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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – African media greeted the new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, by recalling some of particularly cringe-worthy remarks made during his formative years in politics.
The new Conservative Party leader has a history of gaffes involving Kenya and Africa, having once attacked Barack Obama saying the “part-Kenyan president” had an “ancestral dislike of the British Empire” after he removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.
By Jeffrey Moyo
BLANTYRE, Malawi (IDN) – In Karonga, a district in the northern region of Malawi, 32-year old Mavis Banda, a mother of three daughters busies herself drawing safe drinking water from a borehole located at the heart of her village.
Banda and several other villagers claimed they long abandoned a local well where for years they drew water for domestic purposes, thanks to the initiative by the European Union (EU) ensuring developing African countries like Malawi access safe drinking water – as stipulated in Goal 6 of the UN Agenda 2030, which aims to “ensure access to water and sanitation for all”.
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW (IDN) – The ways and means of invigorating bilateral relations in political, trade, economic, educational and humanitarian areas were the centrepiece of the first diplomatic encounter between Foreign Minister Marcel Amon-Tanoh of Côte d'Ivoire, also known as Ivory Coast, and his counterpart Sergey Lavrov of Russia, in Moscow.
The two Foreign Ministers also exchanged views on major global and regional issues, such as crisis settlement and peacekeeping in Africa. Countering international terrorism and extremism in the context of collective efforts to neutralize these threats in Africa and beyond too topped their agenda.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – The New York Times is still recovering from the verbal bashing it received from Kenyan writers shocked and angered by the paper’s outdated references to Africa in a recent ad for the job of Nairobi Bureau Chief.
How far has Africa come, wondered educator Alice Wairimu Nderitu, since the day when posters portrayed wild animals with the title “The Highlands of British East Africa as a Winter Home for Aristocrats”?
By Ramesh Jaura
BERLIN | NEW YORK (IDN) – “African countries, especially those in West Africa, are simply not doing enough” to “ensure that no one is left behind”, declares a new report, unveiling shocking figures that underline extreme inequality and poverty rampant in the region. West Africa is the African region “least committed to the fight against inequality”, says the report titled ‘The West Africa Inequality Crisis’.
And this in a year that marks the fourth year of the implementation of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation – as envisaged in Goal 1, Goal 10 and Goal13.
Viewpoint by António Guterres
Following are excerpts from UN Secretary-General's remarks to the African Regional High-Level Conference on Counter-Terrorism and the Prevention of Violent Extremism Conducive to Terrorism, in Nairobi on 10 July 2019.
NAIROBI (IDN-INPS) – I would like to honour the tens of thousands of African victims of terrorism and to express solidarity with African countries that have suffered terrorist attacks that shock with their barbarity and disregard for human life. Kenya itself has endured numerous terrorist attacks. This year alone, terrorists murdered 21 people in the Dusit hotel complex in Nairobi, and in Wajir County, eight police officers were killed and others injured when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) - A law adopted on June 21 but still awaiting presidential approval would send writers to jail for up to 10 years’ jail for “demoralizing the defense and security forces of Burkina Faso.”
A fine of up to $3,500 would be imposed for publishing what the government called “fake news information compromising security operations, false information about rights abuses or destruction of property, or images and audio from a “terrorist” attack.”
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – "Inequality has reached extreme levels in West Africa, and today the wealthiest 1 per cent of West Africans own more than everyone else in the region combined." That was the finding in a new report published by Oxfam and Development Finance International (DFI).
According to the "West Africa Inequality Crisis" report, six of the ten fastest-growing economies in Africa were in West Africa, with Ivory Coast, Ghana and Senegal among the world's 10 fastest-growing economies.
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW (IDN) – Chairman of the State Duma, Viacheslav Volodin, has urged African leaders to use the untapped enormous natural resources to vigorously pursue sustainable development goals as the best way through which to escape underdevelopment, economic dependency syndrome and neo-colonialism.
In order to achieve this, Russia, he said, was prepared with a new legislative supported comprehensive plan in the coming years to uplift, especially, its economic cooperation into a new stage with African countries.
By Kizito Makoye with Goodhope Amani
DAR ES SALAAM (IDN) – It is a typically hot and humid afternoon in Gongo la Mboto on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam and Abdullah Nyambi is busy shoving plastic waste into a giant metal kiln with an iron rod ready to make pavement slabs.
With a shiny yellow breathing mask perched on his nose, Nyambi briskly mixes the melting plastic while methodically sprinkling sand on it to make it stiff. “We use any type of plastic to make the slabs,” says Nyambi, with trails of sweat soaking his yellow T-shirt. A plume of black smoke rises into the sky as fierce fire obliterates the plastic material and turns it into a thick liquid.
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