across Africa in five minutes

RWANDA

Military-grade spyware leased by the Israeli firm NSO Group to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories. Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, a human rights group, had access to a list of more than 50,000 numbers and shared it with the news organizations, which did further research and analysis. Amnesty’s Security Lab did forensic examination of the phones.

LESOTHO

Lesotho has finalized a new tax treaty with Mauritius, alleviating fears in the southern African nation that multinational corporations were dodging taxes through shell companies. The new agreement, which sets out the taxation rules for companies that run Lesotho businesses from Mauritius, came into effect earlier this month. It replaces a 1997 treaty that, in recent years, the Lesotho authorities complained was unfair. “The process for renegotiating the treaty was initiated by Lesotho in recognition that the old treaty was compromising Lesotho’s interests and because some of the key elements of a modern tax treaty were missing,” according to a brief provided to ICIJ by the Lesotho Revenue Authority.

BURKINA FASO

President Roch Kabore has fired Cherif Sy in the wake of widespread protests against insecurity on June 26, 2021. At the beginning of June, Burkina Faso saw its worst terror attack on civilians since the conflict with armed groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) began in 2015. Sy was at the helm of the defence ministry since then. At least 138 people were killed in the village of Solhan. The attack triggered a wave of protests against insecurity.

NIGERIA

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Tuesday, announced the cessation of forex sales to Bureau De Change (BDCs) operators. CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, who disclosed the new policy after the July 2021, Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Abuja, said the apex bank was funneling $5.7 billion (about N2.346 trillion) annually through the BDCs. He said the $5.7bn allocated to BDCs has become unsustainable as $20,000 is allocated to over 5,500 BDCs in the country, amounting to $110 million per week.

ZIMBABWE

Embattled Chief Justice Luke Malaba is back at work, defying a High Court ruling which said he ceased to be a judge on May 15, 2021 after he reached the retirement age of 70 years. This comes after Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi and Attorney General Prince Machaya separately filed their notices of appeal against an urgent High Court judgment made on May 15. The government says the noting of an appeal to the Supreme Court effectively suspends the order of the High Court paving way for Chief Justice Malaba to be back in the revered judicial office by operation of law.

TANZANIA

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan has received her COVID-19 vaccine in public, kicking off a nationwide inoculation campaign in one of the world’s last countries to embrace jabs in the fight against the disease. Hassan’s vaccination on Wednesday was the most decisive signal yet of a break from the policies of her late predecessor who repeatedly dismissed the threat of the pandemic.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

France’s highest appeal court has upheld a guilty verdict against the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president for embezzlement, paving the way for the potential return of tens of millions of dollars to the country’s people. Wednesday’s ruling on Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is also the vice president of the Gulf of Guinea nation, came after he was handed a three-year suspended sentence and a 30 million euros ($35m) fine at the end of his trial in absentia in 2020.

SUDAN

Hundreds of women displaced by recent inter-communal fighting in the Al Geneina town of West Darfur are suffering from anxiety and depression as they shoulder the responsibility of caring for their families without husbands, say women’s rights activists in Sudan’s western region. The fighting that erupted in April, 2021 left more than 200 people dead and more than 200 others wounded. Thousands of families have been sheltering in government buildings, schools and mosques in overcrowded conditions with limited access to proper sanitation, according to Sumeya Musa, a women’s advocate with the local NGO, Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa.

SOUTH SUDAN

The government and opposition are closing ranks, after a group that opposed monitoring and verification mechanisms, agreed to a ceasefire. The Community of Sant’ Egidio, based in Rome, initiated talks in 2020 to incorporate the holdout groups into the September 2018 peace agreement, but progress has been slowed by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The groups led by former Chief of General Staff General Paul Malong and former SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum, have agreed to join the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring and Verification Mechanism.

SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is on the brink of allowing pharmacists holding the required permits to prescribe and initiate HIV medicines without people first having to get scripts from doctors or nurses, Catherine Tomlinson reports for Spotlight. The initiative, known as Pharmacist-Initiated Management of ART or PIMART, seeks to improve linkage to HIV treatment and prevention therapy among under-reached and underserved groups and communities. South Africa’s PIMART programme will be the first of its kind globally – potentially paving the way for other countries to follow suit. South Africa has the largest HIV antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme in the world. Over seven million people in the country are living with HIV – over five million of whom are on ART.

