Public Eye Group

DIVIDED INTO mixed-use residential and commercial areas, with its eight-storey apartment blocks looking down on three-lane tree-lined boulevards, Tatu City gives off an orderly air not normally associated with Kenyan cities.

But then this is “the first planned city for Africa”, according to Cameron Rush of Planning, the project managers behind the 1,000-hectare development, as he unrolls blueprints for a city that should see its first occupants move in by 2013.

The demand is there for it – 200,000 Kenyans are moving from rural areas to cities every year, where people are already living in congested conditions.

The current housing shortfall stands at 200,000 units a year in Nairobi alone, where 60 per cent of the population live on 6 per cent of the land. Tatu is a vision, albeit an ambitious one, of how the country begins finding solutions to these problems.

“The confines of the city are such that there are no large pieces of land that the city can grow into,” says Arnold Meyer of Renaissance Capital, a division of the Russian investment bank Renaissance partners. It has been buying land in Africa for several years, convinced that the continent offered better prospects in the real estate market than more developed economies.

When a 120-year-old coffee farm north of Nairobi came up for sale, they bought it and soon began looking at ways to develop the portion closer to the Kenyan capital for urban development. The idea for Tatu was born.

Two to three times the size of Nairobi city centre and the size of downtown Johannesburg, Tatu City is designed to house 62,000 people.

Whereas downtown Nairobi functions 12 hours a day, with office workers stuck in long traffic queues in the morning and evening as they look to get home, the idea is that Tatu will operate all-day round.

Renaissance is not building the city itself. Instead, they have acquired the land, got licences and permits in place and put in the infrastructure for it, from laying water pipelines to electricity cables. Local rivers and aquifers will provide 25 million litres of water a day, while a deal has been struck with the Kenyan state electricity provider to supply 150MW of power, 10 per cent of what Kenya uses now.

The company then creates fresh real estate, taking what was agricultural farmland and cutting fresh titles from that. The idea is that for developers, it is plug in and play from there.

With Renaissance putting together plans for other cities in Zambia, Nigeria, DR Congo and Ghana, it wants Tatu to avoid comparisons with white elephant projects often started but never finished by many governments in Africa. The dynamics are in its favour.

In 1980 there were 400 million people in Africa. Last year there were more than a billion, and in the next 30 years, it will hit two billion.

Fifteen cities will grow by a million people in the next 100 months. Nairobi is one of them, as is Cairo, Lubumbashi, Accra, Lusaka and Addis Ababa.

Lagos in Nigeria is forecast to expand by two million, bringing Renaissance to replicate the concept of planned cities across the rest of Africa.

“Wherever we look, capitals and cities are so constrained that they just cannot cater for the growth,” says Meyer.

“Investors are quickly coming to the realisation that cities are going to be the main drivers of growth in Africa. Cities drive innovation, creativity. People like to think that Africa is a disaster case. But in 1880, London was the biggest slum in the world.

“The census at the time indicated an average dwelling housed 35 people. There was no sanitation, all the sewage flowed down the streets. It was a place you did not want to be. But that congestion sparked innovation and had a multiplier effect. The same thing is happening in Africa. Cities are drawing people to them and people are finding solutions because of congestion.”

One criticism of Tatu is that it will suck the life out of downtown Nairobi, leading to a migration of businesses and homes to surrounding suburbia. Renaissance says Tatu will have a rejuvenating effect on the Kenyan capital, not unlike what happened to Johannesburg several years ago. “Sandton was an up-and- coming area and a lot of businesses decided overnight to move. The vacancy factor downtown increased. Entrepreneurs then moved in and converted them to residential, which should have happened long ago. Young people then began moving in because they like the vibe and being within walking distance to social activities.”

And when they can’t get there on foot, the idea is for planned cities such as Tatu to provide an effective integrated public transport system, as well as other public services.

“Tatu will employ an urban management system to make sure all roads, solid waste and sewerage are maintained to a point that are higher than what you see today in other Kenyan municipal authorities,” says Rush. “And that can only translate into better public spaces, a better standard of living and higher quality environment for all.”

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1230/1224309632742.html

By David Ochami in El Wak

Kenya Defence Forces now control most of the strategic Gedo region in Somalia after Al Shabaab militia fled, according to Kenyan and Transitional Federal Government officials in the northern sector.

“All Shabaab is now on the run,” TFG’s military commander in Gedo, Abbas Ibrahim Gure told The Standard.

This follows the ouster of the militia group from Burhache town. The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and Transitional Federal Government (TFG) troops are carrying out operations as far as Bardheere, more than 100 kilometres inside Somalia.

Abbas described Al Shabaab as “hyenas that will never change” and must be ousted by the use of force.

