Jonathan endorses effort to end modern slavery

Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday met with the founder of The Walk Free Foundation, a prominent anti-modern slavery body, Andrew Forrest, in efforts to promote liberty in Africa and other parts of the world.

The foundation, which publishes Global Slavery Index to increase awareness of the problem of modern slavery, is active in helping people caught up in modern slavery achieve their freedom.

Mr. Jonathan met with Mr. Forrest and his daughter, Grace, in New Jersey where he also endorsed their work in a video message.

The former president is chairman of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, which is committed to spreading democracy and freedom throughout Africa.

Jonathan endorses effort to end modern slavery

Africa’s Poverty Rate Drops to 43%, New W’Bank Report Reveals

A new World Bank report has put Africa’s poverty rate at 43 per cent compared to a previous figure of 56 per cent.

African head of states

The World Bank Vice President, Africa Region, Mr. Makhtar Diop said during a video conference on ‘End Poverty Day’ over the weekend that “We understand poverty has been going down in Africa significantly.”

Diop stated that the latest estimates came as “good news in the context where we have decay of solid growth in Africa averaging 5 per cent.”

“But while we are saying that, we have a lot of work to do because we still have a larger number of poor people in Africa, hundreds of millions,” he added.

He said the report represented the most recent poverty data available and seeks to highlight the need to know the determinants of poverty in Africa.

However, he said much of the progress in poverty reduction came from the non income dimension of poverty which witnessed improvement in literacy and child mortality rates as well as increase in life expectancy in the continent.

The Vice President further noted that the new figures were still a far cry compared to what is obtainable in other developing world. He said poverty eradication should not be limited to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but seen as foremost demand from the people of Africa.

“As society becomes more and more open, people are voicing the needs and wants for more inclusive growth,”, he said in a video conference from Ghana.

The reported estimated that two out of five persons were still malnourished in Africa while education systems are serious problems in terms of quality.

Diop said more investments and tough actions were required by governments to fix the energy sector particular the electricity distribution company which appeared inefficient and largely contributed to the failure of power sector.

The new Africa Poverty Report released over the weekend highlighted weak poverty data in the continent and urged governments to strengthen research instruments. It further noted that though non monetary dimension of well-being improved, levels remained low and progress had leveled off.

It said poverty in Africa may be lower than current estimates suggest although more “people are poor today than in 1990.” It also said inequality patterns vary across the African continent.

It further expressed concern over the low quality of surveys conducted by countries – some often incomparable. It cited a particular case of Nigeria as an example.

It said: “One survey of Nigeria’s poverty rate in 2010 estimated the figure at 26 per cent; another conducted the same year, putting the figure at 53 per cent. With 20 per cent of Africa’s population in Nigeria, this discrepancy makes a big difference in tracking trends in the region.”

Africa’s Poverty Rate Drops to 43%, New W’Bank Report Reveals

Video: South Africans march against attacks on foreigners

Thousands of people are expected to attend a march in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban in solidarity with the country’s foreign nationals.

The march, on Thursday, which includes religious leaders and concerned citizens, comes after weeks of attacks against foreign nationals in which at least five people have been killed and 74 people arrested since the end of March, according to Colonel Jay Naicker, the police spokesperson.

Al Jazeera producer Mukelwa Hlatshwayo, reporting from the march in the coastal city of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, said as many as 5,000 people had joined the prosession and that the atmosphere was calm with people ulilating and singing songs of solidarity.

Many shops remained closed in the business capital of the country, Johannesburg in the Gauteng province fearing attacks as well.

Groups of people were said to have travelled to Durban from other provinces to join in the show of solidarity with the foreign nationals.

Messages circulating on social media warned people in Gauteng province and KwaZulu-Natal to be on high alert for possible attacks and to also remain indoors.

Video: South Africans march against attacks on foreigners

African leaders restrategise against Boko Haram

A joint summit of Heads of State of Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of Central African States will hold in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, on Wednesday for adoption of a strategy against the terrorist group, Boko Haram.

