Africa Top10 News

1African Governance Progress Lagging Behind Needs & Expectations

The 2018 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), launched by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, highlights that public governance progress in Africa is lagging behind the needs and expectations of a growing population, composed mainly of young people. Despite strong GDP growth over the last ten years, Africa has failed to generate economic opportunities for its booming youth population. Over the last decade, Overall Governance has on average maintained a moderate upward trajectory, with three out of four of Africa’s citizens (71.6%) living in a country where governance has improved.

SOURCES: Africa.com

2Green Energy: A Relatively New Market in Somalia

With a company backed by his own funds, Guled Wiliq along with friends and family has brought electricity to 1,000 people so far, through installing 70 kilowatts of solar panels. Digital technologies frequently collide with rural realities. Most of Wiliq’s customers pay in installments, as they can’t afford solar panels outright. Sometimes he has to take a mix of money and goats to get a deal done; given the high upfront costs, Wiliq’s solar home system has just six customers. Power OffGrid recently acquired a smaller solar company, Wiliq says, with $60,000 in sales.

SOURCES: Ozy

3The Future of Nigeria’s Oil Industry

By early next year, the largest offshore production vessel ever delivered to Nigeria will start pumping crude from a deposit deep beneath the seabed, boosting the West African country’s oil output by about 10 percent. The project, viewed as the most ambitious in Nigeria’s history, could help to push production to a record by 2022.

SOURCES: Bloomberg

4Saving an Hour of Natural Light in North Africa

Morocco has decided to scrap winter time and will instead keep its clocks at summer time, GMT+1, all year around. The announcement comes less than two days before the clocks would have gone back by one hour on Sunday. The North African nation joins a number of others, mainly in Africa and Asia, which do not use daylight saving.

SOURCES: BBC

5Statelessness in Africa

Many South Sudanese living in Sudan are being forced to live on the margins as they have no way to prove their identity. That’s because they were there before South Sudan became an independent country seven years ago.

SOURCES: Al Jazeera

6African Island Launches Novel Financing Instrument

The Republic of Seychelles has launched the world’s first sovereign blue bond — a financial instrument designed to support sustainable marine and fisheries projects. Proceeds from the bond will support the expansion of marine protected areas‚ improved governance of priority fisheries and the development of the Seychelles’ blue economy.

SOURCES: Business Day Live

7Tunisian Officials Battle to Stop Smuggling

Tunisia started digging trenches and setting up monitoring systems provided by Western allies on the Libyan border in 2015. Routes that had been used for decades to smuggle cheap fuel, pasta and wheat from Libya to Tunisia, were also being used by Islamic militants to transport drugs and arms. Officials say shutting the routes has helped prevent a repeat of attacks such as the one in 2015 when a Libyan-trained Tunisian shot dead dozens of tourists on a Tunisian beach. But the crackdown took the livelihood of thousands, many of whom have joined the protests.

SOURCES: Reuters

8Pledges Come In as South Africa Launches Investment Summit

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he has been ‘overwhelmed’ by the level of interest in an investment summit and that his plans to lure $100 billion over the next five years are well ahead of target. Since announcing the investment drive in April, China, the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz unit have pledged $35.5 billion.

SOURCES: BusinessTech

9Uganda’s Pay-as-you-go Solar Program

The service provides a simple and inexpensive way to power homes and businesses in Uganda. M-KOPA, which offers affordable, safe and clean energy to three million people in East Africa has launched Mastercard’s Quick Response (QR) payment technology. The partnership will also provide Ugandans with easy access to information and finance for a range of productive assets.

SOURCES: Ventures Africa

10How Zimbabwe can Leverage its Popularity Status

Zimbabwe, with its natural wonders and ancient ruins, has recently been listed as one of the best countries to visit by Lonely Planet’s ‘Best in Travel 2019’. What seems like a vote of confidence in Zimbabwe’s tourism industry is in fact a sign of stagnation. Zimbabwe’s decades-long appearance on global travel recommendations shows the country has not fully taken advantage of tourism, despite industry leaders’ enthusiasm.

SOURCES: Quartz Africa

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