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(Partner Content) Social innovation in Africa must be the priority for Governments, business leaders, charities, and the private sector. African countries must now urgently take a collaborative approach across countries and sector to harness emerging technology and innovative solutions to these issues at a local level.
A November 26 letter from the presidency asked the head of Uganda's national drug authority to 'work out a mechanism' to clear the importation of the vaccines.
China has about five COVID-19 vaccine candidates at different levels of trials. It was not clear what vaccine was being imported into Uganda.
One of the frontrunners is the Sinopharm vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product, a unit of Sinopharm’s China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates said the vaccine has 86% efficacy, citing an interim analysis of late-stage clinical trials.
China has used the drug to vaccinate up to a million people under its emergency use program.
On Tuesday, Morocco said it was ordering up to 10 million doses of the vaccine.
Record cases
Uganda on Monday registered 701 new COVID-19 cases, the highest-ever daily increase, bringing its national count to 23,200.
The new cases were out of the 5,578 samples tested for the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, the country's health ministry said in a statement.
Tuesday's tally was 606, the second-highest ever number of new infections, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the east African country to 23,860.
Health authorities have blamed ongoing election campaigns which have drawn huge crowds for the rise in infections.
Belgium is a small country in northwest Europe that joined Europes race for colonies in the late 19th century. Many European countries wanted to colonize distant parts of the world in order to exploit the resources and civilize the inhabitants of these less-developed countries. Belgium gained independence in 1830. Then, King Leopold II came to power in 1865 and believed that colonies would greatly enhance Belgiums wealth and prestige.
Leopolds cruel, greedy activities in the current Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi continue to affect the welfare of these countries today.
European adventurers experienced great difficulty in exploring and colonizing the Congo River Basin, due to the regions tropical climate, disease, and the resistance of the natives. In the 1870s, Leopold II created an organization called the International African Association. This sham was supposedly a scientific and philanthropic organization which would greatly improve the lives of native Africans by converting them to Christianity, ending the slave trade, and introducing European health and educational systems.
King Leopold sent the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to the region. Stanley successfully made treaties with native tribes, set up military posts, and forced most Muslim slave traders out of the region.
He acquired millions of square kilometers of central African land for Belgium. However, most of Belgiums government leaders and citizens did not want to spend the exorbitant amount of money that would be needed to maintain distant colonies. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, other European countries did not want the Congo River region.
King Leopold II insisted that he would maintain this region as a free-trade zone, and he was given personal control of the region, which was nearly eighty times larger than Belgium. He named the region the Congo Free State.
Leopold promised that he would develop his private property to improve the lives of the native Africans. He quickly disregarded all of his Berlin
This was highlighted by Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, Assumpta Ingabire ahead of the International Day of Families.
This year, the day is celebrated globally under the theme- 'Families in Development: Copenhagen & Beijing + 25' while in Rwanda, celebrations are to be held under the theme of 'Let's build a resilient and safe family.'
In Rwanda, there will be no national celebrations by officials from the ministry and other stakeholders will use the media to discuss issues affecting families in the country.
Ingabire stressed that the family is the foundation for a country's development and hence should possess the foothold in the fight against the current pandemic.
To ensure resilience and safety of families, the ministry has carried out continued awareness through the media mobilising communities on the need to stay safe as well as maintaining peace and harmony in families.
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX aimed for a Sunday night launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station, although the prospects of good weather were just 50-50 and its leader was sidelined by COVID-19. Vice President Mike Pence was expected at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for the long-awaited start of regular crew rotations aboard privately owned and operated capsules. It also marked only the second time in nearly a decade that astronauts were set to rocket into orbit from the U.S. 'Game day!' tweeted NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, the crew commander. As […]
The post SpaceX aims for night crew launch, Musk sidelined by virus appeared first on Black News Channel.
[allAfrica] Cape Town -- As of November 30, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 from 55 African countries have reached 2,163,577. Reported deaths in Africa have reached 51,724 and recoveries 1,830,891.
[African Arguments] With medical disruptions due to COVID-19 likely to kill more people in Africa than the disease itself, two countries provide interesting lessons.
On February 13, 1965, Malcolm Xs home in New York City was bombed. He and his family were not hurt and he decided to keep a longstanding speaking commitment at Detroit, arriving the next day to give the presentation below. This proved however to be his last public appearance. One week later on February 21, Malcolm was killed as he began to give a presentation in Harlem.
Attorney Milton Henry, distinguished guests, brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, friends and enemies:
I want to point out first that I am very happy to be here this evening and Im thankful for the invitation to come here to Detroit this evening. I was in a house last night that was bombed, my own. It didnt destroy all my clothes, not all, but you know what happens when fire dashes through--they get smoky. The only thing I could get my hands on before leaving was what I have on now.
