Africa
ICC allows Ivory Coast ex-president Laurent Gbagbo to leave Belgium
Ivory Coast’s former president Laurent Gbagbo can leave Belgium under certain conditions, the International Criminal Court said on Thursday, following his acquittal last year over post-election violence that killed 3 000 people. Gbagbo, the first head of state to stand trial in The Hague, and his deputy Charles Ble Goude were cleared in early 2019 of crimes against humanity – eight years after the former West African strongman’s arrest and transfer to the court. Belgium had agreed to host Gbagbo after he was released under strict conditions, including his return to court for a prosecution appeal against his acquittal. An ICC spokesperson said Gbagbo could travel provided the country he was going to agreed to receive him. It therefore remains uncertain if Gbagbo can return to Ivory Coast, w...
WHO: Africa’s coronavirus cases hit 123,000
Flickr The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday reported that COVID-19 cases in Africa as at May 26 had risen to over 123, 000. The WHO Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, gave the update on its official twitter handle @WHOAFRO. “There are over 123,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases on the African continent – with more than 50,000 recoveries and 3,600 deaths,’’ it said. The figures show that South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria have the highest reported cases in the continent. According to the report, South Africa has 25,937 cases and 552 deaths, followed by Algeria with 8,857 cases and 623 deaths, while Nigeria has 8,733 confirmed cases and 254 deaths. It said that Ghana had 7,303 reported cases and 34 deaths, while Cameroon recorded 5, 436 confirmed cases and 177 deaths. The ...
PTF decries continued refusal by hospitals to treat patients for fear of coronavirus
The Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 (PTF) has decried the continued refusal by medical institutions including federal tertiary institutions to receive and treat patients for fear COVID-19. PTF lamented that this development has resulted in several unfortunate and avoidable fatalities. Meanwhile, the PTF will conclude its assessment on the impact of the measures put in place and further recommendations would be submitted to the President for a decision within the next seventy hours. Chairman of PTF and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Boss Mustapha, who disclosed this at the daily Press Briefing in Abuja, noted that Nigeria is having more deaths from non-attendance to other diseases than even COVID 19 adding that the reason for the greater emphasis on COVID 19 is ...
Wilfred Ndidi: Why Leicester City move was very scary for me
Wilfred Ndidi claimed he saw his move to Premier League side Leicester City as an opportunity rather than getting carried away with pressure. After three seasons at Belgian top-flight side Genk, the Nigeria international joined the Foxes in a transfer deal worth £17 million. At that time, the King Power Stadium giants were reigning English champions, plus they needed a replacement for N’Golo Kante who had joined Chelsea on a five-year deal. The Frenchman played a starring role in Leicester’s English top-flight-winning campaign where he made 40 appearances while helping France reach the final of Euro 2016. Despite adapting to life quickly at the Luminus Arena after his move from Nigeria’s Nath Boys Academy, Ndidi said he saw an opportunity to ‘develop’, thus, embraced the burden of expectat...
Tanzania summons US official over coronavirus warning
Tanzania said on Tuesday it had summoned the top official at the US embassy to object to an advisory that warned of “exponential growth” of Covid-19 cases in the east African nation. The embassy’s “health advisory” published earlier this month contained inaccurate information, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The advisory reported, for instance, that “many hospitals” in Dar es Salaam, the economic capital, “have been overwhelmed in recent weeks”. This claim “is not true and could cause panic among Tanzanians and foreigners”, the foreign ministry’s statement said. The US embassy’s charge d’affaires, Inmi Patterson, met with Wilbert Ibuge, permanent secretary at the foreign ministry, who reminded Patterson about the two countries’ “historical cooperation”, the foreign ministry said....
UN encourages Africa to invest on digital transformation
The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) has encouraged African countries to make right investments toward developing a digitally transformed economy. Mr Jean-Paul Adam, Director, Technology, Climate Change and Natural Resources at UNECA, made the call on Tuesday during a webinar monitored in Abuja. The webinar was organised by Africa Information and Communication Technology Alliance (AfICTA) in collaboration with UNECA with the theme “Unlocking Africa’s Digital Potential Amid COVID-19”. Adam said that the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic had caused a disruption in activities, hence the need for a paradigm shift. “Africa needs to address issues that have limited their digital growth. There are issues of gender imbalance, speed of bandwidth, poor internet access. “When we get some of the...
