Author: Editorial Staff

BITCOIN’S rally hit a speed bump as the world’s largest cryptocurrency witnessed its worst weekly decline in almost a year amid wider losses in risk assets. The digital token slumped 20 percent last week, the most since the pandemic-fuelled selloff last March. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, tracking Bitcoin, Ether and three other cryptocurrencies, was down 23 percent for the same period. Bitcoin fell 5 percent to trade at $45,672 as of 5:00 p.m. on Friday in New York, according to consolidated pricing compiled by Bloomberg. ‘It is a market that was ridiculously overbought and will probably be so…

NIGERIA expects to take delivery of 3.92 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday, the third West African country to benefit from the Covax facility after Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, the government’s coronavirus task force said on Sunday. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with some 200 million people, has reported fewer than 1 900 Covid-19 deaths so far, much better than had been widely predicted early in the pandemic. Last week, Nigerian drug regulator approved the Astrazeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine use in Nigeria. The dispatch is part of an overall 16 million doses planned to be delivered to Nigeria in…

RELATIVES of more than 300 girls abducted by gunmen from their boarding school in northwest Nigeria endured an agonising wait for news amid rumours that they had been released, while security forces continued their search on Sunday. An armed gang kidnapped 317 girls from the Government Girls Science Secondary School in the town of Jangebe, in Zamfara state, at around 1 a.m. on Friday. The raid in Zamfara state was the second such kidnapping in little over a week in the northwest of the country, where schools have become targets for mass kidnappings for ransom. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on…

A LAWSUIT by South Africa’s two-times Olympic 800 metres champion Caster Semenya in the European Court of Human Rights that challenges restrictions of testosterone in female athletes is a ‘fight for all women’, her lawyer has said. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Gregory Nott said on Sunday a ruling by the governing body of athletics that prohibits Semenya from competing in certain track events due to her high natural testosterone is ‘a human rights violation’. ‘This is Caster’s fight but she believes it’s a fight for all woman who faced derogatory or prejudicial attacks upon themselves,” he said, speaking from Johannesburg.…

THE number of people without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa has declined for the first time in absolute terms in recent years, with countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda pave the way for their African counterparts. Moreover, Africa is ahead of the curve with distributed energy systems that can rapidly increase energy access in rural areas. This proves more cost effective than conventional grid extension solutions, driven by innovative business models and rapidly diminishing technology costs. Further, renewables are concurrently on the rise across the continent with considerable renewable generation capacities being added in countries such as Egypt,…

IT would make economic sense for Ghana to import liquified natural gas (LNG) because supplying natural gas from the west of the country to the industrial east would be too expensive, according to a report that assesses the future of the country’s energy and power sectors. The report released this week by UK-based Pangea Risk, a specialist risk analysis firm, looks at the opportunity presented by LNG versus domestic supply of natural gas in Ghana. The survey said that the infrastructure for supplying natural gas from offshore blocks in the west of the country to the east ‘is not fit…

THE World Bank has approved $250 million to improve the operational performance of the electricity sector utilities and increase electricity access in selected cities of Angola. The Electricity Sector Improvement and Access Project will finance electrification investments in the provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Huila and Huambo, delivering 196,500 new electricity connections that will benefit close to one million people and 93,857 public lights. The project will focus on electricity access expansion and improvement of revenue collection, electricity service improvement, capacity improvement of the public electricity producer PRODEL (Empresa Pública de Produção de Electricidade) and strengthening sustainable management of generation plants.…

CANADIAN NuRAN Wireless has entered into a Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) contract with Orange DRC SA to create solar-powered cell phone towers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). NuRAN is partnering with Orange DRC and various multi-network operators to construct and operate 2,000 solar-powered communication masts over the next 40 months. The towers will be erected across the DRC with a particular focus on rural communities with populations around 5,000. The supplier of mobile and broadband wireless infrastructure solutions has established  four different site categories to support multiple population densities and coverage patterns. Once fully operational, the network will have…

CHARLES Keter, Kenya’s Energy Cabinet Secretary revealed that the Kenya-Ethiopia interconnector line construction is expected to be completed by mid this year. ‘The new connection will be ready for commissioning at the end of the next three months. We view this as a critical installation, with which we will venture into the power trade businesses and as a result assist in the development of the country,’ said Keter. The Kenya-Ethiopia interconnector line is 1,045 kilometres long and  interconnects at the Moyale common border and has the capacity to accommodate or other transport 2,000 MW of electricity in either direction. The…

HUNDREDS of girls are missing after a large group of gunmen raided a school in northern Nigeria early Friday morning, residents say. The Government Secondary Jangebe School in Zamfara state was the scene of the latest mass abduction of school children in northern Nigeria. Nasiru Abdullahi told The Associated Press that school records show 300 girls are missing. His daughters, aged 10 and 13, are among them. Resident Musa Mustapha said the gunmen also attacked a nearby military camp and checkpoint, preventing soldiers from interfering while the gunmen spent several hours at the school. It was not immediately clear if…