KENYA

President Uhuru Kenyatta and former prime minister Raila Odinga are still clinging to the hope of successfully pushing through constitutional changes which are currently bogged down in the courts, through a referendum before the 2022 elections. President Kenyatta stated that the referendum was inevitable, saying the proposed constitutional changes popularly known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) would ensure the devolution of more resources to the counties and fair representation in parliament.

UGANDA

The rising political temperatures in Kenya over President Uhuru Kenyatta’s successor, is likely to take a toll on the country’s trade with its East and Central African partners as  importers and transporters on the northern corridor already exploring new routes for their cargo. Since July 19, 2021 Uganda began a trial delivery of petroleum products from Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port through to Lake Victoria, after a 16-year break. This move spells doom to the Port of Mombasa, which accounts for three-quarters of the transit cargo headed for Uganda.

GHANA

The Ghana International Investment Trade and Finance Conference (GITFiC) has advocated the urgent implementation of harmonised trade finance policy reforms across the Continent for effective implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Mr Selasi Koffi Ackom, the Chief Executive Officer of GITFiC, said an increase in trade finance would ease cross border trade, enable capital and information flow, attract greater foreign and intra-continental investments and provide larger customer base for financial institutions to serve.

LIBYA

Amnesty International has published fresh evidence of appalling human right abuses against people detained in Libya’s notorious migrant detention centres as it called on European countries to suspend border control cooperation with Libya ahead of a debate by the Italian parliament on the issue. in a 52-page report, former detainees at Tripoli’s Shara’ al-Zawiya centre disclosed how guards raped women, while others were coerced into sex in exchange for their release, or for essentials like clean water.

NAMIBIA

The Roads Authority (RA) announced that the temporary suspension of bookings for learner’s license testing will be extended to next week Friday. In a media statement released yesterday, RA’s corporate communications manager Hileni Fillemon said clients whose learner licences have expired during the period 1 July 2021 – 06 August 2021 will be allowed to book for driving license tests after the suspension of bookings has been lifted. “The temporary suspension of bookings for driving license testing is also extended until Friday, 6 August 2021. Only applicants with prior confirmed bookings will be assisted

DNT News

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Mandela was pressured to abandon key elements of ANC’s Freedom Charter as president

Nelson Mandel fought for his people and consequently sacrificed 27 years of his life behind bars. Upon his release, he was still undeterred as he continued to make the same pro-people pronouncements.

But as president, Mandela came under pressure to abandon key elements of the Freedom Charter that his party The African National Congress had crafted to truly liberate Africans in South Africa from the effects of Apartheid.

These observations are part of several made from an illuminating Diaspora Weekly interview on DNT with Dr. Bheki N. Mfeka, Economic Advisor and Strategist for the City of Johannesburg.

When Mandela “came out of prison, he still maintained those (radical ideological) beliefs, but he shifted” when he became president, said Mfeka citing his attendance in January 1992 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he had to shake the hands of F. W. de Klerk who threw him in jail, as a key turning point.

Mandela was leaned on by “leaders of the commanding heights of the global economy” to depart from stances such as nationalization of mines and banks, which were key pillars of the ANC Freedom Charter.

After Davos, “he was observed to have changed,” said Mfeka.

But even before Davos, Mandela was thought of as having been “captured,” a term used by the ANC to describe elements of their members who are suspected as having been compromised by the establishment.

For example Mandela, after his release from jail, was catered for by the Oppenheimer family who controls a large portion of the South African economy. “Remember when he had nothing when he came out of prison,” Mfeka pointed out.

Furthermore, Mandela needed the same Oppenheimer family and other similar wealthy families to even run the country. Not to mention that the ANC had to concede more than it wanted to at the 1994 negotiations that paved the way to end Apartheid.

