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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Foreign mining companies extract more than a quarter of the world’s production of rare emeralds in Zambia yet, in some quarters, are alleged to declare losses to make themselves tax exempt.
So far, charges of tax evasion filed against Kagem mine, a subsidiary of the London-listed gemstone miner Gemfields, have been unsuccessful on investigation and dismissed by the Zambian Revenue Authority.
Viewpoint by António Guterres
The following is the text of UN Secretary-General's remarks to a high-level debate of the Security Council on 'Mercenary activities as a source of insecurity and destabilization in Africa' with the Central African sub-region as a focus, under the presidency of Equatorial Guinea for the month of February. Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo chaired the meeting on February 4. – The Editor.
NEW YORK (IDN) – The use of mercenaries dates back through the ages. From antiquity to the medieval era to the present day, those who fight for financial reward or other material compensation have been a near constant on the battlefield. The shadowy nature of the practice makes data hard to come by. Reports suggest a surge in the use of mercenaries and other foreign fighters. While the numerical picture may be murky, the impacts of mercenaries today are all too clear.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department say they will no longer issue visas for certain Ghanaians owing to a “lack of cooperation” by the West African nation – namely its refusal to accept 7,000 Ghanaian nationals that the U.S. wants to deport.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said Ghana has “denied or unreasonably delayed accepting their nationals ordered removed from the United States.”
But Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey hotly disputed the charge, calling the allegations “unfounded.”
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – In an interview for the book No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over a Half Century, Dumisani Kumalo recalled the struggle to cut off the U.S. funds that were sustaining the apartheid government of South Africa.
“I spoke to more than 1,000 campuses all over the country in all 50 states,” Kumalo recalled. A particular triumph came in 1986, when the U.S. Congress, overriding a veto by President Ronald Reagan, passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act.
By Benjamin Tetteh, Africa Renewal
ACCRA (IDN-INPS) – In the heart of Accra, Ghana’s capital, just a few meters from the United States embassy, lie the tombs of W. E. B. Du Bois, a great African-American civil rights leader, and his wife, Shirley. The founder of the U.S.-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People moved to Accra in 1961, settling in the city’s serene residential area of Labone and living there until his death in August 1963.
Mr. Du Bois’s journey to Ghana may have signaled the emergence of a profound desire among Africans in the diaspora to retrace their roots and return to the continent. Ghana was a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
Migrants’ Search For Greener Pastures Carry Deadly Consequences
By Franck Kuwonu and Louise Donavan
This article first appeared on Africa Renewal, December 2018-March 2019 issue.
NEW YORK | NIAMEY (IDN-INPS) – Alone in Niger, the young man sits, filled with regrets. “I didn’t necessarily want to come this far,” he says with anguish. “Khartoum may have been OK.”
What made him extend his flight to a destination unknown? he wonders. He survived a perilous journey across deserts and seas, but at a terrible cost. His brother, with whom he was so close, lost his life after leaving the Sudanese capital, where the two had briefly settled after fleeing Eritrea, the country of their birth.
“So I left Khartoum too,” 36-year-old Tekle (not his real name) says, despairing over the unforeseen misfortune in his life.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – Efforts to clean up government – difficult in the best of times – were hamstrung by none other than Nigeria’s top judge accused of failing to declare hundreds of thousands of dollars that ‘suspiciously’ appear in his accounts but were never declared as required by law.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who has often accused the judiciary of frustrating his anti-corruption fight, defended his announced suspension of Chief Justice Walter Nkanu Samuel Onnoghen.
In a furious tweet storm on January 25, President Buhari said the judge should have stepped aside when the allegations reached the court. “This is not a mere technicality like innocently placing a document in a wrong file or mistakenly placing yesterday’s date on a document.”
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | HARARE (IDN) – After 67 albums and a score of awards and honorary degrees, Zimbabwe’s musical legend Oliver Mtudkudzi – affectionately known as ‘Tuku’ – lost his long battle with diabetes at the Avenues Clinic in Harare. He was 66.
He was buried January 27, with music, singing and dancing by thousands of his adoring fans.
On the Afropop music website, guitarist Banning Eyre recalled his friend: “Born in 1952, 'Tuku' grew up during the final decades of Rhodesian rule. He was a contemporary of Thomas Mapfumo, and both came of age during the brutal independence struggle of the 1970s, as Zimbabweans fought hard for liberation from the oppressive, racist Rhodesian regime.
By Sulaiman Momodu
The writer is a public information officer with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR. This article first appeared on Africa Renewal, December 2018-March 2019 issue.
KAMPALA (IDN-INPS) – As thousands of desperate men, women and children flee conflicts and natural disasters in search of a place of refuge, some countries are debating whether to accept or reject asylum seekers. But Uganda has opened its doors to refugees in record numbers.
Thirteen-year-old Robert Yatta was living with his aunt and going to school in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, when fighting broke out in early 2017.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – The Algerian philosopher and revolutionary writer, Frantz Fanon, wrote: “Africa is shaped like a gun, and Congo is its trigger. If that explosive trigger bursts, the whole of Africa will explode.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s largest country, is now caught up in the aftermath of its first proper election since independence from Belgium in 1960. Towards the end of last year one could say, after years of non-stop wars and massive carnage, the country was 90 percent bereft of fighting.
The authoritarian regime of President Joseph Kabila was still in power but at last it had been pressured to call an election by the African Union, the Western aid-givers, some of the big Western businesses that mine in the mineral-rich country and, not least, the Catholic Church.