The ECOWAS in a statement on Sunday in Abuja, stated that the meeting is against the backdrop of mounting and increasingly bloody attacks by the fundamentalists against Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad “with their serious consequences for these countries, and the real risk of destabilisation that they induce in West and Central Africa.”

The commission explained that experts from both organisations had held a preliminary meeting in Douala, Cameroon on April 2, 2015, to prepare ground for the summit.

It noted that the experts identified the particular objective of the strategy, which aims to eradicate Boko Haram.

The regional body said, “The experts submitted coordination mechanism between the incumbent presidents and between the executives of the two regional economic commissions, and also how to articulate the strategy at the operational level.”

The Doula meeting, the Commission said, was attended by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal from ECOWAS, while for ECCAS, in addition to Cameroon, the host country, the participants came from Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, DR Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe and Chad.

African leaders restrategise against Boko Haram

African Export-Import Bank supports firms with $48 million

The African Export-Import Bank says it has provided $48 million lines of credit to African factoring companies in the last two years.

This was disclosed in a statement by Benedict Oramah, Afreximbank’s executive vice president in charge of Business Development and Corporate Banking, on Thursday in Lagos.

Factoring is not a loan but a cash-management tool of choice for many companies, and is one of the oldest forms of business financing.

Mr. Oramah, who spoke at a symposium on factoring in Africa in Cairo, was quoted as saying that the support was to give liquidity and payment risk protection in the companies’ factoring activities.

The two-day symposium was organised by the Egyptian Factoring Association, the Financial Services Institute and the International Factors Group.

According to him, the amount comprised $23 million granted to factors located in Mauritania and $25 million to several others based in Senegal.

He announced that Afreximbank currently had factoring lines totalling $50 million under assessment for institutions in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Egypt, Botswana, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

Mr. Oramah said that Afreximbank had supported the development of factoring in Africa through educational events and fostering the creation of facilitative infrastructure.

He said that Afreximbank would soon introduce a co-branded factoring development product called AfriFactor, to reduce costs incurred by African factors in setting up factoring business platforms.

“Besides, AfriFactor will address challenges around the lack of expertise in back-office and receivables management,” he said. “It will provide advisory services to African financial institutions seeking to commence or enhance their factoring businesses, and provide support in such areas as establishing factoring businesses, information technology and operations platforms.”

Mr. Oramah added that Afreximbank was also working with the African Development Bank’s Thematic Fund for Private Sector Assistance to support factoring companies in Africa.

According to him, the partnership uses FAPA grants that target innovative programmes for small and micro-scale enterprises.

He said that a grant has been pre-approved for technical capacity building, drafting of a model law, and for advocacy, including training, workshops and conferences.

Mr. Oramah said Afreximbank had organised seminars, trainings and workshops across Africa, targeting bank officials, lawmakers and regulators, to encourage interest in factoring as an alternative trade finance instrument for companies.

Afreximbank is a foremost Pan-African multilateral financial institution devoted to financing and promoting intra-and extra-African trade.

African Export-Import Bank supports firms with $48 million

Africa Investigates: Bribery rife in the Ugandan justice system

• Emmanuel Mutaizibwa goes undercover in Uganda’s court system

• Bribes demanded from the very first instance of reporting a crime

• Bribery revealed within the court itself, up to a senior magistrate

In the second season finale of Al Jazeera’s award-winning Africa Investigates, Emmanuel Mutaizibwa leads a team of reporters who go undercover inside Uganda’s court system to reveal the price of justice, exposing a chain of corruption that is rotting the country’s judiciary to its core.

Although the Global Corruption Perception Index ranks Uganda at 142nd out of 170 countries, the country’s law courts used to be seen as free from graft. But a recent report from the country’s Anti Corruption Coalition has confirmed an increasingly widespread view – that corruption has seeped into one of the most sacred institutions of the land.

The Al Jazeera investigation begins in Kasangati, a suburban town just north of the capital city, Kampala. The Magistrate’s Court in Kasangati plays a central role in the town, but Emmanuel and his team discover that it’s as much a place for buying and selling as the town’s market.

