Johannesburg  — President-elect Donald Trump talked tough on China during his campaign, vowing to impose higher and sweeping tariffs on imports from the Asian giant. Beijing will now also be closely watching the incoming administration’s movements further afield, in Africa, where U.S.-China rivalry is high. Experts disagree on what a second Trump term will mean for Beijing’s ambitions on the continent, with some saying it could be a boon for China – Africa’s biggest trade partner – if the U.S. pursues an isolationist, “America First” agenda that mostly ignores the region. But Tibor Nagy, who served as Trump’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 2018 to 2021 has a different perspective. He said Trump grasped how powerful a player China had become on the continent. “It was the Trump administration that was the first to kind of recognize the existential threat that China poses,” Nagy told VOA. “We were on the front lines of that in Africa, and we saw what the Chinese were doing,” said Nagy, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to Guinea and Ethiopia during the administrations of presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Nagy told VOA he does not think the incoming Republican administration will neglect Africa because it sees China as a threat to U.S interests there. He also said the continent is a major source of critical minerals attractive to both superpowers. Nagy credits the first Trump administration with introducing policies on the continent intended to counter China's influence. “We had … the right focus because we made it about the youth. You know, our premise was that Africa is going to be undergoing a youth tsunami with the population doubling by 2050. And that more than anything, what the youth really wanted was jobs,” he said. To this end, Nagy says, the first Trump administration set up Prosper Africa in 2018, an initiative designed to assist American companies doing business in Africa, and he expects the incoming administration will remain engaged there. “Africa remains very much the front lines,” he said. “The United States is extremely concerned about our strategic minerals, and when a hostile power has a lock on strategic minerals, that's really not very good when you need the strategic minerals for your top-end technology and for weapon systems.” But Christian-Geraud Neema, Africa editor for the China-Global South Project, is skeptical and said a second term for Trump could be an opportunity for Beijing. “Looking at his first term, Trump didn't show much interest in Africa, which is likely to be the case still now,” he told VOA. “Only a few countries will matter — countries whose resources or position matter to the U.S. national security interests.” “China will have room to maneuver and increase its influence in so many ways,” he added. Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, echoed this. “I doubt that Africa will be a featured priority for Trump,” she told VOA in an emailed response, adding that the United States’ absence on the continent “will boost the prominence of the Chinese position by its presence.” Lobito corridor future Views on how successfully President Joe Biden’s administration has engaged with Africa are also mixed. Many analysts said regardless of whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in office, the continent is usually an afterthought in U.S. foreign policy, which does not differ much from one administration to the next. The current administration said it was “all in on Africa,” when Biden hosted dozens of heads of state at his first African Leaders Summit in 2022, an event seen as an attempt at reasserting U.S. influence in the face of a rising China. Yet, “African leaders or the African Union were not consulted about the agenda of the 2022 US-Africa Leaders Summit. This was also the case with the US’s Africa strategy,” wrote Christopher Isike, the director of African Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Pretoria, in an article co-signed by Samuel Oyewole, political science postdoctoral research fellow at the university While Trump never traveled to Africa as president, top Biden administration officials did visit the continent, including the vice president. Biden is also expected to travel to Angola before the end of his term in December. Under Biden, the U.S. agreed to develop the Lobito Corridor and Zambia-Lobito rail line, a project described by the State Department as “the most significant transport infrastructure that the United States has helped develop on the African continent in a generation.” The rail line is seen as part of a transcontinental vision connecting the Atlantic and Indian oceans. The undertaking is to be financed through a joint agreement calling for the U.S., African Development Bank, Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and the European Union to support Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zambia. Observers see it as an attempt to compete with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s global infrastructure project the Belt and Road Initiative, which has built railways, ports and roads across Africa. There is concern among some analysts that Trump could pull back from this. “Existing bilateral and multilateral business partnerships … such as the Lobito Corridor … might wane significantly during the next Trump administration,” said Oluwole Ojewale, a Nigerian analyst with the Institute for Security Studies, in an email to VOA. “When that happens China will gain significant mileage in areas where the US Government’s exit creates a vacuum on the continent,” he added. But Nagy disagreed, saying the Lobito Corridor is the “kind of project which would have come right out of the Trump administration.” Therefore, there’s likely to be continuity, he added, noting: “The deal is done. Again, I can't speak for President Trump, or the people who are going to be coming in … but it's logical.” ‘Other Friends’ When asked how African leaders will navigate the next Trump administration, Sun said they could play the U.S. and China against each other. “Africa could highlight its role in the US-China great power competition in order to strengthen its position in the US grand strategy,” she said in an email to VOA. But she is doubtful African leaders will take that route because it “will carry the effect of being forced to choose, which I doubt that Africa will want to do.” However, at least one African politician has already alluded to this option. Kenya’s Raila Odinga, who is in the running to take over as chair of the African Union Commission next year, was blunt in his assessment of how African governments would handle a more isolationist U.S. under Trump. “If he does not want to work with Africa,” Odinga told Agence France-Presse last week, “Africa has got other friends.”

