving doses sit on the shelves of a warehouse, unused and unreachable.
The clinic is a half hour’s drive from the warehouse, but for Okwirry, they may as well be an ocean apart.
Without US funding, distribution from the warehouse, which stocks all US government-donated HIV medicine to Kenya, has ceased, leaving supplies of some drugs worryingly low, according to a former USAID official and a health official in Kenya.
The 90-day foreign aid freeze, ordered by US President Donald Trump after taking office on 20 January, has upended the global supply chain for medical products to fight HIV and other diseases. It is also blocking the distribution of drugs that long ago reached their destination countries.
“I was just seeing death now coming,” said 50-year-old Okwirry who was diagnosed with HIV in 2008 and has a 15-year-old daughter, Chichi, who is also HIV-positive.
Okwirry used to receive six-month supplies of ARVs from the clinic but now can only get one month.
“I told Chichi: what about if you hear the drugs are doomed?” said Okwirry, growing emotional. “She told me: Mom, I’ll be leaning on you.”
The State Department issued a waiver last month exempting funding for HIV treatment from the freeze.
But the USAID payments system in Kenya is down after the cuts, meaning contractors who implement the programmes cannot be paid, said Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin, who was the deputy head of communications for USAID, East Africa, until resigning on 3 February in protest at the dismantling of the agency.
“Projects are left wondering: ‘Well, how am I going to resume activities if you’re not paying me money?” he said. “The waivers that have been given are really waivers on paper.”
In Kenya, officials in Washington had not authorised the release of money required to distribute the $34-million worth of medicine and equipment at the warehouse, he added.
According to a Kenyan government document seen by Reuters, about $10-million is needed for that distribution. The Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies, the Christian charity that runs the warehouse, supplies drugs to some 2,000 clinics nationwide, says its website.
Knowles-Coursin told Reuters the commodities at the warehouse included 2.5 million bottles of ARVs, 750,000 HIV test kits and 500,000 malaria treatments.
USAID referred a request for comment to the State Department, which did not respond. The Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (Meds) did not respond to requests for comment.
Kenya’s Health Minister, Deborah Barasa, said she expected her government to mobilise funds to allow the supplies at Meds to be released within two to four weeks.
“We have identified the resources that are required,” she said in an interview.
Kenya has the seventh-largest number of people living with HIV in the world, at around 1.4 million, according to World Health Organization data. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the main US vehicle for funding HIV treatment, supplies some 40% of Kenya’s HIV drugs and supplies.
A health official in Kenya, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said stocks of two critical HIV treatments, Dolutegravir and Nevirapine, were low but did not know exactly how much remained nationwide.
Dolutegravir is often used to treat coinfections of HIV and tuberculosis. Nevirapine is often used to prevent mother-to-child transmission.
Barasa, the health minister, said there would be enough Dolutegravir to last five months and Nevirapine to last eight months once the Meds stocks were released.
For the time being, some patients can only get refills of their ARVS for one week at a time, said Nelson Otwoma, director of the National Empowerment Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya.
Lawsuits aiming to compel the Trump administration to restore funding for humanitarian programmes and reinstate thousands of fired or furloughed USAID workers are working their way through US courts.
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration has cancelled more than 80% of all USAID programmes.
Ghana to implement economic ‘shock therapy’ to reduce debt
Ghana’s new government would make steep spending cuts this year to recover the economy, said Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson on Tuesday as he announced wider than expected deficit and debt figures for 2024, particularly in the cocoa and energy sectors.
“The state of the economy ... does not reflect an economy that has turned the corner,” Forson said during his first budget speech to parliament.
“It reflects an economy in severe distress, burdened by debt repayment humps, mismanagement and a lack of accountability.”
The West African country is emerging from its deepest economic crisis in a generation, with turmoil in the vital cocoa and gold industries.
President John Dramani Mahama, who took office in January, has vowed to boost the economy and create jobs. He faces the fallouts of a cost-of-living crisis, an ongoing bailout from the International Monetary Fund and a sovereign debt default in the cocoa and gold-producing nation.
Forson said Ghana, which faces significant external debt service costs over the next four years, should reduce its financing needs to improve its credibility.
He announced a “shock therapy” of spending cuts, that will be compensated for by scrapping levies on consumers and targeted measures on revenue generation to reduce deficit.
“The government’s decision to keep its promise to remove four poorly designed taxes ... was a rare combination of good politics and smart policy,” said Bright Simons, an analyst at the Accra-based think tank Imani Africa.
Spending cuts should allow the country to achieve real GDP growth of at least 4% and reach an inflation rate of 11.9% by the end of the year, Forson told legislators.
Ghana is restructuring its debt as part of conditions to receive an IMF support programme agreed under the previous administration.
The country has to pay back $8.7-billion over the next four years, accounting for 10.9% of GDP, the minister said. The bulk of this is due in 2027 and 2028.
Al-Shabaab gunmen attack hotel in central Somalia
Gunmen attacked a hotel in a town in central Somalia on Tuesday where local elders and government officials were meeting and laid siege to the hotel, witnesses and relatives told Reuters.
Dahir Amin Jesow, a federal legislator from Beledweyne, the capital of Hiraan region, said at least four people had been killed. Hours after the initial attack, government forces were trying to flush out al-Shabaab fighters, some of whom had been killed in nearby alleys, said Jesow.
The Islamist militant group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement and said it had killed over 10 people.
Abdullahi Fidow, a clan elder in Beledweyne, said the hotel meeting was meant to discuss ways of countering al-Shabaab in the region.
“I was supposed to attend the meeting but got delayed because I was busy with a family issue. The blasts occurred before I reached the hotel,” he told Reuters.
Al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab frequently launches bombings and gun attacks in the fragile Horn of Africa nation as it tries to topple the government and establish its own rule based on its strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
“We first heard a huge blast followed by gunfire, then another blast was heard,” said Ali Suleiman, a shopkeeper who witnessed the attack.
Parts of the Qahira Hotel were reduced to rubble as government troops and gunmen exchanged fire, added Suleiman.
Halima Nur, a witness who lives near the hotel, said gunfire could be heard intermittently as the siege continued. DM