10 March 2021
“A tree that stands beside the river understands the language of the fish”
BBC Africa Live 10 March 2021. Today's wise words. Sent by Lelinu Bertrand and Marine and Kabirulawal, both from Nigeria
Patent suspension for Covid vaccine? Unlikely. WTO members have started discussing the India-South Africa proposal and 100 developing countries support it – but the rich countries oppose it and are likely to block it.
BBC Africa Live 10 March 2021. 7:41
9 March 2021
Nigeria: 10,000 refugees from Boko Haram into neighbouring Cameroon are willing to return home. The first 340 have now actually returned by bus and truck to Banki, Borno State.
BBC Africa Live 08 March 2021. 17:39
Nigeria: The traumas of the 1967-70 Biafra war have never been properly dealt with. Memorialisation and formal acknowledgement need to be done properly to heal wounds. The solution would be “(p)olitical justice (which) aims for political reforms that recognise the political nature of the crisis in the postcolonial state. The goal is to rethink or reform the political structures of colonially imposed governance. The same exclusionary political structures that led to the political crises and massacres across Nigeria in the 1960s have remained firmly in place.” The – rather vague and general – aim should be “a negotiated political reform based on recreating a state that is responsible, acceptable, legitimate to its members, and where power is devolved and decentralised to all constituencies”.
https://theconversation.com/memory-practices-are-not-enough-to-remedy-nigeria-biafra-war-injustices-156067
Nigeria: Diaspora remittances dropped dramatically because of Covid-19, from $25bn in 2019 to a mere $5.3bn in 2020. The country is very reliant on these inflows – in 2018, remittances were as high as 83% of the budget, 6.1% of GDP and 11 times higher than foreign investment inflows. The Central Bank of Nigeria has now launched a “naira for dollar” scheme to attract more remittances: for every $1 sent by Nigerians living abroad through international money transfer operators, there is a reward of 5 naira (= 1.2 dollar cents, i.e. 1,2%).
BBC Africa Live 09 March 2021. 13:20
Nigeria: James Ibori, ex-governor of Ibori State, is thought to have stolen £50m from oil-rich Ibori State. He had been convicted of money laundering in 2012 in the UK. On the basis of an agreement signed in 2016, the UK will now send back the £4.2m that UK agencies have recovered to be used for infrastructure projects (expressway Lagos-Ibadan, road Abuja-Kano, second Niger Bridge).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56333255
South Africa: Xenophobic violence, once again. In Durban, at least 2 men were injured when foreign-owned shops were raided and burnt. The attackers seem to have been young members of the former ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association. Is that the reason why no arrests have been made and the authorities limit themselves to “monitoring the situation and working with the people to find a lasting solution”?
BBC Africa Live 09 March 2021. 9:38
Why is the Gulf of Guinea a piracy hotspot?
BBC 09 March 2021. A BBC Africa daily-audio of 14’ on https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0992ncr
Uganda: The job of journalists is all but easy in Uganda. Subject to state intimidation and violence (with threats, defamation charges, detainment and beatings unpredictable and spies in the newsroom a common phenomenon), journalists are paid little and have few development opportunities. Bribes (because of low pay) and self-censorship (because they only get paid for articles that get published, so you don’t write on sensitive issues that might not get published) are common.
The article is based on interviews conducted nearly three years ago. But “recent attacks on journalists suggest the problems have not been resolved, and may be worsening”.
https://theconversation.com/why-working-as-a-journalist-in-uganda-is-particularly-tough-156505
Ethiopia: The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has announced that it will not take part in the June parliamentary elections. It accused the government of “narrowing democratic space”, having closed down OLF offices and imprisoned some of its leaders. But an OLF faction headed by deputy chairman Ararso Bikila said it would take part in the elections.
A week ago, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) of Jawar Mohammed had announced that it pulled out of the June election.
BBC Africa Live 09 March 2021. 14:05