Africa mostly quiet amid widespread condemnation of Russia — The Columbian

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KAMPALA, Ugan­da — Ugan­dan Pres­i­dent Yow­eri Musev­eni recent­ly remarked that Russia’s war on Ukraine should be seen in the con­text of Moscow being the “cen­ter of grav­i­ty” for East­ern Europe.
His son, Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kaineru­ga­ba, was more force­ful, declar­ing that most Africans “sup­port Russia’s stand in Ukraine” and “Putin is absolute­ly right!”
Amid a world­wide cho­rus of con­dem­na­tion, much of Africa has either pushed back or remained notice­ably qui­et. Twen­ty-five of Africa’s 54 nations abstained or didn’t record a vote in the U.N. Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion ear­li­er this month con­demn­ing Russia.
The rea­son? Many nations on the con­ti­nent of 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple have long-stand­ing ties and sup­port from Moscow, dat­ing back to the Cold War when the Sovi­et Union sup­port­ed anti-colo­nial struggles.
Those rela­tions have tight­ened in recent years: As U.S. inter­est in Africa appeared to wane under Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion, Rus­sia — along with Chi­na — expand­ed its influ­ence, enlarg­ing its eco­nom­ic foot­print to include every­thing from agri­cul­tur­al pro­grams to ener­gy plants. In 2019, dig­ni­taries from 43 African nations attend­ed a sum­mit with Rus­sia, which also has become the dom­i­nant exporter of weapons into sub-Saha­ran Africa, accord­ing to the Stock­holm Inter­na­tion­al Peace Research Institute.

Google internet cable lands in Africa, promising fast connection | Reuters

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DAKAR, March 18 (Reuters) — A sub­sea cable owned by Google (GOOGL.O) that promis­es to dou­ble inter­net speeds for mil­lions in Africa arrived in Togo on Fri­day, the com­pa­ny said, the lat­est step in a mul­ti-year project to pro­vide cheap­er access to users across the continent.The Equiano cable, the first of its kind to reach Africa, has wound its way from Por­tu­gal and will dou­ble inter­net speed for Togo’s 8 mil­lion res­i­dents, Google said in a statement.That may be a taste of things to come for oth­er coun­tries set to ben­e­fit in a region where inter­net use is ris­ing fast but where net­works are often crip­pling­ly slow and are a drag on eco­nom­ic development.Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterThe new line will also make land in Nige­ria, Namib­ia and South Africa, with pos­si­ble branch­es offer­ing con­nec­tions to near­by coun­tries. It is expect­ed to start oper­at­ing by the end of the year.Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s least-con­nect­ed region, with around a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion still lack­ing mobile broad­band cov­er­age com­pared to 7% glob­al­ly, accord­ing to a 2020 report by GSMA Intelligence.Most coun­tries in West Africa are at the bot­tom of a World Bank glob­al rank­ing on inter­net pen­e­tra­tion. read more Togo will be the first to ben­e­fit. The cable is expect­ed to reduce inter­net prices by 14% by 2025, accord­ing to an Africa Prac­tice and Gen­e­sis Ana­lyt­ics assess­ment com­mis­sioned by Google.Google said the cable will indi­rect­ly cre­ate 37,000 jobs in Togo by 2025 and boost GDP by $193 million.Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterReporting by Sofia Chris­tensen; Edit­ing by Edward McAl­lis­ter­Our Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.

African Billionaire To Launch Bid For Chelsea — Soccer Laduma

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An African bil­lion­aire is report­ed­ly close to launch­ing a bid for Chelsea after out­go­ing own­er Roman Abramovich recent­ly announced the club was for sale.
Report: Tuchel Makes Final Deci­sion On Chelsea Future
Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Mail, Ghana­ian busi­ness­man Bernard Antwi Boasi­ako has con­firmed he is eager to buy the Lon­don giants amid the ongo­ing cri­sis at Stam­ford Bridge. 
Last week, the UK gov­ern­ment imposed major sanc­tions on Russ­ian-Israeli oli­garch Abramovich, who has been Chelsea’s own­er since 2003. 
His rela­tion­ship, how­ev­er, with Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has land­ed him and oth­er mega-rich Russ­ian busi­ness­men in hot water in Eng­land, with the bil­lion­aire cur­rent­ly thought to be in the process of sell­ing the club. 
Below are the 10 high­est-paid at Chelsea: 

