Author: Editorial Staff

AFRICA’S top public health official says 60 percent of the continent’s population needs to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in the next two to three years. The director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), John Nkengasong, told reporters on Thursday that if it takes four to five years, ‘the virus will be endemic in our communities.’ African health officials are taking heart in vaccine progress, but concerns are growing that the continent of 1.3 billion people will be near the end of the line in obtaining doses. Nkengasong isn’t sure whether vaccines will be available…

KENYA’S tourism sector lost close to $1bn in revenue between January and October, when numbers of foreign visitors fell by two thirds due to Covid-19, the tourism ministry said on Wednesday. From safaris in the Maasai Mara and other world-beating wildlife reserves to holidays on pristine Indian Ocean beaches, Kenya’s tourism industry contributes 10 percent of economic output and employs over 2 million people. It brought in the equivalent of KSh163.5bn ($1.4bn) last year, and the government had initially expected that figure to grow 1 percent in 2020. But international visitors fell to fewer than 500,000 in the first 10…

ON the backdrop of increased fighting across Mozambique’s North between government forces and ISIL-linked terrorist groups, coupled with continued insurgency throughout Lake Chad and West Africa’s Sahel, a recent multinational study indicates that Africa’s youth sees terrorism as one of the biggest threats facing the future of the continent. More than seven in ten (71 percent) report concerns about terrorism, findings from the inaugural African Youth Survey reveal, with the majority polled across the continent suggesting it had the second biggest impact on the development of Africa over the last five years. Nearly 30 percent of young people identified ‘fighting…

ILLICIT Financial Flows (IFFs) have been at the centre of discussions in Africa due to their negative impact on development financing, sustainable development and growth. The emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the fiscal deficit situation in some African countries, equally bringing to the fore, the urgency to address the vice of the illicit outflows. This is in acknowledgement that the contraction in budgetary resources is likely to impede and delay the implementation of Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and therefore, strengthening domestic resources mobilisation by intensifying the fight against IFFs, and supporting…

JAPANESE automotive group Nissan is to set up a new regional business unit for Africa as it seeks to boost manufacturing capacity and penetrate one of the world’s biggest undeveloped new car markets. The move marks a reorganisation of the company’s disparate operations on the continent, bringing them within one entity headed by Mike Whitfield, who has previously served as managing director of Nissan’s units in both South Africa and Egypt. ‘Beyond internal operating enhancements, this also positions Nissan to focus on the massive opportunity that Africa presents to the organisation globally,’ the company said in a statement on Wednesday.…

EU officials are considering suspending budget support to Ethiopia because of the month-long conflict in the Horn of Africa nation’s Tigray region. The EU has provided €815 million of budget support to Ethiopia in the past seven years. Officials meeting later this month to consider an additional €90 million transfer may delay the funding because of the impact the violence has had on human rights, said two EU officials with knowledge of the discussions, who asked not to be identified as they aren’t authorised to speak publicly. Any decision to reduce aid that finances about 13 percent of the nation’s…

THE Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) mining sector is now almost 70 percent dominated by Chinese investors and that makes it vulnerable to Chinese economic developments, John Kanyoni, vice-president of the country’s Chamber of Mines said during the DRC Mining Week organised by Mining Review Africa. ‘The mining portfolio [in the DRC] is almost 70 percent under the control of the Chinese, so when China is affected we are also affected as an industry,’ Kanyoni told a webinar this week on investing in the DRC. ‘Even before Covid-19 we were facing some issues regarding mining: the slowdown of the Chinese…

Africa’s electricity generation capacity has grown at an average of 4.8 percent per annum since 2008; The Chamber remains determined in its commitment to seek a fair and just resolution that puts forth the interests of African people, businesses, investors and economic growth; This is an excerpt taken from the Africa Energy Outlook 2021. Get your free copy today on EnergyChamber.org. TOTAL electricity generation in Africa stood at 870 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2019, an increase of 2.9 percent from 846 TWh in 2018. Africa’s electricity generation capacity has grown at an average of 4.8 percent per annum since 2008, compared…

PROTESTS against racism have erupted around the globe in recent weeks, sparked by the murder of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer in Minnesota, in the United States. This act of racial violence serves as a timely reminder of the racial inequalities that persist for black people around the world, the African diaspora being no exception, writes Alana Dillette. In fact, Ghana, which has been a leader in connecting this diaspora to its African roots through tourism, commemorated the life of Floyd with a memorial service in Accra. The service was arranged by…

A FORMER Liberian rebel leader is expected to appear in the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona on December 3 to face charges of war crimes during the country’s first civil war. Alieu Kosiah, who was a commander with the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) between 1993 and 1995, will be the first Liberian to face trial anywhere for crimes committed during the country’s civil conflict. It will also be the first war crimes trial in a non-military court in Switzerland. The court will hear from the defendant during the first phase of the trial, which is…