Thus according to Mfeka, all four African leaders, Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma, and Ramaphosa have had to lead South Africa constitutionally handicapped. Incidentally, Zuma, the only one of the four to have pushed harder for reforms in favor of Africans happen to be the one who finds himself in legal trouble and currently in prison.

More of the Highly Illuminating interview with Dr. Bekhi Mfeka, which will air on DNT this Saturday at 9am to follow.

DNT News.

 

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Simone Biles Olympic exit upgrades mental health discussion among stars

TOKYO (AP) — For decades, they were told to shake it off or toughen up — to set aside the doubt, or the demons, and focus on the task at hand: winning. Dominating. Getting it done.

For years, Simone Biles was one of the very best at that. Suddenly — to some, shockingly — she decided she wasn’t in the right headspace.

By pulling on her white sweatsuit in the middle of Tuesday night’s Olympic gymnastics meet, and by doing it with a gold medal hanging in the balance, Biles might very well have redefined the mental health discussion that’s been coursing through sports for the past year.

Michael Phelps, winner of a record 23 gold medals and now retired, has long been open about his own mental health struggles. Phelps has said he contemplated suicide after the 2012 Olympics while wracked with depression. Now an analyst for NBC’s swimming coverage, he said watching Biles struggle “broke my heart.”

“Mental health over the last 18 months is something people are talking about,” Phelps said. “We’re human beings. Nobody is perfect. So yes, it is OK not to be OK.”

Biles joins some other high-profile athletes in the Olympic space — overwhelmingly females — who have been talking openly about a topic that had been taboo in sports for seemingly forever.

— Tennis player Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open, never went to Wimbledon and, after her early exit in Tokyo this week, conceded that the Olympic cauldron was a bit too much to handle.

— American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson made no secret of the issues she faced as she prepared for an Olympic journey that never happened. She said she used marijuana to help mask the pain of her birth mother’s death, to say nothing of the pressure of the 100 meters.

— Dutch cyclist Tom Dumoulin left training camp in January to clear his head, saying he was finding it “very difficult for me to know how to find my way as Tom Dumoulin the cyclist.” He resumed training in May; on Wednesday, he won a silver medal in the men’s individual time trials.

— Liz Cambage, a WNBA player who competes for Australia, pulled out of the Olympics a week before they opened because of anxiety over entering a controlled COVID bubble in Tokyo that would have kept her friends and family away.

“Relying on daily medication to control my anxiety is not the place I want to be right now. Especially walking into competition on the world’s biggest sporting stage,” she wrote on social media.

Biles, though, took things to a new level — one that now makes it thinkable to do what had been almost unthinkable only 24 hours before. She stepped back, assessed the situation and realized it would not be healthy to keep going.

On Wednesday, she pulled out of the all-around competition to focus on her mental well-being.

“I have to do what’s right for me and focus on my mental health, and not jeopardize my health and well-being,” a tearful Biles said after the Americans won the silver medal in team competition. She said she recognized she was not in the right headspace hours before the competition began.

“It was like fighting all those demons,” she said.

The International Olympic Committee, aware of the struggles young athletes face, increased its mental health resources ahead of the Tokyo Games. Psychologists and psychiatrists are onsite in the Olympic village and established a “Mentally Fit Helpline” as a confidential health support service available before, during and for three months after the Games.

The 24-hour hotline is a free service that offers in more than 70 languages clinical support, structured short-term counseling, practical support and, if needed, guidance to the appropriate IOC reporting mechanisms in the case of harassment and/or abuse.

The IOC-developed Athlete365 website surveyed more than 4,000 athletes in early 2020, and the results led the IOC to shift its tone from sports performance and results to mental health and uplifting the athlete’s voices.

Content was created for various social media platforms to feature current Olympians championing mental heath causes. And the Olympic State of Mind series on Olympics.com shares compilations of mental health stories and podcasts.

“Are we doing enough? I hope so. I think so,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Wednesday. “But like everyone in the world, we are doing more on this issue.”

Naoko Imoto, a swimmer at the 1996 Atlanta Games, is a consultant on gender equity for the Tokyo Olympic Committee. She said Osaka’s admission in early June about mental-health struggles represented an opening for a discussion largely avoided.