It isnt something that made me lose confidence in what I am doing, because my wife understands and I have children from this size on down, and even in their young age they understand. I think they would rather have a father or brother or whatever the situation may be who will take a stand in the face of any kind of reaction from narrow-minded people rather than to compromise and later on have to grow up in shame and in disgrace.
So I just ask you to excuse my appearance. I dont normally come out in front of people without a shirt and a tie. I guess thats somewhat a holdover from the Black Muslim movement, which I was in. Thats one of the good aspects of that movement. It teaches you to be very careful and conscious of how you look, which is a positive contribution on their part. But that positive contribution on their part is greatly offset by too many other liabilities.
Tonight we want to discuss--and by the way, also, when I came here today I was a bit--last night, the temperature was about twenty above and when this explosion took place, I was caught in what I had on, some pajamas. And in trying to get my family out of the house, none of us
In the article below independent historian Kyle Haddad-Fonda describes the Asian-African Conference popularly known as the Bandung Conference which was the first significant gathering of independent and soon-to-be independent nations in Asia and Africa.
From April 18 to April 24, 1955, delegates from twenty-nine countries in Asia and Africa convened in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss the common challenges their nations faced in navigating a postcolonial world. The Asian–African Conference, popularly known as the Bandung Conference, was a sensation around the world. Never before had leaders from so many non-Western countries gathered together to make common cause. But the Conference’s iconic status, coupled with a growing global sense of nostalgia for the supposedly optimistic days of the 1950s, means that many legends that have subsequently sprung up about the event are simply not true. Seldom has historical memory distorted and misrepresented any single event in quite so many different ways. Accordingly, it is valuable to include an extended discussion of the facts surrounding the Bandung Conference: how it was organized, who participated, what was said, and—perhaps most important—what was not said.
The Asian–African Conference was the brainchild of Indonesian Prime Minister Ali Sastroamidjojo, who planned the proceedings in collaboration with the prime ministers of Burma, Ceylon, India, and Pakistan. These five men met in Bogor, Indonesia, in December 1954 to draft the Conference’s agenda and to issue invitations.
After considerable debate, the five hosts agreed to send invitations to twenty-five countries. From the continent of Africa, they invited four of the five independent countries of the day: Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Libya. They declined to invite the fifth, South Africa, whose policy of apartheid was criticized in the Conference’s final communiqué. In addition to the four independent African countries, the conveners extended invitations to the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana), Sudan (then under joint
[WHO] Brazzaville -- The World Health Organization (WHO) finds that 18.3% of COVID-19 deaths in the African region are among people with diabetes, one of the conditions that global studies have found to increase the risk of severe illness and death among patients infected with the virus.
There are now more than over 60,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.
According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when.
Lesotho is the country holding out as of May 12.
We shall keep updating this list largely sourced from the John Hopkins University tallies, Africa CDC and from official government data.
SUGGESTED READING: Africa’s COVID-19 deaths pass 1,000 mark
Major African stats: May 12 at 7:00 GMT:
\t
\t\tConfirmed cases = 66,319
\t\tNumber of deaths = 2,344
\t\tRecoveries = 23,143
\t\tInfected countries = 53
\t\tVirus-free countries = 1 (Lesotho)
Countries in alphabetical order
\t\tAlgeria – 5,891
\t\tAngola – 45
\t\tBenin – 319
\t\tBotswana – 24
\t\tBurkina Faso – 760
\t\tBurundi – 15
\t\tCameroon – 2,689
\t\tCape Verde – 260
\t\tCentral African Republic – 143
\t\tChad – 322
\t\tComoros – 11
\t\tCongo-Brazzaville – 333
\t\tDR Congo – 1,024
\t\tDjibouti – 1,227
\t\tEgypt – 9,746
\t\tEquatorial Guinea – 439
\t\tEritrea – 39
\t\tEswatini – 175
\t\tEthiopia – 250
\t\tGabon – 802
\t\t(The) Gambia – 22
\t\tGhana – 4,700
\t\tGuinea – 2,146
\t\tGuinea-Bissau – 761
\t\tIvory Coast – 1,730
\t\tKenya – 700
\t\tLesotho – 0
\t\tLiberia – 211
\t\tLibya – 64
\t\tMadagascar – 186
\t\tMalawi – 57
\t\tMali – 712
\t\tMauritania – 8
\t\tMauritius – 332
\t\tMorocco – 6,281
\t\tMozambique – 103
\t\tNamibia – 16
\t\tNiger – 832
\t\tNigeria- 4,641
\t\tRwanda – 285
\t\tSao Tome and Principe – 208
\t\tSenegal – 1,886
\t\tSeychelles – 11
\t\tSierra Leone – 338
\t\tSomalia – 1,089
\t\tSouth Africa – 10,652
\t\tSouth Sudan – 156
\t\tSudan – 1,526
\t\tTanzania – 509
\t\tTogo – 181
\t\tTunisia – 1,032
\t\tUganda – 121
\t\tZambia – 267
\t\tZimbabwe – 36
SUGGESTED READING: rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa II
[East African] A waiver on patents and other intellectual property-related rights to Covid-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies -- lasting the duration of the pandemic -- has been delayed by at least nine developed countries.