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

La enseñanza bíblica en profundidad de John MacArthur lleva la verdad transformadora de la Palabra de Dios a millones de personas cada día.

Terrorist acts in Algeria and surrounding countries spell trouble for the debt-racked European countries that depend on the region for energy supply.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's four main political parties began the final weekend of campaigning Saturday before a possibly pivotal election that could bring the country's most important change in three decades. Supporters of the long-governing African National Congress, which has been in the government ever since the end of white minority rule in 1994, gathered at a soccer stadium in Johannesburg to hear party leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa speak. The ANC is under unprecedented pressure to keep hold of its parliamentary majority in Africa's most advanced country. Having seen its popularity steadily decline over the last two decades, Wednesday's vote could be a landmark moment when the party once led by Nelson Mandela drops below 50% of the vote for the first time. Several polls have the ANC's support at less than 50%, raising the possibility that it will have to form a national coalition. That would also be a first for South Africa's young democracy, which was only established 30 years ago with the first all-race vote that officially ended the apartheid system of racial segregation. As thousands of supporters in the ANC's black, green and gold colors attended its last major rally before the election, Ramaphosa recognized some of the grievances that have contributed to his party losing support, which include high levels of poverty and unemployment that mainly affect the country's Black majority. “We have a plan to get more South Africans to work," Ramaphosa said. “Throughout this campaign, in the homes of our people, in the workplaces, in the streets of our townships and villages, so many of our people told us of their struggles to find work and provide for their families.” The main opposition Democratic Alliance party had a rally in Cape Town, South Africa's second-biggest city and its stronghold. Party leader John Steenhuisen made a speech while supporters in the DA's blue colors held up blue umbrellas. “Democrats, friends, are you ready for change?” Steenhuisen said. The crowd shouted back “Yes!” "Are you ready to rescue South Africa?" Steenhuisen added. While the ANC's support has shrunk in three successive national elections and appears set to continue dropping, no party has emerged to overtake it — or even challenge it — and it is still widely expected to be the largest party by some way in this election. But losing its majority would be the clearest rejection yet of the famous party that led the anti-apartheid movement and is credited with leading South Africans to freedom. Some ANC supporters at the rally in Johannesburg also expressed their frustration with progress, as South Africa battles poverty, desperately high unemployment, some of the worst levels of inequality in the world, and other problems with corruption, violent crime and the failure of basic government services in some places. “We want to see job opportunities coming and basically general change in every aspect,” ANC supporter Ntombizonke Biyela said. “Since 1994 we have been waiting for ANC, it has been long. We have been voting and voting but we see very little progress as the people, only a special few seem to benefit.” While conceding to some failures, the ANC has maintained that South Africa is a better place than it was during apartheid, when a set of race-based laws oppressed the country's Black majority in favor of a small white minority. The ANC was also widely credited with success in expanding social support and housing and other services for millions of poor South Africans in the decade after apartheid, even if critics say it has lost its way recently. "There are many problems in South Africa, but nobody can deny the changes that have happened since 1994, and that was because of the ANC,” said 42-year-old Eric Phoolo, another supporter of the ruling party. “These other parties don’t have a track record of bringing change to the country." As some voters have turned away from the ANC, it has led to a slow fracturing of South African politics. They have changed allegiances to an array of different opposition parties, some of them new. South Africa has dozens of parties registered to contest next week's election. South Africans vote for parties and not directly for their president in national elections. Parties then get seats in Parliament according to their share of the vote and the lawmakers elect the president — which is why the ANC losing its majority would be so critical to the 71-year-old Ramaphosa's hope of being reelected for a second and final five-year term. If the ANC goes below 50, it would likely need a coalition or agreement with other parties to have the votes in Parliament to keep Ramaphosa, once a protege of Mandela, as president. The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters had their last big pre-election gathering in the northern city of Polokwane, the hometown of fiery leader Julius Malema. The new MK Party of former South African President and former ANC leader Jacob Zuma was also campaigning in a township just outside the east coast city of Durban, although Zuma didn't attend the event. The 82-year-old Zuma rocked South African politics when he announced late last year he was turning his back on the ANC and joining MK, while fiercely criticizing the ANC under Ramaphosa. Zuma has been disqualified from standing as a candidate for Parliament in the election because of a previous criminal conviction.

