Category: Market

GENEVA – The World Food Program is warning that 21% of Sudan’s 40 million population faces acute hunger and will need emergency assistance between June and September, when food stocks are lowest.

Several factors have contributed to this situation. For example, over the past year, Sudan has faced hyperinflation, the worst floods in years, a locust infestation, and COVID-19 restrictions, which have caused massive job losses.

A nutritional survey by the Sudanese government, the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program finds 9.8 million people cannot feed themselves, putting many of their lives at risk.

The WFP says it will provide food assistance for 9.3 million of the most vulnerable people during the next six months, but it is $48 million short of what it needs for this operation and is appealing for support.

Marianne Ward is the WFP’s deputy country director operations in Sudan. Speaking by video link from the capital, Khartoum, she says the WFP has been expanding its school feeding programs to provide children with nutritional biscuits.

“I recently was very far north of Khartoum where we were opening and inaugurating a new school to be part of our school feeding program,” Ward said. “The school was literally mobbed by children whose families were sending them there so they could at least get one meal a day covered from somewhere else so the family could feed them.”

Sudan’s global acute malnutrition rate — including young children with both moderate and severe acute malnutrition — is 14%, at the edge of the World Health Organization’s emergency threshold. This is a condition that in some cases can lead to death.

Ward says United Nations agencies are expanding nutrition centers across the country.

“For the first time ever, this last year, WFP began opening nutrition centers, emergency nutrition centers in Khartoum itself,” Ward said. “Traditionally, WFP has not had to intervene in the capital because it is the heartbeat of the country and the richest place. But the situation, particularly with hyperinflation, has been so difficult for so many families that, indeed, it is on a crisis footing right now.”

WFP says the cost of hunger to the Sudanese economy is estimated at $2 billion per year, or about 2.6% of its gross domestic product.

Source: Voice of America

The World Bank said on Friday it had temporarily paused payments to operations in Mali following a military coup, while the man expected to become the new prime minister warned sanctions would only complicate the country’s crisis.

The World Bank’s actions added to pressure on Mali’s military leadership after chief security ally France announced on Thursday it was suspending joint operations with Malian troops in order to press for a return to civilian rule.

The military’s overthrow of Mali’s transitional president last week, its second coup in nine months, has drawn international condemnation and raised fears the political crisis will weaken regional efforts to fight Islamist militants.

‘Temporarily paused’

The World Bank, whose International Development Association (IDA) is financing projects to the tune of $1.5 billion in Mali, confirmed the suspension of payments in a statement to Reuters.

“In accordance with the World Bank policy applicable to similar situations, it has temporarily paused disbursements on its operations in Mali, as it closely monitors and assesses the situation,” it said.

Assimi Goita, the colonel who led both coups, was declared president last Friday after having served as vice president under Bah Ndaw, who had been leading the transition since September. Ndaw and his prime minister resigned while in military custody last week.

Goita is widely expected in the coming days to name as prime minister Choguel Maiga, the leader of the M5-RFP opposition coalition that spearheaded protests against former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita before his overthrow last August.

At a rally in the capital, Bamako, on Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the protests against Keita, Maiga was alternately firm and conciliatory toward foreign partners.

“We will respect international engagements that aren’t contrary to the fundamental interests of the Malian people,” he said to thousands of supporters in the city’s Independence Square.

“Sanctions and threats will only complicate the situation,” he said.

French troops

France, the former colonial power, has more than 5,000 troops waging counterinsurgency operations against Islamist militants in Mali and the wider Sahel, an arid region of West Africa just south of the Sahara.

It hopes to use its leverage to press Goita to respect the 18-month timetable agreed to at the start of the transition by organizing a presidential election next February.

The African Union and a West African regional bloc responded to the coup by suspending Mali’s membership but did not impose further sanctions.

Source: Voice of America

Cameroon rights groups, opposition parties and local media are asking the government to publish its findings after most of a $335 million loan from the IMF could not be accounted for. At least 15 officials have appeared before commissions of investigation.

A government statement read on Cameroon state media Monday calls on civilians to remain calm as investigations on missing funds continue. The statement from government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi states that justice will take its course.

The statement comes after Cameroon rights groups and opposition asked the government to explain what happened to about $335 million loaned by the International Monetary Fund to fight COVID-19.

Cameroon says within the past week, 15 ministers have appeared at the audit bench of the Supreme Court and a special criminal tribunal to account for the funds.

Joseph Lavoisier Tsapy is legal adviser to the opposition Social Democratic Front Party and a member of the Cameroon Human Rights League.

Tsapy says the Cameroon Special Criminal Tribunal should have ordered their arrest after the audit bench of the Supreme Court found out that some ministers stole COVID-19 funds. He says the money should have been invested to save lives and assist suffering people. He says he wants to make it clear that government ministers in Cameroon do not have immunity like lawmakers.

In June 2020, SDF lawmakers complained that the awarding of COVID-19 contracts did not respect procurement procedures and gave room for massive corruption.

Local media like Equinox Radio and TV, Roya FM reported gross cases of embezzlement.

In one case, the Ministry of Scientific Research received $9 million to produce the drug chloroquine. The ministry instead bought chloroquine amounting to 30 percent of the funds from China.

Other cases involve overbilling and failure to render services or provide supplies after payment.

André Luther Meka speaks for the ruling CPDM party, to which all of the ministers called up for questioning belong.

Meka says Cameroonians should stop asking for ministers to either be punished or to refund COVID-19 funds. He says Cameroon considers all suspects innocent until found guilty by the law courts. He says Cameroon President Paul Biya has a strong political will to punish everyone who has either mismanaged, embezzled or siphoned state money.

