Month: June 2023

A delegation of African leaders and senior officials seeking ways to usher dialogue between the belligerents of the war in Ukraine and ultimately peace arrived Friday (June 16) in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

The delegation including the presidents of South Africa, Senegal, Zambia and the Comoros Islands first went to Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets last year after Russian troops abandoned a campaign to seize the capital and withdrew from the area.

On Friday South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was met by a Ukrainian special envoy and South Africa’s ambassador at Nemishaeve Railway Station in Kyiv. South Africa has been under intense scrutiny due to the country’s neutral stance on the conflict.

This follows allegations that arms and ammunition were shipped from South Africa to Russia, but the government has denied these allegations.

And there are eyes on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will be coming to South Africa for the BRICS meeting in August and whether an ICC warrant of arrest will be honoured.

The African delegation also includes senior officials from Egypt and the Republic of the Congo.

The delegation was set to travel to St. Petersburg later Friday, where Russia’s top international economic conference is taking place, and meet with Putin on Saturday (June 17).

‘We must protect lives’

Officials who helped lay the groundwork for the delegation’s talks said the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also to assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for fertilizer exports that Africa desperately needs.

They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine amid the war and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.

“Life is universal, and we must protect lives – Ukrainian lives, Russian lives, global lives,” Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema told The Associated Press. “Instability anywhere is instability everywhere.”

The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counteroffensive to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

Floodwaters in the Kherson region have continued to recede, with the average level in flood-hit areas standing at 1.67 meters (about 5 feet). That is down from 5 meters (16 feet) immediately following the breach of the Kakhovka dam last Tuesday, according to the Ukrainian presidential office.

Forty-seven young footballers, including 36 minors, were rescued by Portuguese police in a dragnet launched on Monday against a human trafficking network linked to a training center in northern Portugal, Africanewsguru.com has learned. Thursday with the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF).

The victims, men from countries in Africa, Asia and South America, were placed in institutions “under the protection of the State”, the same source said.

Two Portuguese and five companies were indicted as part of this operation, called “El Dourado”, during which several “passports and residence permits” were seized.

According to local media, the victims were sequestered in the premises of the Bsports football academy, in Riba d’Ave, near Vila Nova de Famalicao (north). Players had to testify before a judge before returning to their home countries.

One of the two indicted persons was identified by the media as Mario Costa, one of the officials of the Bsports academy and president of the general assembly of the Portuguese football league, a post from which he resigned on Wednesday, saying not to have committed any illegality.

The illegal recruitment of footballers is “unacceptable and shocking”, reacted the Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, Joao Paulo Correia, assuring that the government would “take measures” to fight against this type of trafficking. Human being.

Egypt’s Al Ahly won the African Champions League on Sunday for a record-extending 11th continental club title, as a late header by defender Mohamed Abdelmonem wrestled the crown away from defending champion Wydad at its home stadium in Morocco.

Abdelmonem’s 78th-minute goal saw the second leg of the final end 1-1 in Casablanca and gave Al Ahly a 3-2 aggregate win.

It is the Egyptian giant’s third title in four years and was revenge for a loss to Wydad at the same Stade Mohammed V in the one-off final a year ago.

Yahia Attiyat Allah put Wydad ahead in the 27th minute when his left-footed free kick from out on the right side drifted past everyone and into the far corner of the net.

At 1-0 on the night, Wydad was winning on away goals and the home fans let off fireworks from that point on, causing referee Bamlak Tessema Weyesa to stop the game for a few minutes in the second half for the clouds of thick white smoke to clear.

Abdelmonem ended the celebrations for the Wydad supporters about 10 minutes after the short delay when he met Ali Maaloul’s corner with a glancing header to take Al Ahly back to the top of African club soccer.

As the Al Ahly players celebrated the goal near a tiny pocket of their supporters, plastic bottles rained down on them from the Wydad fans.

There was a heavy security presence for the North African showdown, with lines of police emerging to surround the field in the final minutes of the game.

Ahead of kickoff, there were scuffles between Wydad supporters and Moroccan police near the stadium, with some fans bundled into police vans.

