Central African Republic president launches crypto initiative following Bitcoin adoption

African News Review, Business and Investment, Finance and EconomicsLeave a comment

Faustin-Archange Touadéra, pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, has announced the gov­ern­ment will be back­ing an ini­tia­tive cen­tered around devel­op­ing the country’s blockchain infrastructure.In a Mon­day announce­ment on Twit­ter, Touadéra said the CAR gov­ern­ment would be launch­ing San­go, a cryp­to ini­tia­tive pro­posed fol­low­ing the country’s adop­tion of Bit­coin (BTC) as legal ten­der in April. Accord­ing to Sango’s web­site, the gov­ern­ment intends to launch the pro­gram dur­ing a July 3 event in which the pres­i­dent, mem­bers of his cab­i­net and indus­try experts will dis­cuss the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed for the CAR to enter the cryp­to space, as well as the legal frame­work for the coun­try. The San­go project’s plans include build­ing a “legal cryp­to hub” aimed at attract­ing busi­ness­es and glob­al cryp­to-enthu­si­asts, expand­ing the adop­tion of Bit­coin in the coun­try, and cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al “cryp­to island” — a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in the meta­verse that will seem­ing­ly have an equiv­a­lent space in the phys­i­cal world. Accord­ing to San­do, the CAR plans to have a ded­i­cat­ed legal frame­work for cryp­to in place by the end of 2022.“The ambi­tious strat­e­gy to quick­ly build a suc­cess­ful econ­o­my can only rely on new tech­nolo­gies that have tak­en the world by storm and tak­en mon­ey to anoth­er lev­el, with Bit­coin as a watch­word,” said Touadéra. With #Bit­coin as #legal­tender & inspi­ra­tion, our coun­try opens a new chap­ter in its inspir­ing jour­ney towards a brighter future via #blockchain #tech. Every­one is wel­come to wit­ness the San­go Gen­e­sis Event that will be broad­cast on the 3rd of July, on https://t.co/LIQiKGhcBS. pic.twitter.com/7u6knv5f6w— Faustin-Archange Touadéra (@FA_Touadera) June 27, 2022Related: Cryp­to users in Africa grew by 2,500% in 2021: ReportTouadéra’s and the CAR’s plans to adopt cryp­to seem to be emu­lat­ing those of El Sal­vador, whose Bit­coin Law declar­ing the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy legal ten­der went into effect in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The Latin Amer­i­can nation also announced plans to cre­ate its town Bit­coin City fund­ed by $1 bil­lion worth of BTC bonds, placed on hold as of June amid the bear market.

Window of opportunity closing for South Sudan, on road to lasting peace

African News Review, East Africa, UN News AfricaLeave a comment

With eight months remain­ing, the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty is clos­ing for South Sudan to meet crit­i­cal bench­marks required to com­plete its tran­si­tion away from long-run­n­ing civ­il con­flict, the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the coun­try told the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Mon­day, press­ing par­ties to the Novem­ber 2018 peace deal, to imple­ment their com­mit­ments in let­ter and spirit.

