NEWS ANALYSIS

Look to heavy investment into technology to reverse slow 2016 growth Centenary Bank and Barclays Bank of Uganda Ltd registered slower growth in profits for the year ending December 2016 but the managers say that is no problem and instead remain positive about the future. Centenary’s profits grew by 8.2% …

Paris, France | AFP |  It is an image that will long live in French political memory. As incoming president Emmanuel Macron stood in front of his cheering supporters at the Louvre on Sunday night to savour his election victory, his wife Brigitte took his hand and kissed it, tears …

Paris, France | AFP | Despite Marine Le Pen’s drubbing in the French presidential election, her far-right National Front party expanded its footprint in the political landscape — and confirmed its move into the mainstream. Her anti-immigrant, anti-Europe stance won a record 34 percent of ballots cast on Sunday, which …

Police insiders going rogue? They call themselves the Bakijambiya (Machete gang) and they pounce in the wee hours of the night. They come with pangas, iron bars, nails on wood clubs, and big knives. They chop and clobber their victims, steal their money and portable property, and rape the women …

Abuja, Nigeria | AFP |  Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday vowed to help to 82 schoolgirls who have been freed from more than three years of Boko Haram captivity after a prisoner swap. The girls — who were among more than 200 kidnapped in 2014 from the Government Girls …

Consumers want the cheap prices but local traders want the profits Hostility towards Chinese petty traders appears to be growing in Uganda but so is the dependence on Chinese imports. On April 19, the hostility erupted once again as hundreds of traders in the capital city, Kampala, staged a closed-shop …

Mbabazi court award hits Shs21bn: Attorney General’s office looks for ways of scaling back costly damages The Shs13billion court award granted to lawyer Severino Twinobusingye, known for representing Amama Mbabazi, in 2013 is probably the largest ever given out to an individual. He told The Independent recently that he has …

Palma, Mozambique | AFP |  The small, palm-fringed fishing town of Palma was meant to become a symbol of Mozambique’s glittering future, transformed by one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas projects. But construction has fallen far behind schedule and the town’s fate is uncertain after gas prices fell …

Paris, France | AFP | Pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron takes on far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the second-round run-off of France’s presidential election on Sunday. – Why is it important? – France is the eurozone’s second-biggest economy as well as a global military and diplomatic heavyweight, with veto power as …

Durban, South Africa | AFP |  African countries are becoming increasingly repressive and causing more people to leave their homes, British charity Oxfam said this week, as Germany warned of the destabilising effect migration is having on the continent. Political freedom and the problem of Africa’s brain-drain were among the …