Safari Notes

Kenya’s elephants could be wiped out by poaching in 10 years, unless urgent measures are taken to end the crisis, International wildlife conservationists warned here this week. A demand for ivory and rhino horns in the lucrative Asian black market has attracted cartels to Africa that are presently carrying-out cold blood killings of the animals, the conservationists say. In Kenya, the situation is at its worst now, according to Richard Leakey, an internationally famed paleontologist and founder of WildlifeDirect, a conservation charity. “There has never been such a level of killing as we are experiencing today. Unless we do something now elephants will be gone from the wild within the next decade,” says Dr. Leakey, speaking at a presentation in the Kenyan capital.

Transparency International has ranked Rwanda the least corrupt country on the African continent. According to a report dubbed ‘The Global Corruption Barometer’ (TI GCB 2013), countries  were put in clusters depending on the prevalence of corruption. Rwanda is in the group whose  corruption incidence ranges between 10 and 14.9 per cent. The report was released yesterday. Rwanda’s bribery rate was put at 13 per cent. No other African country appeared in this category. Sudan and Tunisia follow as the second least corrupt countries (between 15-19.9 per cent), while Madagascar is in the next category (20-29 per cent).