Tag Archives: africa

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The World Health Organization-WHO will scrutinize the COVID-19 cases that have been reported in Africa. This comes at a time when more countries on the African continent seem to be reporting cases of the disease. According to WHO officials, scrutiny is needed to ascertain …

Geneva, Switzerland | THE INDEPENDENT & AFP  | Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that …

Scientists identified Algeria, Egypt and South Africa as the most likely to import new coronavirus cases into the continent | THE INDEPENDENT | Whether it’s a matter of faulty detection, climatic factors or simple fluke, the remarkably low rate of coronavirus infection in African countries, with their fragile health systems, …

West African political leaders recently announced that the CFA franc – a currency created by France in 1945 for its colonies and still used by 14 African countries – will be replaced this year by a new currency pegged to the euro called the eco. COMMENT |Célestin Monga | But …

The financing gap to achieve the SDGs; between $500bn and $1.2tn, is beyond what many states can deliver COMMENT | KARNIKA YADAV | There is only one road left to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set for Africa for 2030 and that’s through sustainable businesses. The sluggish progress to …

Why the opposition playbook carries risks Malawi recently held its breath as the Constitutional Court took ten hours to painstakingly read out its verdict on the highly controversial 2019 presidential elections. When it finally became clear that the judgment would nullify the election of President Peter Mutharika, jubilant opposition supporters …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | The coronavirus is spreading fast beyond its China birthplace but sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions, has so far been almost spared — and experts want to know why. China reported a fresh spike in coronavirus infections on Sunday, while there …

COMMENT | Ronald Kato | When US secretary of state Mike Pompeo began his Africa trip in mid-February, it was clear that countering China’s influence on the continent was top of his agenda. Yet from Senegal to Angola, he had restrained himself from the hard-hitting attacks on China that have come …

  Can the African Continental Free Trade Area succeed where previous free-trade initiatives have failed? Dianna Games weighs up the issues. Africa heads into a historic year in which the long-awaited African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) finally becomes a reality, with trading under the scheme scheduled to begin on 1 …

  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | AFP | The World Health Organization warned Saturday that African health systems were ill-equipped to respond to the deadly coronavirus outbreak should cases start to proliferate on the continent. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on African Union member states “to come together to be …