Author: Agencies

As Nigerians inch closer to the February 2023 presidential election, the seventh since the current wave of liberal democracy formally started in 1999, there are at least 10 key issues that are likely to drive and determine the outcome. Political scientist, Jideofor Adibe, explores them all. 1. Ethnicity and regionalism Four of the 18 presidential candidates in the election, regarded as the front runners, come from the three dominant ethnic groups in the country: Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo. From the north are Atiku Abubakar, a former vice-president of the country (1999-2007) and the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party; and Rabi’u Musa…

During his planned visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan in February 2023, Pope Francis intends to be in dialogue with African Catholics – but also to listen to political leaders and young Africans. This visit comes at a defining moment in what is regarded as a fairly progressive papacy. Pope Francis has convened a worldwide consultation on the future of the Catholic church. This consultation, called a synodal process, began in 2021 and will conclude in 2024. It is the most ambitious dialogue ever undertaken on bringing changes in Catholic beliefs and practices since the Second Vatican Council’s…

When Pope Gregory XII, the last pope to resign before Benedict, died in 1417, the world was not watching. Gregory had stepped down two years earlier in 1415 and spent his remaining days in virtual obscurity hundreds of miles from Rome. He was quietly buried in Recanati, a town near the northern Adriatic coast. It will be vastly different with the passing of ailing 95-year-old Benedict. The Vatican has painstakingly elaborate rituals for what happens after a reigning pope dies but no publicly known ones for a former pope. It will be at least partially scripting new protocols. They could…

VATICAN CITY, Dec 31 (Reuters) – Former Pope Benedict, who in 2013 became the first pontiff in 600 years to step down, died on Saturday aged 95 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican where he had lived since his resignation, a spokesman for the Holy See said. “With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be provided as soon as possible,” the spokesman said in a written statement. For nearly 25 years, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict was the…

Christmas and New Year are holidays with dietary excesses that many of us cannot control. This often leads to the “festive bulge”. As the holidays approach, could there be a recipe to contain this weight gain and pave the way to sustainable nutrition-based health at the same time? There’s a lot of focus on what we eat and how much we eat – but what about when we eat? Chrononutrition is the science of how timing affects our responses to nutrients. Scientific insights into when we eat suggest it may be worth exploring for better health. While the idea of getting started on chrononutrition over…

News from Europe that a vast windfarm is being demolished to make way for a new open-pit coal mine is the reprehensible double standard we in Africa have come to expect. As Europeans switch their coal-fired plants back on while still demanding fossil-fuel generation remains beyond the pale for Africans. It makes a mockery of Western commitments to climate targets and their promises to help speed African development all in one breath. We are told that these are only temporary measures, needed to mitigate the energy shortages caused by the war in Ukraine. As soon as the conflict ends, the…

Ugandans on Saturday staged protests at Chinese, French and Ugandan missions in New York demanding them to compel TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Uganda limited to back out of the planned heated East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). They say the project will evict people and endanger the fragile ecosystem. The EACOP project is planned to run from Hoima district in Western Uganda to Tanga Port in Tanzania which is a distance of 1,445 kilometres and is expected to be commissioned in 2025. The demonstrators, who included lawyers and human rights activists, asked China, France and Uganda…

CAPE TOWN, Oct 20 (Reuters) – Uganda’s national oil company (UNOC) expects to secure the funding for a $5 billion crude pipeline that the European Union is opposed to, by early next year, UNOC’s chief executive told Reuters on Thursday. In February, TotalEnergies and its partner China National Offshore Oil Corporation signed a final investment decision with Uganda and Tanzania to kick-start investments worth more than $10 billion to produce and export Uganda’s crude. Part of that investment will involve a $5 billion pipeline, criticized by the EU which has passed a parliamentary resolution seeking to delay the project that…

China has an unprecedented seven universities in the world top 100 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023 – up from six last year and just two five years ago.Tsinghua University becomes the best-performing Chinese institution (16th overall) in the rankings, which were released on Wednesday 12 October.Asia is the most represented continent with 669 universities participating out of a total of 1,799 universities.Japan leads the Asian countries with a total of 117 universities ranked, followed by China with 95 and India with 75.Among individual nations, Germany also achieved unprecedented success with nine universities in the top 100 and 22 in…

My name is John Tereraho. Tereraho is a hopeless name, because my parents thought I was not going to make it in life. In Rufumbira and Rwanda dialect it means throw there. It is a name that carries no hope because my parents were pagans. They thought I was going to die because those who had come before had died but iam here and on October 29, I will be 60 years. I went to school by accident and I ended up being the only one that went to school among my siblings, even my parents did not go to…