Author: Editorial Staff

BOBI Wine, the Ugandan singer and presidential candidate, suspended his campaign on Tuesday after members of his campaign team were injured and his car shot at during clashes between security personnel and his supporters. The developments were the latest in escalating violence in Uganda as authorities crack down on supporters of 38-year-old Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi. ‘With effect from today, I am suspending my campaign until further notice,’ he told a news conference in a village near the capital Kampala on Wednesday. ‘We are going to the electoral commission headquarters to inquire why we are being…

SINCE the coronavirus forced his school to close in March, Papin has been working six days a week at a diamond mine in the Central African Republic (CAR) – hauling sacks of mud and rubble under a hot sun. He is among a dozen children working at the open-pit mine near the southern town of Ngoto, where about 100 miners use shovels and sieves to scour the red earth for diamonds. It is back-breaking work and Papin longs to return to the classroom. ‘I came here to help my big brother,’ Papin, who said he was 16 but appeared younger,…

POLICE in Nigeria have rescued 10 people, including four children, four pregnant women and two other women from an illegal maternity home, a spokesman said on Wednesday. The operation was carried out at the so-called ‘baby factory’ in the Mowe area of the southwestern Ogun state on Tuesday. ‘Acting on a tip-off, our men stormed the illegal maternity home and rescued 10 people, including four kids and six women, four of whom are pregnant,’ police spokesman Abimbola Oyeyemi told AFP news agency. He said the women told police that the owner hired men to impregnate them and then sell the…

KENYAN sex worker Silvia does not much like the large, oblong-shaped blue pill she takes with her porridge every morning. While the daily tablets of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drastically cut her risk of getting HIV, they bring with it stigma and even violence due to the common misconception that the drug is taken by people who already have the virus. ‘I was beaten up by a client who found the pills in my handbag. He thought I had AIDS and accused me of giving it to him and hit me on the head with bar stool. I ended up in…

THE Commonwealth is deploying a team to observe the general election in Ghana scheduled for December 7. Commonwealth Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland, constituted the group following an invitation from the Electoral Commission of Ghana. Members of the group include politicians, diplomats and experts in law, human rights, gender and election administration from across the Commonwealth. An assessment has been conducted in compliance with international Covid-19 safety guidelines ahead of the group’s deployment. Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland said: ‘The Commonwealth has a long and proud history of  standing in solidarity with citizens as they prepare to choose their leaders and in supporting efforts to strengthen…

COTE D’IVOIRE and Ghana are cancelling all cocoa sustainability schemes run by US-based Hershey in the West African countries, accusing the chocolate-maker of trying to avoid paying a cocoa premium aimed at combating farmer poverty. In a letter addressed to Hershey and seen by Reuters, the Ivorian and Ghanaian cocoa regulators accuse Hershey of using the ICE exchange to source unusually large volumes of physical cocoa in order to avoid the premium. The letter was verified as authentic by the spokespeople for the regulators. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana said they are also barring all companies from running sustainability schemes in…

AS a legal case over energy giant Shell’s planet-heating emissions kicked off in the Netherlands, activists said the health and livelihoods of people in Nigeria’s oil-producing region would hinge on its outcome. Royal Dutch Shell faced its first court hearing on Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by environmental and human rights groups in The Hague, the company’s headquarters. Seven green groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Netherlands, filed the case on behalf of more than 17,000 Dutch citizens who say Shell is threatening human rights by knowingly undermining international climate goals. They are demanding the company stop extracting…

THE African Development Bank’s (AfDB) board of directors has approved a $5 million investment in the SPARK+ Africa Fund to deliver clean cooking solutions to over two million households across Africa. The European Commission will contribute an additional $12 million. The Bank’s investment, which will come from its Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), is expected to enable the participation of other interested investors. As an anchor investor, the Bank will channel first-loss equity from SEFA and the European Commission thematic blending facility. In addition to delivering clean cooking technologies, the investment is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 15.9Mt…

PARAMEDICS wheeled Marry Mubaiwa, estranged wife of Zimbabwe’s Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, to appear before Harare Magistrate Ngoni Nduna after the same magistrate had earlier issued a warrant for her arrest. State-owned The Herald newspaper reported that Mubaiwa was brought to court in an ambulance, carried into the building on a stretcher and then pushed into the courtroom in a wheelchair while on an intravenous injection, after a warrant of arrest was issued against her for failing to attend a court remand hearing on charges of attempted murder and externalising foreign currency. The publication reported that Nduna issued a warrant of…

CHINESE infrastructure lending to African countries is widely expected to slow over the next 1-2 years amid mounting debt sustainability concerns, according to analysts interviewed by the South China Morning Post. This would mark a dramatic change over the past twenty years when Beijing emerged as a key source of development finance that helped Africa close its gaping $100bn-a-year infrastructure deficit. From 2000 to 2018, China extended $148bn of loans, mostly for infrastructure development, according to data from the China-Africa Research Initiative. But now, as a growing number of those countries are struggling to repay their debts, Chinese creditors are becoming…