Africa Briefing (2024)

29/01/2024

https://youtu.be/giNXSmB2jjY?si=_OZa1oBc4buVEClm The West African bloc says it's ready for a 'negotiated solution' with Faso, , and , after the countries announced their withdrawal from the organisation. Africa analyst Jonathan Offei-Ansah unpacks the impact this move might have. PLEASE LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE AND SUBSCRIBE

The West African bloc says it's ready for a 'negotiated solution' with Faso, , and , after the countries announced their withdraw...

15/01/2023

ONE of Ghana’s premiere festivals that celebrates Black music, art, fashion, and culture, Afrochella, is not ending! Instead, is rebranding into Afro Future Fest. ‘We’re still in the early stages of rebranding but the festival isn’t ending out right,’ a spokesperson tells lifestyle news portal Travel Noire. ‘The brand is just transitioning from Afrochella to another name.’ There are very few details on the brand’s new name, but the spokesperson confirms the team has already gone live with a few posts on social under the name ‘Afro Future Fest.’...

Afrochella

15/01/2023

ENOUGH was enough. For 13 years, extremists with al-Qaida’s East Africa affiliate had controlled Mohamud Adow’s village in central Somalia, imposing harsh ideology and arresting local teachers and traditional leaders. Then, word came that Somali forces in a surprising national offensive had expelled the fighters from nearby villages. A small group of residents sneaked out one night in August to meet with Somali troop commanders and invited them into their village of Rage-El....

al-Shabab

15/01/2023

CHINESE Foreign Minister Qin Gang has said Africa should have a greater voice in the UN Security Council and other international bodies, something the continent's leaders have long called for. The diplomat is on a week-long tour of five African countries to oversee numerous infrastructure projects. ‘We should boost the representation and voice of developing countries, especially those of African countries, in the UN Security Council and other international organisations,’ Qin said at the inauguration of the Chinese-funded headquarters for the…...

more African representation

15/01/2023

ZIMBABWEAN police on Saturday fired teargas at an opposition party gathering in Harare and arrested 25 of its members, including two members of parliament, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) said. The arrests come after a wave of politically motivated violence against opposition supporters in rural Zimbabwe, raising fears of repression ahead of the presidential election this year. The date has not yet been announced....

Zimbabwe presidential election

14/01/2023

THE foreign ministers of France and Germany have voiced support for Africa to receive two permanent seats on the powerful UN Security Council. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna added their support to an African push for permanent seats on the Security Council. Baerbock spoke after she and Colonna met with African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa....

UN Security Council

14/01/2023

TANZANIAN opposition leader and former presidential candidate Tundu Lissu said he will return home this month from exile in Europe, after the government lifted a ban on political rallies. President Samia Suluhu Hassan lifted the six-and-a-half-year ban on political rallies last week, part of her reconciliation strategy after taking over the presidency in March 2021 following the death of her predecessor, John Magufuli....

Tanzania opposition leader

14/01/2023

THE Rwandan government is moving forward with a major project to digitise its public services and support innovative industries with the help of a €37 million ($39.8 million) loan from the official French development agency Agence Française de Développement (AFD). Rwanda's Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) confirmed the loan in a statement and said AFD was also giving the country a €1.2 million ($1.3 million) grant to help mobilise French expertise in the project areas....

Rwanda digitisation project

14/01/2023

THE Ghanaian subsidiary of South African mobile operator MTN Group has received a bill for back taxes of around $773 million, including penalties and interest charges, the parent company said on Friday. The Ghana Revenue Authority issued MTN Ghana with the bill after auditing it for the years 2014 to 2018 and inferring that the company under declared its revenue by about 30 percent during the period, MTN said in a statement reported by…...