“In Japan, we still don’t talk about mental health,” Imoto said. “I don’t think there’s enough of an understanding on mental health, but I think there are a lot of athletes coming out right now and saying it is common.”

Australian swimmer Jack McLoughlin choked back tears after winning the silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle Sunday, describing how the pressures of training during a pandemic while also pursuing an engineering degree nearly caused him to quit the sport.

“That’s all to my family and friends. They really helped me out, I was really struggling,” McLoughlin said. “I train up to 10, 11 times a week, so to do that when you are not 100% sure you’re actually going to get where you want to be is pretty hard.”

Particularly with the world watching. John Speraw, coach of the U.S. men’s volleyball team and the son of a psychologist, hired a specialist to assist his athletes when he coached at UC Irvine. He was an assistant on two Olympic teams before advancing to be the head coach for the Rio Games. There, he noticed his players were posting on Facebook — during the actual opening ceremony.

“To me, it was the most striking,” he said. “I think we are very conscious of the increased scrutiny and external pressure and expectations that it places on our athletes.”

Thriveworks, a counseling, psychology, and psychiatry services with more than 300 locations, found that one in three elite athletes suffer from anxiety and depression. In an analysis of more than 18,000 data points from print, online, broadcast and social media sources covering track and field, swimming, tennis, gymnastics and soccer, 69% of negative mentions were about female athletes compared to 31% about male athletes.

It showed that when the focus is on an individual athlete, coverage becomes less enthusiastic with a 29% negative tone that exemplifies the public pressure and criticism athletes face, said Kim Plourde, a licensed clinical social worker at Thriveworks who works with elite athletes through the Alliance of Social Workers in Sport.

“Female athletes have to manage a different level of expectations from themselves, coaches, other athletes, media, and fans ranging from their physical appearance to their performance,” Plourde said.

Jenny Rissveds of Sweden was the youngest women’s cross-country mountain biking champion when she won gold in Rio at 22. A year later, two deaths in her family triggered depression she still deals with. Rissveds failed to win a second consecutive gold, finishing 14th in Tokyo, but she was elated to be done with competition.

“I’m just so f—-ing happy that it’s over,” she said. “Not just the race. But all these years, to not have to carry that title any more. I have a name and I hope that I can be Jenny now and not the Olympic champion, because that is a heavy burden.

“I hope that I will be left alone now.”

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2020-tokyo-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Liberia vows to meet WHO’s benchmark as the U.S donated vaccines arrive

Liberia’s Minister of Health and head of the incident management system Dr. Wilehlmina Jallah says, Liberia will meet the W.H.O’s benchmark following the arrival of the U.S donated Johnson and Johnson vaccines.

Global African Family Meeting

The United States Government, last week donated ver 300,000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines to help Liberia fight off the raging covid-19 virus here.

“With the comEditing y Lewis S. Tehby Jonathan Browneing of additional vaccines from the U.S., I can safely say Liberia will meet the requirements and reach all of the benchmarks set up by W.H.O,” she assured.

Dr. Jallah gave the assurance on Saturday, July 24, 2021 in a special press briefing held at the Ministry of Information in Monrovia when she announced the arrival of 302,400 doses of Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines provided by the United States Government in collaboration with the African Union and the African Centers for Disease Control via the Roberts International Airport in Harbel, Margibi County.

The Health Minister said the vaccines are gifts from the U.S. Government and will definitely help the country reach WHO’s benchmark, which requires at least 10 percent of a country’s total population to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by September 2021.

Dr. Jallah thanked President George Weah, U.S. President Joe Biden,

Liberia’s Ambassador to the United States, George Pattern and Liberians in the United States for their combined efforts and in ensuring the vaccines arrive here safely.

She said unlike the AstraZeneca jabs administered earlier that requires two doses per person, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is a single dose, which means everyone will have an opportunityy Lewis S. Teh to be vaccinated with healthcare workers being prioritized.

“When we began administering the first doses, we listed certain people, but this time around everyone is important, including those with cold mobility, among others” Dr. Jallah explained.

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