(AFP 08/11/13)
JOHANNESBURG, August 11, 2013 (AFP) - Nelson Mandela is making "slow but steady" progress back to health, although he remains critically ill, the office of the South African president said Sunday. The 95-year-old former president and anti-apartheid icon has been in hospital for more than two months with a recurring lung infection. "Former President Nelson Mandela continues to receive treatment in hospital in Pretoria and doctors have indicated to President Jacob Zuma that the former president is making a slow but steady improvement," a statement from the presidency said. "The medical team also reiterated that although his health was improving steadily, Madiba still remained in a critical condition," it added, referring to Mandela by his clan name. Zuma asked South...
(Reuters 08/11/13)
(Reuters) - Six migrants drowned off the Italian island of Sicily on Saturday after attempting a dangerous passage from Africa in a fishing boat, according to the Italian coastguard. The 18-metre-long boat carrying some 120 migrants ran aground at dawn some 40 meters (132 feet) from a beach near the city of Catania, its coastguard captain Roberto D'Arrigo said. While most of the passengers reached the shore, the six who drowned were apparently unable to swim. The 120 migrants were mainly from Syria and Egypt, D'Arrigo told Sky Italia television, with an adolescent boy among the victims, who were all under age 30. Egypt has suffered prolonged political and economic turmoil. Syria is shattered by civil war. D'Arrigo said he...
(AFP (eng) 08/10/13)
Nelson Mandela, who has been lying critically ill in hospital for just over two months, is becoming more alert and more responsive by the day, his youngest daughter said Friday, adding that the anti-apartheid hero is "not going anywhere anytime soon". "Tata (father) now manages to sit up, like now he is able to sit up in a chair for a few minutes in a day. Everyday you know, he becomes more alert, more responsive, and so on," Zindzi Mandela told South Africa public television SABC. "Tata is determined not to go anywhere anytime soon, I cannot stress this enough. "People must stop saying to the family let go, let go, we are just looking at this man who is...
(Reuters 08/09/13)
LONDON | Fri Aug 9, 2013 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N) has appointed Alasdair Warren as head of its financial sponsors group for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), according to a memo seen by Reuters. Financial sponsors, the term investment banks use to describe private equity firms, are regular users of equity capital markets for selling shares in their portfolio companies. London-based Warren, who joined Goldman in 2005 and was named a partner in 2008, was previously head of equity capital markets (ECM), convertibles and equity derivatives for EMEA. Richard Cormack and Christoph Stanger will jointly take on that role, becoming co-heads of ECM and convertibles in EMEA, the memo said. A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs confirmed the contents...
(AFP 08/08/13)
CAPE TOWN, August 8, 2013 (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu had his Twitter account briefly suspended Thursday for "aggressively following" other users, just hours after it was launched. The ex-archbishop's @TutuLegacy account racked up hundreds of followers in its first hours of use, before being black listed. "Twitter says it's 'sorry for the inconvenience' over our suspension. We got caught up in a spam clean up. Glad it wasn't something we said," Tutu tweeted soon after he was unblocked. His foundation had earlier expressed dismay at the decision. "Twitter has not explained how following 30 people could be construed as 'aggressive following'," his foundation said in a statement. The foundation suggested "the number of people who followed...
(AFP 08/07/13)
PRETORIA, August 7, 2013 (AFP) - South African church leaders on Wednesday led prayers in front of the hospital where critically ill former South African president Nelson Mandela is soon to mark two months in care. Archbishop Joe Seoka used the eve of the sorrow-tinged anniversary to urge South Africans to rally together. "God is using Madiba, and his extended illness, to present to us a great challenge to unite behind the values that he represents," the Pretoria archbishop said, using Mandela's clan name. Mandela was rushed to the Pretoria Mediclinic Heart Hospital on June 8 with a recurring lung infection. On Wednesday the South African presidency reported his condition was still "critical but stable". The last two months have...