MTN Ghana

14/01/2023

THE Kenyan High Court has suspended charges for sending money between mobile money wallets and bank accounts. The suspension is pending the determination of a lawsuit involving financial consumer rights after a petition was filed with the court by Kenyan citizen Moses Wafula claiming that charges should not be passed on to consumers. The ruling halts the reintroduction of charges between mobile money wallets and bank transactions, that were supposed to begin on January 1, 2023, after the Central Bank of Kenya announced the…...

mobile money fees

14/01/2023

SAUDI Arabia is one of the key destinations for Kenya’s domestic workers. Data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection shows that in 2022 alone nearly 80,000 domestic workers secured jobs in the Arab country. These migrant workers have also formed part of the largest pool of diaspora remittances. In 2021, the East African nation became one of the top four highest remittance-recipient countries in Africa gaining at least $3.7bn U.S dollars, …...

migrant workers in Saudi Arabia

14/01/2023

FROM Angola to Senegal, no fewer than 15 feature-length movies have been nominated for the top prize in next month's Fespaco pan-African film and television festival, held in Burkina Faso. Launched in 1969, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) draws thousands of movie fans and professionals from across the continent. It is also closely followed by the US and European movie industries, which scout the event for new films, talent and ideas....

Africa's top cinema event

13/01/2023

THE British government's funding of up to $1.15bn for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Mozambique is lawful, a London court ruled on Friday, dismissing an appeal by Friends of the Earth. The environmental campaign group had asked London's Court of Appeal to rule the British government wrongly decided funding the project, led by French energy company TotalEnergies, was compatible with the Paris Agreement on climate change....

Mozambique LNG project

13/01/2023

A BOTSWANA court on Friday dismissed an application by former President Ian Khama to have an arrest warrant against him struck down. The warrant was issued by a regional magistrate in late December after Khama, who has been living in South Africa since November 2021, failed to turn up in court to answer charges laid against him in April. The charges include unlawful possession of a firearm, receiving stolen property and procuring the registration of a firearm by false pretence among others....

Khama's arrest warrant

13/01/2023

FOR the first time in years, Arya Rams falls asleep and wakes up each day without a dense knot of fear in her chest. She lives in a room in a safe house deep in Kenya's Rift Valley, supported by the Dutch non-governmental organisation Trans Rescue. Being transgender in Kenya can be dangerous. In 2021, her friend was stoned to death by a mob on a beach near the city of Malindi, she said....

Transgender Kenyans

13/01/2023

CHINA has rapidly become Africa’s most important infrastructure builder, and the footprint of Chinese construction companies is seen in cities, towns and villages across the continent. With the launch of Beijing’s ‘Go Global’ policy in 2000, and President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the volume of roads, bridges, railways, power stations and other infrastructure built by China has increased markedly....

Chinese workers

13/01/2023

UGANDA has terminated its contract with a Chinese firm China Harbour and Engineering Company Ltd (CHEC) to build a railway to the Kenyan border and is now considering a deal with a Turkish company, a senior official told Reuters on Friday. In 2015, the east-African country signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with CHEC to develop the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, which will use the international standard rather than a narrower gauge sometimes used in the region....

Uganda drops Chinese firm

13/01/2023

GHANA’S government and trade unions on Thursday agreed to increase all public servants' salaries by 30 percent for 2023, they said in a joint statement, as the country struggles to reduce debt and tackle rampant inflation. The West African gold, oil and cocoa producer is battling its worst economic crisis in a generation. The local cedi dropped heavily against the dollar last year as government spending cuts and central bank interest rate hikes failed to tame inflation, which…...

Crisis-hit Ghana

13/01/2023

ZAMBIA’S former ruling Patriotic Front party has rejected a report by the IMF saying corruption flourished under its government. The IMF said this week the political elite under former president Edgar Lungu bent rules to access lucrative government contracts. Current President Hakainde Hichilema pledged to tackle corruption and secured $1.3bn in IMF debt support after Zambia defaulted to creditors. An IMF mission conducted a study last year focusing on governance weaknesses and corruption vulnerabilities in Zambia at the request of local authorities....

Zambia's former ruling party

13/01/2023

BENIN’S pro-government parties have won a majority of seats in Sunday's parliamentary elections, the country's constitutional court announced Thursday. The vote also marked the return of the opposition after a four-year absence. Sunday's vote, which went ahead peacefully, was a test for the West African state where President Patrice Talon has promoted development but critics say democracy has gradually been eroded under his watch, AFP reported....

Benin pro-government parties

13/01/2023

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TeamApt Incorporated, the leading business banking platform in Nigeria, has adopted the name of its flagship product - Moniepoint, a testament to its success as the all-in-one digital banking solution for businesses across Nigeria. The Moniepoint brand is already an established and trusted name among its customer base in Nigeria, and adopting it as the name means one less layer between the brand and the people it intends to serve....

