Africa News and Discussions

weatheriscool
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Heavy gunfire reported at Burkina Faso military base
Source: AP

By SAM MEDNICK
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Heavy gunfire rang out at a military base in Burkina Faso’s capital early Sunday, prompting fears that a coup attempt was underway after weeks of growing frustration with the government’s handling of the Islamic insurgency wracking the country.

The government put out a statement acknowledging gunfire in army barracks but denying an army takeover of the country. President Roch Marc Christian Kabore has not been detained, according to Defense Minister Aime Barthelemy Simpore.

State broadcaster RTB carried a news headline describing the gunfire as “acts of discontent by soldiers.”

“The military hierarchy is working to restore calm and serenity in the barracks,” it read. “Contrary to some information, no institution of the republic has been targeted.”

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/africa-burki ... 2ff7a774d9
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At least 16 killed, several injured in nightclub fire in Cameroon's capital
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/23/africa/n ... index.html
By Nimi Princewill and Schams Elwazer, CNN

Updated 10:39 AM ET, Sun January 23, 2022
People walk past the entrance of the nightclub where a deadly fire occurred in the Bastos district of Yaoundé, on January 23, 2022.

(CNN)At least 16 people were killed after a fire tore through a nightclub in Cameroon's capital city Yaoundé early on Sunday morning, according to the country's government.
Eight other people were seriously wounded in the fire at the Liv Nightclub, according to the government's statement. During a press conference held at the scene of the fire, the director of the Yaoundé Central Hospital said several people in critical condition were transferred to the hospital.
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caltrek
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Mdundo Eyes More Telco Partnerships After Music Streaming Revenue Growth from Tanzania and Nigeria Deals
by Annie Njanja
February 10, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/10/mdund ... ria-deals/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed deals with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, and Vodacom in Tanzania, which appear to be paying off after its user-base almost doubled as it added paying subscribers as a source of revenue.

MTN and Airtel Nigeria have a combined customer-base of 124.5 million, while Vodacom Tanzania has 15.6 million subscribers, giving Mdundo access to a huge target audience.

“This is a new revenue stream for us. When we listed the company in September 2020 we predicted that revenue from this revenue stream will account for 40% of revenue within a few years and this is still our forecast,” said founder Martin Nielsen.

Mdundo users access music through USSD services on a bundled program (daily, weekly or monthly). The streaming service is also accessible through its website or app which has over 1 million downloads.

By December 2021, Mdundo had 1.7 million international songs on its platform and 367,000 tracks uploaded by 122,000 African musicians, a 46 percentage point growth from December 2020. The company pays more than 50% of its income to music creators.
Image
Mdundo co-founders Martin Moeller Nielsen (CEO) and Francis Amisi (Frasha) who is also an image artist.
Credit: Mdundo
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Mauritius formally challenges Britain’s ownership of Chagos Islands

Mon 14 Feb 2022 08.00 GMT

Britain’s ownership of the Chagos archipelago has been formally challenged after the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, Jagdish Koonjul, raised his country’s flag above the atoll of Peros Banhos.

In a ceremony on Monday at 10.30am local time, Mauritian officials sang their country’s national anthem and the red, blue, yellow and green standard was raised up the flagpole.

Koonjul said: “We are performing the symbolic act of raising the flag as the British have done so many times to establish colonies. We, however, are reclaiming what has always been our own.”

A pre-recorded message by the Mauritian prime minister, Pravind Jugnauth, was broadcast on a speaker to the Chagossians, Mauritian officials and media assembled on the beach.

“This is the first time Mauritius has led an expedition to this part of its territory,” he said. “I feel sad that I have not been able to be part of this historic visit."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... os-islands


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Remedial Health Raises $1 Million Pre-seed to Digitize Pharmacies in Nigeria
by Annie Njanja
February 14, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/14/yc-ba ... n-nigeria/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Remedial Health has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies, and stem the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products, starting with Nigeria before expanding to the rest of Africa.

The round was led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with participation from Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund, and other angel investors, including Flutterwave’s Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Victor Asemota.

Part of the new funding will be used to extend the startup’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) offering, for an even wider reach.

Founded in 2020 by Samuel Okwuada, a trained pharmacist and self-taught software developer, together with his co-founder Victor Benjamin, Remedial Health started off as a private label business, focused on contract manufactured products from markets like India, which they would then sell to pharmacies in Nigeria.

“That business was pretty small. But at least we were in the market and we were growing,” said Okwuada, who pursued his MSc in Pharmacy at the University of East Anglia, in the UK.
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Did the French Mission in Mali Fail?
by Mucahid Durmaz
February 18, 2022

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022 ... -mali-fail

Introduction:
(Al Jazeera) In February 2013, thousands lined up along the main road in the historic Malian city of Timbuktu to give a heroic welcome to France’s President Francois Hollande. He was visiting the city after French forces had pushed back armed groups that had captured swaths of Mali and were marching towards the capital, Bamako.

Dancing and waving French flags, locals chanted “Vive la France” as Hollande waved back at them. Even the muezzin of the 14-century mud mosque of Djinguereber, who recites the call to prayer five times a day, flaunted a scarf in the colours of the French flag as he shouted “Vive Hollande”. It was a joyful day in Mali.

Today, that seems like a distant memory. In Bamako, French flags are now considered a neocolonial symbol and are being burned during anti-France protests. The troops once referred to as liberators are now accused of splitting the country and training militias.