Kenya Defence Forces panhard tank patrols Damasa area in Gedo region as a soldier keeps vigil. [PHOTO: GEORGE MULALA/STANDARD]

Despite providing some of the initial rationale for the Kenyan operation in the form of constant shelling of Kenyan towns, detonation of landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) like roadside bombs, and abduction of foreigners and Kenyan security forces, operations in the northern sector of Operation Linda Nchi are the least documented.

Geographically the sector extends from Gerille town below Wajir district in Kenya up to Mandera in the North, making it the largest sector that includes such important Somali towns as Bulla Hawa (or Beled Hawa as it is called), Damasa, Burhache, Busar, Garbaharey, Bardheere (an ancient Islamic studies town), Luuq, Dolo, Catamu and Busar among others.

The northern parts of the sector are mountainous with deep valleys within the Juba Valley river system while the Southern parts are drier plains with lighter population.

Ethnically, the region it is populated by ethnic Marehan and the late despot Muhamed Siad Barre is buried in Garbaharey. Some accounts state that Barre was born there, although other authorities suspect he was born in Ethiopia1s Ogaden region, but grew up in Garbaharey.

Historically Gedo and Puntland have been the source of Islamist militancy, including the rise in the 1990s of the defunct Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), the ideological predecessor of the former Islamic Courts Union and Al Shabaab, especially in the towns of Luuq and Dolo.

Smugglers, human traffickers and other transnational criminals who terrorise Kenya and Ethiopia had found a save haven in Gedo’s un-policed towns and hinterland.

From Bula-Hawa, militants and other criminals have shelled Mandera and El Wak towns since the collapse of Somalia’s central government in 1991.

Many of these attacks went unreported. Last

Month, infiltrators from Bula Hawa blew up a truck and killed four Ministry of Education officials in El Wak, and also tried to attack the local police station.

Police and military sources indicate that all the IEDs and land mines that have struck Mandera during the ongoing operation and before have come from the northern sector.

Since 2007 and this year, several Kenyan security and government officials, civilians and foreign workers have been abducted from El Wak and Mandera into Bula-Hawa and other towns in Gedo.

The most egregious attack was on June 10 when two policemen, were snatched from a foot patrol by suspected smugglers or militants.

It is believed they were initially taken to Garbaharey, but their current whereabouts remain unknown.

In 1997, Kenya shut down the operations of a Saudi agency, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, after one of its Algerian managers in Garissa, was alleged to have recruited about 300 Kenyan youth into AIAI, after visiting Luuq and Dolo, that had just been overrun by Ethiopian forces, scattering the forerunners of Al Shabaab into central and southern Somalia.

Kenya Defence Forces have deployed in the northern sector that largely covers the troubled Gedo region towards Baidoa in Somalia1s

Bay region.

Kenyan aircraft have hit several Al Shabaab targets in Bardheere in Gedo. The militants claimed the planes struck a relief camp although aid agencies said it had been evacuated before the strikes.

TFG officials say the claims are “classic Al Shabaab propaganda”.

Yesterday, TFG officials said an air strike on one of the militants’ pick-up trucks known as “technicals” full of Al Shabaab fighters in a small town called Yaqle in Gedo region was aborted because the militants forced civilians onto the vehicle to deter missile strikes from the air.

It is not easy to determine the nature and scope of KDF’s operations in Gedo, but occasional details emerge, including an encounter with

Al Shabaab militants in Busar town, 50 kilometres from the Kenyan border.

Lose border towns

And beyond the air strikes, the Kenyans provide aerial and electronic reconnaissance missions, training in and outside Somalia, joint searches and patrols and special operations to strengthen the TFG in liberated areas.

Until early this year the terrorists held sway in most of the towns in Gedo. Burhache was taken by the TFG in March and the Al Shabaab ousted from most towns like Damasa, Luuq, Dolo at the start of the Kenyan operation.

The TFG spokesman for the region, Colonel Warfa Sheikh Aden, claims their troops and KDF have liberated 80 per cent of Gedo and adds that “the only town that has not been liberated is Bardheere” although reliable reports indicate Garbaharey, Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama1a, a moderate Islamist militia allied to the TFG, controls the official capital of the region.

KDF and TFG military strategists believe forcing Al Shabaab out of Gedo region is a strategic objective of the two governments.

Besides losing territory or frontier control according to Lieutenant Mohamed Hassan, the Commander of Kenyan forces in the northern sector, the ouster of Al Shabaab from Burhache, Damasa and Bulla Hawa have denied it revenue generated through taxation and extortion in its former border towns.

“When they lose border towns they lose revenue besides room to maneuver,” said Lt Hassan adding that their ouster cost Al Shabaab major routes connecting Gedo to Ethiopia and Kenya to launch attacks.

Source: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/InsidePage.php?id=2000049153&cid=4