Foreign Office

London: The Foreign Office said on Friday that Dr Amanda Susannah Tanfield has been appointed Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the State of Eritrea.

She will succeed Mrs Sandra Tyler-Haywood who will be transferring to another Diplomatic Service appointment. Dr Tanfield will take up her appointment during April 2012.

Dr Tanfield joined the FCO in 1998 after ten years as a scientist in the Ministry of Defence. Her career to date has focused on multilateral security issues such as arms control and drugs and crime, including in a regional context.

On her appointment as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the State of Eritrea, Dr Tanfield has said:

“I am honoured and delighted to have been chosen as Britain’s next Ambassador to Eritrea, which is a beautiful country, though not without its challenges. I look forward to developing the UK’s bilateral relationship with Eritrea and to getting to know its people and culture.”

Curriculum vitae

A census of every household in England and Wales will be held in March 2011 by the UK government. The census forms will be printed in 57 different languages, more than double the number of the last census a decade ago, says the right-wing paper Daily Telegraph.

The languages range from Twi, spoken in southern Ghana, to Sinhala, spoken in Sri Lanka.

The bill for the translation only accounts for £50,000 or the £428million cost of the census but it appears to contradict the claims by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, that fewer Government forms would be put into foreign languages.

However, a Downing Street spokesman said the decision to use all the languages was taken by Labour when it was in power and it had been too late to change it when the Conservative-led Coalition took office.

Other African languages on the list include: Ibo (spoken in Nigeria), Amharic (Ethiopia), and Swahili (Kenya). Asian ones include: Bengali (Bangladesh), two types of Kurdish (Syria and Iran), and Tigrinya (Eritrea). Others span Albanian, Bulgarian, Lingala (Congo), and Vietnamese.

The same newspaper published in June 2008 an article titled “Surge in Eritrean population in Britian”, reporting the British Eritrean community had grown over the past 60 years to a population around 20,000 and that more than 17,000 of that number live in London.

The numbers speak for themselves and a printing a version in Tigrinya will most probably help to raise the quality of the census.

British newspapers report that an Eritrean woman died after she fell from a bridge in Coventry. A 32-year old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder as the investigations are going on. Police authorities were called to the scence yesterday to reports of two people lying in the road at the canal bridge.

A post mortem examination revealed that the 41-year-old woman, named Genet Kidane, had fatal injuries consistent with falling from a bridge. According to a witness a couple was arguing on the bridge minutes before the 41-year old plunged to her death onto a road.

Police said they were keen to speak to three “potentially key witnesses” – a nurse who administered first aid, the driver of a black cab which drove past the scene clockwise on Ringway St Nicholas, and a woman crossing the bridge who was carrying a red umbrella.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Britain’s overseas investment arm plans to invest about $300 million a year in coming years in African companies because the continent is registering high economic growth rates and it has become easier to do business in Africa.

The $300 million figure, some of which will be directed toward infrastructure and consumer goods companies, represents about 50 percent of CDC Group PLC’s new investment portfolio in the coming years, chief executive Richard Laing told The Associated Press late Tuesday.

“What we are seeing in these economies is for the first time many individuals have discretionary (spending money) available and they are looking for ways to spend that money. They want to have good value in goods and services,” said Laing, explaining the group’s motivation in putting more money into African consumer goods companies.

“I think Africa compares extremely well with Asia,” Laing said, referring to the rate of return on private investments. He said that the CDC Group has had an average return of 16 percent a year on its investments in sub-Saharan Africa.

CDC Group PLC is owned by Britain’s Department for International Development and has been investing in the private sector of emerging economies for more than 60 years.

Laing said it has become easier to do business in sub-Saharan Africa compared with 10 to 20 years ago. The World Bank said earlier this month that 10 sub-Saharan African countries were among the world’s top most-improved economies for doing business over the past five years.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund said the region is recovering fast from the global financial crisis and it will register the second-highest growth rates in the world, behind Asia.

The Washington-based institution said in its 2010 economic outlook that sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth will be 5 percent this year, compared to 2.5 percent in 2009. But the region has not recovered fully from the crisis, IMF officials warned.

They, however, said that next year’s economic growth for sub-Saharan Africa’s is projected to be 5.5 percent, bringing it closer to the high average rates of 6 percent to 6.5 percent it registered between 2004 and 2008.

The CDC Group has invested in a wide range of companies in sub-Saharan Africa, including in the power, telecommunications, industrial and financial sectors.

CDC Group generally does not invest directly in companies, but through local fund managers. The group also has investments in Asia and Latin America. Last year, it made global investments worth about $500 million.

When the group was formed in 1948 it was called Colonial Development. It later changed its name to the Commonwealth Development Corp. before abbreviating it to CDC. In Africa, it concentrated its investments in former British colonies. But recently, the group has expanded to other African countries.