Allegations against Africa’s richest woman said to relate to maladministration of funds
Africa’s richest woman, Angola’s Isabel dos Santos, has been named as a formal suspect in a criminal investigation, the country’s attorney general is reported to have announced.
Dos Santos amassed a fortune estimated at $2.2bn (£1.7bn) while her father, José Eduardo dos Santos, was president of Angola.
Continue reading...Unpublished report claims water from contaminated reservoir leaves 3 million in Zimbabwe’s capital at risk of disease
Water being pumped to millions of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital city came from reservoirs contaminated by dangerous toxins, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
A study conducted by South African company Nanotech Water Solutions concluded that the health of 3 million Harare residents may be endangered by the provision of water containing toxins that can cause liver and central nervous system diseases.
Continue reading...Rapidly growing sector could prove lucrative as Britain seeks post-Brexit trade opportunities
UK investors could seize a $24bn investment opportunity by helping to connect millions of people without access to electricity to off-grid home solar power systems.
The market for pay-as-you-go home solar packages is expected to boom in Africa, where millions of homes are using mobile technology to rent low-cost solar panels.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Bob Moritz says he is ‘shocked and disappointed’ by Luanda Leaks disclosures
The global chairman of PwC has warned that heads could roll at the professional services firm over its links to Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, who is battling allegations that she obtained her wealth through corruption and nepotism.
Bob Moritz, whose firm advised companies belonging to Dos Santos and her husband across multiple jurisdictions, told the Guardian he was “shocked and disappointed” by recent disclosures about the British-headquartered accounting firm’s work for the daughter of Angola’s former president.
Continue reading...The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care
A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.
Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.
Continue reading...Far from promising an economic miracle, the UK has missed the boat on a continent on the brink of a painful debt crisis
Tony Blair’s cheerleading for the UK-Africa investment summit is of a piece with much of the former prime minister’s recent career. Trading in grand-sounding ideas, often very short on detail, he brings the pitch of an evangelist crossed with a lobbyist to the world’s biggest problems.
Blair’s latest piece of rhetorical woo-woo unites (and promises to address) a series of disparate preoccupations: eradicating poverty and encouraging good governance in Africa while solving the issue of Britain’s trading relationships post-Brexit. All seasoned with just a hint of post-colonial hubris.
Continue reading...Pledge comes as former ruler’s daughter denounces Luanda Leaks investigation
The Angolan government has vowed to use “all possible means” to force the return of Isabel dos Santos following the Luanda Leaks investigation into how the ex-president’s daughter accrued her $2bn fortune.
Angola’s prosecutor general, Hélder Pitra Grós, said on Angolan public radio on Monday that the country would use “all possible means and activate international mechanisms to bring Dos Santos back to the country”.
Continue reading...Increasingly erratic general shows no sign of relenting despite international pressure
Libya’s oil production and exports have almost ground to a halt as the increasingly unpredictable Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military leader in the country’s east, ignores international calls to seek a negotiated political settlement to the civil war.
World leaders had convened in Berlin on Sunday to endorse plans to entrench, monitor and enforce a ceasefire intended as a precursor to the disarming of militias and political talks in Geneva to build a reunified government, and a fair distribution of oil revenues between the east and west of the country.
Continue reading...Leak has shown how Africa’s richest woman built her empire, but how did it happen?
Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola, claims to be a self-made businesswoman, but a cache of documents investigated by the Guardian and partners appears to tell a different story.
The Luanda Leaks are a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that help explain how Dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2bn.
Continue reading...Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work
The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa, according to a study.
Women and girls across the globe contribute an estimated £8.28tn ($10.8tn) to the global economy with a total of 12.5bn hours a day of unpaid care work, a figure more than three times the worth of the global tech industry, claims an Oxfam report published on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Continue reading...Economic growth in African countries has triggered a global race for influence. Britain cannot afford to be left behind
Africa is the coming continent. Its population is predicted to double to 2 billion people over the next three decades. That growth will mean enormous opportunities for business and investment, but will also create huge challenges around sustainability and the environment.