Emmanuel meets a number of litigants who claim that court officials had swindled money out of them. The only way to substantiate these claims is for Emmanuel to take the plunge and dive into this murky court system.

Posing as litigants and armed with undercover cameras, Emmanuel’s team climb a hierarchy of corruption, where they are forced to use bribe money to navigate past officials at every step.

Money is demanded from the very first instance of reporting a crime and the practice reaches shocking heights within the court itself, from the police up to a senior magistrate.

Emmanuel then confronts Uganda’s anti-corruption authorities with the video evidence.

“Judicial corruption eats away at the fabric of society,” says Al Jazeera English’s executive producer Diarmuid Jeffreys. “If police and court officials can be bought off, then how can they ever be trusted? That’s why this story is so important. Emmanuel’s remarkable investigation was given extra weight by ordinary citizen activists; hard-working Ugandans determined to hold the corrupt to account and protect the principle that justice should be fair, impartial and honest. “

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Africa Investigates: Bribery rife in the Ugandan justice system

GET RICH QUICK SYNDROME: Man allows hyena to eat his manhood

The need to get rich has led a man, Chamangeni Zulu almost to his grave.

Chamangeni Zulu, from Malawi, has been hospitalised at Chipata General Hospital in Zambia, near the Malawi border, after he allowed the hyena to eat his manhood.

Mr Zulu told the Times of Zambia yesterday that he was promised by a witch doctor that by sacrificing his body parts he would become rich.

‘I met some business persons who told me the best way to become rich was to sacrifice parts of my body,’ he told the paper. At around 4am on Monday last week, the man went into the Zambian bush. Mr Zulu said: ‘I was instructed to be naked and a hyena came to me and started eating my toes and eventually my manhood was eaten.’

Mr Zulu said that the witch doctor did not make it clear that his body parts would be ‘lost’. Yet despite the horrific ordeal, Mr Zulu admitted he was still hopeful of becoming rich. ‘Even if I have lost some important parts of my body, I still want to get rich,’ he said. The Malawi man has been living and working in Zambia for the past four months.

Chipata Hospital described the man’s condition as stable and said that he had been brought to the hospital by police officers.

 

GET RICH QUICK SYNDROME: Man allows hyena to eat his manhood

Leadership failure, bane of Africa’s devt, says ex-Ghanaian leader

LAGOS—FORMER Ghanaian Vice President and global speaker on leadership change, Mr Nana Akufo-Addo has attributed the inability of Africa to attain a proper place in the comity of continents to leadership failure.

FORMER Ghanaian Vice President, Nana Akufo-AddoHe also identified successful leaders as those with innovative mind, ability to embrace new ideas and routinely challenge old ones.

Speaking at the Verdant Zeal 3rd Innovation Leadership Series in Lagos, yesterday, with theme ‘’Growing Leadership Innovation: Lessons for Africa’’,  Akufo-Addo traced many of Africa’s problems to the hangover of colonialism, the continent’s  failures to bad leadership.

Corroborating Akufo-Addo, Chairman of the event and former Minister of National Planning, Mr Shamsudeen Usman,  said all hope was not lost in Nigeria if we focus on building strong institutions that will tackle accountability and corruption.

He said: ‘’I think this has to do with the weakness of the institutions and we should focus on building those institutions and with time, we will get there”.

Further, the Ghanaian leader maintained that the challenge Africa now face is how to make democratic governance deliver on the promises of prosperity and individual freedoms.

His words: ‘’It has been more than 50 years since we attained political independence, but our hopes for prosperity and attaining a proper place among the comity of nations remain unfulfilled while the long years of military adventurism in our politics have not helped.

The belief that there are shortcuts to finding solutions to our problems has certainly not helped either. It is a great relief that finally a consensus has emerged that the best way to govern ourselves is through multi-party democratic governance.

‘’The focus of leadership has and should always be geared towards the provision of a better future. Effective leaders are necessary innovators. As one writer puts it, ‘today’s successful leaders will be those who have innovative of mind – with the ability to embrace new ideas and routinely challenge old ones.’’’

