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Access Bank has completed negotiations to acquire the sub-Saharan subsidiaries of Standard Chartered Bank for an undisclosed sum. With this move, Access Bank’s pan-African drive sees another boon: an acquisition that could make it one of the continent’s topmost banks.
Announcement of the death of former President Rawlings pic.twitter.com/7ext0fp4sd
— Nana Akufo-Addo (@NAkufoAddo) November 12, 2020
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By Victor Omondi As the game upped for the US presidential election, many pollsters predicted that Democrat Joe Biden, Trump’s arch rival, would win the presidency. That wasn’t a good tiding for Trump, who’d chest-thumped during the campaigns, asserting that he wouldn’t lose to Biden. Meanwhile, before the presidential election results were released, Trump’s Spiritual […]
Analysis - With Angola's economy battling, anti-government protests have been brutally subdued. But demonstrators are not backing down, and plan to take to the streets again on Wednesday -- Angola's independence day.
BY RICHARD MUPONDE HARARE, renamed from the colonial Salisbury, in the early days of independence, was widely referred to as the Sunshine City owing to its squeaky-clean streets and orderly, smart and clean residential suburbs. Harare’s cleanliness and orderliness echoed throughout Sadc, and undoubtedly contributed to “The Jewel of Africa” moniker accorded the country by statesmen like Tanzania’s former President, the late Julius Mwalimu Nyerere. Sadly, the city has over the decades deteriorated to some stinky hellhole that nobody can be proud to be associated with. Old timers get nolstalgic about the old Harare when today they come across huge mounds of garbage at street corners, minefields of potholes, total absence of street lighting and a literal invasion of pavements by poverty stricken vegetable and other vendors. In the past the city fathers used to collect garbage every week which was a well-planned and monitored programme of servicing the suburbs where refuse trucks had a timetable for collecting garbage. However, things have gone out of hand as garbage heaps grow at every street corner in the central business district. Litter bugs go scot-free with no one to enforce by-laws against littering resulting in a health time bomb. The influx of vendors in the central business district (CBD) has also exacerbated the problem as they dump garbage anywhere near their operating sites without care or worry. Meanwhile council does not collect its movable bins placed at strategic points in the city making Harare an eyesore. During the lockdown period council workers took advantage of the absence of people in the CBD and cleaned it up, but that has all come to naught as the situation has returned to original dirty settings. A resident of Kuwadzana, Admire Mutengiwa, said the city council was letting residents down by not collecting garbage when every month it billed them for a once a week refuse collection. “The way the council is operating is short-changing ratepayers. I think it is wise for them not to collect our money if they can’t collect the garbage. Heaps of garbage are piling on every open space in this suburb and around the whole city. Organisations such as Environment Management Agency (EMA) should fine the council heavily because it is the one driving residents to dump garbage everywhere,” he said. Mutengiwa’s sentiments were echoed by Kelvin Pamire, from the same suburb, who said litter bugs should be arrested and the city council fined for polluting the city with uncollected garbage. “Law enforcement should take its course and those littering the environment should be brought to book. Council shouldn’t be spared because it is the driving force behind all this mess,” Pamire said. Precious Shumba, director for Harare Residents Trust (HRT), said refuse collection was virtually non-existent in Harare. “Uncollected garbage continues to pile in open spaces, at shopping centres, street corners in other residential places and the Avenues area. Residents are charged for once a week refuse collection on their monthly bi
Hundreds of Ethiopians gathered Thursday to donate blood for troops fighting in the northern Tigray region, as officials tried to rally support for a week-old conflict Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said was going his way.
The government also announced that police had arrested 150 people in the capital suspected of trying to carry out \"terror attacks\" on the orders of Tigray's ruling party.
Prime Minister Abiy blames the Tigray ruling party for a conflict that analysts fear could spiral into a protracted civil war.
Hundreds have died and thousands have fled the country since Abiy, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, sent troops and warplanes into Tigray last week after a months-long feud with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
Abiy said the TPLF -- which dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades before he took office in 2018 -- had crossed a \"red line\" and attacked two federal military bases, which the party denies.
Thursday's blood drive was organised by the office of Addis Ababa Mayor Adanech Abebe, who claimed the population was unified against the TPLF while donating blood herself.
\"The aim of this blood donation is to express our respect for our army,\" she told journalists as a nurse drew blood from her left arm.
\"The attack done by TPLF to our army is shameful for Ethiopia. Never happened in our history. We want to condemn this.\"
Tigray has been under a communications blackout since the military operation was launched on November 4, making it difficult to verify the situation on the ground as both sides make conflicting claims.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Abiy said government forces had \"liberated\" the western zone of Tigray -- made up of six zones, plus the capital and surrounds.
