OPINION: Appeal by China’s President for true multilateralism must be embraced

The number of COVID-19 cases in Ethiopia has been increasing. The Delta variant has been identified recently in the country, but officials are still investigating if it is driving the resurgence.

South Africa is rich in natural heritage, and that’s universally supported and appreciated.  But it’s also extremely rich in cultural heritage, but that is a double-edged sword, writes Janet Whitton.

The Institute of Election Management Services in Africa (IEMSA) says going to the local government elections, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) will face many challenges, including the distribution of ballot papers.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari is about to take over the presidency of the Pan-African Agency of the Great Green Wall – the continent’s effort to restore degraded cropland, grazing areas and woodlands bordering the Sahara Desert. He takes over from Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, president of Mauritania.

South Africans are heading to the polls to elect their local government leaders but with the current state of municipalities, more than anything, these elections will be futile because the very same leaders will campaign for the next five years instead of accounting for the last five, writes Vusi Gumbi.

A recent report by the global advocacy organisation Amnesty International painted a dire picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Somalia. Based on interviews with health workers, government officials, and finance and debt relief experts, the report concludes that the government’s response to the pandemic has been “wholly inadequate”

The phrase “Never Forget” is often associated with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But what does this phrase mean for U.S. students who are too young to remember? What are they being asked to never forget?

The youth of the country need to be taught to be South African youth and accordingly behave like historical young people of South Africa. Rhetorical as it may sound, the current generation of South African youth are not behaving in tandem with the past young generations.

London-based GB News channel has ruffled feathers with its raw take on current affairs, paving a way for a far-right, pro-Brexit agenda that is set to dominate the UK politics for a while longer as long as the Conservatives are in power, write Abbey Makoe.

Market research firm, Ipsos, says a recent political opinion poll has shown a possible decrease in support for the African National Congress in the upcoming Local Government Elections.

Nigeria’s journey to the Petroleum Industry Act started in 2000 under President Olusegun Obasanjo, who inaugurated an oil and gas sector reform implementation committee. The committee’s report formed the basis of the first Petroleum Industry Bill eight years later.

In a rare no-holds-barred public repudiation, during which the traditional diplomatic decorum was temporarily placed in abeyance – the Chinese authorities in SA shred into pieces a US government report that persists on Washington’s standpoint that COVID-19 could have originated in Wuhan, China.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way elections are conducted across the world. South Africa, too, is faced with an unprecedented situation of having to decide whether to postpone its municipal elections, scheduled for 27 October.

On the 20th of August 2021, Minister of the South African Police Service (SAPS), General Bheki Cele, announced the official release of the national crime statistics for quarter one (April - June) of the 2021/22 financial year period. The statistics revealed that contact crimes such as murder, attempted murder, sexual offences and all categories of assault registered a staggering 60,6% increase, compared to the corresponding period of the previous financial year.

The International Labour Organisation states that the world average ratio of informal to formal jobs is 2 to 1, yet in South Africa it is 1 to 2, suggesting that the majority of the 11 million missing jobs are in the informal sector.

Nigeria is sitting on a demographic goldmine that could transform the economy. About 60% of Nigeria’s 200 million people are under the age of 25, and that number is expected to increase significantly by 2050.

Images of scores of desperate Afghan men, women and children – some clinging to a slowly moving US plane in a bid to sneak in, painted a horrific picture of America’s gross foreign policy failure.

Since the record-breaking success of Ramsey Nouah’s 2019 sequel to the Nollywood classic, Living in Bondage, the Nigerian film industry has been overtaken by a frenzy of remakes and sequels of classics from the 1990s.

There’s been an increase in COVID-19 deaths across Africa since mid-July 2021. But the impact of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa remains markedly lower compared to the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Apart from the annihilation of millions of people around the world that the advent of Covid-19 has brought with it since 2019, the pandemic also exposed the often hidden yet glaring socio-economic universal inequities, writes Abbey Makoe.

After General Elections and seats in Parliament are allocated according to parties proportionally based on the votes they have received, Members of Parliament deployed by various parties take an oath of office, affirming their faithfulness to the republic in discharging their duties in accordance with Schedule 2 of the Constitution.

Political economist Moeletsi Mbeki says African National Congress (ANC) economic policies are not focused on the poor people but only on the middle class in the country.

Like during religious festivals or activities of global significance, opposing sites on battlegrounds pause to show respect, including during Olympic Games. But not the American bombs, writes Abbey Makoe.

At first glance, a recently granted South African patent relating to a “food container based on fractal geometry” seems fairly mundane. The innovation in question involves interlocking food containers that are easy for robots to grasp and stack. On closer inspection, the patent is anything but mundane. That’s because the inventor is not a human being – it is an artificial intelligence (AI) system called DABUS.

South Africa has a two-tier health system. The public sector is wholly funded by the government and serves the majority of the population. The private sector is partly funded by the state and by patients. Around 27% of South Africans have access to private healthcare.

Any notion that COVID-19 was going to last for just a few months was very much misplaced in 2020. Especially after it was recognised that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was largely spread through the airborne route, all indications were that it would cause repeat bouts of waves. This is what happened in the flu epidemic of 1918.

With rising cases of the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Nigeria, there is heightened concern about how well the country is prepared to deal with them. The Conversation Africa’s Wale Fatade asked public health expert Doyin Odubanjo what Nigeria should do.

These events undoubtedly give rise to the temptation to jump onto the regular bandwagon of rubbishing the national team and local football. But a couple of pertinent questions arise; first and foremost being “and then what?”, writes Sipho Kekana. 

Despite the increase in COVID-19 vaccine uptake, many South Africans are still hesitant to take the vaccination. The circulation of misinformation about it poses the danger of hampering efforts to control the pandemic.

Although Africa has proven its potential as a fast-rising home to brilliant innovations, many innovators in the continent are struggling, writes John Omo.