South Africa Hails COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver

African News Review, Covid-19, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Johan­nes­burg, South Africa — 
South Africa on Sat­ur­day hailed a WTO agree­ment to allow devel­op­ing coun­tries to start pro­duc­ing their own COVID vac­cines fol­low­ing a near two-year battle.
“We secured an agree­ment. It was a strong­ly fought agree­ment,” said Min­is­ter of Trade Ebrahim Patel, who along with India and NGOs had been call­ing for an intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights waiv­er on COVID-relat­ed treatments.
The World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion (WTO) announced a relax­ation of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty restric­tions on vac­cines Wednes­day in a move aimed at a pro­vid­ing more equi­table access to shots but which many observers crit­i­cized for being lim­it­ed in time and scope.
After months of wran­gling, and talks going down to the wire this week to win over some major play­ers in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing to a com­pro­mise, the Unit­ed States and Chi­na final­ly clinched the deal by agree­ing on which coun­tries would ben­e­fit from the waiver.
Both South Africa and India had been vocal in their demands for such a move which they said was need­ed to stop “vac­cine apartheid.”
Accord­ing to the WTO, 60% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has received two dos­es of the COVID vac­cine but there are glar­ing exam­ples of inequity with only 17% hav­ing been inoc­u­lat­ed in Libya, with the fig­ure at 8% in Nige­ria and less than 5% in Cameroon.
In a state­ment, the South African gov­ern­ment salut­ed a waiv­er designed to pro­vide local vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers with the right to pro­duce either vac­cines or ingre­di­ents or ele­ments that are under patents, with­out the author­i­ty of the patent hold­er, hail­ing this as a notable step for­ward — even if lim­it­ed to five years.
Pre­to­ria added that “to scale up the pro­duc­tion on the con­ti­nent, fur­ther part­ner­ships will be need­ed includ­ing access to know-how and technologies.”
The accord for the time being excludes, how­ev­er, tests and cost­ly ther­a­peu­tic treat­ments against COVID on which the WTO is to pro­nounce in the com­ing six months.
Com­mer­cial­iza­tion in Africa will be a chal­lenge, however.
Dur­ban-based South African phar­ma giant Aspen, which clinched a deal last Novem­ber with U.S.-based John­son & John­son to man­u­fac­ture a “made in Africa for Africa” Aspen-brand­ed COVID vac­cine Aspen­o­vax, said last month it could pull the plug owing to lack of orders.
“Our focus now is to ensure we address demand by per­suad­ing glob­al pro­cur­ers for vac­cines to source from African pro­duc­ers,” said Patel.
South Africa has three sites under the aegis of Aspen in Dur­ban, Afrigen in Cape Town and Bio­vac, also in Cape Town, which makes the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vaccine.
Afrigen’s biotech con­sor­tium makes the mes­sen­ger RNA shot based on the Mod­er­na for­mu­la, the first to be made based on a broad­ly used vac­cine that does not require the devel­op­er’s assis­tance and approval.

Vaccination rates for the vulnerable are soaring in Africa, the W.H.O. says.

African News Review, Covid-19Leave a comment

Most coun­tries in Africa have made sig­nif­i­cant gains in vac­ci­nat­ing two vul­ner­a­ble groups against Covid-19, but new infec­tions are creep­ing upward as sum­mer trav­el begins and some coun­tries ease pub­lic health mea­sures, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion said on Thurs­day. About half of pub­lic health work­ers and peo­ple over 60 have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in 31…

Odunde festival returns to Philadelphia to celebrate African heritage — WHYY

African News ReviewLeave a comment

A small crowd of paraders paused on the South Street Bridge Sun­day to offer gifts to Oshun, the riv­er god­dess in the Yoru­ba belief sys­tem of West Africa. A moment of prayer pre­ced­ed the throw­ing of offer­ings into the riv­er: whole pineap­ples, hon­ey-driz­­zled oranges, can­dy and streams of wine.  The rit­u­al is cen­tral to the Odunde…

The Brewing Battle Over Africa’s Ivory

African News ReviewLeave a comment

HWANGE, Zimbabwe—Fourteen years since the last legal com­mer­cial sale of ivory, south­ern African coun­tries are lob­by­ing to sell tons of tusks held in stor­age. As these states sub­mit pro­pos­als to the Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion on Inter­na­tion­al Trade in Endan­gered Species of Wild Fau­na and Flo­ra (CITES) sum­mit in Novem­ber, the fate of African ivory is…

Pregnant people in Sub-Saharan Africa are at higher risk of complications and death from COVID-19

African News Review, Covid-19Leave a comment

Preg­nant peo­ple who are hos­pi­tal­ized with COVID-19 in Sub-Saha­ran Africa are dying at a rate far greater than preg­nant peo­ple with­out COVID-19 and non-preg­nant peo­ple with COVID-19, accord­ing to a new mul­ti­cen­ter study encom­pass­ing six African coun­tries. The research was pub­lished today in Clin­i­cal Infec­tious Dis­eases and led by a Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh School of Pub­lic Health infec­tious dis­eases epidemiologist.

