COVID-19 Has Exposed The Fragility Of Our Economies
By Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour Organization The human dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic reach far beyond the critical health response. All aspects of our future will be affected – economic, social and developmental. Our response must be urgent, coordinated and on a global scale, and should immediately deliver help to those most in need. From […]
Nigerian Businesses Set To Harness The Power Of WhatsApp
By Olajide Osho-Thomas, Sales Manager at Infobip Nigeria Modern day customers demand more than ever before from brands and businesses, including fast, personalised, reliable and free two-way communication. Organisations are realising how important it is to reach their customers where they are and on a communication channel that they know and trust, and are increasingly looking […]
Creating Opportunities To Nurture Agripreneurship Among Africa’s Youth
“It is not easy to be in agriculture but you must have the perseverance and you must have the passion for it,” Ngozi Okeke (30), the director of operations at Frotchery Farms, tells IPS during a tour of the company’s factory in Ibadan, Nigeria. For Okeke, passion and patience are pivotal to business success. But […]
Netting the Hoops in a Hijab
Asma Elbadawi played football. She jumped around. And she took on a four-year battle for the right to wear the hijab while playing basketball, becoming one of the leading voices in the fight to get the International Federation of Basketball (FIBA) — the sport’s governing body — to change its rules three years ago. With […]
Bringing Door-to-door Delivery in Mozambique
Self-funded startup Cliko is slowly clocking up the customers. Conceived by its founders in 2017 at Startup Weekend Beira, Cliko launched in September 2018, providing customers with access to an online delivery service, working primarily with restaurants and supermarkets. “In our province, most people have busy schedules. Some people work and study at the same time, other people have […]
South Africa’s Newest Art Hub
So when the first-ever Stellenbosch Triennale began last month, and artists mingled with Afrikaner finance types at the opening-night party while hip DJs from Cape Town spun Nigerian and Congolese dance hits, even the organizers who intended this effect did a double-take. “I did look around many times, and just smile,” Andi Norton, a board […]
Sudanese Minister for Defence Dies in Juba
Lt Gen Jamal Al-Din Omar is said to have been in the neighbouring South Sudan for more than a week purposely engaged in Sudanese Peace talks mediated by President Kiir, with some of the rebel groups Khartoum wants to bring to the fold of the transitional government under Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The minister suffered […]
A Mission to Protect the African Manatee
There are an estimated 10,000 left, spread across 21 African countries, from the coast of Senegal down to Angola and inland to Chad. The DNA extracted from faecal samples allows researchers to isolate individual populations and determine which groups are most endangered. African manatees are classified as a vulnerable species on the International Union for […]
The Nile Water Treaties are Hampering Progress on Building the Grand Dam Project
Disputes over the filling and operation of Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have, once again, threatened security in North-East Africa. Diplomatic spats between Addis Ababa and Cairo are not new. Since the early 1990s, the two countries have held various talks on the Nile but these usually end in a stalemate and the threat of […]
Strong Words for Nigeria from Outspoken Author
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has criticised the response of the Nigerian government and religious leaders to the coronavirus. Over the weekend some preachers in the West African country ignored government directives about social distancing and went ahead with Sunday services, which were attended by thousands of congregants. The author, who lives in Nigeria which has […]
