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/ 24 December 2007
China has sanctioned state-owned companies to examine three possible strategies to block BHP Billiton’s proposed takeover of mining giant Rio Tinto, a report said Monday. Strategies include forming a domestic consortium to bid for Rio Tinto, a joint bid by domestic and foreign firms, or purchasing Rio shares on the open market.
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/ 24 December 2007
"A child if I want and when I want," reads the sign at the family-health centre in Niamey where dozens of Niger women come to get free contraceptives. "I was taking the pill without my husband’s knowledge," said Zahratou Amadou, a 38-year-old mother of 10. "When he found out he repudiated me."
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/ 24 December 2007
Worried that it may be seen as insensitive to the food needs of Africa, the South African government, which is facing a general election in 2009, has chosen food security in framing a biofuel policy. After months of dilly-dallying, a strategy for the biofuel sector was accepted by the Cabinet at the start of December.
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/ 24 December 2007
After almost a decade of poor cocoa production during the 1980s, the Ghanaian government is upbeat about the subsequent growth in output of the product that is the country’s main export, providing more than 60% of foreign earnings. Swollen-shoot disease remains a headache, though.
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/ 24 December 2007
Easily portable, consumable goods from Zimbabwe are increasingly finding their way into neighbouring countries as cross-border traders search for deals to earn much-needed foreign currency. Zimbabwe is battling acute foreign-exchange shortages as its political and economic crisis drags on.
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/ 24 December 2007
Nadège Shabani, a refugee from Burundi, is a successful businesswoman plying her trade in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. She owns a thriving beauty salon, restaurant and a clothes shop. She is an example of the foreigners who are being accused of ”taking away” business opportunities from locals.
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/ 24 December 2007
The bicycle has been hailed as having done ”more than anything else in the world … to emancipate women” — the words of 19th-century American feminist Susan B Anthony. But for many women in South Africa, culture and tradition make it difficult to take advantage of the increased mobility offered by bicycles.
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/ 24 December 2007
Recent international reports show Zimbabwe’s economic decline hastened by continued capital flight. Economic analysts say the continued injection of foreign direct investment largely depends on the reversal of the Zimbabwean government’s controversial political and economic policies.
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/ 23 December 2007
Thabile* was 15 when she was forced to marry a man in his thirties in the Mgudlulweni village near Mount Frere in the Eastern Cape. Her parents agreed to "give" their daughter to him. She did not know about the marriage or consent to it. On her way to school one day, four men abducted her. "I was walking to school and they grabbed me. They took me to a man I did not know to be my husband," Thabile says.
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/ 23 December 2007
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The battle between President Thabo Mbeki and new African National Congress president Jacob Zuma is far from over, if perceptions conveyed in the Sunday newspapers are anything to go by. An unnamed Mbeki ally was quoted as saying ”all is not lost”.