By Patrick Werr

CAIRO, Reuters- An Egyptian and a Sudanese company signed an agreement on Tuesday to build a key section of the Cape-to-Cairo highway, an Egyptian official said.

The road has been a dream since the late 19th century, when British officials planned a road to connect their colonies in Africa. Under the agreement, a 400-km (250-mile) stretch of highway will be built between Aswan in Egypt and Dongola in Sudan at a cost of $500 million, Osama Saleh, chairman of the General Authority for Investment, told reporters.

This is the last section to be built between Khartoum and Cairo, although major gaps remain unfinished in East Africa.

“The project aims to connect Egypt’s Alexandria and Cape Town in South Africa,” Saleh said.

Egypt’s state Holding Co. for Building and Construction and Sudan’s privately owned Zawaya Group for Development and Investment signed the memorandum of understanding.

Eritrean Ministry of Information reports that a high-level Eritrean government delegation headed by Foreign Minister Osman Saleh participated at the 4th China-Africa Partnership Conference held in the Egyptian city of Sharm Al-Sheik from November 6 to 9.

More than 19 Heads of State and ministers from 49 African countries attended the conference that focused on enhancing the exiting relations and cooperation of partnership between Africa and the PRC.

In a statement they gave, the ministers of foreign affairs, trade and industry of the African countries and China underlined the significance of enhancing strategic partnership in meeting the current global crisis, especially the negative impact of the prevailing economic and financial meltdown, food shortage and climatic change.

An understanding has also been reached to hold the 5th China-Africa Conference in Beijing in 2012.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Osman Saleh conducted discussion with his Egyptian counterpart, Mr.Ahmed Aboul Gheit, on bilateral relations and developments in the Horn of Africa. Source: (Shabait)

Austal High Speed Boat

The Government of Egypt’s two Austal-built high speed vehicle ferries have officially commenced operations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, introducing a new standard of ferry service across the Red Sea.

The important milestone was achieved on the back of Austal’s recent award of a technical management and maintenance contract for the two catamaran ferries.

Each 88-metre vessel now performs six return trips per week, operating on 100 nautical mile route between Dibba in Saudi Arabia and Safaga in Egypt.

The service has already proven popular with Pilgrims travelling on to Mecca, Egyptian workers travelling to and from Saudi Arabia as well as business and leisure travellers. So far more than 69700 people have utilised the service, which has also facilitated the transport of 3514 vehicles and 730 trucks.

Integral to the successful launch of the new service, Austal’s comprehensive technical management and maintenance package is being undertaken over a three-year period and includes options for an additional two years.

The package will see Austal perform planned and preventative maintenance support, unscheduled maintenance, management and performance of annual surveys and maintenance periods as well as shorebased engineering support.

As a result, Austal has established a dedicated, fully staffed service office in the Egyptian port city of Safaga, where it will utilise the region’s existing maintenance docking facilities where required.

Along with building on the company’s extensive experience in the Middle East region, Austal General Manager – Service, Michael McCourt, said the project demonstrated Austal’s growing technical management and maintenance capability.

‘Austal continues to grow its global Through Life Support (TLS) capability, which now includes countries such as Oman, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela,’ Mr McCourt said.

‘As this contract has already shown, Austal is committed to ensuring client vessels are fully maintained and available for operation in accordance with the vessels’ planned operational profile. We are pleased to be involved in establishing and maintaining this important public transportation service in the Middle East,’ he said.

Mr McCourt said Austal can tailor service packages to suit individual requirements by drawing on more than 20-years experience in aluminium vessel design and construction.

‘Having delivered more than 200 vessels to both commercial and defence customers worldwide, including 16 to the Middle East, we understand what is required to maximise the operational availability of every fleet,’ he said.

The two 88-metre ferries ‘Cairo’ and ‘Riyadh’ were originally delivered to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in December 2008 and later gifted to the Egyptian Government to improve the standard of ferry services across the Red Sea.

Each vessel has the capacity to carry 1200 passengers, 120 cars and 15 trucks at an operating speed of 37 knots. Source: (AMEINFO)

Nile

Egypt State Information Service (SIS) is reporting that Egypt is denying reports that Eritrea diverted one of the Nile tributaries away from Egypt and Sudan.

Dr. Mohamed Nasr Eddin Allam, Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation said reports are not true on Eritrea’s diversion of one of the tributaries of River Atbara which is nourishing the River Nile away from Egypt and Sudan.

He added that Eritrea’s technical capabilities are limited in this field and its contribution to the water resources of the Nile Basin is rather weak.

Allam said Egypt has approved last week the establishment of a number of dams in Ethiopia and some Nile Basin countries to cultivate 20,000 feddans by those countries.  He affirmed that Egypt does not object the establishment of small dams by those countries, contrary to some parties’ allegations that Egypt is against development process in Nile Basin countries.

