Author: Agencies

South Africa is rapidly approaching a significant milestone with its 2024 national general election. Recent electoral trends and opinion polls indicate that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is poised to fall below the 50% threshold of the national vote for the first time since the advent of democracy in 1994. This potential shift is expected to usher in South Africa’s inaugural national coalition government, marking the end of single-party dominance. A crucial player in this transformation is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the nation’s third-largest political party, whose electoral support has been steadily growing since 2014. During this period,…

The recent synthesis report for the Global Stocktake suggests growing agreement on the necessity of fossil fuel phaseouts. However, African negotiators have expressed their dissatisfaction with the report’s approach to equity and differentiation, as well as its treatment of finance and technology transfer. One of the central focus areas at this year’s COP will be the global stocktake, which essentially serves as a collective progress report on the Paris Agreement’s goals. It evaluates mitigation, adaptation, and means of implementation, including finance, while also addressing issues like loss and damage and response measures. This year’s stocktake, the first under the Paris…

On 24 May, a flutter of excitement spread through the sun-scorched city of Maroua in northern Cameroon. Earlier in the day, four elephants had become separated from their herd as they migrated from Waza National Park and ended up wandering through the town’s asphalt roads. Despite being relative neighbours in the country’s semi-arid Far North region, many residents had never seen these huge creatures in the flesh. The phenomenon of elephants venturing into the outskirts of Maroua is a relatively recent occurrence. Curious onlookers took to the streets to follow the wayward visitors. “It was simply amazing,” says Adamu Hamadou,…

Released globally as an acquired Netflix Original on 22 September, Nigerian film The Black Book has taken the streaming world by storm. Netflix says the action-thriller, starring Nollywood icon Richard Mofe-Damijo as Paul Edima, an avenging ex-security operative on the hunt for the murderers of his only child, ranked fourth globally amongst the platform’s English-language titles after the first weekend of its release. The Editi Effiong-directed film also pulled in at least 5.6 million views in the first two days, ranking in the top ten in at least 38 countries, with audiences in South America and Europe also tuning in. “The…

This year’s Nobel economics prize has been awarded to Claudia Goldin, an American economic historian, for her work on women’s employment and pay. Prof Goldin’s research uncovered key drivers behind the gender pay gap, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. She is only the third woman to receive the prize, and the first to not share the award with male colleagues. The 77-year-old academic currently teaches labour market history at Harvard University in the US. She had “advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, pointing to her work examining 200 years…

For weeks, Uganda’s political scene has been rocked by a scandal involving the country’s second-largest opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Allegations have surfaced that key party leaders received campaign funds from President Museveni in 2021, purportedly to co-opt the FDC and thwart a potential alliance with the largest opposition party, Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP). The accused leaders – FDC party president Patrick Amuriat and Secretary General Nandala Mafabi – have admitted to receiving the money but have declined to disclose its sources, purportedly to protect their donors’ security. This ambiguous stance and the NRM’s history…

The average debt ratio in sub-Saharan Africa has almost doubled in just a decade—from 30 percent of GDP at the end of 2013 to almost 60 percent of GDP by end-2022. Repaying this debt has also become much costlier. The region’s ratio of interest payments to revenue, a key metric to assess debt servicing capacity and predict the risk of a fiscal crisis, has more than doubled since the early 2010s and is now close to four times the ratio in advanced economies. As of 2022, more than half of the low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa were assessed by the…

Abnormal bacterial communities in the oral cavity have been linked to liver disease, renal failure, cancers, heart disease and hypertension. The oral cavity is the door to the gastrointestinal tract and the rest of the body. Like the gut, the mouth is home to several diverse colonies of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa. It’s the second largest microbial community in humans, after the gut. More than 700 species of microorganisms reside in the mouth. New technologies, such as 16S rRNA analysis, have allowed researchers to study their genetic makeup and family trees. These microbes are found all over the mouth: in and around the teeth, the gums, tongue, palate and saliva. They usually remain…

By Crispin Kaheru I would like to express our gratitude to Africa Freedom for Information Centre (AFIC) for hosting this event, marking the International Day for Universal Access to Information. The significance of access to information, along with the challenges associated with navigating the digital space, cannot be overstated in today’s ever-changing world. At the international level, the right to access information is firmly established by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In this era of digital transformation, the internet has emerged as…

Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park lies at the centre of Ghana’s capital, Accra. Recently renovated, it is dedicated to the memory of Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana’s independence struggle and its first president. Marking the spot of his final resting place at the park is a massive statue. The statue has been continuously contested since its original commission in 1956 and its unveiling at the first anniversary of independence in 1958. As a social anthropologist who has researched and written about Kwame Nkrumah themed monuments, I have explored the contradiction that generally characterises monuments: built as lasting memories, they remain embedded in social and political conflict. Nkrumah is…