Wangari Maathai , in full Wangari Muta Maathai (born April 1, 1940, Nyeri, Kenya—died September 25, 2011, Nairobi), Kenyan politician and environmental activist who was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace, becoming the first black African woman to win a Nobel Prize. Her work was often considered both unwelcome and subversive in her own country, where her outspokenness constituted stepping far outside traditional gender roles.
Maathai was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica College (now Benedictine College; B.S. in biology, 1964) and at the University of Pittsburgh (M.S., 1966). In 1971 she received a Ph.D. at the University of Nairobi, effectively becoming the first woman in either East or Central Africa to earn a doctorate. She began teaching in the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi after graduation, and in 1977 she became chair of the department.
While working with the National Council of Women of Kenya, Maathai developed the idea that village women could improve the environment by planting trees to provide a fuel source and to slow the processes of deforestation and desertification. The Green Belt Movement, an organization she founded in 1977, had by the early 21st century planted some 30 million trees. Leaders of the Green Belt Movement established the Pan African Green Belt Network in 1986 in order to educate world leaders about conservation and environmental improvement. As a result of the movement’s activism, similar initiatives were begun in other African countries, including Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe.
In addition to her conservation work, Maathai was also an advocate for human rights, AIDS prevention, and women’s issues, and she frequently represented these concerns at meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. She was elected to Kenya’s National Assembly in 2002 with 98 percent of the vote, and in 2003 she was appointed assistant minister of environment, natural resources, and wildlife. When she won the Nobel Prize in 2004, the committee
Following a successful launch and stakeholders’ sensitisation public forum of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund’s-Rural Economic Development Initiative 11 (JSIF-REDI ll) project, key partners have now joined forces to endorse the initiative as...
[Monitor] The news about the Covid-19 vaccine that is 90 per cent effective in stopping coronavirus infection, has raised hope that the pandemic will end soon.
Dr. Tulinabo S. Mushingi is currently the U.S. Ambassador to the West African nation of Burkina Faso. After nomination by President Barack Obama and his confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Mushingi arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, and began serving as ambassador on August 5, 2013. He is a career officer of the Senior Foreign Service and the first African-born, naturalized U.S. citizen to return to that continent as a U.S. ambassador.
Born 1957, Mushingi earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Institut Superieur Pedagogique in Bukavu, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Soon after, he moved to the United States and earned an M.A. degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. He continued his studies at Georgetown University and received a Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1989. His dissertation was titled Vehicular languages as media of instruction: The case of Swahili in Zaire.
Mushingi began his career as a language and cultural trainer for the Peace Corps, working successively in Papua New Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, and the Central African Republic. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1993 and served in various roles: General Services Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique from 1994 to 1996; Counseling and Assignment Officer in the U.S. State Department Bureau of Human Resources in Washington, D.C. from 1999 to 2001; and Management Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca, Morocco from 2001 to 2003.
From 2003 to 2006, Mushingi was a Supervisory General Services Officer for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. He next accepted two posts in Africa. From 2006 to 2009, he was Counselor for Management Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. From 2009 to 2011, he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Then, immediately prior to being named ambassador, Mushingi was Deputy Executive Secretary in the Executive Secretariat and Executive Director of the Executive of the Secretary of State from 2011 to 2013.
Mushingi has
Bermuda’s Corporation of Hamilton has announced it will host the 40th annual Conference of Black Mayors Convention later this year.
The event, which will take place on November 12 – 16, 2014, at The Fairmont Southampton, will convene the largest gathering of Mayors and local officials from around the world.
Mayors from cities, towns and villages from all over the U.S. will be joined by high level officials from China, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
In making the announcement, the Chairman of the local Organizing Committee, the City of Hamilton’s Deputy Mayor Donal Smith, said the Conference of Black Mayors had grown from modest beginnings into an event of considerable political and economic importance that now includes more than 2,000 African/American Mayors and municipal staff and has attracted the participation of politicians, business and financial leaders not only from the U.S. but increasingly from around the world.
“Today the CBM also includes 39,000 political leaders and elected officials of color from around the world. Currently we estimate that the City of Hamilton, Bermuda, will be greeting 400 – 500 plus delegates from as far away as Brazil, Colombia, China, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaicaand the Caribbean Islands and we should note that the aim of this great gathering has always been to improve the quality of life in the cities, townships and villages these Mayors and these officials represent.”