Abiy also accused TPLF-aligned fighters of \"cruelty\", saying that when the army took control of the town of Sheraro they \"found bodies of executed defence force personnel whose hands and feet were tied\". There was no immediate reaction from the TPLF.
Under Abiy, Tigray's leaders have complained of being unfairly targeted in corruption prosecutions and removed from top positions.
Tensions soared as Tigray defiantly held its own elections in September, insisting Abiy was an illegitimate leader after national polls were postponed due to the coronavirus.
-'Rule of law'-
The conflict has seen multiple rounds of airstrikes targeting arms and fuel depots along with heavy fighting in western Tigray.
The UN said Wednesday some 11,000 Ethiopians had sought refuge in neighbouring Sudan, and Ethiopia has acknowledged some of its troops at one point retreated into neighbouring Eritrea, highlighting the conflict's potential to draw in the wider Horn of Africa region.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, quoted by state news agency SUNA as he hosted Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh, on Wednesday called for a \"stop to the fighting as soon as possible\" and a return to the negotiating table.
The African Union has also called for an immediate stop to fighting and for dialogue, as internationa
[Premium Times] Authorities in Enugu said a strange ailment, now known to be yellow fever, had claimed over 50 lives in parts of the state since early September.
ARARIPE BASIN, Brazil-A prehistoric mayfly thought to have a lifespan of days or minutes has managed to survive as a fossil for up to 125 million years. University researchers found the fossil in Brazil's Crato [...]
[Daily Trust] President Muhammadu Buhari and a former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo have congratulated former Vice President Joe Biden on his election as new President of the United States while also attacking foreign policies of incumbent President, Donald Trump.
[New Times] AS Kigali head coach Eric Nshimiyimana has said that new signing Aboubakar Lawal is a clever player and will greatly contribute to the club's striking department.
A Desert Locust Storm
Somalia is seeing a desert locust invasion, the latest in the series of these pest storms that have been overwhelming several other East African countries this year. Exacerbating food shortages amid the unprecedented and already challenging covid-19 pandemic. Abdullahi Ahmed, a Somali camel herder, shares his disconcerting experience with the locust infestation, \"Here we are in the Daynile district. This morning, a large number of locusts invaded and since then they have been eating the grass intended for our livestock, forcing us to beat corrugated iron sheets to disperse them, so we are calling the government to help us fight these locusts.\"
Regional Food Insecurity
Mohamed Abubakar Jafar, Commissioner of Mogadishu's Daynile District, is ready to take action, \"We see that the locusts are destroying the farms and we should fight back against them. That is inevitable.\" Massive efforts have already been made in the region to control the infestation with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations also stepping in to alleviate the food crisis.
The best option for the Western Cape is to improve the current dispensation, but also to work towards an independent Western Cape, FF Plus Western Cape leader Corné Mulder said.
[Africa In Fact] This month's presidential election in the United States has highlighted the vexing and universal conundrum of how to govern in the presence of deep disagreements in society.
[Nation] From Shashamane, a town in central Ethiopia, smugglers have created two routes to get bhang to Nairobi and authorities say they are boldly hauling huge consignments stashed in oil tankers.
For the first time in 175 years, students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., will be led by a Black woman. Midshipman First Class Sydney Barber will during the spring semester be the brigade commander, the academy said in a release Monday. 21-year-old Barber from Lake Forest, Illinois, will assume the role -...
The post 21-year-old Sydney Barber will be first Black woman to serve as U.S. Naval Academy brigade commander appeared first on Face2Face Africa.
Econet has partnered with Alphabet, Google’s parent company to provide new high speed broadband technology which uses beams instead of fibre, Alphabet’s subsidiary, X “Moonshot Factory” said on Tuesday. BY PRIMROSE HAISA “Our ‘Project Taara’ high-speed optical wireless broadband endeavour is working with internet provider Econet and its subsidiaries to begin rolling out its tech across Sub-Saharan Africa,” X said in a statement. “This deployment follows a series of small pilots in Kenya specifically, but now Taara and Econet are ready to start adding high-speed wireless optical links to supplement and enhance Econet service reach more broadly, starting with Liquid Telecom customers in Kenya.” X added: “Taara is yet another approach to extending the reach of broadband networks to parts of the Earth that have typically not had access or high-speed connections, due primarily to infrastructure challenges.” According to X, in a substitute of digging about two weeks to lay fibre cables, the new technology will be organized to connect two points 20 km apart and it currently delivers up to 10 Gbits of internet capacity. X’s Taara is essentially a fibre optic network cable without the cable which uses a narrow, invisible beam of light to transmit data between two terminals that can span up to nearly 12.5 miles, while providing transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbps. This, X said, means thousands of customers or households can be connected while still providing speeds high enough for streaming high-quality video. “Taara’s technology can essentially be used to patch gaps in traditional fibre optic networks, spanning rivers or crossing terrain that would be hard or impossible to span using either under or aboveground cable.” X has been piloting Taara in a number of deployments around the world and is moving towards commercialising the project.
