[allAfrica]

[Namibian] Russian company Rosatom and South African AllWeld Nuclear and Industrial are joining forces to promote the sustainable development of nuclear energy in Africa.

[allAfrica]

[The Conversation Africa] Despite the flaws in the latest novel by South African writer Nthikeng Mohlele, there is something alluring about Revolutionaries' House. It is Mohlele's most political novel, and the parallels drawn between love and politics - and their pitfalls - are intriguing.

The EU is considering a broader mandate for the EBRD, and its president, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, believes its model would work in sub-Saharan Africa.

Poor infrastructure and political instability deter tourism, but small and manageable steps to avoid chaos and promote hospitality can work wonders.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s fastest growing mobile phone market, but how can telecoms companies make the most of the huge opportunities the region provides?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals aim to end global poverty, but poorer countries are struggling to hit them. More help from richer countries is crucial, writes Mazdak Rafaty.

London event hears how the UK export credit agency is increasing its focus on trade with African countries. Jason Mitchell reports.

Having opened new production facilities in Rwanda and South Africa, Mara Phones is looking to alter Africa's mindset from being a 'consumer' to being a 'manufacturer'. 

Continued African development could hinge on public finance reforms.

The UAE followed Singapore’s swift reaction to combat Covid-19, to preserve the health of its citizens. Now moves are in place to tackle the country’s economic wellbeing.

The Egyptian capital Cairo led Africa in 2018, attracting 10 foreign business services investment projects, in its strongest performance since 2012. Joshua Crawford reports.

Oluwatimilehin Doko, a member of Team Ogun that represented Nigeria at the 2024 African Scrabble Championship in Kigali, Rwanda, has made history as the youngest African Scrabble Championship winner. Doko and other Ogun State players in Rwanda recorded awe-inspiring performances, with the youngster emerging as the overall winner. The Ogun State player became the youngest

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.”

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.

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

[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.

[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, […]

[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

Some of the creeping impacts of this triple crisis are possibly the most debilitating: Africa is the most severely impacted region by desertification and land degradation, with approximately 45% of its land area affected. In the Horn of Africa and the Sahel alone, it imposes food shortages on more than 23 million people. Just last […]

Africa Youth Day Statement by Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif

Our hominin ancestors originated in Africa and the consensus is that they didn't leave there until about 1.8 million years ago, but stone tools found in Jordan challenge the idea

Title: European MRSA Originated in Sub-Saharan Africa, Study Finds
Category: Health News
Created: 8/29/2014 9:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/29/2014 12:00:00 AM

Title: Polio Eradicated in Africa: WHO
Category: Health News
Created: 8/26/2020 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/26/2020 12:00:00 AM

ABSTRACTIntroduction:Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) remains the leading cause of maternal mortality. A new clinical intervention (E-MOTIVE) holds the potential to improve early PPH detection and management. We aimed to develop and pilot implementation strategies to support uptake of this intervention in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania.Methods:Implementation strategy development: We triangulated findings from qualitative interviews, surveys and a qualitative evidence synthesis to identify current PPH care practices and influences on future intervention implementation. We mapped influences using implementation science frameworks to identify candidate implementation strategies before presenting these at stakeholder consultation and design workshops to discuss feasibility, acceptability, and local adaptations. Piloting: The intervention and implementation strategies were piloted in 12 health facilities (3 per country) over 3 months. Interviews (n=58), case report forms (n=1,269), and direct observations (18 vaginal births, 7 PPHs) were used to assess feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity.Results:Implementation strategy development: Key influences included shortages of drugs, supplies, and staff, limited in-service training, and perceived benefits of the intervention (e.g., more accurate PPH detection and reduced PPH mortality). Proposed implementation strategies included a PPH trolley, on-site simulation-based training, champions, and audit and feedback. Country-specific adaptations included merging the E-MOTIVE intervention with national maternal health trainings, adapting local PPH protocols, and PPH trollies depending on staff needs. Piloting: Intervention and implementation strategy fidelity differed within and across countries. Calibrated drapes resulted in earlier and more accurate PPH detection but were not consistently used at the start. Implementation strategies were feasible to deliver; however, some instances of limited use were observed (e.g., PPH trolley and skills practice after training).Conclusion:Systematic intervention development, piloting, and process evaluation helped identify initial challenges related to intervention fidelity, which were addressed ahead of a larger-scale effectiveness evaluation. This has helped maximize the internal validity of the trial.