Day: August 23, 2022

ACCRA— Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Herbert Krapa, has announced that Ghana, together with seven other countries are set to commence trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

So far, 54 African countries have signed the AfCFTA agreement with 46 including Customs Union having submitted their tariff offers.

According to Herbert Krapa, 87.7% of tariff lines have been agreed upon under the rules of origin negotiations and phase two negotiations on investment, intellectual property rights, competition policy, women and youth in trade and digital trade were ongoing.

Speaking at the Export Trading Company Seminar in Accra, the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry said, “Actual trading is starting between Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania, Tunisia and Ghana.

In the coming weeks, the dream of our forebears will be off the ground, and historic as the moment may be.”

He further commended Afrexim Bank for setting up export trading companies across Africa to facilitate trade across the continent.

AfCFTA was introduced in 2018 and it aims at creating a single market for Africa, as well as, ensuring the free movement of goods and services on the continent which will help expand Intra-African trade.

This implies that goods will be sold at a relatively cheaper price because of the increase in production which will, in turn, create both direct and indirect jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.

The free trade area also allows traders and/or importers to stay competitive.

Businesses when conducted in a free and safe environment will help reduce poverty in member states as well as create sustainable development.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

KAMPALA— Police in north-western Uganda are investigating the deaths of a dozen people who are suspected to have consumed a locally manufactured gin.

The deaths are said to have been registered between Saturday and Sunday in the Madi-Okollo district.

Several others, including one trader selling the gin known as City 5 Pineapple Flavoured Gin, have been hospitalised with suspected poisoning.

It is not clear what the ingredients in the drink are, but “demineralised water, extra neutral alcohol and pineapple flavour” are listed on the bottle.

A regional police spokesperson said that the gin samples have been collected and will be submitted to the government chemist to conduct tests.

Four suspects have been arrested, and the cottage factory where the gin was being manufactured closed, as investigations continue.

Deaths from adulterated alcohol are common in Uganda. In 2010, at least 80 people died in southwestern Uganda after drinking alcohol laced with methanol, according to authorities.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

By decision of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, published in the Government Gazette on 19.8.22, Ambassador Theocharis Lalakos was appointed Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Prior to assuming his current duties, Ambassador Theocharis Lalakos was Director General for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the course of his career, he has served in a number of key positions, including Ambassador in Nicosia, Ambassador in Washington D.C., Head of the then Liaison Office in Skopje, and Ambassador-Counselor at the Embassy in Ankara.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his gratitude to the Ministry’s outgoing Secretary General, Ambassador Themistoklis Demiris, who has successfully served in this position.

The Minister wished him every success in his new duties.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic

Authorities in Cameroon say thousands of people who fled communal violence near the borders with Chad and Nigeria are suffering from malnutrition with scores of children dying in the past few weeks.

The conflict in December between cattle ranchers and fishers left at least 40 people dead and pushed more than 100,000 into Chad. Many have since returned but aid groups say the displaced are struggling to survive.

Maroua is the capital of Cameroon’s Far North region that shares borders with Nigeria and Chad. The Cameroon government said thousands of people in the northern border with Chad and Nigeria are suffering from malnutrition with scores of children dying in the past few weeks.

Tomato seller Mota Nyako said she is lucky her malnourished son did not die. She rushed the 2-year-old to the hospital because he was vomiting ceaselessly and had severe diarrhea. She said her son has begun gaining weight after receiving treatment at the hospital for a week. Nyako said she is going to inform women whose children are losing weight to immediately bring them to the hospital where their lives will be saved.

Nyako, who spoke via a messaging app from Maroua, said she was displaced from a border district with Chad, during clashes with farmers and fishermen over water. Nyako said she is poor and cannot afford enough food for herself and her son.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Public Health said the thousands of new malnourished people reported within the past two months adds to the more than 100,000 children in northern Cameroon currently suffering from acute malnutrition.

