Author: Editorial Staff

CHINA’S exceptional economic and political success can be called the ‘Chinese miracle’ from which African countries have much to learn, a Kenyan party leader has said. ‘You have to give credit to the Communist Party of China (CPC) for having managed to steer the country in a disciplined manner and in a focused manner that has enabled them to achieve what one can generally call the “Chinese miracle”’, Raphael Tuju, secretary-general of Kenya’s ruling Jubilee Party, told Xinhua in a recent interview. Noting the outstanding trajectory on which China develops its economy, he said that there are many lessons that…

AFRICA is facing a vicious coronavirus resurgence, with unprecedented hospital admissions and fatalities pushing health facilities to the brink as the continent falls far behind in the global vaccination drive. With just under 5.3 million reported cases and around 139,000 deaths among its nearly 1.3 billion people, Africa is still the world’s least-affected continent after Oceania, according to an AFP tally. So far African nations have been spared disasters comparable to Brazil or India. But the pandemic is resurging at an alarming rate in at least 12 countries, with continental cases expected to hit a record peak in around three…

ALIKO Dangote, Africa’s richest person, said he plans to diversify his group’s investments in Cameroon, starting with energy. ‘We have plans to expand our investment to other sectors beginning with oil and gas,’ Dangote told reporters Wednesday after meeting Cameroonian President Paul Biya in the capital, Yaounde. He didn’t provide further details. The Nigerian billionaire, founder of the multinational industrial conglomerate Dangote Group, also announced his company will double cement production in Cameroon. Dangote opened a 1.5 million-ton cement grinding facility in the central African nation in March 2015 that ended a 40-year French monopoly in the industry.

THE Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has granted  Senegal an additional funding of about $4.67 million to fund the implementation of the port of Dakar’s Pier 3 modernisation project. This grant is subject to an agreement signed last month by the Senegalese Minister of the Economy, Amadou Hott, and the Japanese ambassador to Senegal, Arai Tatsuo. It brings the total amount of Japan’s investments in this programme to nearly $40 million. Overview of the project The port of Dakar’s Pier 3 modernisation project was launched on July 4, 2019. The works comprise, among other things, the construction of a 350-metre…

SOMALILAND’S power grid supplying the city of Berbera, home to the largest port in the horn of Africa, is being monitored and controlled using microgrid technology. The microgrid consists of two solar plants with a total capacity of 8MW, a containerised lithium-ion power storage system with a capacity of 2MWh and three modern diesel generators. These were combined in the Berbera Electricity Company (BEC) utility grid. This has enabled BEC to reduce the electricity tariff in Berbera, which is now the lowest in Somaliland and the Somali-Peninsula overall. The large-scale expansion project, hosted by DHYBRID technology and with the help…

A 12-YEAR-OLD conflict in northeast Nigeria has caused the deaths of some 324,000 children under five, mostly from disease and hunger, the UN has warned. Previous data showed that Boko Haram militants, who launched an insurgency in 2009 that has since spread to neighbouring countries, have killed more than 40,000 people and displaced over two million from their homes. But in a new report titled Assessing the impact of conflict on development in northeast Nigeria, the UN Development Programme said on Wednesday ‘the full human cost of war is much greater.’ ‘We estimate that more than 90 percent of conflict-attributable…

STRIVE Masiyiwa, the telecommunications billionaire tasked with helping the AU secure Covid-19 vaccines, said the shortage of doses on the continent was a consequence of deliberate action by the world’s richest nations. While the US has fully vaccinated 45 percent of its population, the UK 47 percent and the EU 29 percent, Africa has had 61.4 million doses delivered for 1.1 billion people. Just 1.1 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. ‘It’s not a question of if this was a moral failure, it was deliberate,’ Masiyiwa told a virtual summit on vaccine equality and equitable distribution on Tuesday.…

ETHIO Telecom has partnered with Ericsson to expand its 4G services into the South West region of Ethiopia. Specifically, Ethio Telecom will use Ericsson’s radio system products and solutions for its 4G network deployment, of which the core expansion will be carried out in Ethio Telecom’s regional data centres and those in Addis Ababa. ‘We are excited to collaborate with Ericsson in expanding our 4G/LTE Advanced service. This will bring high-speed internet to the South West region, which will be vital for achieving Ethiopia’s digitalisation ambitions while improving the reach of telebirr, our mobile money service,’ said Frehiwot Tamru, CEO…

WARNING the continent faces slower growth, rising debt levels and a shortage of Covid-19 vaccines, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Wednesday appealed for more aid to African countries to help them bounce back from the pandemic. ‘Africa is now facing the world’s fastest growth rate for new Covid cases, with an exponential trajectory even more alarming than during the second wave in January,’ she said in an address to the African Development Bank’s annual meeting. ‘It is a human tragedy – and an economic calamity.’ While the global economy is expected to grow six percent this year, the Washington-based…

AFRICRYPT, a South African cryptocurrency investment company, has reportedly defrauded around $3.6bn in investor funds after the company made claims that its trading systems had been hacked. Investors in AfriCrypt reportedly count amongst South African celebrities and other high profile individuals. In a matter of hours the staggering monetary amount, around R54-billion, seemingly disappeared without a trace on 13 April. $3.6bn in stolen cryptocurrency Shortly after claiming that its systems had been shut down by a hack, AfriCrypt’s teenage ‘directors’, brothers, Ameer and Raees Cajee (17 and 20, respectively) allegedly transferred all investor funds from their South African bank account…