In their latest campaign for East Africa, the children’s charity, Plan UK, have called for 494 sponsors to come forward to help the children and families affected by the worst drought the region has seen for 60 years. The campaign has received the endorsement of medical practioner and television agony aunt Dr Miriam Stoppard, comedian [...]
‘Tim was a messenger of truth. You can kill the messenger, but you can’t kill the truth.’ These were the words of renowned Sierra Leonean documentary filmmaker Sorius Samura at the launch of the Tim Hetherington Award Scheme. Held in Freetown in memory of the late internationally acclaimed photojournalist, the award is a testament to [...]
Incumbent President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first female elected head of state, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this month for helping end Liberian conflict. But will she bear out this achievement by winning a second term in office? Amongst eleven acknowledged contenders, Sirleaf, leader of the Unity Party, takes on Winston Tubman. Tubman, a former [...]
The Disasters Emergency Committee has recently raised a staggering £72million for famine victims in Eastern Africa. The DEC has been involved in raising funds since an appeal was launched in July this summer to help Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Republic of South Sudan, after they suffered from one of the worst droughts recorded in [...]
After several days of disruption for global Blackberry users, manufacturer research in motion (RIM) reported it was seeing ‘a significant improvement’ to their service provision. Blackberry Messenger, internet browsing and email capacity were either unavailable or running at a delayed speed. Users in Africa, Europe, the Middle East (EMEA zone) had been experiencing the worst [...]
In October Nigeria joined a crop of other African nations that have hiked up their interest rates as a bulwark against soaring inflation. The restrictive policy measures, outlined at an emergency meeting, exceeded leading analysts’ predictions. The new measures were established by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s monetary policy committee (MPC), less than a [...]
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has discovered further falsified batches of Zidolam-N, the anti-retroviral (ARV) drug commonly used in the treatment of HIV, that was found to have been tampered with in September. Tablets carrying a reference of ‘batch number E100766’ were previously identified as fake, and WHO has now confirmed batch numbers A9351, A9357, [...]
When UK Prime Minister David Cameron pledged last week to increase foreign aid by a considerable 34%, the announcement was met with widespread concern even from members of his own party. At a time of austerity and severe national cuts, does it make economic sense to drive so much money into foreign development- especially when [...]
The self styled ‘lord’ and socialite Edward Davenport, dubbed ‘fast Eddie’, has been jailed for his part in a multimillion-pound fraud case. Davenport has courted controversy over the years. He purchased his 33 Portland Place mansion from the Sierra Leone government for cut market rate in 1999, when the country was in the midst of [...]
The Dow Chemical company announced this week that it will expand its operations in Africa by opening outlets in Algeria and Ghana, in response to a growing demand in the regions. Multinational corporation Dow is a supplier of plastics, chemicals, and agricultural products and has a presence in more than 175 countries, employing 46,000 people [...]