( FOROYAA Newspaper 08/07/13)
With its abundance of natural resources and large and growing population , Africa is the next frontier for many global companies. However, while investors are keen to get, there's often a wariness on the part of Africans. The BBC's Vineet Khare travelled to Ethiopia to find out about what can be a tricky relationship and how things are not always so rosy. Watch the video...
(Business Daily 08/06/13)
The top-ranking US trade official Michael Froman said on Monday that issues of "reciprocity" will be raised at a US-Africa conference next week in Ethiopia that will consider renewal of the Agoa trade initiative. The African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is due to expire in 2015, gives duty-free treatment to Kenyan textiles and many other African exports to the United States. Agoa is said to be responsible for creating thousands of jobs in the Kenyan textile industry. But as a condition to Agoa's extension beyond 2015, American negotiators may press African countries to give the same preferential treatment to US exports to Africa. Ambassador Froman made clear in a talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington that the US...
(Reuters 08/06/13)
LAGOS/SYDNEY, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Nigeria is gradually opening up to Islamic finance, a move that could bring non-interest banking to over 80 million Muslims and develop one of Africa's fastest-growing consumer and corporate banking sectors. Home to the largest Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria is trying to establish itself as the African hub for Islamic finance, which follows religious principles such as bans on interest and gambling. In recent months, a string of regulatory initiatives have set the groundwork for products such as Islamic bonds (sukuk), insurance (takaful) and interbank lending products, although there is still only a small number of local market participants. "The potential is there but the market is negligible in Nigeria because we have...
(Tanzania Daily News 08/05/13)
A few weeks ago, when Tanzania was hosting the Ministerial Committee Organ (MCO) responsible for Defence and Security Cooperation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Bernard Member, confirmed that Tanzania is one of the top five countries of the SADC whose harbours and airports are used as conduits for drug trafficking. Speaking at this 15th MCO, which is faced with an uphill task of tackling this illicit trade, Minister Membe singled out other countries being South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola. The announcement just came a fortnight after two female artists from Tanzania were nabbed at the Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg with 150 kg of drugs, crystal methamphetamine locally known...
(Reuters 08/05/13)
WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 5, 2013 (Reuters) - The United States extended embassy closures by a week in the Middle East and Africa as a precaution on Sunday after an al Qaeda threat that U.S. lawmakers said was the most serious in years. The State Department said 19 U.S. embassies and consulates would be closed through Saturday "out of an abundance of caution" and that a number of them would have been closed anyway for most of the week due to the Eid celebration at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The United States initially closed 21 U.S. diplomatic posts for the day on Sunday. Some of those will reopen on Monday, including Kabul, Baghdad and Algiers...
(CNN 08/05/13)
African Voices is a weekly show that highlights Africa's most engaging personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely open themselves up to the camera. Follow the team on Twitter. Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) -- Inside a brightly painted Mogadishu clinic, Salim (not her real name) sits alongside her seven-year-old son, waiting for a check up. Opposite them, a health professional listens to their nightmarish ordeal. Salim recounts how she was raped and then watched, helpless, as her young son was molested. Too afraid to seek assistance, she did what she thought would help. She washed her son's wounds with hot water and salt for four excruciating days, until they were brought here, the Sister Somalia center. "There are...
(CNN 08/03/13)
(CNN) -- The African Union on Friday applauded Zimbabwe for holding peaceful elections, and made no mention of rigging accusations by the main opposition candidate. However, its observers added that they noted several shortcomings. Problems included voters getting turned away, late publication of polling stations and media taking sides, the African Union observers said in a statement released Friday. Even so, the continent-wide body said, "The Mission observes generally, that from a historical perspective and in comparison to the 2008 elections, Zimbabwe has made an important transition in the conduct of its elections." Wednesday's vote pitted President Robert Mugabe against his prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe's party declared victory a day later even though the electoral commission has not released...
(African arguments 08/02/13)
UK Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds, has stated that the government will not intervene directly in Barclays Bank's decision to withdraw banking services to Money Service Businesses (MSBs) including those that provide remittance services to Somalia, but said he hoped that a 'market-based solution' could be found. Simmonds stated in a letter dated 18th July to SOAS academic Laura Hammond (and shared with African Arguments) that "the government would not be able to intervene on behalf of a particular company or 'remittance corridor'". He was responding to a letter submitted by Hammond on behalf of 105 academics, researchers and practitioners calling on the UK government to intervene to prevent the collapse of remittance flows into poor and fragile states, particularly...