The 45,000-seat Stade Mohammed V was full two hours before kickoff.

Wydad, buoyed by a late goal of its own in the first leg to come away from Cairo with a narrow 2-1 loss, was in charge of most of the game in Casablanca.

Morocco international Attiyat Allah had two similar curling free kicks from the same place saved by Mohammed El Shenawy before his third attempt — which was more of a cross than a shot — went over everyone and past El Shenawy’s right hand for the opening goal.

As the second half progressed, Wydad retreated in an attempt to defend its lead and was made to pay when Abdelmonem met Maaloul’s corner first and the ball skimmed off his head, across the goal and into the same corner that Attiyat Allah scored in.

Al Ahly was voted Africa’s club of the 20th century and now has six more African club titles than its nearest challengers, Cairo rival Zamalek and Congo’s TP Mazembe.

The Rwandan government and the African Union Commission (AUC) on Saturday concluded agreements for the establishment of the headquarters of the first ever African Medicines Agency in Kigali.

On 10 June, Rwanda signed an agreement with the African Union to host the headquarters of the African Medicines Agency in Kigali.

The signing comes just a few days after the Rwandan authorities officially agreed to host the AMA’s headquarters on their territory.

In 2019, the African countries adopted the treaty establishing the Agency, which came into force in 2021.

Its creation is part of the African Union’s strategy to reduce the continent’s dependence on pharmaceutical products supplied by foreign countries.

Africa imports 97% of the pharmaceutical products it needs.

The agency should regulate and harmonize this market on the continent, encourage production in Africa and counter the traffic in counterfeit medicines.

For Minata Samaté Cessouma, AU Commissioner for Health, Africa must prepare for other pandemics after Covid-19, and the agency’s objective will be to propose “African solutions”.

More than four years after the adoption in 2019 of the treaty establishing the African Medicines Agency, this is a first step towards making this new African Union body operational, according to the Rwandan Minister of Health, Sabin Nsanzimana.

Staff recruitment will be discussed in ten days’ time, again in Kigali, during the second extraordinary session of the 23 States that have ratified the treaty establishing the agency.

Nigeria’s security services have detained the country’s suspended central bank chief as part of an investigation into his office, the national domestic security agency said on Saturday.

The arrest of Central Bank of Nigeria governor Godwin Emefiele came shortly after new President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government suspended him following nearly a decade in the post.

Tinubu, who came to power at the end of last month following a highly contested February presidential election, had promised reforms to help Africa’s largest economy emerge from financial troubles.

“The Department of State Services (DSS) hereby confirms that Mr Godwin Emefiele, the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is now in its custody for some investigative reasons,” the DSS internal security agency said in a statement.

The DSS did not give any further details, but one of Tinubu’s government spokesmen earlier said that Emefiele had been suspended immediately as part of an “ongoing investigation of his office and the planned reforms in the financial sector”.

The bank’s deputy governor will step into the director’s role pending the conclusion of investigations, the statement said.

The central bank did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Emefiele was under fire recently, including over a policy by former president Muhammadu Buhari to replace old naira currency notes with new ones to prevent corruption during this year’s election and curtail cash ransom payments after kidnappings.

The policy led to a huge naira cash shortage across Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, where many people rely on cash payments in the informal economy to survive.

Emefiele had also attempted to run against Tinubu in the ruling All Progressives Congress or APC party primaries to be the party candidate for the presidency. He eventually stepped aside.

A former Lagos governor, Tinubu already stoked controversy on his May 29 inauguration day by immediately calling for an end to long-standing government subsidies to keep petrol prices artificially low.

Fuel prices almost tripled across Nigeria, after Tinubu announced that subsidies were “gone” on the day he took office.

Most analysts say the subsidies needed to end to help the government save billions of dollars in expenses at a time when it has already been struggling to keep up vital oil production.

But the subsidy removal triggered a rapid spike in transportation costs, sending food prices soaring, while electricity has become more costly for those using generators for power at home and business.

The subsidy issue is one of a host of issues facing Nigeria’s new leader, including a security crisis with the armed forces battling jihadists, heavily armed criminal gangs and separatist militants in different parts of the country.