Rumours recent­ly emerged that Boasi­ako, who made his bil­lions being a gold­mine own­er, was explor­ing an offer for the Pre­mier League giants due to his fond feel­ings towards the Blues. 
A spokesper­son for the wealthy busi­ness has since appeared to con­firm his inter­est: “Bernard Antwi Boasi­ako is explor­ing a poten­tial offer for Chelsea. Dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous par­ties involved in the sale have tak­en place.
“Chelsea has a last­ing lega­cy in Africa, play­ers like Didi­er Drog­ba and Michael Essien are leg­ends of the club; the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enhance the club’s rep­u­ta­tion in Africa is a very tempt­ing prospect.
“Restor­ing sta­bil­i­ty and ensur­ing there are no job loss­es are among the priorities.”
Below is where Abramovich cur­rent­ly ranks among the wealth­i­est Pre­mier League club owners: 

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Tensions rise in Libya as risk of ‘parallel governments’ grows, Security Council hears

African News Review, North AfricaLeave a comment

Amid a polit­i­cal impasse that threat­ens to see Libya frac­tured again by two par­al­lel gov­ern­ments, the pri­or­i­ty must be main­tain­ing hard-won gains and ful­fill­ing the elec­toral aspi­ra­tions of near­ly three mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers, the UN polit­i­cal affairs chief told the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Wednesday.

CERAWEEK ‘Energy transition? Leave us out,’ say African energy leaders | Reuters

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A ver­ti­cal gas flar­ing fur­nace is seen in Ughel­li, Delta State, Nige­ria Sep­tem­ber 16, 2020. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde/FilesRegister now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterHOUSTON, March 9 (Reuters) — Devel­op­ing coun­tries should not have to tar­get renew­able ener­gy sources and turn away from fos­sil fuels, Niger­ian and Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea ener­gy offi­cials said on Wednes­day, join­ing oth­er emerg­ing oil-pro­duc­ing nations reluc­tant to embrace the glob­al ener­gy tran­si­tion trend.Emerging economies must con­tend with high­er fuel costs at a time when mil­lions lack access to reli­able ener­gy sources while also deal­ing with extreme cli­mate events.Some 900 mil­lion peo­ple in the world, most of them in Africa, still have no access to ener­gy for basic needs, Nige­ri­a’s oil Min­is­ter Timipre Mar­lin Syl­va said dur­ing the CER­AWeek ener­gy con­fer­ence in Houston.Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegister“We are still in tran­si­tion from fire­wood to gas,” Syl­va said. “Please allow us to con­tin­ue with our own transition.“Equatorial Guinea Min­is­ter of Mines and Hydro­car­bons Gabriel Obiang Lima echoed those con­cerns, say­ing pres­sure over renew­ables is “very unjust”, with a dis­cus­sion on how to tran­si­tion only pos­si­ble after the ener­gy secu­ri­ty cri­sis is over.The 38 mem­bers of the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD), some of the rich­est coun­tries world­wide, along with Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, account for more than two-thirds of the world’s oil demand. The rest, which includes Africa, most of Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca, accounts for just 31%, accord­ing to OPEC data.“Every emerg­ing econ­o­my has to have the right to access reli­able, safe ener­gy,” said Tengku Muham­mad Tau­fik, pres­i­dent and CEO of Malaysi­a’s state-owned Petronas.Other coun­tries with oil dis­cov­er­ies still in devel­op­ment, includ­ing Ghana, Guyana and Suri­name, also have said they can­not be expect­ed to give up the chance to ben­e­fit from oil and gas that helped build more devel­oped economies.“They want all of us, includ­ing those of us with­out food, to car­ry the bur­den of tran­si­tion,” Niger­ian Nation­al Petro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion (NNPC) gen­er­al man­ag­er Bala Wun­ti said.Nigeria now faces a dou­ble blow from high prices of gas for cook­ing that it imports and lack of invest­ment in its oil indus­try, Syl­va said, as banks and funds have been push­ing to restrict invest­ment in oil glob­al­ly to cut green­house gas emis­sions and fight cli­mate change.Nigeria has had to cut oil pro­duc­tion from 1.8 mil­lion bar­rels per day (bpd) to less than 1.5 mil­lion bpd due to lack of financ­ing to main­tain its facil­i­ties, Syl­va said.That lost pro­duc­tion could have helped con­tribute to glob­al sup­ply as the world now seeks alter­na­tives to Russ­ian oil after buy­ers halt­ed pur­chas­es over its inva­sion of Ukraine, he said. Rus­sia calls its actions in Ukraine a “spe­cial operation”.Investors back­ing renew­able fuels have cut financ­ing for oil projects, reduc­ing pro­duc­tion of oil, gas and coal faster than renew­able sources of ener­gy could replace them, push­ing prices up, he said.“It was expect­ed we were going to arrive at this point where we have an ener­gy cri­sis,” Syl­va said. “There is a gap.“Register now for FREE unlim­it­ed access to Reuters.comRegisterReporting by Sab­ri­na Valle; Edit­ing by Ken­neth Maxwell and David Gre­go­ri­oOur Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.

