Generous China slices headline lending to ravenous Africa by $40 billion, redirects credit to small businesses
From almost nothing 20 years ago, Chinese banks now make up about one-fifth of all lending to Africa, concentrated in a few strategic or resource-rich countries including Angola, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia. Annual lending peaked at a whopping $29.5 billion in 2016, according to figures from the China-Africa Research...
Technology: British takes Internet blimps to Zanzibar in a fragile market where Google flopped, pulled out
The Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar and Pemba are about to become a test site for a mobile internet network its creators hope will not just revolutionise lives there, but possibly across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. Only around 20 per cent of Tanzanians use the internet, according to the World Bank....
US federal agencies consider creation of integrity council to shield science from political meddling after Trump missteps
US federal agencies need to strengthen the policies that protect science used in government decision-making. They should also create a scientific-integrity council spanning many agencies, to help address political meddling by government officials. Those are some of the top conclusions of a long-awaited report from a taskforce convened by US...
Sudan crisis: International community urged to offer military incentives to surrender power to civilians
Events leading up to the resignation on January 2 of civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok have returned Sudan’s rocky democratic transition to square one. This raises fundamental questions about what needs to be done differently to revive the faltering democracy project. Hamdok had been prime minister in the joint military-civilian...
Sudan’s ruling junta agrees to mediation by UN, wants African Union and Kenya on board
The United Nations has announced that it has started consultations in Sudan to try to salvage the country’s move to democracy after a military coup. UN officials were contacting parties to look for a way forward and the army had raised no objections to the initiative, UN special representative Volker...
Human rights: The minute the word gender enters dialogue, some regions get up and leave conference room
Since the beginning of the war in Tigray in November last year, more than 1,300 incidents of rape have been reported, while many argue that more cases went unreported due to societal stigma surrounding the topic. A high number of cases of gender-based violence including gang-rape and other atrocities were...
How Maryland hospital in US obtained emergency authorisation for compassionate use of pig heart transplant
The dramatic bid to save heart failure patient David Bennett’s life at University of Maryland Medical Centre in downtown Baltimore came after he had been in the hospital for more than a month, being kept alive by an artificial breathing machine, and his medical care team determined that he was...
Patient with terminal heart failure breathing on his own after pig heart transplant, his medical team says
A medical team at the University of Maryland Medical Center announced on Monday that it had accomplished a world-first: Its surgeons had transplanted a heart from a genetically engineered pig into a human. The doctors performed the eight-hour procedure on Friday evening. As of Monday night, the man, 57-year-old David...
Sudan security forces teargas injured anti-coup protesters recovering at Khartoum Teaching Hospital
On the afternoon of December 30, security forces banged on the windows of Khartoum Teaching Hospital then fired teargas into an emergency room packed with protesters injured in a nearby demonstration. “We were around the corner trying to hide, it came right past our heads,” said a nurse who asked...
Interview: How can a global treaty to end violence against women succeed?
As Covid-19 enters a third year, so does the “shadow pandemic” of violence against women. Such violence is not new of course, but it has been fostered by lockdowns and economic blows dealt by the coronavirus. The rise in violence since early 2020 has increased awareness and stirred interest in...
