Author: Editorial Staff

ETHIOPIA’S prime minister shifted focus away from war on Wednesday, opening a cross-border highway to Kenya at the opposite end of his country, while the United Nations voiced alarm at continuing fighting in the northern Tigray region. Abiy Ahmed cut the ribbon on a mega-highway linking south Ethiopia with Kenya’s Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, alongside Kenyan counterpart President Uhuru Kenyatta, reflecting Ethiopian aspirations to become a regional powerhouse. ‘Just like the infrastructure, we should work on peace and security,’ he said at the border town of Moyale, refraining from mentioning Tigray. ‘Peace is a foundation for everything we are…

PIERRE-EMERICK Aubameyang has been fined $10,000 for social media posts that tarnished the ‘honour and image’ of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) after his Gabon team spent the night on an airport floor ahead of an African Cup of Nations qualifier last month. Aubameyang and his team mates were stuck at the airport in the Gambia after arriving for a qualifying game. They were not allowed to leave as officials argued over Covid-19 testing. The Arsenal striker posted pictures of players sleeping on the airport floor and wrote: ‘Nice job CAF, it’s as if we were back in the…

THE UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) on Friday, December 3, hosted the first ever UK-Africa Renewable Energy Ministerial Symposium to deepen UK-Africa collaboration in the renewable energy sector. Bringing together British and African leaders, the symposium created a platform to exchange best practices, align objectives, and explore bilateral opportunities in the renewable energy industry. The virtual symposium brought together several energy ministers, international energy companies, investors and financiers across Africa along with the UK Minister for Exports Graham Stuart.  Attended by more than 300 participants across Africa, with attendees hailing from regulatory bodies, key private sector players and UK…

NIGERIA employees of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell ordered the deliberate vandalisation of oil pipelines for personal gain, a documentary in the Netherlands has reported. Dutch television documentary programme Zembla, together with Dutch environmentalist organisation Milieudefensie, reported in a programme to be aired on Thursday that ‘multiple witnesses declared that SPDC, a subsidiary of Shell, caused the oil leaks.’ ‘According to sources, Shell employees profit from these intentional oil leaks by pocketing money from clean up budgets,’ Zembla said in a press release summarising an 18-month investigation of various leaks between 2010 and the present day. Zembla added the SPDC, along…

A GROUP of activists and celebrities, including a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, have signed an open letter to Nigeria’s president demanding that he hold accountable security personnel accused of shooting anti-police brutality protesters. The letter, published in the New York Times on Thursday to mark International Human Rights Day, comes nearly two months after what witnesses and Amnesty International say was a fatal clash in Lagos between peaceful protesters and military and police. The military and police deny shooting protesters. The demonstrators had called for an end to police brutality and a much-hated unit called the Special…

TRADE between  China and Africa fell by 10.6 per cent in the first 11 months from a year ago amid the pandemic, but analysts expect a rebound next year as key commodities like oil and copper recover. Chinese customs data released on Monday showed two-way trade amounted to $167.7bn from January to November, driven down by lower commodity prices and a coronavirus-fuelled economic slump, according to analysts. China’s exports to Africa edged up by 0.6 per cent to $101.47bn in the period from a year earlier. But China’s imports from Africa plunged 23.6 per cent to $66.3bn. China’s two-way trade…

A TUMULTUOUS year – with the pandemic and the oil price slump – has left its mark on Algeria. However, Nabil Frik, Managing Director Africa & Middle East at British Arab Commercial Bank (BACB), believes that economic reforms and increased impetus behind economic diversification are laying the foundations for better days ahead. As BACB celebrates the 20th anniversary of its representative office in Algiers, Nabil reflects on the impressive progress that the country has made over the past two decades  Algeria – the largest country in Africa and largest economy in the Maghreb region – is positioning itself for the…

RUSSIA has signed an agreement with Sudan to establish a navy base in the African nation for at least a quarter century, part of Moscow’s efforts to expand its global reach. The deal published Tuesday on the official portal of government documents allows Russia to simultaneously keep up to four navy ships, including nuclear-powered ones, in Port Sudan on the Red Sea. The agreement lasts for 25 years and could be automatically extended for 10-year periods if none of the parties objects to it. The document states that the Russian navy base should ‘help strengthen peace and stability in the…

NIGERIA’S Defence Intelligence Agency has acquired equipment that it can use to spy on its citizens’ calls and text messages, according to a report by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which researches digital surveillance, security, privacy and accountability. The report, titled Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyber-espionage Firm Circles, said a telecom surveillance company by the name of Circles has been helping state security apparatuses across 25 countries, including Nigeria, to spy on the communications of opposition figures, journalists, and protesters. The Citizen Lab report also said Circles was affiliated with Tel Aviv-based NSO Group, an Israeli…

THE Nigerian government has expressed its ‘surprise’ at the decision by the US to place the country on its religious freedom blacklist. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday designated Nigeria as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ for religious freedom, the rare inclusion of a fellow democracy in the US effort to shame nations into action. The State Department did not immediately elaborate on why it designated Nigeria but, in its annual report earlier this year, took note of concerns both at the federal and state levels. It pointed to the mass detention of members of the Islamic Movement…