He said further: ‘’There are many development challenges ahead for Africa and the World Bank rightly identifies these problems as un-diversified production structures, huge infrastructural deficits, underdeveloped human capital, weak governance, fragile states, and need for women and youths empowerment’.

Proffering solutions to various problems faced by Africa countries, the two time Ghanaian vice president explained that African leaders must achieve their potentials through innovative leadership.

He said:  ‘’To be able to make that breakthrough and move from having potential to achieving this potential, we need innovative leadership that can deliver opportunities and prosperity to Africa’s long-suffering peoples.

We all now have a pretty good idea about the things that hold us back from making rapid progress but our economies are not structured to meet the needs and provide opportunities for our people. What Africa needs above all is value addition and this starts with adding value to our human capital through an education system that provides every child with the skills to realise his or her  full potential.

He however maintained that Nigeria must provide the political leadership and passion to translate the ECOWAS dream into reality, saying: ‘’It might seem to you in Nigeria that with your oil you are operating in a larger world market already and do not need the region.

Nigeria should focus on building institutions –Usman

In his submission, Shamsudeen Usman said the theme of the event represents excellence, professionalism and Nigeria’s potentials and how to realiSe them.

“I have been concerned especially in the last  five years as Minister of National Planning about the future of this country. Some of us, in the past, took exams and passed, there was no question of examination malpractice  during our days. If you are going to write exams, you will prepare for it to pass, this is what Nigeria used to be.

“Some of us have not lost hope, I believe that it is possible. In the past, we  believed leadership is all about economics, we were just focusing on economics then but after my  eight years at the Central Bank of Nigeria and about  five  as Minister, unfortunately, I changed my mind.

I now see it is all about politics. Unless you get the politics right, the economics will never work. What this has shown is that at the end of the day, it is all about leadership and that is why the theme of the event is all about leadership.

We need transformational change — Olugbodi

In his welcome address, Mr Tunji Olugbodi, GMD/CEO of Verdant Zeal, said the innovation series is prompted by the need for transformational change through forward thinking and the call for practical solutions that meet the demands of tomorrow.

He said the world is shifting its scope on Africa from a binocular view to a more dissected one and the burgeoning growth is expected to sprout in the midst of certain parallel aspects: innovation and leadership .

His words: ‘’Having this in mind, all factors must be steered in the direction of developing our potential, harnessing all available resources and translating these into a progressive position and this session should ultimately investigate our present models with results of providing solutions that correct distorted views as well as catalyse fresh thinking and finally grow leadership innovation.

‘’Leadership is a hot topic. Innovation is even hotter these days because it has a vital role to play in the recovery and in shaping the societies of tomorrow. We’ve been very curious about the overlap of these two fascinating subjects to see what happens when you examine the values and behaviours of leaders who are responsible for big innovations that shake the world.

‘’The changes that Africa is now going through do not cease to amaze. It seems only yesterday when Africa was at the bottom of the class in terms of technological innovation – passively accepting whatever new technology it was deemed capable of ‘handling’ and things have changed remarkably since. Africa is now becoming a global trendsetter in the innovative application of technology not in producing faster cars or loud speaker systems but in critical areas such as finance, communication, energy generation, agribusiness and finding home-grown solutions to problems that seemed intractable.’’

He however said that Africa must embrace new thinking to remain dynamic and forward looking.

Other discussants at the event include Executive Chairman, Multichoice South-Africa Group, Mr Nolo Letele; Executive Director Leadership Effectiveness, Accountability and Professionalism, Mrs Iyadunni Olubode; Chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Mr Folusho Philips; Senior Consultant/CEO of Resources and Trust Company Ltd, Mr. Opeyemi Agbaje and Founder, Rise Network, Miss Toyosi Akerele.

We must improve quality of life — Philips

Also speaking, Mr Folusho Philips said the best way to define innovation is creating increasing convenience and trying to improve quality of life. “To get it right, we must be bold and brave to do something different and I am waiting for a day when we will have leaders that are passionate about the people and the country. There is a lot of confusion because of the financial power that is vested so much on the government.

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Leadership failure, bane of Africa’s devt, says ex-Ghanaian leader