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/ 23 January 2008
With most formal banks inaccessible to many Africans, the service of cellphone banking is expanding to the poor on the continent. Mary Kimani examines how financial institutions are extending their services through the ubiquitous usage of cellphones in rural areas.
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/ 22 January 2008
The World Bank and African Development Bank, acting over the turmoil in Kenya, said on Tuesday they may have to adjust lending programmes if unrest persists following a disputed poll. ”We wish to continue working with the people of Kenya … but it is difficult to do so effectively in an environment of instability,” they said.
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/ 18 January 2008
An eight-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, the Health Ministry said on Friday, bringing the toll to 97 in the nation worst hit by the H5N1 virus. The boy was the seventh person from the Jakarta satellite city of Tangerang to die of the disease since October. He died at 4am local time in a Jakarta hospital, the ministry’s bird-flu centre said.
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/ 17 January 2008
Secondary school attendance can lead to a lower risk of HIV infection amongst young people in rural South Africa, according to a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health on Thursday. The study examined sexual behaviour and HIV prevalence among 916 young men and 1Â 003 young women aged 14 to 25.
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/ 16 January 2008
Press-freedom groups agree that an increase in arrests, intimidation and harassment of journalists in Niger is impeding development in one of the poorest countries in the world. At least 14 journalists were arrested in Niger in 2007. Four of them are still in prison awaiting sentencing.
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/ 15 January 2008
Nigeria will not pour more cash into power, having spent -billion in the last seven years with little to show for it, until it has a clear idea of how to revamp the sector, President Umaru Yar’Adua said on Monday. Yar’Adua took power on May 29 with a pledge to declare a ”national emergency” on power and energy, but he has yet to formally take the step.
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/ 15 January 2008
Madagascar’s only passenger railway is a lifeline for dozens of isolated mountain villages set back from the coast and more and more tourists are falling for its old-world charm. However, the ageing line is facing an uncertain future, at a time when Madagascar is struggling to turn around its dismal economy.
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/ 13 January 2008
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s talk of creating a new growth and well-being index for France is part of a mounting global campaign that many economists believe will shape civilisation and democracy in the 21st century. Sarkozy presented his recruitment of Nobel prize-winning economists Jospeh Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to work on a quality-of-life index.
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/ 11 January 2008
Tax collectors from 39 countries around the world meeting in an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development-sponsored conference on Friday agreed to support a further conference specifically on taxation in Africa. The conference will be hosted by the South African Revenue Service, and will take place in May this year.
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki said on Saturday he was ready to form a government of national unity to end post-election violence that has killed hundreds of people and forced 250 000 to flee their homes. The development could be a breakthrough after a week-long stalemate between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
President Mwai Kibaki is open to the idea of a coalition government to end Kenya’s post-election crisis but only if the opposition meets his terms, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Friday. ”There is a great deal of hope,” said Tutu, trying to mediate to end turmoil that has killed more than 300 people and threatened one of Africa’s strongest economies.
Cambodia suffered its worst-ever outbreak of dengue fever last year and it killed 407 people, most of them children, the highest toll in nearly a decade. Dengue, which causes fever had infected nearly 40 000 people since the first outbreaks last May, Ngan Chantha, director of the Health Ministry’s anti-dengue programme, said on Friday.
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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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/ 18 December 2007
Microcredit, tiny loans to the world’s poorest, is booming and now benefits more than half a billion people but Africa and Latin America lag behind Asia and unscrupulous lenders are cashing in. The Microcredit Summit Campaign surveyed more than 3 000 microcredit bodies around the world and found they reported reaching 133-million people by the end of 2006.
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/ 18 December 2007
Palestinians were given a powerful signal of international and Arab support for an independent state on Monday night, with ,4-billion in aid to revive their moribund economy and bolster renewed but faltering peace negotiations with Israel.
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/ 18 December 2007
The World Bank is planning projects in Africa with China’s Export-Import Bank to address concerns that Beijing is taking more than it gives as it scours the continent for oil and minerals. World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the pros and cons of the country’s push into Africa had been an important topic during his talks with senior officials.
