Africa

Africa's Emerging Markets Vulnerable To Cyber Attacks

By Emmanuel Tita Sama*

LAGOS (IDN) – As emerging markets race to join the digital revolution they are fast being hijacked by cybercriminals, who are preying on the fledgling IT environment with potential security weaknesses and using them to launch attacks on territories with more advanced defence strategies.

The United Nations recently reported that, shockingly, only 38 percent of countries globally, have a published cyber security strategy, which has highlighted that there is a huge chasm between countries in terms of awareness, understanding, knowledge and the ability to deploy cyber security capabilities and programs "to ensure a safe and appropriate use of technology as an enabler for economic development".

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 16 August 2018

Photo: Emmerson Mnangagwa speaking in Headlands on Didymus Mtasa as Vice President of Zimbabwe in 2015. CC BY 3.0

'Skulduggery' Foils Zimbabwe Inauguration Of Mnangagwa

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | HARARE (IDN) – The hastily organized inauguration of Emmerson Mnangagwa as president of Zimbabwe has hit a brick wall.

Invitations to the heads of diplomatic mission, international organizations and consulates were pulled back after challenges to July 30 general election put a question mark around the slim victory of Mnangagwe over his rival Nelson Chamisa.

Mnangagwa allegedly beat Chamisa with 50.8 percent of the vote to Chamisa’s 44.3 percent.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 14 August 2018

Photo: UN Peacekeepers serving with the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) patrol the city of Bangui in 2017. UN Photo/ Hervé Serefio

Security Council Calls for Better UN Agency Cooperation in Central Africa

By J Nastranis

NEW YORK (IDN) – In view of "the volatile and fast‑evolving nature of the political, security and social situation" in Central Africa, the United Nations Secretary-General has asked the Security Council to extend by three years from September 1, 2018 to August 31, 2021 the mandate of the UN Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA).

Created on January 1, 2011, and operating under the purview of the Department of Political Affairs, UNOCA covers the 11 member States of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS): Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe.

: J Nastranis; THE WORLD; Africa; 13 August 2018

Photo: Uniformed children in class in Ha Nqabeni primary school, Lesotho. CC BY-SA 2.0

UN Supports Comprehensive Reform Process in Lesotho

By Ntsoaki Nkoe

MASERU (IDN) – Lesotho has launched a landmark project with the European Union willing to provide Euros 12.5 million (approx. USD14.4 million) and the United Nations USD 2 million. Known as the Lesotho National Dialogue and Stabilization Project (LNDSP), the initiative aims to stimulate a comprehensive national reforms process the southern African country is undertaking.

Explaining the genesis of the project, UN Resident Coordinator Salvator Niyonzima said the launch of the project was the result of several months of consultations, project formulation and fund raising going back to September 2017 when Prime Minister Thomas Thabane wrote to the UN Secretary-General requesting UN support to Lesotho’s long-anticipated national reforms.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 12 August 2018

Photo credit: Lesotho's MMN Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Thirteen-Year-Old Defies Family, Escapes Forced Marriage

By Billy Ntaote

This report is part of a series on Human Trafficking by MNN Centre for Investigative Journalism in Lesotho.

MASERU (IDN) – For people living in the rural parts of the country, early child marriage doesn't exist – but when a teenager is impregnated, families rush to organise a traditional wedding ceremony and it's a deal done.

This common, yet cruel practice perpetrated on the girl child continues in rural parts of Lesotho with the unsuspecting victims – socialised to believe it is their only way out of poverty and hunger – married-off in exchange for either a herd of cattle or cash in bride-wealth.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 11 August 2018

Trump's Conservative Nominee For Post In Kenya Gets Grilling

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Democrats are challenging President Trump’s nominee from the Midwestern state of Illinois for the post of U.S. ambassador to Kenya. State Sen. Kyle McCarter’s conservative views run the gamut from opposition to gay rights, restrictions on immigration and locking up former Senator Hillary Clinton.

A White House media release said McCarter would be "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Kenya."

The post requires Senate confirmation. State Sen. McCarter was questioned by members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 07 August 2018

Photo: #TheTotalShutdown organisers said they were seeking legal advice after they were instructed to hand themselves over to the police. Credit: Alaister Russel | Times Live, South Africa's news website.

South African Women March Against Gender-Based Violence

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | PRETORIA (IDN) – Thousands of women and gender activists joined together on the first day of Women's Month to protest the rising incidence of gender-based violence across the country.

The movement's Brenda Madumise said the marchers, under the banner #TheTotalShutdown, were taking control of their destiny.

"We are saying that we had enough,” said Patience Mpani from the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. “We are dying every day and we cannot continue to live like this. It can't be business as usual in South Africa when women are dying every day."

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 07 August 2018

Photo credit: Transparency International

Stakes High in Returning Nigerians' Stolen Millions

By Kwame Buist

LONDON (IDN) – Of the estimated 20-40 billion dollars stolen annually from developing countries and hidden abroad every year, a small proportion is sometimes successfully confiscated and returned to the country it came from.

However, where institutions of accountability do not work well, this poses a complex problem: how to make sure that the money is not embezzled again, and actually benefits the real victims of corruption – the ordinary people whose state finances were plundered.

Take one case, Nigeria, where plans are under way to distribute 322 million dollars recovered in Switzerland from the late General Sani Abacha, the country’s former military ruler who is suspected of looting between three and five billion dollars in public money.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Africa; 07 August 2018

Photo: Members of the Hadzabe community in Manyara region making bows for hunting. The group is among beneficiaries of the mapping project run by the Ujamaa Community Resources Team. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

Tanzania's Indigenous Communities Racing to Secure Land Eyed by Investors

By Kizito Makoye

DAR ES SALAAM (IDN) – Helena Magafu smiled as she held a piece of paper that recognizes her as the sole owner of a disputed farmland in her village was handed over to her, thus resolving a raging dispute with her neighbours.

"I am very happy, I don’t think anyone with ever again claim this is their land," she said

For the past eight years the 53 year-old widow, who lives in Sanje village in the rural district of Kilombero – in Morogoro Region, south-western Tanzania – has been embroiled in a dispute with her neighbours who attempted to take 30 hectares of her family land when her husband died.

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 05 August 2018

Photo: Ambassador Kairat Umarov, Chair of the Sanctions Committee on Somalia and Eritrea and Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Horn of Africa on 30 July 2018. United Nations, New York. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias.

Kazakh Chair of UN Sanctions Committee Calls for Support to Peace in Horn of Africa

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – Applauding the landmark rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ending two decades of hostility, the UN Security Council has called for providing all necessary support to build peace in the Horn of Africa. The appeal came in the briefing on July 30 on the Council's recent visit to the region by the Sanctions Committee on Eritrea and Somalia, which Ambassador Kairat Umarov, Kazakhstan's Permanent Representative to the UN headquarters in New York, chairs.

Umarov welcomed the July 9 signing of the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship by President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, as well as the July 28 visit by Somalia's President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo to Asmara. In the reporting period, March 14 and July 30, 2018, the Committee also attended meetings in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia, Umarov said.