Flobert Danbe, a Cameroon health official in charge of malnutrition in Cameroon’s Far North region, said malnutrition is severe in Kousseri, Mada, Makary and Goulfe, districts on Cameroon’s northern border with Chad and Nigeria. He said Mayo Tsanaga administrative unit, which has the highest food production basin on the border with Chad and Nigeria, is also reporting increasing cases of malnutrition because of an influx of displaced persons.

Cameroon said tens of thousands of its citizens fled the December 2021 bloody conflicts over water between cattle ranchers and fishermen to Mayo Tsanaga. Some of the displaced persons have returned but their plantations have been severely damaged by battles or by heavy rains and flooding.

Source: Voice of America

Angola holds presidential and parliamentary elections Wednesday in what is expected to be the biggest challenge to the country’s longstanding one-party rule.

The ruling MPLA party, in power for nearly half a century, has been losing young supporters to the leading opposition party, UNITA.

The presidential candidates have focused mainly on economic issues, but observers are expressing concern about whether the election will be fair.

Angola’s national electoral commission has begun distributing voting material ahead of Wednesday’s polls.

The incumbent president, Joao Lorenco of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, is facing a tough challenge from the opposition candidate Adalberto Costa Junior of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known as UNITA.

The two main political parties have promised to fight corruption, create jobs and improve the living standard of the people. Currently, half of Angola’s population lives on less than $2 per day.

Experts say economic challenges threaten the ruling party’s hope of winning the Wednesday vote.

Borges Nhamirre, a researcher for Institute for Security Studies, said the election campaign has been peaceful, with candidates focusing on solving the people’s and country’s problems.

“The electoral campaign was good, not much violence as in the past,” he said. “And also, the candidates discussed ideas about what they have to do for Angola; that is good as well. The performance of the electoral body was not that good because they failed to organize a transparent and fair election. The National Electoral Commission did not submit the voter roll to be audited, so they are going to vote, but the number of voters is not audited as mandatory by the law.”

Critics accuse the electoral commission of failing to build trust with the political class and the public ahead of the election.

Officially, there are at least 14 million people eligible to vote but some suspect the actual number to be less because the commission failed to clean the voter rolls of possible double registrations and the deceased.

UNITA fears the unverified voter register could be used to rig the vote in favor of the ruling party.

Opposition groups have also criticized the commission’s move to announce the results at the national election center in Luanda’s capital instead of at polling stations.

The head of Angola Institute of Electoral System and Democracy, Luis Jimbo, said the electoral agency must act properly on election day.

“Right now, it’s not about transparency. There have been a lot of transparent things that were supposed to be done from the beginning,” he said. “But we are demanding they must follow the law according to what the law says, to publish the results at the polling station, and the result at the national center must reflect those results. So, they are aware of this and there is pressure from all of society.”

Experts predict a tight presidential election. According to recent public opinion surveys, UNITA’s popularity among young voters has grown, something that worries the MPLA.

Nhamirre said the opposition can win the election but the ruling party may refuse to hand over power.

“In Angola, it’s very difficult to distinguish who is MPLA, the ruling party, and who is the state, so I foresee some groups within MPLA not accepting the result,” he said. “So, we might have a situation that mediation will be necessary to prevent conflict in Angola.”

Nhamirre says conflict can be avoided if the police remain peaceful and refrain from violence in the event of any post-election protests.

The MPLA has been in power since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.

Source: Voice of America

Conservation groups say the rate of rhinoceros poaching in Africa has dropped significantly since a peak in 2015.

The latest figures on the animal whose horns are coveted in traditional Chinese medicine are recorded in a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the NGO Traffic.

The report covers 2018 through 2021. It notes an increase in the number of rare black rhinos by just over 12 percent from 5,495 to 6,195; however, it says the number of white rhinos fell from just over 18,000 to 15,942. That’s also a change of 12 percent.

The report says overall there was a decrease, with about 22,137 rhinos, black and white, left in Africa at the end of 2021.

IUCN Rhino expert Sam Ferreira says the reason they aren’t seeing the results of a decreased poaching rate yet is that the drop needs to be sustained over a longer period.