Five jihadists, two soldiers killed in Cameroon clash
Five rebels and two soldiers were killed early Tuesday when jihadists crossing from Nigeria attacked a military position in northern Cameroon, sources said. The overnight attack took place at Soueram, a village close to the Nigerian border in Cameroon’s Far North region, an army colonel and a local official told AFP. “Two Cameroonian soldiers were killed” in the assault, while five jihadists died in the counter-attack, the colonel said. He attributed the attack to Islamic State West Africa Province, a splinter group of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which has led a bloody 11-year campaign against perceived western influence. An army vehicle was destroyed and the jihadists made off with a piece of heavy weaponry, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A local leader, who also asked not to be i...
President Ramaphosa: South Africa’s coronavirus outbreak will get worse
The president of South Africa has warned that the country’s coronavirus outbreak is going to get much worse, while announcing that lockdown measures are to be eased. Cyril Ramaphosa said a third of the country’s more than 22,000 cases had been recorded in the last week. Despite that, the president said the current lockdown could not be sustained indefinitely. He announced that, from 1 June, more restrictions would be lifted. Mr Ramaphosa was speaking after a mining company in South Africa said 164 workers at a gold mine near Johannesburg had tested positive for coronavirus. There have so far been 429 recorded Covid-19 deaths in the country. An overnight curfew will no longer be in place, more businesses will be allowed to open and schools will re-start, the president said. A controversial ...
South Africa’s confirmed coronavirus cases top 20,000
The total number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa has reached 20,125, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Friday. The country recorded 988 cases over the past 24 hours, Mkhize said in his daily update. The death toll related with Covid-19 reached 397, up by 28 from Thursday, the minister said. The total number of recoveries to date is 10,104, he said. The Western Cape province, the epicentre of the outbreak in the country, led all other provinces with 12,888 confirmed cases, followed by Gauteng with 2,521, the Eastern Cape with 2,459, and KwaZulu-Natal with 1,735. Nationwide, a total of 543,032 tests have been conducted so far, with 17,599 done in the last 24 hours, said Mkhize. South Africa is preparing to ease the lockdown from level four to level three of a five-level system...
Sudan’s coronavirus cases climb to 3,378
Sudan’s Health Ministry on Friday announced 235 new infections with COVID-19 and 16 more deaths, bringing the total confirmed cases in the country to 3,378 and the death toll to 137. And 63 more patients have recovered, taking the total recoveries to 372, it said. On April 18, the Sudanese government imposed a three-week curfew on Khartoum State. The curfew had been extended for 10 days from May 9 and again for two weeks from May 18. Sudan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments on Friday said the Eid al-Fitr prayers will not be held at mosques and squares. The minister of religious affairs and endowments Nasr-Eddin Mofarah instructed all Muslims in the country to perform the prayers at home, saying that the decision was made to protect the citizens against the virus. Get more stori...
Goodluck Jonathan: Coronavirus could give rise to dictators
YouTube Former President Goodluck Jonathan, Friday advised Africans to be careful the way they handle coronavirus pandemic, noting that the virus could give rise to dictators. Disclosing this while speaking during a webinar organised by the Kofi Annan Foundation, Jonathan said: “This is the time that many continental bodies must come up with their own minimum standards for any country going into election to operate. “Otherwise people who ordinarily would have loved to be dictators will now exploit the problem of the COVID-19 pandemic and do what is not in line with the laws of the land.” Speaking further, Jonathan mentioned one positive thing’ in Nigeria’s COVID-19 response. According to him, “In Nigeria, I have seen one thing about the management of the COVID-19 which is also positive,” h...
Libya’s GNA says it is targeting retreating renegade strongman’s forces
Libya’s internationally recognised government has launched air strikes against forces loyal to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar after his forces announced they were pulling back from Tripoli front lines. Air strikes by the Government of National Accord (GNA) targeted several locations in the west of the country, including in the Haftar stronghold of Tarhouna near the capital, Tripoli, according to GNA army spokesperson Colonel Mohamed Qanunu. In Tarhouna, two military vehicles and a vehicle carrying ammunition that belonged to Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) were destroyed, the spokesperson said. On Thursday, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the GNA carried out five air operations against forces loyal to Haftar in the past 24 hours. A day earlier, the LNA announced it w...
