CHINA is to write off $18,6-million owed by Zanzibar in an effort to help boost the economy of Tanzania’s semi-autonomous off-shore state. The decision was announced during a meeting at State House here between a Chinese delegation and Zanzibar President Amani Karume. Karume said “the writing-off of this debt is a great relief to our […]

THE six-month ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo is holding, but the situation in the giant central African nation remains fragile, the UN special envoy to the region said on Wednesday. Kamel Morjane, the Special Representative of Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the DRC said while the situation was a great deal better compared with […]

LIBYAN leader Muammer Gadaffi announced on Wednesday his intention of creating a fund for the rehabilitation of southern Sudan, which has been torn by an 18-year civil war. During a meeting with Sudanese officials in Khartoum, Gaddafi pledged Libya would be the first contributor to the fund and said he would urge other African countries […]

NIGERIA loses several thousand children to human trafficking a year, the Vanguard newspaper said on Sunday, quoting an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report. The paper quoted the ILO report as saying that in 1996 alone, over 4 000 children were trafficked from the southern and southeast parts of the country. It said the children were […]

A DRAFT bill to divide up Nigeria’s inefficient state-run electricity company NEPA ahead of its planned privatisation is ready, officials said on Tuesday. The government last year announced plans to improve the performance of the widely criticised National Electric Power Authority and then break it up and sell it off over the next two years. […]

A South African High Court has ordered a man to pay his wife a million rand ($121 000) in damages for infecting her with HIV, it was reported on Sunday. The court ruling is the first in South Africa in which a married woman has claimed damages after her husband wilfully infected her with the […]

THE Sudanese government has said it doubts foreign oil companies, notably the Canadian company Talisman, will pull-out from the Sudan under the threat of sanctions from the United States, Sudan’s foreign minister was quoted saying to local newspapers on Tuesday. “Numerous signals we have received confirmed that all oil companies, including Talisman, will continue operating […]

A GROWING number of Swaziland schools are introducing compulsory pregnancy tests at the start of the year so that parents can hold their daughters back. The idea is that parents not waste money on school fees, uniforms and textbooks, only to have their daughters drop out later on. The kingdom’s Ministry of Education does not […]