African press review 9 May 2016

In today’s African Press review, we take a look a fraud story rocking Kenyan schools as well as clashes between two ministries in Egypt. Meanwhile, South Africa says it won’t be legalizing rhino horn trade anytime soon.

DR

We start with Kenya's Daily Nation, which headline with a story about a massive fraud. The paper leads with a new report by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption office, that uncoveres 'massive irregularities in procurement of text books for public schools".

"The fraud ranges from forging signatures, delivery of phantom books, overpricing and single-sourcing of suppliers for instructional material at school level" reads the Daily Nation.

Apparently, and despite the government spending 26 million euros on buying books in the last three years, most Kenyan schools don't have any text books. Even worse, heads of school, "management committees and suppliers" are all to blame for the "failure to achieve a 1:1 book to pupil ratio".

This has prompted the ministry to call for a rethink in the supply method, explains the paper.

It shouldn't be a surprise then, that the government is worried about this - not having books will impact the success of Kenyan pupils and undermine the free secondary education policy that started in 2003.

Now to Egypt, where the Agriculture Minister and the Supply Minister have clashed over wheat, according to The Egypt Independent.

The paper writes that conflicts between the two ministries "with Supply Ministry officials complaining that expected consignments of wheat have not arrived on time, despite new distribution procedures" have arisen recently.

And this is very bad timing, because it coincides with the start of the country's wheat harvest "with famers hoping to sell their crops through official channels at government-subsidized prices".

To be clear: on one side, you have the Supply Ministry saying they haven't been given 140 stocks of wheat, while on the other, the Agriculture Ministry is accusing the Supply Ministry of accepting batches of wheat from private-sector traders, breaching the law in the process.

This comes after the introduction of a new system aimed at reducing the surplus stock of wheat, which amounts to more than 700,000 tons, explains the daily.

Meanwhile, Business Day says South Africa might consider legalising rhino horn trade in the future. This couldcould anger environmental activists, even though the country's Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa says South Africa has "no immediate intention to trade in rhino horn".

Molewa comments come ahead of the upcoming Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference organised in Johannesburg. Some campaigners have been calling for the lifting of the ban on rhino horn trade, explains Business Day.

"South African which is home to some 20,000 rhino, or 80% of the global population, has suffered the brunt of poaching" writes the paper. Last year, 1,338 rhino were poached accross Africa - but so far, and that's a bit of good news - this year, the numbers have dropped from 404 to 363.

Finally, The East African reports on economic growth in the region. Here is the good news: "Rwanda's economy grew to 6.5 per cent last year up from 6 per cent the year before, while Kenya recorded a 5.6 per cent up from 5.3 per cent".

The two countries, however, are the only countries that saw their growth rate rise in 2015.Uganda "recorded the sharpest drop in growth, from 5.9 per cent in 2014 to 5.2" says the paper.

And the cause? Currency depreciation, falling commodity prices and high interest regimes, to name just a few.

There's a silver lining here however: "According to the World Bank, the region is still one of the brightest spots for growth in sub-Saharan Africa".