[New Times] The national football team, Amavubi, will use a chartered RwandAir plane when they depart Kigali for Cape Verde on Monday ahead of the November 12 clash.
ZIMBABWE will host the men and women’s southern African qualifier for the 2021 Hockey Africa Cup of Nations at St Johns’ College in Harare from February 19 to 27. BY FREEMAN MAKOPA The men and women’s teams will face southern African countries in a competition in which the top two nations in each category will proceed to next year’s Cup of Nations finals. Hockey Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) secretary-general Sarah Bennett said although the COVID-19 outbreak affected their preparations, management did its best to keep the players in good shape. “We are ready to participate at the Central-South Africa Qualifiers for Africa Cup to be staged at St John's College from February 19-27 next year. Although COVID-19 has affected our preparations, our dedicated coaches and management have done well to keep the players fit but we have missed some time on the astro turf which is what the players need right now,” she said. Bennett said the association was looking forward to extending the game to high-density areas in order to groom coaches and officials. “We want to spread the game of hockey throughout Zimbabwe especially in the high-density and rural areas and ensure that we educate and support coaches, officials and umpires. We want to partner with corporates to assist our projects and the national teams,” she added. She added that the sport was in need of financial assistance.
A study found that at least 350 transgender people were killed in 2020.
[allAfrica] As of November 09, the confirmed cases of Covid-19 from 55 African countries have reached 1,882,818. Reported deaths in Africa have reached 45,360 and recoveries 1,587,135.
[African Union] H.E. Dr Amani Abou-Zeid spoke today at the International Forum for Energy Transition 2020 held under the theme \"Sustainable Development in the Post-COVID-19 Era\" hosted by State Grid Corporation of China in collaboration with World Economic Forum.
Douala, Cameroon's economic capital city of some 3.7 million people is known for its hustling and bustling. B ut also now for something that puts fear in the minds of many- Gang violence.
A group of young men in addressing the threat now go out with light arms to protect their neighborhood.
\"It was just a surprise, a shock. They came out in a big group and that Sunday everyone was trying to escape, pack up their goods and flee. It was a bit like that. Well, I had to pack up my things, I started to run away and hurt my foot. We didn't see it coming.\" Prince, an attack victim said of his experience.
Norbert Tapa, a trader in the city has also had his bitter share of the violence.
\"They came to beat up the traders, to take things from the traders and other people who were passing by. Because there was no shortage of bandits in the crowd, other bandits who came by took advantage of the opportunity to cause trouble without even being aware of what was going on.\" Tapa explained.
Gang violence in Douala the main commercial city in Cameroon is on the rise both night and day, according to authorities. Local community watch committees are being set up to deal with this new form of crime.
Njoh Nicolas is the Secretary general of the chiefdom of the canton of Deido. For him, the process of seeing with each village chief how to set up a community watch committee, one in which a community watch is placed in every village to ensure good response is important.
The plan is now underway. \"Because the canton is so big, if we put them in each village, the response will be stronger.\" he explains.
Nicolas is fortunately not alone in finding solutions to the problem.
A non-profit group Saint-Nicodème chain of Foyers is also offering shelter and educational opportunities to about forty street children to help them reintegrate into society.
Paul Adamou, Priest and director of the group believes the approach has to be different. \"They are street kids. Perhaps when they find themselves in difficult situations, they are forced to use violence, to use alternative means to feed themselves and protect themselves. But with what we offer at the Saint-Nicodème chain of shelters, along with the State, I think that these children are given a second chance. They accept what we offer them in terms of education and the opportunity we give them.\"
The toll of casualties from the gang raids is unknown, but last month alone, at least four districts suffered such attacks.
Adamou maintains that the better approach would be \"to identify them and get them to turn towards productive activities rather than favouring repression\".
[UN Women] UN Women announces the theme for International Women's Day, 8 March 2021 (IWD 2021) as, \"Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.\"
… racist, but he expanded his African American vote. He accused Mexicans of … Barack Obama, the first-ever African-American president who was born of …
Social media regulations in Africa are not fighting hate speech and disinformation.
[Daily Maverick] As a minimal definitional requirement, the script for a real-world TV series should be written well. If so, then a man who appeared as a wrestler on 'WWE' and has joked about grabbing women by their genitals could never be elected president of the US (nor would someone who did a cameo on 'Gossip Girl' be tasked with brokering peace in the Middle East). Such plot twists are the preserve of badly written soap operas.