Angelbert Lebong is a member of the Cameroon Civil Society. He says President Biya should explain to the Cameroonian people how his government has managed the COVID-19 funds.

He says Biya should for once speak out against embezzlement and publicly condemn his collaborators who have stolen COVID-19 funds. He says Cameroon has more serious life-threatening issues to handle than the heavily publicized receptions Biya gives diplomats in his office.

Last month, Human Rights Watch urged the IMF to ask Cameroon to ensure independent and credible enquiry on the management of COVID-19 funds before approving a third loan.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Cameroon in March 2020, the IMF has approved two emergency loans to the central African state totaling $382 million.

Source: Voice of America

Australia’s Danakali (ASX: DNK; LSE:DNK) says filtered seawater is a reliable, unlimited and economic option to use in the sulphate of potash (SoP) production process at its Colluli project in Eritrea.

The Perth-based miner said it will now rely on a combination of beach well intake, smaller pumping station and greater renewable energy to pump filtered seawater to the processing plant at the Colluli.

Previously, Danakali would have needed to build a large seawater desalination plant and a pipeline to transport water to the plant.

The water intake treatment area’s (Wita) redesign has a materially smaller onshore and offshore footprint. It also requires less power, thereby reducing operational expenditure (opex), fuel costs and carbon dioxide emissions, Danakali said.

The company noted the new plan requires less capital expenditure (capex) and reduces sustaining capex over the life-of-mine (LoM).

“Using filtered seawater as an unlimited input in our production process is not only a world first, but also a long-term game changer,” executive chairperson Seamus Cornelius said in the statement.

Testing in 2015 proved that SOP could be made from Colluli ore, but only at higher water rates with Reverse Osmosis fresh water.

What was achieved with recent test work with Saskatchewan Research Council in 2021 demonstrates that high-quality product only using seawater is assured, Danakali said.

The innovation adds to the miner’s recent assessment of the use of both solar and wind energy at Colluli.

Since the project is located in one of the world’s most geothermally-endowed rifts, the Danakil depression in the East African Rift Valley, the company said it’s also studying the use of geothermal energy with a view to becoming a zero carbon producer of SoP.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online

A delegation from the regional bloc ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) is heading to Mali Tuesday, a day after the West African nation’s military detained the president and prime minister.

A joint statement issued Tuesday by ECOWAS, the United Nations, African Union and other international bodies called for the release of President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, who were detained in the capital, Bamako, and taken to the military’s headquarters in nearby Kati.

President N’daw and Prime Minister Ouane, along with Defense Minister Souleymane Doucoure, were seized hours after announcing a cabinet reshuffle that left out two members of the military.

The two men were chosen to head a civilian transitional government last year, just a month after the military seized power after ousting then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The transitional government was created to lay the groundwork for presidential and legislative elections by next February.

Mali has been in turmoil since then-President Amadou Toumani Touré was toppled in a military coup in 2012 that led ethnic Tuareg rebels to seize control of several northern towns, which were then taken over by Islamic insurgents. France deployed forces to repel the insurgents the following year, but the rebels have continued to operate in rural areas.

Source: Voice of America

The High Court in Kampala has sentenced to 50 years, a UPDF captain convicted of masterminding the kidnap and killing of an Eritrean businessman.

Daniel Michael Weldu, a resident of Muyenga and owned businesses in Uganda and South Sudan was abducted from Kololo, a leafy Kampala suburb on October , 27, 2016 and the border later found burnt at the Uganda-Kenya border in Busia.

Capt Bumali Mangeni was convicted together with two civilians including Benon Duncan Lumu and Andrew Kisitu.

On Monday afternoon, Justine Flavia Anglin Ssennoga said the three convicts deserved a sentence that would ensure the trio serves as an example to other would be offenders.

“The commission of the offences was meticulously premeditated and executed . All the convicts acted in furtherance of an unlawful purpose and each one played a part in the commission of the offences as they failed to dissociate themselves from the heinous acts, “Justice Ssenoga said.

The judge said the trio carried out the mission immaculately that they were able to kidnap the Eritrean businessman from Kololo, forced him to withdraw money from his bank account that they stole and later killed him , before burning the body kill evidence.

“The deceased was kidnapped, threatened to be charged with made up offences, sedated into unconsciousness, robbed and was eventually murdered for the sole purpose of stealing money that he had on his accounts. The kidnap was as a result of fraud and his death was not accidental but deliberately occasioned in furtherance of unlawful purpose.”

“The body of the deceased was set ablaze with an apparent intention of causing disguise about the cause of death and to hide the identity of the deceased.”

The court said that the trio spent a lot of time planning their mission until their pulled it off meticulously.

The judge said it is appalling that the convicts didn’t find it into their hearts to be remorseful and give a second chance for life to the Eritrean businessman.

“The offence negatively impacted on the victim’s family, relatives and friends and the public at large. Such offences cause a lot of concern for security and safety of people in society. Because of commission of such offences people are not free to enjoys fruits of the honest labours. The sentences are meant to send out a strong message to the public and other would be offenders that crime doesn’t pay and will not be tolerated by anyone,” she said.

The judge consequently sentenced each of the three convicts to 50 years imprisonment for kidnap with intent to murder, 30 years for aggravated robbery and 50 years for murder of the businessman.

She also ordered that they pay shs200 million to the deceased’s family in compensation but also refund the money they robbed from the deceased.

“The sentences to run concurrently and the period spent on remand should be deducted,”she said.

Source: Dehai Eritrea Online