POLITICS OF SECURITY AND CONFLICT ISSUES
West Africa: US President Barack Obama said last week that Liberia has overcome most its difficulties due t
o the heroism of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and her commitment to democracy. Obama also pledged more US cooperation and aid for the country.
Meanwhile Football star George Weah, who once accused Mr. Charles Taylor of plotting to eliminate him, has now endorsed the National Patriotic Party (NPP), the offshoot of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) that the now former rebel leader then president created.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf expressed utmost dismay and total dissatisfaction with the action taken by NSA Director Fombah Sirleaf, in an attempt to arrest a staff of the General Auditing Commission (GAC). She reaffirmed that her Government does not and will not resort to the infringement of human rights or arrest of anyone without due process.
The Security Council met last week to discuss the United Nations peacekeeping in Côte d'Ivoire amid ongoing concerns about the stalled electoral process and the political impasse affecting the country.
Ghana while celebrating 50 years participation in UN Peacekeeping last week renewed its commitment to continue cooperating with the United Nations in peacekeeping to improve on the current level of international peace and security.
The Security Council today voted to extend for one month the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), and the French forces supporting it, while the 15-member body continues to consider possible revisions to the mission’s mandate.
The President of the ECOWAS Commission, His Excellency James Victor Gbeho has commended the military government in Niger for releasing a 12-month transition timetable that will culminate in the inauguration of a civilian President on 1st March 2011.
A power struggle in Nigeria’s PDP has grabbed attention this week- Former President of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) Board of Trustees (BOT) Ogbulafor has alleged that his arm of the party was sidelined by the Prince Vincent Ogbulafor-led National Working Committee (NWC) and the National Executive Committee (NEC).
Consequent upon a major reduction from the 2010 budget in Lagos State, Nigeria Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) recently sent a supplementary budget of N74.777 billion to the Lagos State House of Assembly to aid the implementation of some provisions in the 2010 Appropriation Law, which was ultimately rejected by the house.
Former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, returned to Nigeria on June 6, this year, returning from self imposed exile. He fled the country on January 3, 2009 after complaining of “serious” threats to his life. Meanwhile the EFCC, said last week that it was doing everything possible to extradite the former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori, to Nigeria to face corruption charges. Also After being released for lack of evidence, the (EFCC) re-arrested five officials of the Oyo State government over alleged diversion of N8.2 billion local government funds. The officials had initially been granted bail by the anti-graft agency.
A complications thrown up by the death of the late Nigerian president Umaru Musa Yar' Adua is the debate on the political future of his successor, Dr Goodluck Jonathan. The debate has to do with whether he should run for president in the 2011 general elections or give way to a presidential candidate from the Northern part of the country in line with the zoning arrangement of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). Senate president, David Mark, allayed fears last week that President Jonathan will run in the 2011 presidential election, saying he is certain Jonathan will respect the zoning arrangement.
A former Niger Delta militant has said Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan is the best person to solve the crisis in the oil-producing region.
In the meanwhile Nigeria and the United States signed a pact to fight corruption and also see to the conduct of free and fair elections in 2011.
Even before the committee set up by the Nigerian Federal Government to review the salary of federal civil servants completes its assignment, the Senate, last week, approved a 100 % salary increase for workers of the National Assembly, to be implemented over eight years.
About three persons are feared killed in Jos city, Nigeria, following reports of the death of three Fulani headsmen in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area last week. Meanwhile a backlash led to the death of another two.
At the beginning of an official visit to the African nation last week the United Nations relief chief said that Chadian forces must ensure security in the troubled east of the country so that aid workers can continue to assist the region's vast population of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Meanwhile Chadian President Idriss Déby reiterated assurances that his Government will take responsibility to protect civilians, including the humanitarian community, as the United Nations prepares to end its peacekeeping mission there by the end of the year.
Southern Africa: Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said last week that Zimbabwe elections will go ahead next year, despite infighting that continues to hamper the government's power-sharing agreement. Meanwhile a meeting aimed at launching a process of national reconciliation was aborted after chaos erupted over delegate accreditation.
Zambia’s information minister has dismissed accusations that a former president and the electoral commission will rig next year’s general elections to keep the ruling party in power.
