|
|
|
|
|
By Jackie
RENO, Nevada, United States (IDN) – Business is booming across Africa and a number of companies have risen above the fray with 24 of them being worth over $1 billion. However, many of these companies are not famous outside of the continent, so what are the 25 biggest companies in Africa? They are:
By Viwanou Gnassounou
ACP Assistant Secretary General for Sustainable Economic Development and Trade.
Fisheries and aquaculture are critical for poverty eradication and sustainable development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. With this in view, ministers and senior government officials from 79 countries that constitute the ACP Group of States will gather in Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas – the coral-based archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean Bahamas with 700-plus islands – from September 18 to 21, 2017. "The focus will be on bolstering high level shared commitments, sharing national or regional best practices and seeking consensus on priority issues that need multilateral action," says Viwanou Gnassounou, ACP Assistant Secretary General for Sustainable Economic Development & Trade. – The Editor
By Global Information Network
NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – Waving a gold sword – a symbol of Ghana’s presidency – the new president came out swinging against years of debilitating corruption.
“We must restore integrity in public life,” President Nana Akufo-Addo thundered at his swearing in ceremony last January. “State coffers are not spoils for the party that wins an election, but resources for the country’s social and economic development.”
Nine months later, the unpleasant stench of corruption is swirling around the presidency after it was revealed that highly-overpriced garbage contracts to the tune of $74 million were okayed by government officials.
By Global Information Network
NEW YORK | LOME (IDN) - In another strike against presidents who refuse to hand over power, the people of Togo filled the streets this month to protest 50 years of repressive rule by one family.
In an estimated crowd of 100,000 protesters, banners reading “Free Togo” and “Faure resign” could be seen. Police dispersed the protestors with tear gas and violence. In earlier protests in August, two people were killed and 13 injured when police fired on demonstrators. Taking the punishment a step further, the regime shut down the internet, making it almost impossible for opponents to use social media to organize.
By Global Information Network
ATLANTA (IDN) – The fierce contest between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition candidate Raila Odinga since their discarded election in August found echo here in Atlanta between Nairobi’s ambassador to Washington and a prominent U.S.-based legal scholar.
“I can categorically say here looking you straight in the eye that the Supreme Court robbed Uhuru Kenyatta of his win and stole the election from the Kenyan people,” Ambassador Robinson Njeru Githae was reported to say.
Not so, responded Prof. Makua Mutua, a human rights advocate and former dean at the University at Buffalo Law School.
By Jeffrey Moyo
MWENEZI; Zimbabwe (IDN) - Raviro Chawuruka scoops out sand from a well on a stream bank closer to her rural home in Rutenga, 443 km west of Harare, in Mwenezi district in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province.
At the age of 72, Chawuruka says she has known no rest while scavenging for water, this as she daily battles it out with the sand-filled water well in the vicinity of her home. She stands out among millions of Africans to whom piped water still remains a luxury, decades after several African nations gained independence from their former colonisers: Zimbabwe over 37 years ago.
According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, 65 percent of Zimbabwe’s 14 million people such as Chawuruka are domiciled in rural areas, where they have become the number one victims of lack of piped water.
By Global Information Network
NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – “Floods in Africa in August killed 25 times more people than Hurricane Harvey did.” That was the headline of a recent story in Quartz online by Lagos-based writer Yomi Kazeem.
“Like severe floods in southern Asia, the disasters in Africa have been largely under-reported compared to similar events in Houston where Hurricane Harvey, a once in a '500-year storm' has wreaked havoc,” wrote Kazeem.
Across Texas, 50 people have been reported dead due to the tropical storm but across Africa, intense rains and mudslides killed at least 1,240 people in August, he pointed out.
By Global Information Network
PARIS | NEW YORK (IDN) - "The Selous Game Reserve, covering 50,000 square kilometres, is amongst the largest protected areas in Africa and is relatively undisturbed by human impact," says UNESCO, which decided in 2014 to include it in the List of World Heritage in danger.
Notwithstanding the prominent status given to Selous Game Reserve by including it among world's 54 properties of "outstanding universal value", and much to the dismay of environmentalists, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has invited bids for a 2,100-megawatt hydroelectric plant. The project would more than double the country’s power generation capacity, ending chronic electricity shortages.
By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE (IDN) - He struggles with a huge solar panel as he crawls on the rooftop of his house. Just below him, on the ground, stands his wife gazing upwards, with one hand partially covering her face from direct sun heat.
Nevson Devera, for that is his name, at the age of 44 and domiciled in Harare the Zimbabwean capital, has not had electricity from the country’s main power utility, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, connected to his house, 15 years after he built it. Tired of using fossil fuels for energy, he and his wife Sarudzai have turned to the sun for electricity.
Interview with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone
NEW YORK | FREETOWN (IDN) - UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is paying specific attention to the needs of women and girls affected by the floods and mudslides in the country's capital city Freetown that killed over 495 people on August 14, 2017. Joan Erakit, UN correspondent of IDN, flagship agency of the International Press Syndicate (INPS) Group, spoke with Dr. Kim Eva Dickson, Representative of the UNFPA Sierra Leone. Following is the full text of the interview.
