Tens of thousands demonstrated on Tuesday in Sudanese cities despite a coronavirus lockdown to demand greater civilian rule in the transition towards democracy after the ouster of veteran strongman Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Waving Sudanese flags, protesters gathered in Khartoum and its twin cities Khartoum North and Omdurman after the government closed roads and bridges leading to the centre of the capital. Similar protests also took place in Kassala in eastern Sudan and in the...
Malawi — The opposition has won Malawi’s historic rerun of the presidential election, the first time a court-overturned vote in Africa has led to the defeat of an incumbent leader. Lazarus Chakwera’s victory late Saturday was a result of months of determined street protests in the southern African nation, and of a unanimous decision by the Constitutional Court that widespread irregularities in the May 2019 election — including the use of correction fluid on ballots...
Egypt said it had agreed with Ethiopia and Sudan to restart stalled talks in order to reach a deal on the rules of filling and operating Addis Ababa’s disputed dam on the Blue Nile. The announcement was made late on Friday following a mini-African Union summit, chaired by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, via videoconference to discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) crisis. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi said in a statement the three countries...
Publish What You Fund has ranked the African Development Bank (AfDB) fourth out of 47 global development institutions on its Aid Transparency Index. The bank’s Communications and External Relations Department made this known in a statement on Wednesday. The Index is the only independent measure of aid transparency among the World’s major development agencies. It places AfDB in the highest category of transparency along with other world class institutions such as the World Bank, Asian Development...
JOHANNESBURG – Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 3.2% this year due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday, more than a previous estimated contraction of 1.6%. In its World Economic Outlook update, the IMF projected that GDP in South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, would shrink by 8% in 2020, a bigger contraction than the 5.8% forecast in April. South Africa’s strict...
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – All African countries have now developed laboratory capacity to test for the coronavirus, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also warned that the pandemic was accelerating. “The most recent one million cases of COVID-19 were reported in just one week,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a virtual conference on COVID-19 vaccine development and access across the continent. The WHO chief added that over 220...
BLANTYRE – The Malawi Electoral Commission says it is confident that Tuesday’s presidential election rerun will be fair and free of the irregularities that marred last year’s vote and led to annulling the re-election of Peter Mutharika. Mutharika seeks a second five-year term. He faces two other candidates —main opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera and little-known Peter Kuwani — in a race that political analysts say is too close to call. Malawi’s President Peter Mutharika addresses guests during his inauguration ceremony in Blantyre, Malawi, May 31, 2019. Polling preparations have been smooth, Chifundo Kachale, the commission chairperson, told...
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar have indefinitely postponed a long-awaited peace treaty intended to curb fighting between government and rebel factions. South Sudan plunged into a brutal civil war following independence in 2011, which pitted Kiir’s ethnic Dinka forces against Machar’s ethnic Nuer and displaced nearly a third of the country’s population. A peace treaty signed in August 2015 collapsed after violence re-erupted. Since the resumption of talks in September 2018, Kiir...
President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated Evariste Ndayishimiye on taking office as President of Burundi after a swearing-in ceremony on Thursday in the political capital, Gitega. The Nigerian leader’s congratulatory message was conveyed in a statement released by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, in Abuja on Thursday. The President also felicitated with the Government and people of Burundi on the historic peaceful transition to a democratically elected government, after the...
In the United States and around the world, societies are struggling to balance the sometimes draconian social controls needed to combat a highly contagious infectious disease with the need for limits on government power and the protection of civil liberties. Public health concerns can be used to justify crackdowns on opposition politicians, the manipulation of vital humanitarian assistance, and the emergency overriding of mechanisms meant to prohibit private gain at the public’s expense. In societies where the scales had...
