Author: Agencies

The son of Uganda’s ageing leader, Yoweri Museveni, has said he intends to stand for the presidency in 2026, the first time the outspoken army general has given a timeline for replacing his father, who has ruled the East African country for 37 years. “You have wanted me to say it forever! Okay, in the name of Jesus Christ my God, in the name of all the young people of Uganda and the world and in the name of our great revolution, I will stand for the Presidency in 2026,” Museveni’s son Muhoozi Kainerugaba wrote on Twitter late on Wednesday. Uganda’s…

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has caused panic not just in the U.S. tech industry but also in China, where the bank has been a key player for years among Chinese startups. In recent days, many startups in China have issued statements to reassure their investors that their deposits with SVB will not impact their operations. Before the bank failed and was taken over by U.S. regulators this month, Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th-largest American bank. In foreign markets, SVB’s reputation for financing about half of all U.S. venture-backed technology and health care companies made it a popular…

The journalist’s approach to any topic is to seek out those caught up in the story and get their views. This is not that kind of a story. The wires are replete with anecdotal despatches of African “homophobia” in which for the past decade in East Africa, Uganda has become Ground Zero. The latest flashpoint is a new bill tabled in parliament last week containing proposals to further criminalise homosexual acts. This move has followed what, a decade after the introduction of the first bill entrenching the colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality, has become a familiar script. A decade ago, a…

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) – Britain said on Thursday it would ban TikTok on government phones with immediate effect, a move that follows other Western countries who have barred the Chinese-owned video app over security concerns. “The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices. The use of other data-extracting apps will be kept under review,” Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden said in a statement. TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny due to fears that user data from the app owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance could end up in the hands of…

Growing up, many young Africans nurse the ambition of playing football professionally in Europe and becoming superstars. The BBC reports that about 260 million people in Africa follow the English Premier League. Dreams, for some, do come true, and a few have succeeded in making the journey to Europe. According to Football Benchmark, African players – most of them from West Africa – make up about 6% of the total player base of the 11 most prominent leagues in Europe. But it’s a difficult road, with ups and downs. In my recent study of two West African footballers, Paul and John, in the German professional…

On 28 February, a French court declared an appeal against a controversial oil and gas project in East Africa, largely owned by TotalEnergies, to be inadmissible. Sitting in summary proceedings, the Judicial Court of Paris did not assess the details of the claims brought by several NGOs but dismissed them based on various technicalities. Six French and African civil society groups had called for the court to order the suspension of the Tilenga oil field development and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), arguing that TotalEnergies had failed to comply with France’s “law on the duty of vigilance”. This…

The COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to higher education systems everywhere. But while some changes, like moving lectures online, were relatively easy to make, assessment posed a much bigger challenge. Assessment can take many forms, from essays to exams to experiments and more. Many institutions and individual academics essentially outsourced the assessment process to software. They increased their use of programs like Turnitin to check for matched wording in students’ assignments. And for closed-book, timed tests they used tools such as Proctorio, which monitor a student’s computer or phone while they write exams. But universities did not seize this chance to reflect on what…

On 1 March, 2023 the Ugandan parliament granted opposition MP, Mr Asuman Basalirwa, leave to introduce the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023. This draft bill prescribes ten years of imprisonment for persons who will be found guilty of homosexuality, aggravated homosexuality, and persons who attempt to commit homosexuality. It also proposes a two-year jail term for those aiding and abetting homosexuality; and a five-year sentence for those promoting homosexuality. Landlords who rent property to homosexuals face a year in jail. Suspected Ugandan homosexuals living abroad could be extradited to stand trial in Uganda. It is the latest peak of an anti-gay campaign in the…

Mental health problems among adults are an ever-increasing public health concern. These include depression, anxiety, and conditions associated with bad childhood experiences such as abuse. Several factors are known to influence the development of mental illness. These include anxiety, early adversity, socio-economic status, and some demographic characteristics such as where a person lives. In a recent study we assessed the prevalence of mental health problems among South African adults. We also explored socioeconomic and demographic associations with depression, anxiety and adverse childhood experiences. We found that South Africans who were exposed to adverse experiences in early childhood had a higher risk of probable depression or probable anxiety in adulthood than people…

Last month, award-winning author and academic Siddharth Kara published Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives. The book draws attention to labour conditions and living standards in areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that mine cobalt, a metal that will be critical in the hoped-for global energy transition. Across 250 pages, it argues that by consuming products that contain Congolese cobalt, Western consumers are complicit in a human rights and environmental catastrophe. In the US and UK, the book has been rapturously received. It became a New York Times bestseller in its first week of release and received a glowing…