Negotiations between Comoros' leader and opposition parties on a date for presidential elections have stalled with President Mohamed Abdallah Sambi's rivals accusing him of illegally clinging on to power.
Madagascar's leader Andry Rajoelina named 10 new ministers, including five military officials, in a cabinet reshuffle the opposition said fell way short of creating a neutral government.
South African Special Forces troops have begun a six-month deployment along the troubled border with Zimbabwe, where rape, robbery and other crimes are commonplace, and the flow of desperate migrants continues unabated.
Central Africa: Peter Erlinder, the American lawyer who is in Rwanda to defend Victoire Ingabire, the embattled leader of the yet-to-be-registered political party, FDU-Inkingi has not yet received official approval from the relevant authorities, to practice in the country.
Through a unanimously adopted resolution the Security Council extended the current mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by one month and agreed to transform the operation making it a stabilization mission.
The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) is expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the African Union (AU) aimed at harmonizing peace and security approaches.
Burundi's major opposition parties have demanded a re-vote of last week's local-level elections, which have so far given an extraordinary landslide victory to the ruling party. Meanwhile EU Observers have praised Burundi’s Election despite opposition complaints.
The Rwandan government has told off the United States over the human-rights situation in the country, saying that America's understanding of Rwanda had to be "contextualized." Earlier last week, top American diplomat Johnny Carson warned that the Rwanda government was tightening political expression in the country, and criticized the arrest of an opposition politician.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL ISSUES IN DOMESTIC POLITICS
West Africa: The controversial TRC Report in Liberia recommending punishments for serious perpetrators of war crimes, and bans for those deemed as backing the war is to be scrutinized by a Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.
The United Nations refugee agency is rushing aid to about 3,500 Ghanaians who have fled into neighboring Togo after their homes and belongings were destroyed in an ongoing land dispute between two villages in the northeast of the country. Meanwhile the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), in the Northern Region also dispatched relief items to the victims of the Bunkrugu/Yunyoo conflict.
In Nigeria two different women groups have protested against the quizzing of Senator Ahmad Sani Yarima over his marriage to an under-aged Egyptian girl. A spokesperson for the first group said the attack on Yarima is an attack against Islam and Hausa-Fulani culture. Meanwhile the second group led by President of the widows and less-privileged empowerment association Abuja, Mrs Rita Audu said Yarima has been the benefactor of widows in the country. She added that the moral bankruptcy in the society today makes it a good thing for girls to marry very early.
South Africa: Last week Zimbabwe licensed four private daily newspapers, including the banned Daily News, a sign the new unity government is following through on promises to open up the media to non-state run publications.
South Africa's leader Zuma, in a rare rebuke of a fellow African nation condemned Malawi's sentencing of a gay couple to 14 years in jail but said he would not press the country to change its laws. Meanwhile Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika pardoned the couple earlier last week after he held a meeting with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Also a Zimbabwean court has freed two gay activists on bail after they were arrested on allegations of possessing indecent material and writings seen as insulting to President Robert Mugabe.
Two ex-officers in Zambia's air force have been awarded damages following claims they were tested and treated for HIV without their knowledge. Mandatory HIV screening is not legal in the military and is a contentious issue in Zambia. Some think forced screening is an invasion of privacy - others say it is needed to fight the virus.
On 25 May Africans celebrated Africa Day and marked the diversity and richness of African culture. However as South Africa prepares to “welcome the world” for the World Cup some are concerned about the possibility of post-event xenophobia. Meanwhile Amnesty International too has said that South Africa's government must do more to protect African migrants from persistent xenophobic violence.
HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT AND DOMESTIC POLITICS
West Africa: Mental Health Associations in the Upper East Region of Ghana have appealed to the Ghana Health Service, to improve the supply of Mental Health drugs to the various Psychiatric Units in the area, to enable patients get a regular supply.
Health workers fanned out across Liberia last week to vaccinate children against polio as the third round of a synchronized regional immunization campaign aimed at eradication the paralyzing disease in West Africa began, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported.
Meanwhile in line with its new thinking in bilateral relations with Nigeria, the United States government is embarking on a joint HIV/AIDS vaccine research effort.