(Reuters (Eng) 08/02/13)
LONDON | Fri Aug 2, 2013 (Reuters) - The winning investment strategy of 2013 has been simple but extreme: return home to the safety of the biggest, most-traded markets, or venture to the riskiest frontiers from Ivory Coast to Pakistan. Those in the middle of the risk curve - the biggest emerging markets that now account for almost half of the top 20 world economies - have been the big losers. The contrasting fortunes may herald the start of a broader repricing of big emerging economies where a flood of cheap money from developed economies has distorted prices the most. Risk - which dominated global financial markets in the past few years - has played a smaller role in defining...
(This Day Live 08/02/13)
Against the backdrop of the three-day investment roundtable in Cape Town, South Africa, John Iwori, who attended the event, writes that African countries are forging a common front in the shipping and energy sectors of the continent's economy. Working against One Another That most African countries are working at cross purposes is an understatement. In spite of their proximity, they prefer to work against their common interests. They hardly see each other as partners in progress. In fact, they see themselves as enemies. They work against one another for the benefit of the people on other continents, especially those who ruled over them during the colonial era. The undue rivalry among African countries has often robbed the people on the...
(This Day Live 08/01/13)
The World Bank Group committed a record $14.7 billion in fiscal year 2013 (July 2012 to June 2013) to support economic growth and better development prospects in Africa, despite uncertain economic conditions in the rest of the global economy. “The region has shown remarkable resilience in the face of a global recession and continues to grow strongly,” said World Bank Vice President for the Africa Region, Makhtar Diop. “Africa is at the centre of the World Bank Group 2030 goals of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity, in an environmentally, socially, and fiscally sustainable manner.” The World Bank Group, according to a release from its Nigeria office in Abuja, continued its strong commitment to Africa approving $8.25 billion in...
(Voice of America 07/31/13)
JOHANNESBURG — The United Nations’ AIDS agency is hailing what officials describe as significant progress in the fight against the epidemic in eastern and southern Africa. The report says AIDS-related deaths have declined dramatically and that the number of new infections has decreased - a direct result of more available treatment. But, they warned, challenges remain. Top health and aid officials praised the gains in the fight against AIDS in southern and eastern Africa - among them, a nearly 40 percent drop in AIDS-related deaths since 2005, and a 50 percent drop in new infections among children since 2001. The cause, they said was simple: The number of people receiving anti-retroviral treatment has increased tenfold, from 625,000 in 2005 to...
(Reuters (Eng) 07/31/13)
LAGOS, July 31 | Wed Jul 31, 2013 (Reuters) - The chairman of African lender Ecobank Transnational (ETI) has repaid a set of loans he took from the bank and no company rules were broken by the transactions, Chief Executive Thierry Tanoh said on Wednesday. South African sovereign fund manager PIC, a 20 percent shareholder in the African bank, has said they would wait for the board of directors to investigate and draw conclusions over the allegations around debt taken out by chairman Kolapo Lawson on August 5. The lender itself has said previously that the loans, which the Financial Times reported were the subject of a boardroom battle, were performing. Tanoh said on Wednesday they were contracted two years...
(CNN 07/31/13)
(CNN) -- A decade after Angola emerged from devastating civil war, the sea front road that winds around the bay of its capital, Luanda, is now dotted with multi-million dollar condominiums, exclusive clubs, and boutique stores catering for the country's elite. Most of Luanda's population, however, live in the nearby slums, where health facilities are non-existent and children must work, not study, to survive. Africa's natural resource wealth has certainly fueled a decade of rapid growth, but most Africans have still not seen the benefits. More urgently, rapid population growth combined with deepening inequality could one day prove explosive. It does not have to be this way, of course. Botswana successfully used its diamond wealth to develop quickly, growing from...