The deafening calls for a French exit from Mali were finally heard in Elysee Palace. On Thursday, President Emmanuel Macron announced the withdrawal of the French military and Paris-led European force known as Takuba after nearly a decade of fighting against the worsening uprising. “We cannot remain militarily engaged alongside de facto authorities whose strategy and hidden aims we do not share,” he said.

According to Macron, the military bases in the towns of Gossi, Ménaka and Gao will be shut down in four to six months in an “orderly” manner.
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Nigeria is Locked in an Endless Tug of War with its Academics
by Ope Adetayo
February 18, 2022

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022 ... -academics

Introduction:
(Al Jazeera) Lagos, Nigeria – In the 22 years since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999, academics in its public universities have gone on strike a record 15 times. The 16th one, a one-month warning strike declared on February 14 to press for increased wages, comes barely two years after a nine-month industrial action.

In each case, the institutions have had to shut their doors, disrupting academic calendars to the frustration of students and parents nationwide. But for the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of the lecturers, a similar frustration is at the heart of its perennial struggle for better remuneration and improved infrastructure in the schools.

‘’Imagine receiving the same salary since 2009 and compare what you received in 2009 with what you are receiving now [and] with the inflation,” asked Foluke Aliyu-Ibrahim, an English lecturer at the University of Ilorin who told Al Jazeera that the government has reneged on several agreements with ASUU. “People don’t understand what we are going through, it is a lot of sacrifices.’’

Since the oil boom of the 1970s, the government has traditionally subsidised tuition in tertiary institutions, but these days, it can barely keep up with the rising cost of education. Industry stakeholders have said the public education system is in a state of gradual decay, best exemplified by the declining standards of the universities.

Currently, there are at least 170 licensed universities in Nigeria; almost half of those are bankrolled by either the federal or state governments while the rest are owned by private individuals and organisations
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Jambo Raises $7.5 Million to Build "Web3 Super App" of Africa
by Tage Kene-Okafor
February 21, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/21/jambo ... of-africa/

Intoduction:
(TechCrunch) Jambo, a Congo-based startup building Africa’s web3 user acquisition portal through “learn, play, earn” and democratizing access to crypto-based income-generation opportunities, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding.

Experts say Africa is poised to be disrupted by web3 in a similar fashion that has seen Southeast Asia become one of the best markets for web3. The latter is home to startups like Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games, which have raised millions of dollars in venture capital owing to the adoption of crypto and play-to-earn models.

The mix of positives such as a fast-growing population–the youngest globally–, solid smartphone penetration, increasing crypto adoption, and negatives like low GDP per capita across board and unemployment makes Africa the next ripe ground for web3.

And a few companies, such as Jambo, are positioning themselves for this next boom. According to James Zhang, its co-founder and CEO, Jambo wants to onboard millions of users to web3 in Africa through its applications. He founded the company with his sibling Alice Zhang — both Congo-born Chinese — in December 2021 after noticing the opportunity to duplicate the success of web3 projects in Southeast Asia across Africa.

Although users of Axie Infinity and other guilds only earn an income while playing games under a revenue-sharing model, Jambo is taking a two-sided approach by allowing its users to do so when they partake in web2 and web3 activities.
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The Keep Africa Poor and Dependent Project
by Graham Peebles
February 27, 2022

https://janataweekly.org/the-keep-afric ... t-project/

Introduction:
(Eurasia Review via Janata Weekly) Exploited and abused for generations by white colonial powers and manipulative economic structures, there is a growing feeling of solidarity within parts of the African continent, as exemplified by the #NoMore movement. Covid vaccine inequality and environmental injustice, together with recent events in Ethiopia have galvanized people.

Ideas of African unity and rage against former imperial forces are nothing new; the chain of suppression and exploitation of African nations is long, running from slavery and colonialism (including colonial extraction) to wealth and climate inequality, racial capitalism and now Covid vaccine apartheid.

Despite the fact that many would say Africa was united long before Europe – family to tribe, tribe to nation, nation to continent, with 54 countries spread over a vast area – establishing a defined Union of Africa seems unlikely, if not impossible. Standing in solidarity, rejecting western intervention, challenging the exploitative status quo and reductive notions of development based on a defunct western model is not; indeed, if African nations are to prosper and create vibrant economies allowing its burgeoning young population to fulfil their enormous potential, they must.

Poverty amidst abundance of resources

Blessed with rich environments and vast natural resources, Sub-Saharan Africa should certainly not be poor. But for huge numbers of people across the continent grinding poverty and hardship are the norm.

According to the World Bank report Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Africa, while those living in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 a day) has fallen in the last twenty years, the number of “poor people [living on $5 a day or less]…has increased from 278 million in 1990 to over 413 million” Over 80% of those living in stifling poverty are found in rural areas where education and health care are scarce.
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UN: Africa is Already Suffering from Warming and Will See Worse
March 2, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/un-afric ... see-worse/

Introduction:
(AP via Courthouse News) — Although Africa has contributed relatively little to the planet's greenhouse gas emissions, the continent has suffered some of the world's heaviest impacts of climate change, from famine to flooding.

Yet from its coral reefs to its highest peaks, the reverberations of human-caused global warming will only get worse, according to a new United Nations report

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted Monday that Saharan flooding, heat and drought will increase, Africa's rich array of wildlife and plants will decline and glaciers on its most iconic mountains will disappear in coming decades.

On a continent already grappling with high poverty levels and food insecurity, the panel warned that fishermen and farmers will feel the pain of future climate change on their lives and livelihoods.

In Kenya, farmer Safari Mbuvi already is trying to weather his country's a four-year drought — and watching his crops fail, again and again.
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