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/ 14 December 2007
Israel must ease restrictions on the Palestinians if efforts led by Tony Blair to boost the Palestinian economy are to be successful, the World Bank and Oxfam said on Thursday. Next Monday Blair, representing the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers, is to chair a conference in Paris of 90 countries and organisations.
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/ 8 December 2007
The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. But pivotal to the United States investigation into Iran’s suspect nuclear-weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar.
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/ 7 December 2007
Kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, eurocrats and countless diplomats from 80 countries will mingle on Friday evening at a sprawling exhibition centre in the east of Lisbon, at the biggest gathering of European and African leaders ever staged.
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/ 6 December 2007
As Portugal prepares to host a summit of African and European leaders, the construction in its ex-colony Angola bears testimony to China’s growing influence on the continent. An army of Chinese construction workers is transforming the skyline of Luanda in an alliance which has put the squeeze on European partners.
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/ 4 December 2007
The United States will slap travel and financial sanctions on about 40 more people with ties to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has cracked down hard on dissent, a senior US official said on Monday. ”Mugabe’s tyranny needs to end,” said US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer.
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/ 30 November 2007
Statistics that indicated HIV/Aids numbers were lower than previously thought was cold comfort, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Friday. Speaking in Pretoria a day before World Aids Day, Tutu said that while the country might say things had improved, it was unacceptable that 600 people died of Aids everyday in South Africa.
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/ 30 November 2007
Thousands of Zimbabwean war veterans gathered in Harare on Friday to lead a ”million-man march” in support of President Robert Mugabe’s bid to extend his rule despite a severe economic crisis blamed on his government. Mugabe (83) and in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, is seeking re-election in presidential and parliamentary elections set for March 2008.
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/ 30 November 2007
Zimbabwe’s 2008 budget seems bereft of concrete measures to curb hyperinflation and ill suited to provide the economic rebound it promises a population faced with growing hardship. The Southern African country, facing the uncertainties of presidential and parliamentary elections next year, is in the grip of a punishing recession.
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/ 29 November 2007
Overtaken as the largest funder of global HIV/Aids programmes, the World Bank is now focusing on easing the economic damage inflicted by the syndrome in Africa and finding ways of controlling its spread through better prevention, care and treatment. Global funding for HIV/Aids reached -billion in 2007 compared to ,6-billion available in 2001.
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/ 27 November 2007
International lenders have signed up a -million loan for the construction of a pan-African submarine cable to slash communication costs in the region. Five lenders, including World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the African Development Bank, will deliver the money for the 23-nation East Africa Submarine System (EASSy) cable that will run from South Africa to Sudan.
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/ 27 November 2007
Equity markets in the emerging world have weathered the subprime credit crunch in developed markets more easily than any previous market turmoil, and are expected to remain a sought-after investment destination — if not a safe haven — for many years to come, according to the head of equity research at Old Mutual Investment Group South Africa.
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/ 25 November 2007
Mozambique will finally take control this week of the biggest dam in sub-Saharan Africa, which had remained in Portuguese hands for more than three decades after the former colonial power’s departure. ”We are finally going to be able to use the dam to satisfy the energy needs of our country,” said President Armando Guebuza.
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/ 23 November 2007
With a United States naval ship stationed off Bangladesh’s coast, US military officials prepared on Friday to deliver much-needed food and medical supplies to the hundreds of thousands that Cyclone Sidr left homeless and hungry, a top US military commander said.
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/ 22 November 2007
Sporadic riots broke out in the Senegalese capital on Thursday against a ban on street hawking the day after one of the country’s most violent protests in recent decades. Police said at least 200 people have been arrested following violent protests that rocked the otherwise stable West African country on Wednesday.
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/ 22 November 2007
The Bangladesh government pledged on Thursday to feed more than two million people left destitute by Cyclone Sidr amid warnings the country faces acute food shortages after the storm ravaged crops. The pledge comes as officials and relief agencies struggle to get desperately needed rice, drinking water and tents to remote villages.
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/ 21 November 2007
A week after a cyclone killed nearly 3 500 people on the Bangladesh coast, relief workers said on Wednesday they had been able to get food, medicine and other provisions to almost all those affected. A relief operation by civil authorities and the army, navy and airforce was at full force after roads blocked by fallen trees has been cleared.