The upcoming summit between U.S. and African leaders is likely to make progress on a number of investment, development and security issues.

If revised and renewed, the AGOA would encourage growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa while also benefitting U.S. economic interests.

Russia started mass supplying its military with Zicron missiles to attempt to boost its nuclear forces.

[African Development Bank (AfDB)] The world's largest annual climate conference opens in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday, with African nations ramping up efforts to tackle climate change. At COP29, the African Development Bank aims to mobilize additional resources for climate action in Africa and launch a bold new approach to assessing African economies by including their "green wealth."

[RFI] African nations are pushing for a dramatic increase in climate financing at the UN's Cop29 summit that opened in Azerbaijan on Monday - calling for $1.3 trillion (€1.22 trillion) annually to help the continent transition to renewable energy, adapt to climate impacts and address damage from climate-related disasters.

[allAfrica] World Pneumonia Day is held every year on November 12. This year it focuses on events around partnerships, aiming to lower mortality rates and strengthen pandemic defenses by uniting organizations to expand access to life-saving interventions.

[The Edelstam Foundation] The Edelstam Prize 2024 is awarded to Mr. Dawit Isaak for his outstanding contributions and exceptional courage in standing up for freedom of expression, one's beliefs, and in the defence of Human Rights. The prize will be awarded during a ceremony at the House of Nobility in Stockholm, Sweden, on 19th November 2024. As Dawit Isaak is a prisoner of conscience and the longest-held detained journalist in the world, he cannot be present. His daughter, Betlehem Isaak, will receive the prize on his behalf.

[ISS] In Gaza and several African countries, protection failures see local aid workers bearing the brunt of this alarming trend.

[Huawei] Istanbul, Türkiye -- The Net5.5G Pioneer Award ceremony was successfully held at the Net5.5G Intelligent IP Network Summit themed "Accelerating Net5.5G, Striding to Intelligence" during the 10th Global Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF 2024), co-hosted by the UN Broadband Commission, World Broadband Association (WBBA), and Huawei.

[VOA] Johannesburg -- President-elect Donald Trump talked tough on China during his campaign, vowing to impose higher and sweeping tariffs on imports from the Asian giant. Beijing will now also be closely watching the incoming administration's movements further afield, in Africa, where U.S.-China rivalry is high.

[allAfrica] Cape Town -- allAfrica's Juanita Williams and Joy Basu, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of African Affairs, overseeing Economics and Regional Affairs across Sub-Saharan Africa, discussed the work of the Digital Transformation With Africa (DTA) project, which is coming up for its two-year anniversary in December 2024, how DTA chooses its partners, and how AI is not a panacea for the challenges the continent faces. Basu is in Cape Town for the Africa Tech Festival, and Williams spoke with her

[allAfrica]

At the 2021 UN Climate Summit, Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley called for more and better use of special drawing rights (SDRs), the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset. The special drawing right is an international reserve asset created by the IMF. It is not a currency—its value is based on a basket of five currencies, […]

Christian Tiambo has always wished to uplift local farmers’ communities through cutting-edge science. As climate change wreaked havoc on local agriculture, Tiambo, a livestock scientist at the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH) and at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), focused on conserving and developing livestock that could withstand environmental stress. Genomics, […]

At a recent media briefing, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, criticized the United States for its support of educational programs, media and NGOs in Africa. Zakharova argued that these efforts are part of a broader attempt by the U.S. to impose Western values and governance models on sovereign African states, framing it […]

Africa has had a terrible record dealing with extreme poverty. The late Adebayo Adedeji, the legendary head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), campaigned vigorously but unsuccessfully in the 1980s against the IMF and World Bank-imposed structural adjustment programmes, contending that these contributed to poverty’s increase. The continent’s economic growth plummeted rapidly […]

[Shabelle] Mogadishu, Somalia -- Somalia's Minister of Defense, Abdiqadir Mohamed Noor, has been actively engaging with troop-contributing countries for the forthcoming African Union mission, set to start in 2025.

[UNHCR] UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency has just concluded a three-day event, hosting partners and Governments from the East and Horn of Africa, Great Lakes Region and Yemen, to review strategies for comprehensive solutions to the ongoing displacement crisis in Somalia. The meeting brought together representatives from Uganda, Yemen, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, as well as the regional body, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and provided a platform for sharing insights and aligning efforts among

On the 7th of November 2024, the Gauteng MEC for Finance and Economic Development, Lebogang Maile, delivered a keynote address at Bolt South Africa's Global Safety Campaign launch in Johannesburg. The campaign is aimed at improving safety in the e-hailing industry