Championing Senegal’s Youth to Preserve the Environment
On World Wetlands Day Tuesday, Senegalese environmental protection NGOs mobilised several dozen volunteers, as well as water and forestry officials, to clean up parts of the mangrove swamps and surrounding coastline in the Joal-Fadiouth marine protected area, a biodiversity sanctuary noted for its sea turtles. Due to the lack of an adequate waste collection system, […]
The Best Way to Protect Africa’s Biodiversity is to Integrate Conservation Measures on Working Lands
The Convention on Biological Diversity has traditionally seen agriculture as one of the biggest threats to biodiversity. It has promoted the protection of natural ecosystems by concentrating on preventing further expansion of agriculture. But evidence shows that farms that share landscapes with wild nature, such as remnant forests and trees, benefit from the ecosystem services […]
Lusaka Misses its Deadline to Repay Debt
Zambia skipped a $56.1m coupon payment on January 30 on its Eurobond maturing in 2027, the finance ministry confirmed on Sunday. Zambia became Africa’s first pandemic-era sovereign to default after it missed a $42.5m Eurobond coupon payment in November. Zambia warned in October that it wouldn’t be able to meet obligations on foreign commercial debt […]
Securing East African Banks from Chancers
Kenyan startup Transcode has developed fraud management software for banks and telecoms, and is seeking funding to scale it across the continent. Formed in 2018, Transcode released its core software – iGuard – last year. iGuard is a fraud and money laundering detection engine that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent and […]
What’s Killing Freetown’s Chimps?
Deaths at a Sierra Leone sanctuary that stumped people for 15 years have now been linked to a bacterium that seems to cause similar ailments in humans. The staff at Tacugama sanctuary, veterinarians and biologists had conducted several investigations into the disease over the years. It was not contagious, did not infect humans, and did […]
A New Flock Adds to Cameroon’s Woes
Authorities in Cameroon say millions of weaver birds have decimated thousands of hectares of farmland on the northern border with Chad and Nigeria. Farmers say between the birds, elephant attacks and floods, the area is on the verge of famine. In an effort to scare away the birds, youths assemble in millet farms everyday to […]
South Sudan is Looking for Alternative Ways to Kickstart the Economy
Years of a vicious civil war have taken their toll on the country. Oil production is not what it used to be, in the Equatoria region, some farmers say coffee is the answer. But they face many hurdles to compete against big, more established coffee producers across the continent, such as Kenya, Ethiopia, or Rwanda. […]
A Catchy Tune Goes Viral in Harare
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono has taken his fight against corruption to the ears of thousands around the world via reggae with a new song entitled “Dem Loot”. The reporter, who has been arrested three times in six months for his work challenging the current government, released a short video on Twitter singing against what he […]
Moeti Pleads with Magufuli to Accept Vaccine
The World Health Organization (WHO) is urging officials in Tanzania to follow science in the fight against the coronavirus, after the country’s president said the approved vaccines are “dangerous” and that “not all vaccines are of good intentions to our nation.” “Urging #Tanzania to ramp up public health measures such as wearing masks to fight […]
A Group of Mixed-race Elderly People are Fighting the Belgian State for Recognition and Reparations
Among the countless abuses committed by the Belgian state during its colonial occupation of the Congo from 1908 to 1960, taking over from the exploitative and violent rule of King Leopold II which killed millions of Congolese, and its control from 1922 to 1962 under a League of Nations mandate in Ruanda-Urundi (today Rwanda and […]
