SILVIA ALOISI, Abidjan | Wednesday IVORY Coast’s ruling junta has arrested several people – including two French nationals – close to presidential hopeful Alassane Ouattara, accusing them of plotting to sow disorder ahead of a presidential election. A junta official accused the Ouattara camp of recruiting people to ”carry out sabotage to prevent the election […]
ETHIOPIA’S late Emperor Haile Selassie will be reburied on November 5 in a ceremony aimed at restoring the dignity of a monarch who died in murky circumstances 25 years ago. The body of the aged emperor, who was deposed by military officers in 1974 and was either murdered or simply allowed to die of neglect […]
MANOAH ESIPISU AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lusaka | Wednesday ZAMBIAN Finance Minister Katele Kalumba is optimistic that Zambia will win debt relief next month under an initiative spearheaded by the IMF and the World Bank – but if it fails to do so, it faces a potentially crippling $440m debt servicing bill in the next year […]
PRESIDENT Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has ordered the return of a confiscated diamond, worth up to $20m, to a local businessman. The diamond, of about 267 carats, was seized in June. Its owner, Alphonse Ngoyi Kasanji, was imprisoned while authorities investigated reports that it had come from a concession owned […]
A ZAMBIAN court has granted a divorce to a man whose wife locked him in the bedroom every night to stop him committing adultery, a Zambian newspaper said. Apparently, the man’s wife, Lifuna Nyambe, told judge Alfred Shilibwa that she was afraid that if she left the bedroom door open, her husband would sneak out […]
EARLY harvests are improving food supplies in the west of Kenya but shortages in drought ravaged regions are getting worse, the government said. Harvesting in the breadbasket region has been promising, but food shortages are expected to persist in the arid Eastern, North Eastern and parts of the Rift Valley and these areas will continue […]
THE newly-elected government in Mauritius is to wage war on corruption in an effort to restore the island’s economy to health. President Cassam Uteem told parliament the country’s finances needed to be cleaned up and judicial and economic reforms enacted. Uteem said the budget deficit was unsustainable, public debt was running at unprecedented levels and […]
MOROCCO has put a 35% stake in state-run Maroc Telecom (MT) up for sale in its largest privatisation operation to date in a bid to speed up the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry The government plans to keep a 51% stake in MT and will float the remaining 14% on local and foreign stock markets. […]
NIGERIA’S second stock exchange market has been switched on in Abuja for a trial run, but no company was listed at its inauguration. The automated globalised trading system was used for mock trading in shares. Nigeria already has one stock exchange in Lagos, the country’s economic capital. It is hoped that the Abuja stock exchange […]
REUTERS, Cape Town | Wednesday RAPE in South Africa is massively under-reported, according to the annual report of the country’s Medical Research Council, with victimisation by the rapist or his friends and the likelihood of dismissive treatment by the police playing a major role. ”We found 1 _300 completed rapes per 100 000 women in […]