SWEDISH aid organisation, Sida, has extended a N$2,9-million concessional loan to the Namibian Stock Exchange to upgrade its computers for share trading and administration. The loan, to be repaid over 10 years, is expected to boost the exchange’s contribution to Namibia’s economic development. Phase One of the new computer systems — equity trading and client […]

GOLD producer Goldfields posted headline earnings of R188-million for the last quarter of 1998, 25% down on the September quarter, it was announced in Johannesburg on Thursday. While gold output remained much the same, Goldfields was affected by a 4% decline in the gold price receipt, the company said. Maiden interim dividend of 50 cents […]

UNDER-17 Meridian Cup holders Ireland beat South Africa’s Under-17 squad 2-1 on Thursday at the start of the 1999 Meridian tournament at Athlone stadium in Cape Town. In other matches, Italy and Nigeria drew 1-1 in Bellville and the scheduled meeting between Portugal and Ghana was postponed due to the non-arrival of the Ghanaian team.

A STUDENT who was held hostage at the women’s hostel at the University of Venda on Monday now has to face a disciplinary hearing, despite her ordeal, for allowing a man into her room without permission. The student, who is doing her postgraduate degree, may also face charges of harbouring a wanted criminal. She was […]

INDUSTRIAL gold production will begin in Niger from 2001, according to Burkina Faso’s minister of mines, who estimates that 90 tons of the precious metal lie in three sites in the Komabandou zone, near the borders with Mali. International companies have been prospecting over the last four years, Mai Manga Boukar said on Thursday. Oil […]

FIGHTING — light arms fire followed by shelling — broke out on Sunday between Guinea-Bissau government forces loyal to President Joao Bernardo Vieira and army rebels in the capital Bissau, sources in the west African city said.The clashes were the first since a November ceasefire. Thousands have gone to Bissau’s port, controlled by Senegalese troops […]

THE Siza Water Company won a 30-year privatisation contract on Friday for water and waste water services provision to the Dolphin Coast — the first contract of its kind. The borough north of Durban includes Ballito, Chaka’s Rock, Salt Rock, Uhlali, Sheffield Beach, as well as the Dolphin Coast municipal area, and has a population […]

SOUTH Africa’s first home grown satellite is set to spend at least the next 10 days earthbound after yet another aborted launch. Sunsat, developed at Stellenbosch University, was to have been launched last year, but continual weather problems have seen the launch delayed innumerable times. The latest scheduled launch, on Thursday, was aborted after one […]

A Fifa inspection team has described hotels in one of Nigeria’s venues for the World Youth Cup as “poor” and ordered the organisers to improve them within a month, state-run News Agency of Nigeria reported on Friday. “The hotels in the Ibadan centre are a shadow of their former selves, poor…but there is room for […]

THE International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) established by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to investigate the 1994 genocide in Rwanda left for Kigali on Sunday on its first fact-finding mission after holding its inaugural session in Addis Ababa. The six-member panel under the chairmanship of Ketumile Masire, former president of Botswana, will later […]