The Mayor of Hamilton, The Rt. Worshipful Graeme Outerbridge, JP, said, the CBM represents one of the most influential political and financial groups in the U.S. and in many other countries around the world. “They represent a powerful voting block in the U.S. and beyond and preside over millions of dollars of municipal funds and new development. As such, they represent enormous opportunities for our international business sector to pursue. We are delighted that the CBM has chosen to come to Bermuda.”
Mr. Smith noted that many U.S. politicians and their
While Russia, for a time, appeared to escape a serious coronavirus outbreak, the situation there has changed drastically during these two months of April and May, - passing Germany and France to become the third most-infected country in the world, according to The Moscow Times.
Despite its internal difficulties, Russia has been offering coronavirus assistance to a number of Africa countries.
Russian Foreign Ministry said a number of African countries have requested Moscow's assistance in combating the coronavirus.
These requests are carefully studied and the situation in a particular country is taken into account,\" it reported, adding that coronavirus spread rates were relatively low in African countries, with the exception of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and South Africa.
Russia's Sputnik News, under the headline, \"Tunisia Asks Russia for Respirators, Masks, Medical Equipment Amid Pandemic\" quoted the Tunisian Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Tarak ben Salem who said: \"This request for assistance is a part of friendly relations between Tunisia and Russia.
[allAfrica] Johannesburg -- Twenty-one countries have experienced three consecutive years of zero indigenous cases of malaria since 2000. Ten countries where malaria once raged have been certified free of malaria by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
There has been poaching in Africa since antiquity. People hunted in areas claimed by other states or reserved for royalty or killed protected animals. Some of the European big game hunters who came to Africa in the 1800s were guilty of poaching and some were actually tried and found guilty by the African kings on whose land they had hunted without permission.
In 1900, the new, European colonial states enacted game preservation laws that forbid most Africans from hunting.
Subsequently most forms of African hunting, including hunting for food, were officially deemed poaching. Commercial poaching was an issue in these years and a threat to animal populations, but it was not at the crisis levels seen in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
1970s and 80s: the first crisis
After independence in the 1950s and 60s, most African countries retained these game laws, but poaching for food, or bush meat, continued, as did poaching for commercial gain. Those hunting for food present a threat to animal populations, but not on the same level as those who did so for international markets. In the 1970s and 1980s, poaching in Africa reached crisis levels. The continents elephant and rhinoceros populations in particular faced potential extinction.
in 1973, 80 countries agreed to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (commonly known as CITES) governing the trade in endangered animals and plants. Several African animals, including rhinoceroses, were among the initially protected animals.
In 1990, most African elephants were added to the list of animals that could not be traded for commercial purposes.
The ban had a rapid and significant impact on ivory poaching, which rapidly declined to more manageable levels. Rhinoceros poaching, however, continued to threaten the existence of that species.
In the early 2000s, Asian demand for ivory began to rise steeply, and poaching in Africa rose again to crisis levels.
The Congo Conflict also created a perfect environment for
Ivory has been desired since antiquity because its relative softness made it easy to carve into intricate decorative items for the very wealthy. For the past one hundred years, the ivory trade in Africa has been closely regulated, yet the trade continues to thrive.
During the days of the Roman Empire, the ivory exported from Africa largely came from North African elephants.
These elephants were also used in the Roman coliseum fights and occasionally as transport in war and were hunted to extinction around the 4th century C.E. After that point, the ivory trade in Africa declined for several centuries.
By the 800s, the trade in African ivory had picked-up again. In these years, traders transported ivory from West Africa along the trans-Saharan trade routes to the North African coast or brought East African ivory up in boats along the coast line to the market-cities of north-east Africa and the Middle East. From these depots, ivory was taken across the Mediterranean to Europe or to Central and East Asia, though the latter regions could easily acquire ivory from southeast Asian elephants.
As Portuguese navigators began exploring the West African coast line in the 1400s, they soon entered into the lucrative ivory trade, and other European sailors were not far behind.
During these years, ivory was still acquired almost exclusively by African hunters, and as the demand continued, the elephant population near the coast lines declined. In response, African hunters traveled further and further inland in search of elephant herds.
As the trade in ivory moved inland, the hunters and traders needed a way to tranport the ivory to the coast.
In West Africa, trade focused on numerous rivers that emptied into the Atlantic, but in Central and East Africa, there were fewer rivers to use. Sleeping Sickness and other tropical diseases also made it almost impossible to use animals (like horses, oxen, or camels) to transport goods in West, Central, or central-East Africa, and this meant that people were the primary movers of
