Category: Africa

By Rodrigo Pérez

RIO DE JANEIRO (IDN-INPS) – Beneath the glitz and glamour, the Samba and Rio’s Carnival-like atmosphere, this year’s Olympic Games Opening Ceremony showcased the most impossible sounding dream of all – Africa’s Great Green Wall.

The initiative started a decade ago. Once completed it will be the largest man-made structure on Earth and a new Wonder of the World.

The progress made shows that land restoration efforts on a mass scale are both possible and offer hope. Senegal has already planted 12 million trees, Ethiopia has restored 15 million hectares of degraded land and Nigeria has created 20,000 jobs in rural areas.

Analysis by Amelia Tan

NEW YORK (IDN | Africa Renewal) – By 6:30 a.m. on June 24, less than 12 hours after a successful referendum on Brexit (Britain’s exit from the European Union), South Africa’s currency, the rand, took the first blow. It plunged by almost 8% from R14.33 to R15.45 against the U.S. dollar, its steepest single-day decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

Brexit sent shock waves through the global markets, including those in Africa.  

Investors in African markets panicked because many economies (such as Angola, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia) were already reeling from low commodity prices exacerbated by a sluggish global demand. In these countries, Brexit added salt to the wounds of injured economies.

NAIROBI (IDN | GIN) – A well-known soukous star from the Congo got a quick lesson in the evolving status of Kenyan women when he was detained and summarily deported, his performance scuttled, after he was caught striking a woman with his foot on a bystander’s cell phone camera.

In the grainy video image posted online, Koffi Olomide, age 60, his musicians and dancers are seen arriving at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. Without warning, he pivots to one of his dancers and aims a vicious kick at her midsection.

Band members said he overreacted after being informed that the unidentified dancer had slapped his purported girlfriend.

LIBREVILLE (IDN | GIN) – For the past 50 years, the citizens of Gabon have lived under a dynasty with one name. Bongo.

Omar Bongo Ondimba, the father, served from December 1967 to June 2009 to be replaced by his son, Ali Bongo Ondimba who served from 2009 until today. On August 27, Gabonese will have a chance to elect someone other than a Bongo family member although the chances are slim.

In the capital, Libreville, peaceful protestors demanding fair elections are already facing a heavy police presence. Some 15 opposition leaders and hundreds of marchers formed a human chain. Police using teargas dispersed the crowd and several shots were fired.

By Devendra Kamarajan

ADDIS ABABA (IDN) – For quite some time, Africa has been hosting at least three-quarters of the UN Peacekeepers worldwide which South African President Theo Mbeki and Algerian UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi bemoan as “a sad fact”.

In preface to the landmark report titled ‘African Politics, African Peace’, the two African leaders stress that having “engaged in a successful struggle against colonialism and apartheid . . . we surely have an obligation to exercise our hard-won right to self-determination and independence effectively to address this humiliating reality of persistent conflict on our Continent and the unwelcome and painful consequences it has imposed on the masses of Africa.”

HARARE (IDN | GIN) – With exports down and scarce dollars hidden away under pillows, banks in Zimbabwe are running out of legal tender. At the same time, some ATMs have been shuttered, leaving minimum wage workers, normally paid in cash, with IOUs as employers struggle to withdraw notes.

“We’re importing more than we’re exporting and we can’t print money because we use mainly the U.S. dollar,” explained Sam Malaba, CEO of the Agricultural Bank of Zimbabwe.

In May 2016, in a bid to relieve the cash shortage, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya announced the printing of “bond notes” – usable within the country but worthless outside – to begin circulating in October. However, the new currency is widely rejected as “monopoly money” by the population.

NEW YORK | HARARE (IDN | GIN) – Zimbabwe‘s former vice president, Joice Mujuru, was the headliner at a rally in Matabeleland in one of the first public events of the new Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) opposition party. The newly-launched campaign promptly took on the incumbent – President Robert Mugabe – in advance of elections in 2018.

Mujuru accused the government of being disinterested in the plight of the majority and promised to fight for the interests of ordinary citizens. “Zimbabwe People First is a new democratic, inclusive political party that accommodates every Zimbabwean… Please, get it from me, I am not going back to Zanu PF”.

By GIN and INPS Africa Correspondent

NEW YORK | LUANDA (IDN) – President José Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled oil-rich Angola for the last 37 years, has found a new and lucrative job for his daughter, Isabel dos Santos, ranked Africa’s richest woman by Forbes magazine.

President dos Santos, 73, tapped his daughter this month (June 2016) to head Sonangol, a parastatal that oversees petroleum and natural gas production in Angola. Using a presidential decree, he sacked the company’s directors, in a move some have called unconstitutional.

By GIN and INPS Africa Correspondent

NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – Ghanaians who use social media could find themselves staring at a blank screen instead of Facebook or Twitter under a plan now being considered by Ghana’s Police Service (GPS).

Superintendent Cephas Arthur, Public Affairs director of the GPS, said that blocking Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets during the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections would be in the best interests of the nation. Such a ban would not infringe on people’s rights, he said, but would promote peace and ensure a violence-free election, he claimed.