Long-awaited local elections will offer Central Africans opportunity to expand political space

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Local elec­tions in the Cen­tral African Repub­lic (CAR), which have been pend­ing since 1988 and are slat­ed for Sep­tem­ber, will deep­en efforts to decen­tral­ize pow­er and expand polit­i­cal space, the UN envoy for the coun­try told the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Tues­day, encour­ag­ing the new Gov­ern­ment to “deploy all pos­si­ble efforts” to calm the polit­i­cal climate.

Erdogan seeks to boost ties with Africa in four-day visit | News | Al Jazeera

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The Turk­ish pres­i­dent wants to boost busi­ness ties with African countries.Turkey’s pres­i­dent has promised to boost rela­tions with African coun­tries as he vis­it­ed the Sene­galese cap­i­tal Dakar dur­ing a four-day tour of Cen­tral and West Africa.
“We will con­tin­ue to enhance our rela­tions with African coun­tries on the basis of sin­cer­i­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty,” Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan said on Tues­day dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence with his Sene­galese coun­ter­part Macky Sall.
“We exchanged ideas on how we can fur­ther advance our rela­tions in every area,” he said. “We once again glad­ly observed that we share the same deter­mi­na­tion to deep­en our cooperation.”
In 2021, the vol­ume of bilat­er­al trade between Turkey and Sene­gal reached $540m. Erdo­gan has said the goal is to bring the fig­ure to $1bn.
The Turk­ish Coop­er­a­tion and Coor­di­na­tion Agency (TIKA), which “has since 2007 com­plet­ed 186 projects in Sene­gal with a total val­ue of $12m, is deter­mined to main­tain its activ­i­ties,” he said.
Sall praised Turk­ish com­pa­nies that have ini­ti­at­ed var­i­ous invest­ment projects in the coun­try and said invest­ments between the two coun­tries should increase even more.
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The Turk­ish pres­i­dent is set to attend Wednesday’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Dakar Olympic Sta­di­um, which was con­struct­ed by a Turk­ish company.
Erdo­gan, who set out on Sun­day for the tour, will also vis­it the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go and Guinea-Bissau.
In Dakar, the Turk­ish pres­i­dent not­ed that the 3rd Turkey-Africa Part­ner­ship Sum­mit, held in Istan­bul in Decem­ber, set out a roadmap in Turk­ish rela­tions with Africa for 2022 to 2026.
Lead­ers from more than a dozen African coun­tries attend­ed the sum­mit, high­light­ing Turkey’s expand­ing influ­ence on the continent.
Since its 2019 inter­ven­tion in the Libyan civ­il war, Istan­bul has steadi­ly expand­ed its African foot­print as it seeks to replace West­ern influ­ence on the continent.
The Euro­pean Union has sought to counter both Turk­ish and Chi­nese influ­ence, posi­tion­ing itself as “Africa’s part­ner of choice” dur­ing a sum­mit with the African Union ear­li­er this month.
“The Euro­pean Union is the first trad­ing part­ner and the first investor in Africa,” Ursu­la von der Leyen, pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, said after the two-day sum­mit, which drew to a close on Feb­ru­ary 18. “Indeed, we need a stronger part­ner­ship between us.”
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