On our weekly blog we aim to keep you posted on news from Africa and the world of development, to help contextualise our work in Katine. Here's this week's round up...
Award-winning Ugandan journalist Richard Kavuma introduces himself to the Guardian this week as he prepares to begin his work in Katine. Kavuma will be visiting the village each month and reporting back regularly on his experiences and on the progress of the project.
Katine fisherman Valentine Okoit lets us video his day spent trying to catch fish to feed himself and sell at the local markets. The village is on the edge of a swamp and many residents rely on it for food. What they catch and how much they have left to sell after feeding themselves and their families, however, isn't always very much.
Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni this week earned the dubious honour of becoming the first, and believed to be the only, African leader to congratulate Mwai Kibaki on winning the disputed Kenyan presidential election, reports the Monitor newspaper. Museveni has spent the past few days talking to Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the opposition leader contesting the result, to negotiate an end to the violence that erupted when Kibaki was sworn into office last week. More than 300 people have died in the fighting.
The paper also reported today that hundreds of Kenyan Asians are fleeing across the border to Uganda to escape the violence - a reversal of scenes 35 years ago when Ugandan Asians were forced to leave under the rule of Idi Amin.
The arrival in Uganda this week of 36 fuel trucks, stranded in Kenya for the past week, will bring some relief to those fearing major fuel shortages across east and central Africa as a result of the turmoil. However, more than 100 trucks remain in the country. Rwanda has already introduced fuel rationing.
Elsewhere, an African Union-UN mission took over peacekeeping in Darfur this week, replacing an AU force that has been trying to quell violence in the ravaged region of western Sudan. The United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) will be the world body's largest peacekeeping operation, with 20,000 soldiers and 6,000 police and administrative staff.
However, the mission's commander, Rodolphe Adada, told people not to expect an overnight change in the situation, reported the afrol news website.
And finally, the foreign minister of Cape Verde has rejected comments that the archipelago, which lies off the coast of Senegal, is a model for the rest of Africa on how to improve your lot. Last year the former Portuguese colony was removed from the UN's list of least developed countries to become a middle-income developing nation - only the second time this has happened to an African state - and is seeking closer ties with the European Union.
However, the foreign minister, Victor Barbosa Borges, told the Inter Press Service this week that he was not happy with the cape being held up as an example. "We do not wish to be set up as an example for anyone. Each African country must choose its own road toward development," he told IPS. The former Portuguese colony enjoys a higher per capita income than many Africa states and has a stable democratic government, although it relies heavily on imports and foreign aid.
* Have you spotted something that followers of the Katine project should know about? Feel free to share with other readers any Africa or development-related news snippets that you have come across.
