Author: NLM Correspondent

By David Onjili South African billionaire and Mamelodi Sundowns Football Club owner, Patrice Motsepe, on Friday, March 12th, was coronated as the new Confederations of African Football (CAF) President. In the colorful event held in the Moroccan capital of Rabat, Motsepe assumed office unopposed. His three main rivals, Jacques Anuoma, Augustin Senghor, and Ahmed Yahya all withdrew their candidacy just a week to the elections. Interestingly, the three will join Motsepe in running the federation in various advisory capacities. Forbes ranks the mining magnate as Africa’s 9th richest man with an estimated wealth of $3 billion. “African football needs collective…

How a young female entrepreneur from Kenya is keeping a business afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic Urban economies in growing cities, such as Nairobi, rely partly on the contribution of tradespeople like plumbers, electricians, and painters. Many live in informal, low-income settlements, far from the rest of the city’s economy, giving rise to an opportunity mismatch for customers interested in hiring these talented artisans. Sarah Lebu, and two other enterpreneurs Kwinoja Kapiteni (Tanzania) and Chidi Uwaeme (Nigeria) formed KaziTu to fill this gap. By creating an online job-matching platform, they are helping hiring companies to find reliable talent, fast and easily.…

By Daniel Finnan Hearings started at the International Court of Justice on Monday for a maritime boundary dispute between neighbours Kenya and Somalia. However, Kenya refused to take part in the oral proceedings and the court will only examine written evidence provided by Nairobi. “The court regrets the decision of Kenya not to participate in the oral proceedings,” said presiding ICJ Judge Joan Donoghue in The Hague. The dispute centres on the maritime boundaries between the two Horn of Africa neighbours, with some 100,000 square kilometres contested, approximately the size of Iceland. Lawyers acting for the Kenyan government had blamed difficulties preparing for the…

Tullow Oil is shifting its focus and over 90 percent of its resources to West Africa, the company recently announced. The firm’s chief executive Rahul Dhir said the firm will be channeling resources to projects it considers to be productive in a bid to cut costs. “After a year of significant change for Tullow, we are now executing a robust, cash generative business plan, which is focused on our most productive assets,” said Dhir. The announcement came as Tullow, once again, watered down the value of its stake in the Kenyan oil project by Sh46.8 billion owing to low global…

A global study of family beliefs, motivations, and sources of information on schooling By Rebecca Winthrop and Mahsa Ershadi Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the global education community spent relatively little time thinking about the role of parent engagement in education. But when almost all the world’s countries shut their school doors last March, engaging parents and families moved quickly to the top of the agenda. Research confirms that a trusting relationship between families and schools has always been important. A meta-analysis across 50 studies on the impact of family engagement in education shows that effective parent engagement strategies that transform…

Africa recorded remarkable economic growth in the first 15 years of the 21st century, largely because of positive trends in the export of primary commodities, among other factors. However, this narrative of “Africa Rising” was skewed from the onset, as it focused mostly on economic growth based on gross domestic product (GDP), which is overly one-dimensional. In fact, the economic growth did not generate social inclusion through employment creation, thus failing to derive benefits from the demographic dividend of Africa’s youthful population. Coupled with this, since the 1970s, policy making in most post-independence African states has equated managing poverty with…

Strategic fire management could cut emissions and earn tradable carbon credits, generating funds to save the big cats and benefit Indigenous people By Nancy Averett In 2012 a villager walking through the forest in Mozambique’s Niassa Reserve came across a young male lion caught in a poacher’s snare. The lion lay on the ground, a noose of thick wire squeezing its lower torso. Conservation workers later freed the animal, but most lions are not so lucky. “Poaching has been a major issue over the years,” says Natasha Ribeiro, who has studied illegal hunting in Niassa Reserve and is a forest…

An Ebola outbreak in Guinea that has so far sickened at least 18 people and killed nine has stirred difficult memories of the devastating epidemic that struck the West African country between 2013 and 2016, along with neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, leaving more than 11,000 people dead. But it may not just be the trauma that has persisted. The virus causing the new outbreak barely differs from the strain seen 5 to 6 years ago, genomic analyses by three independent research groups have shown, suggesting the virus lay dormant in a survivor of the epidemic all that time. “This…

By Tim McDonnell The US is getting out of the business of backing high-carbon energy infrastructure overseas. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent that message on Mar. 9 in a speech to the US Development Finance Corporation, the federal agency that finances industrial and infrastructure projects in low- and middle-income countries. Development finance, Blinken said, “is a powerful tool for addressing the climate crisis,” and the US will use it to “help drive investment toward climate solutions.” His remarks came after a specific commitment by John Kerry, America’s top climate diplomat, at the World Economic Forum in Davos on…

The Federal College of Forestry Mechanization in Kaduna state on Thursday became the fourth school in northern Nigeria fall become victim of abductions by terrorist groups since December 2020. A viral video on social media continues to circulate with the kidnapped students cowering on a forest floor as armed captors hit them with sticks. The more than two dozen students in the video can be heard pleading for help in both English and Hausa. With one victim saying that the captors want a ransom of $1.3m. “If anybody comes to rescue them without the money, they are going to kill…