An Africa focus is therefore essential, particularly for a post-Brexit Britain.
Continue reading...Johnson says international peacekeeping force could monitor the proposed ceasefire
World leaders seeking an enduring ceasefire in Libya have agreed at a summit to impose sanctions on those breaking an arms embargo and are considering whether to send a multinational force to the country.
The conference in Berlin of 11 countries is aimed at bringing an end to the fighting between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli led by the prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and the Libyan National Army in the country’s east led by Gen Khalifa Haftar.
Continue reading...Vernon Kruger, who has not set foot on the ground since November, says sleeping in the barrel is ‘not very easy’
Vernon Kruger has been sitting in a barrel suspended 25 metres above ground for more than two months.
Overlooking the South African town of Dullstroom, the 52-year old is about to break a Guinness world record ... set by himself in 1997.
Continue reading...The lions, which live on the edge of the national park, will be moved to avoid conflicts with people and livestock
Tanzania will find a new home for 36 lions following a slew of attacks by the big cats on people and cattle.
The lions, an increasingly endangered species, live on the edge of the safari mecca of the Serengeti national park, but have been affected by encroaching human activity.
Continue reading...Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned in Uganda after writing poem about president’s mother’s vagina, lambasts regime’s ‘fear of writers’
The Ugandan academic, writer and feminist activist Dr Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned for criticising the country’s president, has been awarded the Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression.
Nyanzi has been in Luzira women’s prison in Kampala, the capital, for nearly 15 months after writing a poem about President Yoweri Museveni’s mother’s vagina. The poem uses the metaphor of her vagina and Museveni’s birth to criticise his near 35-year rule.
Continue reading...£395m trade boost is aimed at countering China’s spending on the continent
Britain has unveiled plans to channel part of the £14bn aid budget through the City as it seeks to exploit the global reach of the finance sector to boost investment in Africa.
Details of the £395m package were announced by the international development secretary, Alok Sharma, ahead of a high-level UK-Africa investment summit next Monday.
Continue reading...Women and children bear brunt as drought and extreme weather leave tens of millions short of food
Southern Africa is in the throes of a climate emergency, with hunger levels in the region on a previously unseen scale, the UN has warned.
Years of drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray have left 45 million people facing severe food shortages, with women and children bearing the brunt of the crisis, said the World Food Programme (WFP).
Continue reading...Researchers predict worldwide turmoil will continue in 2020, with Venezuela, Iran and Libya at greatest risk
A quarter of all countries experienced a dramatic surge in civil unrest last year in a worrying trend that is likely to continue into 2020, researchers have found.
Verisk Maplecroft, a leading risk analysis and strategic forecasting company, said in a report published on Thursday that 47 countries experienced a significant rise in the number of protests over the course of the past year. Hong Kong, Chile, Nigeria, Sudan, Haiti and Lebanon were among the states affected.
Continue reading...Investment in health and education and an end to early marriage could transform Africa’s most populous country
If you want a window on the condition of children in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, there is no better vantage point than the Katanga health centre in the impoverished northern state of Jigawa.
In a hut that passes for a nutrition clinic, a group of 25 women wait with their children. Tiny bodies bearing the hallmarks of acute malnutrition – distended stomachs and twig-thin limbs – are lifted into a weighing harness and their arms measured to check for signs of wasting. Ali, who has just reached his first birthday, weighs only 5kg – the average age of a two-month-old in the UK. His mother is 14.
Continue reading...Whistleblower granted refugee status after hard-won campaign against deportation
A torture survivor from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is celebrating after a Home Office U-turn allowed him to stay in the UK.
Otis Bolamu, 39, who lives in Swansea, was detained just before Christmas in 2018. The Home Office had planned to deport him to DRC on Christmas Day that year.
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