30 December 2021
Egypt: Citroën has withdrawn the commercial accused of normalising sexual harassment and apologised to all offended, saying that it understands the negative interpretation a part of their ad. “The country's parliament approved harsher penalties for sexual harassment in July, amending the penal code to make it a felony and increasing the penalty to a minimum of two years in prison instead of six months, alongside a fine of between $6,370 and $12,740.” But the law must also be applied…
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59818881
29 December 2021
Uganda: This year’s winner of the Pen Pinter Prize's International Writer of Courage award, Kakwenza Rukriabashaija, has been detained. Would it be because he has recently called Museveni’s son obese and said that “the Musevenis have imposed enormous suffering” on Uganda? Rukirabashaija is known for the novel The Greedy Barbarian, a satire describing high-level corruption in a fictional country, and also for “an account of the torture he was subjected to while in detention in 2020”: Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59809822
Ghana: A middle-income country since 2010, Ghana nevertheless depends on primary commodity exports (gold, crude oil and cocoa) for more than 80% of its foreign exchange earnings. The collapse of commodity prices in the wake of the Covid-19-caused global recession and disruptions of global commodity-based supply chains have hit the economy badly and market-based credit became unavailable or unaffordable (Ghana’s credit rating having been downgraded). The IMF had to come to the rescue.
https://theconversation.com/how-commodity-exporting-countries-like-ghana-have-been-hit-by-covid-19-155799
Covid/Senegal/Mali/Burkina Faso: Workers in the informal economy were more likely to lose their jobs and to experience decrease in earnings due to Covid-19 than workers in the formal sector. The article’s two authors’ research is based on a Facebook survey of 900 individuals – can their figures be considered representative?
https://theconversation.com/informal-workers-in-senegal-mali-and-burkina-faso-have-been-hit-harder-by-covid-19-168122
Egypt: “Who thought it would be a good idea to make an ad that enables sexual harassment in a country where 98% of women reported getting harassed at some point in their lives?” An advert by French car manufacturer Citroën, where a picture is taken of a woman without her consent, is accused of normalising sexual harassment.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-59818881