Tag: africanews

Students of Niger’s Niamey University are up in arms and on Friday protested for better living and housing conditions. They burned tyres, blocked the Kennedy Bridge, connecting the campus’s right bank and left bank and erected barricades. Students are also demanding the payment of about 10 months of arrears of scholarships and say they are tired of the promises of the government of Mohamed Bazoum. “Firstly on an academic level, the critical shortage of research professors. We have faculties today, like the Faculty of Law, which since its creation had…

The pandemic has forced many Christian Ghanaians to change their religious practices, with churches turning to online services and donations, and live streaming funerals. More than 70 percent of the West African country’s 30 million people are Christian, mainly Pentecostals or Evangelists, who have had to abide by strict rules in churches to contain the spread of the coronavirus. “We are following the government’s instructions to the letter. But Covid-19 has significantly affected our attendance,” said Reverend Kofi Oduro Agyeman-Prempeh from the Destiny Adenta church in a suburb of the…

In a luxury villa on Lake Togo, ten young West African screenwriters are getting a rare chance to hone their skills and see their work on the small screen. The Togo initiative by Maison Junior association brings together writers from five countries with the idea of eventually crafting the second season of the French series “Junior des idees au Or” –- “Junior with the golden ideas” — to become the first major French series written entirely in French-speaking West Africa. The animated film takes a look at the daily lives…

As political tensions and uncertainty continue to rise in Chad, our journalist Ruth Laetitia Lago had a talk with Attorney Max Loalngar to get more insight on the current happenings. Ruth: Good day, and welcome to Africanews. We have with us the head of the Coordination des Actions Citoyennes du Tchad, whose civil platform called for a peaceful march against the junta’s seizure of power in Chad on Tuesday, April 27 after the death of President Idriss Deby Itno. Several demonstrators lost their lives and many others were injured. Since…

There is still no consensus on the temporary lifting of patents on COVID-19 vaccines. The idea is to be able to accelerate global production in order to fight the pandemic, which continues to take its toll. The laboratories are generally opposed to this because, according to them, it would deprive them of a return on their costly investments. This measure has been demanded for months at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) by many countries such as India and South Africa. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stated her position as the body’s…

Opposition fighters withdrew from the Somali capital on Friday, ending a tense standoff with pro-government troops after a dispute over delayed elections triggered the country’s worst political violence in years. Hundreds of heavily-armed gunmen pulled out of strongholds in Mogadishu they had occupied since late April when a long-running political crisis turned deadly with clashes erupting between rival factions of the security forces. Under a deal reached by the warring sides this week, opposition troops began leaving their positions in the capital, and key roads sealed off with sandbags and…

South Sudan has issued an order regulating fees charged by private schools. According to the country’s education ministry, schools will not charge more than 80,000 South Sudanese Pounds (about $615) from day students. The directive also mandates boarding schools to charge not more than 200,000 Pounds or $1,535 per year. Some schools in South Sudan charge as much as $5,000 or more a year. Average income in the country is $1,120. 82% of the population is considered poor. “The Ministry of General Education and Instruction has received abundant complaints from…

Residents of South Africa’s Gauteng Province are decrying on the poor state of the roads despite accounting for the seventh biggest GDP in the Southern African country. It is estimated that the province has well over twenty-one thousand potholes according to the state. Gauteng, also known as South Africa’s national flower is peppered across most of the bi-ways of the country. Meanwhile, in Johannesburg, people have started taking things into their own hands. Through some self initiatives, people and resident associations are seemingly running parallel government services. “The work we…

The United Nations announced Thursday it has released $65 million for humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, including $40 million for the Tigray region where a military operation launched in November has escalated into a war in which widespread atrocities are reported and thousands have been killed. The U.N. humanitarian office said the remaining $25 million will fund aid operations in the rest of Ethiopia, including in response to drought in the Somali and Oromia regions. It said funds will be used to treat children with severe acute malnutrition, rehabilitate water systems…

South Africa’s President Ramaphosa vowed to root out corruption at an Iftar dinner on Thursday in Cape Town with business leaders and the clergy. Ramaphosa’s comments come amid a political turning point this week after the ruling party suspended its secretary-general, Elias Magashule, over graft charges. But a defiant Magashule, who is the first top party official to be temporarily forced out under a new policy aimed at turning the page on a litany of graft scandals, said he was not going anywhere. Instead, he said he was suspending Ramaphosa…