The German Federal Ministry of economic, collaboration and development wants to invest from the year 2010 to 2012 a total of three milliard US dollars in rural development and food protection in Ghana. Meanwhile Mr. Kurt Cornelis, head of operations of the European Commission (EC), has said that the Commission would continue to support the development of developing countries including Ghana, to reduce poverty by half by 2015.
A new report by humanitarian aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that backtracking by international donors in funding HIV/AIDS risks undermining years of positive achievements and will cause many more unnecessary deaths.
In Nasarawa, Nigeria one of the states which prides itself as the food basket of the nation, this year’s harvest is at risk of being poor due to fertilizer scarcity.
Two Nordic countries, Sweden and Finland, are exploring opportunities for green businesses in Nigeria, as part of efforts to step up their trade and investment promotion activities in the country.
A Nigerian politician has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine at Lagos airport, purportedly to fund his election campaign for the local House of Assembly in Edo state.
South Africa: As the World Cup prepares to kick off, fears are growing activities surrounding the event could further spread the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa. A national HIV/AIDS effort is being mounted to raise awareness of the risks.
U.N. agencies report some five million children in Zimbabwe are at risk of getting measles while hundreds have died from this preventable disease.
Central Africa: Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) has released new guidelines in environmental education and training in a paper titled 'Rwanda Environmental Education for Sustainable Development Strategy', that also include a five-year action plan for 2010-2015.
POLITICAL ECONOMY
West Africa: Ghana and Nigeria are to renew talks in August, this year to find lasting solution to the stand-off in trade and commerce between them.
Transit reforms initiated by Government of Ghana to streamline activities in the import and transit sector have attracted applause from the World Bank Group while WB has also recommended for replication by other ECOWAS members.
Ghana’s mining sub-sector grew at a remarkable rate of 8 % in 2009 compared to 5.5 % recorded in the previous year. According to Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning the country has also maintained its position as the ninth highest gold producer in the world, closing the year (2009) at an increased yearly output of 9 %.
Meanwhile Cocoa purchases in Ghana, the world's second-biggest producer of the beans, fell 10 % in the first 30 weeks of the season, according to an industry official.
Nigerian mobile investor Globacom is threatening to withdraw from Ghana amid claims that its infrastructure is being sabotaged. Meanwhile rLG Communications, Ghana's first mobile phone assembling company, has started operations in the country with a promise to give jobs to 30,000 youth from the National Youth Employment Programme by the close of the year.
Meanwhile Ghana has being losing a larger chunk of its import revenue through numerous leakage points, mostly systemic failure and administrative lapses, along the import processing chain, Financial Intelligence (FI) investigations have revealed.
London-listed oil and gas exploration company Afren has said that it’s Ghana offshore oil development costs rose by 7-8 % due to regulatory changes following BP's oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico.
Liberia’s Finance Ministry officials have intensified their search for missing financial documents to justify over US$134m allotments issued during the 2006/07 fiscal period after the General Auditing Commission (GAC) threatened a Supreme Court action against Finance Minister Augustine Ngafuan for failing to submit those allotment documents for audit.
Meanwhile the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Board of Directors, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, last week approved an approximately $15 million threshold program grant for Liberia to support the country’s ongoing efforts at reform.
a joint Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and African Development Bank study has urged that African states should consider renegotiating unfavorable contracts with multinationals to ensure they get a fair return on their natural resources.
South Africa: South Africa’s UNIOR miner Wesizwe Platinum has said that it has secured an $877m (R6,6bn) financing package from Chinese investors, in a deal that will see the investors gaining a majority stake in the company.
South Africa's state-owned logistics group Transnet signed a wage deal with a transport union last week, ending a three-week rail and ports strike. South Africa faces more protests ahead of the World Cup. A fresh stoppage looms after a miner's union said 3,000 workers would down tools at diamond producer De Beers.
The IMF has urged Zimbabwe to take corrective measures to repair its economy, warning that without them economic growth could slow significantly this year and undermine progress made so far.
Central Africa: Rwanda is East Africa's best destination for investment, says a new report released by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank. Meanwhile intensive marketing of Rwanda's tourism products and a steady recovery in the global economy have helped the country register a 5 % rise in tourism revenues to $44.4m in the first quarter of 2010. §
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