News Nigeria: Forex – Lagos Assembly Urges Tinubu to Reduce Foreign Trips, Pilgrimages [ad_1] The Lagos State House of Assembly, yesterday, called on the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government to reduce foreign trips for seminars and conferences by ministries and agencies as well as regulate religious pilgrimages as part of measures to halt the continued downward slide in the value of the naira against the US dollar. While the dollar closed at N1,534.39 at the official market on Monday, according to the FMDQ data, it exchanged on Tuesday at N1,534 at the official […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 4
Africa Africa: World News in Brief – DR Congo Clashes, Invest in Ending Polio, Say #idont to Child Marriage [ad_1] Tensions remain high in North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), particularly in the town of Sake, as clashes persist between M23 rebels and Government forces, the UN mission in the country, MONUSCO, reported on Wednesday. Violence last week forced thousands to flee, and fighting occurred on Tuesday in the outskirts of Sake, which is located some 20 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital, Goma. "Our peacekeeping mission is continuing to support the Congolese […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 3
Africa Africa: The World’s Coral Reefs Are Bigger Than We Thought – but It Took Satellites, Snorkels and Machine Learning to See Them [ad_1] The world's coral reefs are close to 25% larger than we thought. By using satellite images, machine learning and on-ground knowledge from a global network of people living and working on coral reefs, we found an extra 64,000 square kilometres of coral reefs - an area the size of Ireland. That brings the total size of the planet's shallow reefs (meaning 0-20 metres deep) to 348,000 square kilometres - the size of Germany. This figure represents whole coral reef […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 2
Africa West Africa Trade Will Take a Hit As Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso Leave Ecowas [ad_1] The membership of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has been whittled down from 15 to 12 following the unilateral withdrawal of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso in February. Founded in 1975, Ecowas is one of eight regional economic communities recognised by the African Union to foster regional integration on the continent. Its main objective is to create a single, large trading bloc through economic cooperation. Since 1975, Ecowas and its sister organisation the West African Economic […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 3
Africa Africa: Why Having Human Remains Land On the Moon Poses Difficult Questions for Members of Several Religions [ad_1] Sending human remains to the Moon on the first commercial lunar lander, Peregrine 1, on Jan. 8, 2024, along with scientific instruments, caused a controversy. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, objected, saying that "the moon holds a sacred place" in Navajo and other tribal traditions and should not be defiled in this way. The inside of the lander was to be a kind of "space burial" for remains of some 70 people. Each of the families had […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 1
Africa Africa: Wagner Group Is Now Africa Corps. What This Means for Russia’s Operations On the Continent [ad_1] In August 2023, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died after his private jet crashed about an hour after taking off in Moscow. He had been Russia's pointman in Africa since the Wagner Group began operating on the continent in 2017. The group is known for deploying paramilitary forces, running disinformation campaigns and propping up influential political leaders. It has had a destabilising effect. Prigozhin's death - and his aborted mutiny against Russian military commanders two months earlier - has […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 2
Africa Africa: IcJ’s Gaza Genocide Case – Big Win, but With What Effect? [ad_1] Ensuring Israel's compliance with the provisional measures will require action by other international bodies, states and civil society. On 26 January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered provisional measures in South Africa's case against Israel on allegations of genocide in Gaza. Securing the order, which was hailed as a major achievement, is one thing - seeing to its implementation is another. With this decision, the ICJ instructed Israel to prevent genocide, ensure Israeli forces don't commit genocide, and […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 2
Africa Africa: Senegal’s Democracy Is in Peril [ad_1] The looming danger of democratic collapse is a challenge to friends of Senegal and democracy to do better. The sudden actions by Senegal's president to postpone this month's presidential election by 10 months threaten to seriously undermine political stability and peace in a nation that has been a resilient democracy in West Africa, where multiple military coups d'état have occurred in recent years. This move poses risks of authoritarianism, violence and economic setbacks for Senegal's 17 million people, and […] todayFebruary 15, 2024 2
Africa Africa: The South Must Unite to End Debt and Shape a New Economic Order [ad_1] The inequities of the global financial system have changed little for decades. What's new, with the climate crisis, is the urgency of fixing them. On 4 February 1975, Senegal's then President Leopold Senghor declared to a meeting of the non-aligned states: "We in the third world have to use our natural resources to break the traditional patterns of world trade...This conference must above all define the objectives of the new economic order and adopt methods of realising these objectives." […] todayFebruary 15, 2024