ETHIOPIA is to receive $255-million in long-term lending from the Abidjan-based African Development Bank for the implementation of projects in agriculture, transport and public utilities, according to an agreement signed in Addis Ababa on Friday. The agreement stipulates that the Ethiopian government receive $235-million as loan and $20-million as grants to pay for project studies […]

FRANKLIN Sonn, flamboyant former ambassador to the United States, has been appointed to the board of directors of both Absa Group and Absa Bank, it was announced on Friday. Absa chairman Danie Cronje said in a statement that Absa is “delighted to have a man of such stature and vision serving on our board”.

A RESCUE team on Monday reached the site of a United Nations cargo plane downed on January 2 in Angola, the second shot down in a month, a UN spokesman said. The team was composed of 25 people who had traveled earlier to Bailundo, a stronghold of the rebel group, Unita. No other details are […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday 7.30pm. ZIMBABWEAN newspaper executive Clive Wilson, who was freed on Monday after being detained over a report of an alleged coup plot, vowed that Zimbabwe’s independent press will not be cowed. “Not for a moment,” said the British-born former editor in response to a question at a news conference at […]

DUTCH football giants Ajax Amsterdam completed a two-match tour of South Africa with a 3-2 victory over a Cape Town selection at Athlone Stadium on Wednesday. Jasper Gronkjaer put the four-time European Cup holders ahead after two minutes and former South Africa striker Grant Young levelled just before half-time. Gronkjaer struck again early in the […]

CIVIL servants in north-east Nigeria have abandoned their cars and taken to cycling to work because of the scarcity of fuel in the region. In Borno State, a semi-desert region on the border with Chad, fuel scarcity is so bad that pedal power has replaced motorised transport for all but the most senior of officials, […]

THE South African Revenue Service announced on Friday that it is to outsource its entire dispatch function to Paragon Business Forms in an initial contract worth approximately R60-million over two years. The contract, which also includes warehousing and distribution, will see the SARS phase out its inhouse computerised forms operations early this year. Paragon’s major […]

THE survival of a young Senegalese stowaway who hid for some five hours in the landing gear of an Airbus bound from Dakar to Lyon is almost a miracle, French doctors say. The stowaway, about 15, was found unconscious “in bad shape but alive” on January 17. After eight days in hospital, doctors on Sunday […]

NIGERIA’S second largest political group, the centre-right All Peoples Party (APP), is split over plans for an electoral pact in next month’s presidential elections. The leaders of the APP, which took nine of Nigeria’s 36 states in state-level elections on January 9, agreed earlier this month to team up for the poll, presenting a joint […]

MILO, the six-month-old Jack Russell puppy who underwent open heart surgery on Thursday, is showing an improvement, the University of Cape Town’s medical school said on Friday. Milo, who has a rare congenital condition which causes defects in all four chambers of his heart, was in a critical condition on Friday morning. University spokesperson Paddy […]