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TeamApt Incorporated, the leading business banking platform in Nigeria, has adopted the name of its flagship product – Moniepoint, a testament to its success as the all-in-one digital banking solution for businesses across Nigeria. The Moniepoint brand is already an esta...

13/01/2023

THE US government appears to be intensifying its attempts to bring to justice terrorists who have been responsible for death and destruction in East Africa. Only this week, Washington offered a $10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the attack on US and Kenyan personnel at the Manda Bay Airfield in Kenya that left an American soldier and two Department of Defence contractors dead in January 2020…...

Kenya hotel bombers

13/01/2023

© UNFPA/Luis Tato – The motorcycle ambulance has significantly reduced the time required to deliver essential and urgent medical assistance to local communities. New York, USA, le 13 December 2022-/ The hardship being felt across the Horn of Africa by the worst drought in 40 years has left many women weak and malnourished. The UN agency dedicated to women’s sexual and reproductive health, UNPA, is helping save mothers’ lives in Kenya, through the donation of a simple but effective way of accessing hard-to-reach areas – a motorbike, to enable safe emergency deliveries in hospital....

© UNFPA/Luis Tato – The motorcycle ambulance has significantly reduced the time required to deliver essential and urgent medical assistance to local communities. New York, USA, le 13 December 2022-/ The hardship being felt across the Horn of Africa by the worst drought in 40 years has left many w...

12/01/2023

PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron has said he will not ‘ask forgiveness’ from Algeria for French colonisation but hopes to continue working towards reconciliation with his counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune. ‘It's not up to me to ask forgiveness, that's not what this is about, that word would break all of our ties,’ he said in an interview for Le Point magazine published late Wednesday....

Emmanuel Macron

12/01/2023

CHINESE Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, on Wednesday rejected the so-called debt trap accusation, saying China has always been committed to helping Africa ease its debt pressure. During a joint press conference with African Union Commission chairman, Moussa Faki Mahmat, Qin explained that in recent years, African countries have been actively promoting economic and social development, but insufficient funds have become the main bottleneck restricting Africa’s prosperity and revitalization....

Chinese Foreign Minister

12/01/2023

THE French and German foreign ministers arrived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday on a mission to support the peace agreement signed last year to end two years of war in the Tigray region. The visit by France's Catherine Colonna and Annalena Baerbock of Germany follows Wednesday's announcement by Tigrayan rebels that they were starting to hand in their heavy weapons, a key component of the November deal to end the conflict in northern Ethiopia....

Tigray peace process

12/01/2023

GHANA is paying holders of its 2023 bond a 2 percent cash fee in exchange for participation in an exchange for longer-term domestic debt, the finance ministry said in a document released on Wednesday. The crisis-hit country launched an amended offer for the exchange on December 24 and extended the deadline for bondholders to accept the offer to January 16, though it did not give a full breakdown on coupons and other details....

Ghana domestic debt exchange

12/01/2023

UGANDA’S cabinet has agreed for the energy ministry to sign production-sharing agreements (PSA) for two oil exploration blocks with two oil firms, including a unit of Australia's DGR Global, the government said on Thursday. According to Reuters report, a cabinet meeting on Monday had approved the signing of an agreement with DGR Energy Turaco Uganda Limited, owned by Australia's DGR Global, for the Turaco exploration area, according to a statement issued by Godfrey Kabbyanga, a junior information minister....

Uganda agrees oil exploration deals

12/01/2023

AFRICAN paytech giant Flutterwave is in a bid to acquire British fintech firm Railsr, along with a number of existing Railsr shareholders, according to a British Sky News report. Railsr is fielding interest from a number of potential buyers, including rival firms, African paytech Flutterwave, as well as a consortium of Railsr investors, according to sources. Sky News believes the sale would take place ‘at a steep discount’ to an earlier funding round....

Railsr

12/01/2023

CHINA will provide financial support for the Angolan national broadband network project under a concessional loan framework agreement signed in Luanda on Wednesday. Under the agreement, the Export-Import Bank of China will provide funding to the tune of about $249 million to build a 2,000-kilometre terrestrial optical cable in Angola as well as a submarine line connecting the enclave of Cabinda, and upgrade the country's telecommunications network....

Angolan national broadband project

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