Drink-and-Drive: How Kenya’s ex-president signed away standard gauge railway deal with China without reading it
The SGR contract left no room for rescheduling of the loan of approximately Ksh400 billion ($3.8 billion). The government, it now emerges, had to sit down with unwilling Chinese government to insert a clause in the agreement that now allows for rescheduling of repayment or renegotiating the loan without ceding sovereignty.
No man, No cry: Chinese women eschew hunt for husbands, prefer ‘singledom’ as economy stutters
China’s single population aged over 15 hit a record 239 million in 2021, according to official data. Marriage registrations rebounded slightly last year due to a pandemic backlog after reaching historic lows in 2022. A 2021 Communist Youth League survey of some 2,900 unmarried urban young people found that 44 per cent of women do not plan to marry.
New survey shows Kenya’s business activity experienced marginal expansion since August
Inflation fell to 6.3 per cent year-on-year in February from 6.9 per cent a month earlier, data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics showed.
China unveils plan to drive economic growth above 5 per cent annually, IMF forecasts 3.5 per cent shrink
China started the year with a stock market rout and deflation at levels unseen since the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The property crisis and local government debt woes persisted, increasing pressure on China’s leaders to come up with new economic policies.
US sanctions Zimbabwe president over ‘criminal network of government officials and businesspeople’
Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said the changes to Zimbabwe’s sanctions regime “are intended to make clear what has always been true: our sanctions are not intended to target the people of Zimbabwe.”
Research: Junk food addicts with high ‘bliss point’ usually have low appetite for fresh fruits, vegetables and beans
A 2023 research report published in the journal Addiction found that: “Tobacco-owned foods were 29 per cent more likely to be classified as fat and sodium hyper-palatable food (HPF) and 80 per cent more likely to be classified as carbohydrate and sodium HPF than foods that were not tobacco-owned between 1988 and 2001.
Kenya new car sales plunge 15 per cent in 2023 as new taxes and weaker currency bite
Individuals and businesses bought 11,370 units last year, the Kenya Motor Industry Association said in data released on Friday, down from 13,352 units sold in 2022.
Environmentalists push Nigeria to delay Shell’s $2.4 billion sale of assets in sorely polluted Niger Delta
Activists say Shell has a history of poor divestment in the region. They point to a wellhead blowout in the Santa Barbara River, which flows through the Niger Delta, in 2021. The wellhead wasn’t producing but wasn’t decommissioned by Shell or its new owners, Aiteo Eastern E & P. The facility spewed crude oil and associated gas for 38 days and caused planet-warming methane to be released into the atmosphere, killed fish and devastated riverside farms.
Congo Brazzaville starts exporting liquified natural gas a year after Italian firm ENI launched local project
Europe has been in search of new energy sources since moving to cut off Russian supplies following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
Nigerian civil servants launch nationwide strike over soaring inflation and unmet promises
Gasoline prices have more than doubled and inflation has shot up as a result, reaching close to 30 per cent last month, the highest in nearly three decades, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
