Praia, Cape Verde | AFP | The World Health Organization has estimated that disease strips hundreds of millions of dollars from Africa’s economic output, as the burden of untreated disease hugely outweighs the potential expense of healthcare. In a report published at the end of a three-day UN forum for …
Read More »The battle to bring affordable antivenoms to Africa
Watamu, Kenya | AFP | Snake antivenoms have been around for 125 years, are effective and can be produced cheaply at scale. Yet Africa, with its abundance of deadly snakes, has an alarming shortage of the life-saving medicine. Experts and campaigners blame a combination of weak production capacity, feeble …
Read More »C-section 50 times more deadly for women in Africa: study
Paris, France | AFP | The death rate among women undergoing a C-section to deliver a baby is about 50 times higher in Africa than in most wealthy nations, researchers said Friday. One in 200 women perished during or soon after a caesarean in a sampling of nearly 3,700 births …
Read More »COMMENT: Africa’s digital generation gap
Governments have only just awoken to the digital economy but are stifling not supporting startups Project Syndicate | Perseus Mlambo | Africa is the youngest place in the world. But because African heads of state tend to be older – with an average age of 62 – they are out of …
Read More »Pan-African bank unveils full operations in United Kingdom
Kampala, Uganda | ISAAC KHISA | Pan-African lender, United Bank for Africa, has unveiled a full operation in the United Kingdom, opening up trade opportunities between the continent and European nations. This follows authorization of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for UBA (UK) Limited …
Read More »Invisible children of Africa
Children who have no birth certificate cannot prove their age, parentage, or identity, or get official papers COMMENT | Dominique Nouvian Ouattara | A name, an official identity, and a nationality recognised by everyone: most of us take these things for granted. Yet, for nearly a quarter-billion children around the …
Read More »Fallacy of better democracy
The claim that democracy fares better in the West than in Africa is a mistake | STEVEN FRIEDMAN | One day, if they follow instructions, Africa’s new democracies will grow up to be “real” like those of Western Europe and North America. This assumption makes little sense – but it …
Read More »Africa’s leaders gather to launch new health financing initiative.
Addis Ababa | THE INDEPENDENT | African Heads of State and Government, Ministers of Health and Finance, business leaders and global partners gathered yesterday ahead of the 32nd Summit of the African Union (AU), to launch a new initiative aimed at increasing commitments for health, improving the impact of spending and …
Read More »Afreximbank’s new fund to catalyse FDI flows in Africa
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the equity investment fund created recently by the African Export-Import Bank will catalyse foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into Africa’s trade and export sectors. Prof. Benedict Oramah, the bank’s president, said during the opening of the Financing …
Read More »COMMENT: Selling Africa’s good news stories
How to stop negative Africa stereotypes that feed western hunger for one-dimensional narratives COMMENT | SHAYERA DARK | Project Syndicate | Anywhere in the world, freelance journalism is an extreme career choice. The job requires withstanding pitch rejections, ignored queries, stolen story ideas, and delayed payments. It means reconciling oneself …
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