Ferreira says he believes it wasn’t, as some experts have suggested, the COVID-19 lockdowns that made the difference, but improved policing and community involvement.

“I think that what is really important is that the arrests decreased from 493 in 2018 to 279 in 2021,” Ferreira said. “Now again, we don’t know what exactly is sitting behind these things. But it does suggest that there are interventions, critical interventions that range states and particularly managers on the ground are doing that are having some consequences on the decisions that people make to poach or not to poach rhinos.”

The IUCN Traffic report says since 2018, several education campaigns have been delivered to more than one million people.

The WWF’s global practice leader, Margaret Kinnaird, says conservationists use everything from social media to classic campaigns with posters to educate the public.

“For WWF, we’ve worked a lot with Chinese travelers in particular that are going overseas where they are visiting markets that have, for example, elephant ivory and rhino horn potentially for sale,” Kinnaird said. “The point there is to change the hearts and minds of those people who are approaching markets and thinking about taking a gift home. Or thinking about buying something for a medical cure. And just giving them alternative ideas for the sort of gift or product they would take home.”

Kinnaird says the smuggled horns go primarily to Asia and are sold through illegal markets in the Mekong region and in China, particularly in markets in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.

She says the horns are marketed from all four of the major rhino range states, the most coming from South Africa but also Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe. South Africa accounts for 90% of all reported poaching on the continent, mostly of white rhinos.

Kinnaird says that, while it is good news that poaching rates have dropped, more needs to be done to ensure the animal doesn’t become extinct.

“We need to improve our crime-related intelligence and make sure we’re targeting the right people, not the little people on the ground, we need to get at the big bosses, the kingpins, the organized criminals,” Kinnaird said.

The IUCN Traffic report was prepared for a U.N. convention on endangered fauna and flora taking place in Panama in November.

Source: Voice of America

U.N. agencies warn that severe hunger is sliding toward famine-like conditions in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, as four years of consecutive drought have wiped out peoples’ ability to grow the crops they need to feed themselves.

The World Food Program reports up to 22 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are facing severe hunger. It says hunger and the death of millions of livestock have forced more than 7 million people to leave their homes in search of food, water and grazing pasture for their cattle.

The WFP warns these figures are likely to grow, and conditions will continue to deteriorate, as poor rainfall is forecast for the fifth year in a row.

The WFP regional director for East Africa, Michael Dunford, recently returned from a visit to Somalia and northern Kenya.

Speaking from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Dunford says he was particularly struck by the dire situation in Somalia where more than 7 million people are facing a humanitarian crisis. He says this is the worst situation he has seen in the 21 years he has been working for WFP.

“We have a real risk of famine. It has not been declared yet, but already there are over 200,000 people in famine-like conditions, catastrophic levels of food insecurity, with another 1.4 [million] on the edge. So, unless we are able to continue to advocate to raise funding, to scale up our operations, then we will have, I fear, a famine to deal with,” he said.

Dunford says the specter of the 2011 famine in Somalia, which killed 250,000 people, half of them children, looms large over this current crisis. He says WFP is scaling up to reach 8.5 million people across Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. He says $416 million is needed to provide lifesaving aid for the rest of the year.

Malnutrition remains high across the Horn of Africa. The U.N. children’s fund reports 10 million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. It adds that nearly 1.8 million face severe wasting, a condition that is life-threatening.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder says millions of children in the Horn of Africa are literally one disease away from catastrophe.

“When you have got these terrifyingly high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children — and that is 1.8 million of those children in that state right now in the Horn, 1.8 million when you have got those — and then you combine it with a simple outbreak in [a] disease like a cholera, like diarrhea, then you see child mortality rates rise at a petrifying speed,” he said.

Elder notes the number of people without access to safe water in the region has risen from nine million in February to 15 million now.

UNICEF has revised its emergency appeal from $119 million to nearly $250 million. This reflects the growing needs across the region.

Source: Voice of America