Egypt had approved the establishment of Tikrizi dam in Ethiopia since the year 2005 as the Ethiopian government presented the detailed feasibility studies on the dam to Egypt and Egypt approved as it is to be built for only power generation and would not affect Egypt’s quota of Nile water, he added.

The projects of building dams for power generation would also benefit not only Ethiopia but also the down stream countries, Egypt and Sudan.

On the other hand, Allam said the satellite survey of the Nile Basin by the Ministry for the Nile Basin countries indicated that the establishment on the Nile establishments including the small dams would not affect Egypt’s water Quota.

The two largest such establishments is Marwa dam of Sudan which stores 12 billion cubic meters a year and that is within the limit of Sudan’s water quota according to 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan.

The second establishment is that of Tikrizi dam in Ethiopia which stores nine billion cubic meters of water a year and it is used for power generation. Allam added that he made a report to the political leadership in this respect.

Relations between Egypt and Ethiopia at the best and there are cooperation by the two countries in the water question through the Nile Basin countries, the Minister added.

Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia the eastern Nile Basin countries are conducting studies to carry out a number of power generation projects and power linkage, for the good of the three countries, the Minister added.

NAM

(Reuters) – Leaders from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a group of 118 countries, said the world needs a financial system that is fairer to developing states which have suffered most in a crisis caused by rich countries.

The presidents of Cuba, Egypt and others were addressing a NAM summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The summit on Wednesday and Thursday is the 15th held by NAM, a grouping that has struggled to stay relevant after it was founded during the Cold War by countries which did not want to be aligned either with the Soviet Union or the United States.

Below an extract from Reuters about the background of NAM:

ORIGIN OF NAM:

* The Bandung Asian-African Conference in April 1955 was instrumental in founding the Non-Aligned Movement. That meeting gathered delegates from 29 countries, many newly independent from their colonial rulers.

FOUNDING NAM SUMMIT:

* The NAM was formally set up in 1961 in Belgrade by developing countries that chose not to align with the United States or Soviet Union to avoid becoming caught up in Cold War politics. Twenty-five countries were represented.

* The founding fathers were President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt, President Sukarno of Indonesia and President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

* Nasser, a champion of Arab nationalism, was a hero to Arabs for defying the United States and colonial powers Britain and France in the 1950s and 1960s. “We don’t want to become a part of any sphere of influence for any power. That is what the United States has tried to do with us,” he said.

NAM TODAY:

* The movement now has 118 member states, with 15 observer states, representing two-thirds of the members of the United Nations and half of the world’s population. It has struggled to find a role since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union’s collapse.

* The 118 are composed of 53 states in Africa, 38 in Asia, 1 in Europe and 26 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

CAIRO,  June 18 (Reuters) – Egypt’s food exports to Libya and Sudan will face increasing barriers after the introduction of new import duties and transport restrictions, the head of Egypt’s Food Industries Export Council said on Thursday.

Hany Berzy told Reuters Libya’s decision to impose a 10 percent import duty on Egyptian food commodities and Egypt’s decision to prohibit transfer of food products to Sudan via land was a double blow to the sector.

“Unfortunately, everyone is trying to introduce extra taxes to protect their local industries despite the fact that we have an Arab free trade agreement,” Berzy said, adding he did not know the exact reason Egypt restricted land transportation for commodities bound for Sudan. Read the full story

Reuters is reporting the first case of the new H1N1 influenza virus in a 12-year-old American girl in Egypt. The source of the information is a Cairo-based official from the World Health Organisation. Read more: Reuters.

Egyptian authorities have increased security levels ahead of this weeks Obama visit to Cairo. According to officials in the capital this have been the biggest security measures in Egypt for a long time. Muslims have been waiting long for the speech by Barack Obama, which will address the relations between the United States and the Islamic world . Read more: IOL.

JERUSALEM (MarketWatch) — Moses once parted the sea somewhere around there, but that was some 4,000 years before the Mediterranean Sea and Red Sea were actually rejoined by the builders of the Suez C…

Land of the Punt

Bonn, Germany: Hatshepsut ruled over the land of the Pharaohs in the 18^th Dynasty 1479 to 1458 BC.

Although it was uncommon that Egypt was governed by a woman, Hatshepsut and Cleopatra are evidence that death and destiny could have created scenarios, where a woman could have become the Sun God.  

As a pharaoh Hatshepsut oversaw preparation and funding of missions to the Land of Punt, today in the region of Eritrea. When the Egyptians returned from the Land of Punt they brought with them richness and goods in the form of gold, myrrh, ebony, ivory and incense.

Even today incense is used and routed deeply in the culture of Eritrea and the Horn of Africa.

According to German scientists traces of such incense have been found in a flagon that has an inscription with Hatshepsut’s name. The flagon was used as perfume by the pharaoh and seems to be well preserved.

The scientists plan to screen the perfume, which they named “the scent of the gods”, in the Radiology Department of the University of Bonn. First x-rays revealed residues of fluid sediment, which is going to be analysed by pharmacologists with the goal to recreate the perfume. University of Bonn Press Release