Twitter has temporarily disabled its Trends feature in Ethiopia in the latest case of a social media network becoming involved in the growing crisis in the Horn of Africa country.
Agriculture is a pillar of Africa’s economy, with the continent heavily dependent on the sector. It contributes 23% of the continent’s GDP and 49% of employment in the continent.
Last month, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental economic body, announced that 136 countries and jurisdictions had signed up to an agreement to have global corporations pay a minimum tax rate of 15%. But Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka had not agreed to the deal, the OECD said.
A looming scarcity of syringes may set back Africa’s already delayed covid-19 vaccination drive, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.
Michael Moreland and Justin Lorenzon co-founded Field Intelligence in 2015 to create a data information system to manage distribution and planning for government medical supply agencies in Nigeria.
Just as the covid-19 pandemic had different impact in different places, the recovery process will be unequal. Some countries’ economies will go back to pre-pandemic levels sooner but others will have to wait longer.
Traveling around the world is known to be a difficult affair for holders of African passports due to restrictive visa rules.
Twenty-year-old Othmane Zolati left his home country, Morocco, in 2015 with $80, a backpack, and a pocket camera. After going through 18,000 miles and 24 countries in almost four years, he got to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa in South Africa and a dream destination for him. He had backpacked, walked, hitchhiked, cycled, and skateboarded through the continent.
In a controversial move last month, Rugby Africa, the regional association for rugby in the continent, announced that it had chosen France as the host for the Rugby Africa Cup 2022, a tournament that will double as a qualifier for African teams for the following year’s Rugby World Cup. It said it had made the decision this after issuing a call for applications to its 39 African member federations and France, which will host the eventual World Cup in 2023.
Early this month, 17 African finance ministers released a statement in support of IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva in the wake of allegations that she instructed staff to manipulate data to favor China, while she was the chief executive of the World Bank.
Africa is home to the world’s smallest cryptocurrency economies, but is also one of the fastest-growing regions for crypto adoption. Because cryptocurrencies promise a swift, convenient, and efficient means of investment, cross-border payments, and remittances, they attract many adopters in the continent.
When Agatha Lenjou was planning on starting her business of selling Swahili sweets last year, she knew that she wanted to run it on social commerce platforms.
Less than a third of African countries have achieved the global goal of vaccinating 10% of their populations against covid-19 by the end of September, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This indicates the challenge the continent is facing in procuring vaccines amidst their uneven distribution for the world’s poorer countries.
Sub-Saharan Africa has significantly reduced its coverage gap for mobile broadband over the past several years, but it still remains the region with the largest coverage gap, a new report by GSMA says. It defines this gap as people living in areas not covered by a mobile broadband network.
International development funding to Africa has a “colonial” approach that favors Western organizations at the expense of local civil society organizations (CSOs), a new independent report funded by the Vodafone Foundation says.
Kenya has banned a documentary film about a gay relationship, saying it promotes same-sex marriage, in a country where gay sex is outlawed.
Netflix has launched a free plan for Android mobile phone users in Kenya with the aim of getting more subscribers in the east African market. In an announcement on its website, the streaming giant says it hopes people to try out the service, then upgrade to a paid plan.
API fintech startups are thriving in Africa’s tech ecosystem as they build the infrastructure to facilitate payments, banking, e-commerce, and insurance. By creating the technical foundations, they are allowing businesses to focus on serving their customers rather than work on a non-core business of building tech.
Following the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) suspension of Chinese companies over illegal activities, Beijing said it will impose sanctions on the businesses if they are found guilty. They must also leave South Kivu province, according to Wu Peng, the director-general of the department of African Affairs at China’s foreign ministry.
The Kenyan government is tracking at least 90,000 people in the country who have skipped their second Covid-19 doses. The health ministry is requesting them to show up for the jabs and has said it is trailing them through its Covid-19 vaccination platform.
Where one succeeds, others follow.
A new South Korean film set during the Somali civil war in 1991 is the highest-grossing film in the Asian country so far this year.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hindered progress on the treatment for HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria, according to Global Fund, a Geneva-based partnership of governments, civil society, technical agencies, and private sector bodies working on the three diseases, which have a high prevalence in Africa.
The number of subscription video-on-demand users in Africa is projected to reach more than 5 million by the end of this year, and triple to 15 million by 2026, according to a new projection by Digital TV Research, a London-based business intelligence company.
