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Social / CSR in Central Africa

  • Congo's Sassou hails retiring dos Santos for service to Africa

    ANGOLA, 2017/09/10 Outgoing Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has received praise from his Congolese counterpart, Denis Sassou Nguesso, the ruling MPLA have said. A message accompanying a photo posted on the MPLA’s Twitter handle read: “President Dennis Sassou Nguesso pays homage to José Eduardo dos Santos, for his deeds for peace in Africa.” Dos Santos, 75, bows out as president next 38 years in charge of the former Portuguese colony. He is set to be restored by his former Defense Minister, Joao Lourenco, who led the ruling MPLA into the last elections.
  • Bill Gates sees US likely to maintain aid levels for Africa

    BOTSWANA, 2017/08/15 The US will probably maintain its current levels of aid to Africa despite President Donald Trump’s proposals to slash funding, according to Bill Gates, the world’s richest man. Trump said in May his government would no longer allocate funding for family planning, a move that has the potential to undermine aid programs in the poorest nations in the world. However, with Congress in control of the budget, it’s unlikely that all cuts proposed by the Trump government will go ahead next year, Gates said in an interview in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial capital.
  • Congo civil servants call strike over wages as crisis bites

    CONGO KINSHASA, 2017/07/22 Civil service leaders called a strike in Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday, demanding pay rises to help workers cope with a mounting economic crisis. The franc has lost 40 % of its price in the completed year, with a particularly sharp decline over the completed week, amid political turmoil and persistently low prices for Congo's key commodity exports. Inflation is expected to top 30 % this year, but wages remain unchanged.
  • Activism And The State: How African Civil Society Responds To Repression

    BURUNDI, 2017/07/09 African citizens, activists and organisations are finding new and innovative ways to resist, organise and mobilise in the face of mounting restrictions on their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association. Restrictions on civic freedoms are increasing worldwide, but are being acutely felt in African nations. According to the CIVICUS Monitor – a constantly updated tool rating nations’ fundamental civic freedoms from open to closed – 43 African nations fall under the bottom three categories of closed, repressed and obstructed with only two African nations rated as open. In most African nations, freedom of expression, assembly and association are stifled by national and non-national actors through the use of restrictive legislation, policies, and judicial persecution inclunding physical attacks, threats and detention of activists and journalists. While these restrictions generally occur at the same time as civil society groups speak out in direct opposition to public policy, there is strong evidence that restrictions increase during politically sensitive periods, like elections and prior to constitutional changes on term limits of political leaders.
  • Cameroon: Women Push for Greater Political Participation

    CAMEROON, 2017/03/12 In Cameroon, civil society groups marked this year's International Women's Day by urging women to register to vote and take on larger roles in decision making in their communities. Gender activist and singer Gracia Fonyuy, uses her voice in Yaounde to encourage women to stand up for their rights. Empowerment Part those listening to her is 45-year-old Sali Hamadikou who has, for the initial time, registered to vote. She says the majority significant thing women completed during these activities ahead of International Women's Day is that they educated men to allow their wives and daughters to register to vote, in particular in the majority-Muslim parts of northern Cameroon where she is from and where she says men are accustomed to being dominant. She says she will continue to educate additional men.
  • Angola: Bié - Hunger Programme to Absorb Over Two Hundred Million Kwanzas

    ANGOLA, 2017/01/23 Additional than two hundred million Kwanzas are expected during the fiscal year 2017 to ensure the Programme to Combat Hunger and Poverty in Andulo municipality, central Bíé province. This was said to Angop on Thursday by the chief of municipal plan division, André Fernandes, at the end of the conference with the members of the municipal hearing and social concert council (CACS).
  • Furthest recorded deaths were in South Africa, 800km from the epicentre of the 2004 tsunami

    AFRICA, 2017/01/09 AFRICA’S Indian Ocean nations and other nations from around the Indian Ocean Rim will take part in mock tsunami scenarios on Wednesday. Dubbed ‘Indian Ocean Wave 2014’ or “IOwave14”, the exercise is meant to increase preparedness, evaluate each country’s response capabilities and improve regional coordination.
  • Urban governance key to quality of life

    AFRICA, 2017/01/09 Africa’s next is urban. Quality of life for Africa’s city dwellers will, however, due depend on the quality of urban governance. Urbanisation can spur development but under current conditions, it is additional likely to compound Africa’s structural challenges. Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable as stipulated in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is no easy task. Africa’s urban people is the fastest growing globally. In less than 20 years from presently each second person in Africa is likely to live in a town or a city. This will total about 926-million people, or 438-million additional than today; the equivalent of adding the current combined populations of Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Tanzania.
  • Congolese parties petition government to withdraw from the ICC

    CONGO BRAZZAVILLE, 2016/11/06 Two parties within the Republic of Congo’s ruling coalition have petitioned the government to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), a fresh blow to the Hague-based court. Some African states have shown discontent at the court, saying the continent is unfairly targeted. Burundi and South Africa became the initial nations to officially notify the United Nations of their intentions to pull out of the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC
  • Ending Africa’s Culture of Impunity

    AFRICA, 2016/06/11 Africa has a long tradition of leaders who inflict great brutality on their own people and who, next flaunting their contempt for human rights, escape accountability for their actions as long as they remain in power. This creates a precedent of impunity for next despots. A much-needed break in the sordid trend occurred this week, as Chadian dictator Hissène Habré was sentenced to life in prison by a Senegalese court for war crimes committed during his policy from 1982 to 1990. This marks the initial time an African leader has been prosecuted and sentenced by the courts of an extra African country.