The effects of COVID-19 on preg­nan­cy have been stud­ied in detail in high-income coun­tries, such as the U.S., but stud­ies of sim­i­lar size and scope are lack­ing in low- and mid­dle-income coun­tries and non-West­ern set­tings. The new find­ings con­firm that preg­nant peo­ple are at high­er risk of com­pli­ca­tions and death from COVID-19 and, there­fore, should be pri­or­i­tized with oth­er high-risk peo­ple for COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion in Sub-Saha­ran Africa.

Our find­ings indi­cate that hos­pi­tal­ized preg­nant women with COVID-19 in Sub-Saha­ran Africa have two to five times greater risk of need­ing inten­sive care and dying than unin­fect­ed, hos­pi­tal­ized preg­nant women. We must urgent­ly pri­or­i­tize preg­nant women among at-risk pop­u­la­tions in COVID-19 vac­cine pro­grams in Africa.”

Jean B. Nachega, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., lead author, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of infec­tious dis­eases and micro­bi­ol­o­gy and epi­demi­ol­o­gy at Pitt Pub­lic Health

The large study looked at out­comes of over 1,300 female patients of child-bear­ing age who were hos­pi­tal­ized between March 2020 and March 2021 in one of six coun­tries: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go, Ghana, Kenya, Nige­ria, South Africa and Ugan­da. Specif­i­cal­ly, this study looked at three cat­e­gories: preg­nant women with COVID-19, non-preg­nant women with COVID-19 and preg­nant women with­out COVID-19.

Researchers found that the rates of inten­sive care unit (ICU) admis­sion and use of sup­ple­men­tal oxy­gen were at least two-fold high­er and the death toll increased five-fold in the preg­nant women with SARS-CoV­‑2.

Relat­ed Sto­ries­Sub-Saha­ran Africa also has high­er rates of tuber­cu­lo­sis (TB) and HIV than the U.S., and pub­lished stud­ies on COVID-19 among peo­ple with these chron­ic infec­tions have had con­flict­ing results, so the team also inves­ti­gat­ed the impact of these infec­tions on their study pop­u­la­tion. Among the par­tic­i­pants, both preg­nant and non-preg­nant women with HIV or a pri­or his­to­ry of TB had a two-fold increased risk of ICU admission.

“The bur­den of TB and HIV infec­tions in Africa adds to the risk of severe COVID-19 dur­ing preg­nan­cy,” said coau­thor John W. Mel­lors, M.D., chief of the Divi­sion of Infec­tious Dis­eases in Pit­t’s School of Med­i­cine. “This fur­ther under­scores the impor­tance of COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion as part of pre­na­tal care.”

Nachega, who splits his time between Pitt Pub­lic Health and a fac­ul­ty posi­tion at Stel­len­bosch Uni­ver­si­ty in South Africa, not­ed recent progress on increas­ing the COVID-19 vac­cine sup­ply in Africa but empha­sized that COVID-19 vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and mis­in­for­ma­tion about pub­lic health guid­ance is a glob­al issue, and Africa is no excep­tion. In an edi­to­r­i­al pub­lished along­side the study, Nachega and fel­low researchers empha­sized that tar­get­ing COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions to this pop­u­la­tion is key in improv­ing moth­er and infant outcomes.

“COVID-19 vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy and low vac­cine uptake in preg­nan­cy include mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion pro­mot­ed on social media and oth­er plat­forms, which mis­lead the pub­lic about side effects, such as infer­til­i­ty and poten­tial fetal harm,” Nachega said. “Along with devot­ing resources to pro­mot­ing vac­ci­na­tion, we must also work to stop the spread of misinformation.”
Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burghJour­nal reference:Clinical Infec­tious Dis­eases. DOI: doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciac294