Global community urged not to let Ukraine crisis affect support for African nations

ISTANBUL The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has been urged to ensure that the fall­out from the Ukraine cri­sis should not have an impact on glob­al sup­port for African nations.A joint state­ment released after a meet­ing of the Forum on Chi­na-Africa Coop­er­a­tion on Thurs­day held vir­tu­al­ly and addressed by China’s For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi, urged the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to “active­ly help African coun­tries address food secu­ri­ty, cli­mate change, ener­gy cri­sis and oth­er glob­al issues.”Expressing sup­port for a peace­ful nego­ti­a­tion between Rus­sia and Ukraine, the state­ment called on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty not to “lev­el down sup­port and input to Africa because of the Ukraine issue.”Russia launched a war on Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary of this year, result­ing in hun­dreds of deaths on both sides and mil­lions flee­ing the coun­try, affect­ing glob­al sup­ply chains, espe­cial­ly ener­gy and food supplies.However, thanks to the efforts of Türkiye and the UN, a grain cor­ri­dor with a coor­di­na­tion cen­ter in Istan­bul has been estab­lished, allow­ing food sup­plies from Ukraine and Rus­sia to reach the rest of the world.“The two sides urge the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to take seri­ous­ly Africa’s con­cerns on expand­ing devel­op­ment financ­ing and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic recov­ery, accel­er­ate the chan­nel­ing of Spe­cial Draw­ing Rights, in a bid to help Africa achieve inde­pen­dent and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment,” the state­ment said.Wang told the forum that Chi­na sup­ports the African side in imple­ment­ing the “Silenc­ing the Guns” ini­tia­tive as the two sides not­ed that the world is fac­ing grow­ing secu­ri­ty chal­lenges, con­demn­ing all forms of ter­ror­ism and vio­lent extremism.Reciprocal sup­port­Reaf­firm­ing their com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ple of non-inter­fer­ence in inter­nal affairs, the Chi­nese side urged the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to “pro­vide finan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to counter-ter­ror­ism oper­a­tions led by Africa in accor­dance with the mech­a­nisms of the African Peace and Secu­ri­ty Architecture.”Expressing sup­port to uphold the pur­pos­es and prin­ci­ples of the UN-cen­tered inter­na­tion­al sys­tem, the state­ment urged uphold­ing “equal­i­ty among all coun­tries regard­less of their size, strength and wealth.”Without men­tion­ing any coun­try, the two sides opposed uni­lat­er­al­ism, pow­er pol­i­tics, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, the for­ma­tion of oppos­ing blocs, and divi­sion and confrontation.The state­ment reaf­firmed their mutu­al sup­port for ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, secu­ri­ty, and devel­op­ment inter­ests, say­ing “there is but one Chi­na in the world … Tai­wan is an inalien­able part of China’s ter­ri­to­ry, and the gov­ern­ment of the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na is the sole legal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sent­ing the whole of China.”“The African side reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to the one-Chi­na prin­ci­ple, and its sup­port for China’s nation­al reuni­fi­ca­tion and China’s efforts to safe­guard the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty,” it added.China and African nations also said they will con­tin­ue to fight COVID-19 with “sol­i­dar­i­ty, deep­en prac­ti­cal coop­er­a­tion, pro­mote green devel­op­ment, uphold equi­ty and justice.”According to the state­ment, the two sides will syn­er­gize China’s mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive, the Glob­al Devel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive with the African Union’s Agen­da 2063, and nation­al devel­op­ment strate­gies of African coun­tries, “in order to ele­vate Chi­na-Africa coop­er­a­tion to high­er levels.”

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African art: One London museum’s agreement to return colonial artefacts could open the … — iNews

In April 1897, Fred­er­ick Horn­i­man, at the time Britain’s wealth­i­est tea trad­er and an avid col­lec­tor, was offered an oppor­tu­ni­ty he could not refuse. Through “estab­lished com­mer­cial sources and pri­vate col­lec­tions” he acquired 12 items of what was referred to as “Benin mate­r­i­al” for the mod­est sum of £30. Horn­i­man, a Quak­er whose par­ents had been part of the anti-slav­ery move­ment and who as a Lib­er­al MP cam­paigned for what became the wel­fare state, had become almost cer­tain­ly the first per­son in Britain to pur­chase items stolen bare­ly weeks ear­li­er from Benin City in an 18-day ram­page by 5,000 British troops sent to sack one of West Africa’s fore­most civil­i­sa­tions. Upon its return to the UK, the booty from the open­ly puni­tive raid was sold, both offi­cial­ly by the For­eign Office to recov­er the cost of the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion, and unof­fi­cial­ly by the troops them­selves, a num­ber of whom had been suf­fi­cient­ly com­fort­able with their loot­ing in present-day Nige­ria to be pho­tographed beside their hauls. Gen­tle­man afi­ciona­dos such as Horn­i­man would have been the sub­ject of many offers from these “pri­vate col­lec­tions” and in the next two years, the tea trad­er con­tin­ued to acquire 60 more objects emp­tied from the Benin citadel, among them orna­men­tal plaques telling sto­ries of trib­al his­to­ry and a key to the palace of the Oba, or king. Worth mil­lions but acquired for the equiv­a­lent of a few thou­sand pounds of mod­ern mon­ey, these “Benin bronzes” were put on dis­play among thou­sands of oth­er arte­facts in Horniman’s pala­tial home in the plush south Lon­don sub­urb of For­est Hill. Short­ly after 1901 a pur­pose-built muse­um on the site was bequeathed by the mag­nate to the then Lon­don Coun­ty Coun­cil for the “recre­ation, instruc­tion and enjoy­ment” of the capital’s pop­u­lace. Horniman’s goal, as he saw it, of “bring­ing the world” to a sub­ur­ban cor­ner of the British empire’s cap­i­tal was com­plete. A cen­tu­ry or so lat­er, the museum’s trustees, required to over­see and shape Horniman’s increas­ing­ly thorny lega­cy, this week record­ed anoth­er first in his name. More on British Muse­u­mAfter a two-year process of con­sul­ta­tion and eval­u­a­tion, it was announced that the 72 Benin bronzes are to be returned to Nige­ria, mak­ing the Horn­i­man the first major muse­um direct­ly fund­ed by the Depart­ment for Cul­ture, Media and Sport to under­take such a large-scale act of resti­tu­tion of colo­nial-era plun­der. The pledge to return the items was made all the more sig­nif­i­cant by the unvar­nished recog­ni­tion of wrong­do­ing that accom­pa­nied it. Eve Salomon, chair of the Horniman’s trustees said: “The evi­dence is very clear that these objects were acquired through force… It is both moral and appro­pri­ate to return their own­er­ship to Nige­ria.” Oth­er British insti­tu­tions have pre­vi­ous­ly under­tak­en small­er returns of Benin arte­facts, led by Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty and Jesus Col­lege, Cam­bridge last year. But there is a grow­ing view that the Horn­i­man Museum’s deci­sion – along­side a sim­i­lar announce­ment last week by Oxford and Cam­bridge uni­ver­si­ties to seek the return of 200 items to Nige­ria – is a water­shed moment in a resti­tu­tion cam­paign which has seen the slow ero­sion of a decades-long refusal by cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions (the UK hold­ings of Benin bronzes are held by 150 sep­a­rate bod­ies) to con­tem­plate the sur­ren­der of ill-got­ten gains. It is a fact which bears rep­e­ti­tion that near­ly 90 per cent of major African works of art and arte­facts are held out­side Africa, most of them in Europe.

DW News Africa with Tomi Oladipo, 29 July 2022

Zim­bab­we intro­duces shiny new gold coins in a bid to tame soar­ing infla­tion, DW News Africa asks how this unusu­al mea­sure is meant to work, and explores its chances of suc­cess. And: We hear from peo­ple in Ghana, who are suf­fer­ing from soar­ing prices. The coun­try is tak­ing des­per­ate mea­sures, but at what cost? Plus: We vis­it the South African town where taps have run dry

West Africa bloc chair says Guinea accepts two-year transition | Military News | Al Jazeera

In July, bloc lead­ers met in Accra, Ghana to dis­cuss tran­si­tions to civil­ian rule in Guinea, Mali and Burk­i­na Faso.The chair of the West African region­al bloc has said Guinea will cut the time­line of its planned tran­si­tion to civil­ian rule from three to two years.
Speak­ing along­side French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron at a media brief­ing in Bis­sau, Guinea-Bis­sau Pres­i­dent Umaro Sis­so­co Emba­lo, who is chair of the Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ty of West African States (ECOWAS), said he had recent­ly con­vinced Guinea’s mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment to short­en its timeline.
“I was in Conakry with the pres­i­dent of the com­mis­sion (of ECOWAS) to make the mil­i­tary jun­ta under­stand the deci­sion of the sum­mit of heads of state that the tran­si­tion can­not exceed 24 months”, Emba­lo said.
“They had pro­posed 36 months, but we suc­ceed­ed in con­vinc­ing them,” he added.
Ous­mane Gaoual Dial­lo, a Guinean min­is­ter and spokesman for the tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment, told AFP that “nei­ther the gov­ern­ment nor the pres­i­den­cy con­firm this infor­ma­tion about the dura­tion of the tran­si­tion in Guinea”.
An ECOWAS offi­cial told AFP on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty: “The prin­ci­ple is accept­ed but we were wait­ing to for­malise it … before announc­ing it.”
Last Sep­tem­ber, sol­diers led by Colonel Mamady Doum­bouya over­threw Pres­i­dent Alpha Conde and in May, the mil­i­tary pledged to hand over pow­er to elect­ed civil­ians with­in three years.
But region­al pow­ers reject­ed this time­line, with ECOWAS sus­pend­ing Guinea after the coup.
Last week, West African medi­a­tors met Guinea’s rul­ing mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment for talks on a return to civil­ian rule, accord­ing to ECOWAS and state media. Emba­lo, Gam­bian diplo­mat Omar Alieu Touray, who is the pres­i­dent of the ECOWAS com­mis­sion, and Benin’s for­mer pres­i­dent Thomas Boni Yayi, the ECOWAS medi­a­tor for Guinea, were all present.
Ear­li­er in July, ECOWAS lead­ers had met in Ghana’s cap­i­tal Accra to dis­cuss tran­si­tions to civil­ian rule in Guinea, as well as Mali and Burk­i­na Faso, which togeth­er have under­gone four coups since August 2020.
They lift­ed tough sanc­tions that had been imposed on Mali’s mil­i­tary regime, accept­ing a March 2024 return to civil­ian rule.
And they agreed to allow Burk­i­na Faso two years for its tran­si­tion back to democracy.
But dis­cus­sions until then had been trick­i­er with the rulers of Guinea, where the gov­ern­ment had announced a 36-month tran­si­tion – a peri­od that African Union chair­man and Sene­galese Pres­i­dent Macky Sall described as “unthink­able”.
On Thurs­day, protests against Guinea’s mil­i­tary lead­ers brought Conakry to a standstill.
The Nation­al Front for the Defence of the Con­sti­tu­tion (FNDC), a coali­tion of polit­i­cal par­ties, trade unions and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, called the demon­stra­tions to denounce the government’s “uni­lat­er­al man­age­ment” of any return to civil­ian rule.
Oth­er par­ties and coali­tions joined the protests.
In May, the gov­ern­ment banned pub­lic demon­stra­tions, and Thursday’s protests led to spo­radic clash­es between demon­stra­tors and police.

Presidents Ramaphosa and Ouattara ‘pleased’ to see Ukrainian grains deal signed

The Pres­i­dent of Ivory Coast, Alas­sane Ouat­tara, vis­it­ed South Africa on Friday.
Out­tara was wel­comed by his South African coun­ter­part, Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa in the cap­i­tal, Pretoria.
The vis­it coin­cid­ed with a UN and Turkey-bro­kered agree­ment to allow Ukraine and Rus­sia to export grain and fertilizers. 

“It has tak­en much too long, in my view, because that con­flict has put a stop to the import or expor­tat of grain, fer­til­iz­ers and oth­er food­stuffs like wheat to var­i­ous oth­er parts of the world. And we are there­fore pleased. That this may indeed in the end become a real­i­ty. Would this be seen as sig­nalling some­thing that could amount to the end of that con­flict? I would like to believe that, yes”, said South African Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa. 
Refer­ring to Mali, the Ivo­rian pres­i­dent reject­ed ear­li­er sug­ges­tions that his coun­try was inter­fer­ing in its neighbour. 
The accu­sa­tions were linked to the deten­tion of a group of Ivo­rian sol­diers accused of being mercenaries.
” Ivory Coast can­not afford to attempt to desta­bi­lize any coun­try and espe­cial­ly not a neigh­bor­ing coun­try (such as Mali). And they are the same peo­ples, the same pop­u­la­tion. The rela­tion­ships are close, are very close. We use the same cur­ren­cy, we use the same legal frame­work, etc. It (Mali) is a friend­ly coun­try and broth­er and sis­ter pop­u­la­tions. There­fore, there isn’t any ques­tion about us engag­ing in any attempt to desta­bi­lize”, reas­sured Alas­sane Ouat­tara, Pres­i­dent of Ivory Coast.
Dur­ing the vis­it to South Africa, the two pres­i­dents signed a num­ber of agree­ments and Ouat­tara addressed the South Africa — Ivory Coast Busi­ness Forum.

Google signs deal to pay 300+ news publishers in Europe

This sto­ry, plus OAN seg­ment states there was no wide­spread elec­tion fraud, Elon Musk says he would reverse Trump’s Twit­ter ban and more, all in today’s media head­lines. Top Sto­ries May 11, 2022 May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022 Press & Gov­ern­ment May 10, 2022 Media Busi­ness May 10, 2022 May 10, 2022 Research May 10, 2022 Inter­na­tion­al May 11, 2022 May 11, 2022…

Why Nigeria and other African countries are blocking cellphones | Fin24 — News24

This week, Nige­ria blocked mil­lions of its cit­i­zens — who haven’t linked their lines to their ID num­bers — from mak­ing phone calls.Other gov­ern­ment also want cit­i­zens to reg­is­ter their phones.But there’s a dis­trust by res­i­dents to hand over their details to the government.This Mon­day, mil­lions of Nige­ri­ans woke up to find that they
had been barred from mak­ing phone calls. The num­ber of dis­con­nect­ed lines is
report­ed to be as many as 75 mil­lion, more than a third of the total 198
mil­lion lines nationwide.But the move has been a long time coming.In Decem­ber 2020, Abu­ja issued a direc­tive for all SIM card
car­ri­ers to link their lines to a unique Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Num­ber, cit­ing a
need to tack­le the plagu­ing inse­cu­ri­ty in the country.That dead­line was post­poned numer­ous times but last week’s
attack on a train by armed groups was a wake-up call. When reports started
sur­fac­ing online that the attack­ers had start­ed call­ing fam­i­lies of abducted
pas­sen­gers for ran­som, the gov­ern­ment swung into action, ful­fill­ing its almost two-year-old
promise to cut off non-com­pli­ant citizens.On social net­works, many – espe­cial­ly south­ern­ers – are
debat­ing the con­nec­tion between SIM card link­age with the nation­al identity
num­ber and the actions of these groups, known local­ly as ban­dits, whose axes of
focus are swaths of the north­west and cen­tral Nigeria.In 2015, the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment fined MTN,
one of the continent’s biggest tele­com play­ers, US$5.2bn for default­ing in
cut­ting off unver­i­fied customers.The Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (NCC) had previously
instruct­ed the tele­com giant to deac­ti­vate between 10 and 18.6 million
lines. But gov­ern­ment swung into action after the high-pro­file kid­nap of a
for­mer Niger­ian finance min­is­ter; police say the kid­nap­pers used MTN lines to
con­tact his fam­i­ly members.ALSO READ | MTN must ver­i­fy users in Nige­ria by
year end or face blocked SIM card­sAcross the con­ti­nent, there is a length­en­ing line of
gov­ern­ments embark­ing on a mass dis­con­nec­tion dri­ve cit­ing, among oth­er things,
domes­tic secu­ri­ty. In March, Zam­bia announced it had deac­ti­vat­ed two million
SIMs cards to stem the vol­ume of fraud car­ried out using mobile lines.Kenyan media have also report­ed an April 15 dead­line by
author­i­ties in the East African coun­try for the deac­ti­va­tion of unregistered
SIM cards – the third such dead­line in the past 10 years. In 2013, it switched
off more than two mil­lion SIM cards after an attck by the armed group
al-Shabab.Last year, Tan­za­nia said it had blocked 18,000 SIM cards
involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. In a bid to also cur­tail mobile scams, Ghana
issued a direc­tive for every SIM card car­ri­er to re-reg­is­ter their SIMs with
the Ghana Card, the nation­al res­i­den­cy card, or lose them.In far­away Hong Kong, a pro­pos­al from last year to
impose new restric­tions on phone line reg­is­tra­tions was approved this March.What are the issues?With Africa hav­ing a 44% mobile pen­e­tra­tion rate, SIM cards
are one of the most ubiq­ui­tous tech­nolo­gies around.At least 50 of Africa’s 54 coun­tries have manda­to­ry SIM
reg­is­tra­tion laws in place, but most have bare­ly been enforced – until now.
Reg­is­tra­tion usu­al­ly involves the sub­mis­sion of per­son­al data and the capture
of cit­i­zen biometrics.The ratio­nale is that this reg­is­tra­tion will help cre­ate a
vast data­base to help track crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. Offi­cials say SIMs, accessible
even on the streets for some­times as low as US$1 (~R14), are fre­quent­ly bought
and dis­card­ed by sus­pect­ed crim­i­nals, with­out any – or not enough – details of
their per­son­al iden­ti­ty to trace and mon­i­tor them.“Since 9/11, in many coun­tries, if you want to get a
SIM card, you have to show some [form of] iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,” Rebecca
Enon­chong, Cameroon­ian tech entre­pre­neur and founder of App­sTech told Al
Jazeera. “It is rather nor­mal that the gov­ern­ment should require those who
are using cell ser­vices [to] reg­is­ter with the oper­a­tors and the
telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies should know who is con­nect­ed to their
services.“YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE| OPINION | Yes, the reg­u­la­tor wants
mobile oper­a­tors like Voda­com and MTN to store your bio­met­ric­sOn the sur­face, this sounds like a quick and cheap solution
for many gov­ern­ments in a con­ti­nent where most coun­tries have no unified
oper­a­tional nation­al database.But mul­ti­ple SIM own­er­ship is preva­lent across Africa for
many rea­sons includ­ing vary­ing data prices, con­nec­tiv­i­ty speeds and signal
strength. In 2018, four African coun­tries were among the top 10 glob­al­ly, with
dual or mul­ti-SIM mobile phones. Kenya even once had plans to insti­tute an
own­er­ship cap of 10 SIM cards per per­son. Tele­com oper­a­tors also often tailor
reg­is­tra­tion process­es in order to sell more pre­paid SIM cards.Experts say the out­come is that the data gleaned from SIM
reg­is­tra­tions are not as accu­rate or neat as they ought to be.“The ID sys­tems [in Africa] are not real­ly backed by
tech­nol­o­gy, there are no link­ages, so there is no ver­i­fi­ca­tion process,”
Enon­chong said. “If the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pa­nies them­selves don’t
enforce that, it is real­ly very hard for the gov­ern­ment to make use of the
data.“How did we get here?At the root of it all is a mass unwill­ing­ness to register
SIM cards due to a seem­ing lack of dis­trust by res­i­dents to hand over their
details to the government.Unsurprisingly, there are con­cerns about data pri­va­cy and
the ines­timable capac­i­ty of gov­ern­ment to use data col­lect­ed for one purpose
for anoth­er, giv­en the his­tor­i­cal intol­er­ance for dis­sent in some of these
countries.There is also a legal void around gov­ern­ment han­dling of
data.A 2021 report by Col­lab­o­ra­tion on Inter­na­tion­al ICT Policy
for East and South­ern Africa (CIPESA), claimed that only half of African
coun­tries have adopt­ed laws to pro­tect per­son­al data.Repeated reg­is­tra­tion exer­cis­es have also weak­ened the will
of the peo­ple, experts say.Over the years, Nige­ria, Africa’s most pop­u­lous coun­try and
its eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, has insti­tut­ed mul­ti­ple manda­to­ry identity
reg­is­tra­tion schemes, includ­ing Bank Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Num­ber (BVN) and National
Iden­ti­ty Num­ber (NIN), along­side more wide­spread IDs like vot­ers’ cards,
inter­na­tion­al pass­ports and others.Yet, the gov­ern­ment is insist­ing that the way for­ward is for
every SIM card to be linked with an NIN, a pol­i­cy that many Nige­ri­ans say will
be just as cum­ber­some and bureau­crat­ic as its pre­de­ces­sors – and pos­si­bly end
up achiev­ing noth­ing too.“This is a trend of pol­i­cy lazi­ness,” Gbenga
Sesan, head of Lagos-based dig­i­tal rights advo­ca­cy non­prof­it Par­a­digm Initiative,
told Al Jazeera. “The prob­lem does not lie with the lack of a central
data­base; it is about impuni­ty. If I know that if I com­mit a crime and I know I
would be pun­ished for it, then I will like­ly think about it twice.“In Kenya, cit­i­zens are also com­plain­ing about the redundancy
of mul­ti­ple reg­is­tra­tions. The new reg­is­tra­tion war­rants the sub­mis­sion of the
phone num­ber, copy of pass­port or visa and bio­da­ta page, exit stamps and
scanned ID – items they claim to have sub­mit­ted dur­ing the last exer­cise in 2018.The big­ger fear, how­ev­er, is of gov­ern­ment surveillance
under the guise of nation­al secu­ri­ty, lead­ing to a wide­spread reluc­tance to
will­ing­ly sub­mit per­son­al data which can be used to mon­i­tor their everyday
activities.“The issue of data pri­va­cy tran­scends Africa,” Ken
Ashig­bey, the CEO of Ghana Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Cham­ber, not­ed. “The concern
about Big Broth­er sit­ting some­where and using your data to spy on you is always
going to be there, [and] when you bring it into the exam­ples of Africa where
our gov­ern­ments all seem to have total pow­er, def­i­nite­ly there are risks,”
he said.The risks also extend to small and medi­um-scale enterprises
(SMEs) in a dig­i­tal era where SIMs and the world of pos­si­bil­i­ties on the
inter­net are help­ing empow­er many in the absence of social wel­fare schemes.Already, SMEs account for 84% of employ­ment and make up 96%
of busi­ness­es in Nige­ria. Shut­ting mil­lions of peo­ple out of seamless
com­mu­ni­ca­tion could adverse­ly affect the econ­o­my, Sesan warned.“What we are going to lose is rough­ly one-third or
about 35% of con­nect­ed lines that we have [and] there will be major economic
con­se­quences [but] there will be no gain in terms of secu­ri­ty,” he said. Go to the Fin24 front page.Go to the Fin24 front page.

