Bigger Economy: Why could that be bad news? Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The recent rebasing of the national account series by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has excited economists with many saying it presents the government an opportunity to make policy based on data that is a …
Read More »‘Kamikaze kids’: Youngs toasts England’s boy wonders
Oita, Japan | AFP | England scrum-half Ben Youngs described back-row marauders Tom Curry and Sam Underhill as “phenomenal” after they crushed Australian spirits in Saturday’s 40-16 World Cup quarter-final rout. Curry and Underhill, who England coach Eddie Jones calls his “kamikaze kids” because of their appetite for destruction, made …
Read More »What next for Tunisia’s new president?
Tunis, Tunisia | AFP | Tunisia’s president-elect Kais Saied has won a clear mandate to fight corruption and promote social justice, even though his role focuses on security and diplomacy. Here is an overview of key policy challenges facing the conservative newcomer: – Change in foreign policy? – A constitutional law …
Read More »Across Sub-Saharan Africa, tech-enabled micro-insurance is the next big thing
INSURANCE AND MOBILE PHONES: Policymakers across the region need to implement policies and practices that stimulate growth Kampala, Uganda | ISAAC KHISA | The Sub-Saharan African region is set to be the hotbed for mobile phone services as the young population owns more devices in the next six years. …
Read More »Mozambique to vote in tense election after violent campaign
Maputo, Mozambique | AFP | Mozambique votes in a general election on Tuesday that some fear could test the country’s fragile peace, after a heated campaign marred by violence and allegations of electoral fraud. The Frelimo party, which has ruled the impoverished southern African nation since independence from Portugal in 1975, is …
Read More »Counting the Somalia peacekeeping deaths
For the first time, a reliable count on how many fatalities AMISOM has suffered | PAUL D. WILLIAMS | New evidence has made possible a more accurate estimate of how many African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) personnel have died since the mission deployed in March 2007. My previous report …
Read More »Candidates to spend millions in 2021polls
In 2016 many spent Shs500m -1bn Kampala, Uganda | RONALD MUSOKE | Money–and a lot of it this time—will be the choice campaigning tool for both incumbents and challengers in the 2021 presidential and parliamentary polls, according to a study by the Alliance for Campaign Finance Monitoring-Uganda. The civil society …
Read More »Cover Story: Visa denied
Uganda’s Who-is-Who live in fear of US travel ban Kampala, Uganda | IAN KATUSIIME | As if U.S. sanctions slapped on President Yoweri Museveni’s former right hand man, Gen. Kale Kayihura for his role as Inspector of General of Police were not bad enough, another top government official, Pius …
Read More »Ebola survivors can pass on the virus
Scientists trying to understand what role sex plays Four scientists: Professors Andrew L. Webb, Brayden G. Schindell, Jason Kindrachuk, and Jia B. Kangbai have noted one area in the spread of the Ebola hemorrhagic fever that requires further study. It is the Ebola virus’ persistence in the reproductive systems of …
Read More »Facebook researchers use maths for better translations
Paris, France | AFP | Designers of machine translation tools still mostly rely on dictionaries to make a foreign language understandable. But now there is a new way: numbers. Facebook researchers say rendering words into figures and exploiting mathematical similarities between languages is a promising avenue — even if a universal …
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