African refugees see racial bias as US welcomes Ukrainians — WXYZ

(AP) — African refugees say the recent deci­sion to grant refugee sta­tus and oth­er human­i­tar­i­an pro­tec­tions to Ukraini­ans flee­ing war under­scores the racial bias inher­ent in Amer­i­can immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy. Wil­fred Tebah says he and oth­er immi­grants from Cameroon have long been deserv­ing of sim­i­lar human­i­tar­i­an con­sid­er­a­tions. They also argue that Con­go and Ethiopia should qual­i­fy because of their ongo­ing con­flicts, as should Mau­ri­ta­nia. The Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty said it con­tin­ues “mon­i­tor­ing con­di­tions in var­i­ous coun­tries.” Pres­i­dent Joe Biden recent­ly announced the U.S. would take in 100,000 Ukrain­ian refugees and grant Tem­po­rary Pro­tect­ed Sta­tus to anoth­er 30,000 already in the country.

African countries respond to global inflation [Business Africa] | Africanews

In Africa, gov­ern­ments are step­ping up their efforts to mit­i­gate the impact of the Rus­sia-Ukraine cri­sis on their cit­i­zens’ wal­lets. Accord­ing to UNCTAD data, no less than 25 African coun­tries import more than a third of their wheat from Rus­sia and Ukraine; 15 import more than half and two coun­tries, Benin and Soma­lia, import 100%. So how is Africa try­ing to lim­it the impacts of this crisis?
Ghana presents robust dig­i­tal econ­o­myGhana has recent­ly embarked on the trans­for­ma­tion of sev­er­al pub­lic ser­vices. An iden­ti­ty card serves as a bio­met­ric pass­port and tax iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. In this way, the coun­try intends to mobilise domes­tic rev­enue and pros­e­cute all those who evade tax­es before the end of the year. This dig­i­tal pol­i­cy, which affects all sec­tors, should be a response to finan­cial exclu­sion and the pre­dom­i­nance of the infor­mal sector.
Burun­di cof­fee sec­tor strug­gles to rebound­In Burun­di, cof­fee accounts for near­ly 40% of export resources, and sup­ports 8 mil­lion Burun­di­ans. With the fail­ure of the pri­vati­sa­tion of the sec­tor, the state has been run­ning the sec­tor since 2019, but pro­duc­tion fig­ures remain low, drop­ping from 34,000 to 6,000 tonnes for the 2021–2022 grow­ing sea­son. Cof­fee grow­ers’ dis­con­tent is grow­ing, as well as the lack of trace­abil­i­ty of all actors involved in the sector.

Africa’s five teams going to the Qatar World Cup confirmed — Futbol on FanNation — Sports Illustrated

The five African nations head­ing to Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup were con­firmed on Tues­day night. Cameroon, Moroc­co, Tunisia, Ghana and Sene­gal will rep­re­sent CAF in the first ever November/December World Cup. All five qual­i­fiers booked their places at Qatar 2022 by win­ning two-legged play­offs. Those play­offs turned out to be large­ly close affairs as…