Africa Business News

Nigeria has recorded a fresh spike of COVID-19 cases.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control in its report on Monday night disclosed that the country has recorded 161 new cases.
Lagos State recorded 153 new cases, while Gombe recorded two, Oyo and Rivers one each and the FCT four cases respectively.
This now brings the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 168,713.
164,476 have recovered.
The NCDC, however, assured Nigerians that the federal government has put measures in place to combat the disease, asking them to adhere to the recommended safety protocols.

Chairman House of Representatives Committee on Information National Orientation Ethics and Values, Segun Odebunmi, says that the House has agreed to suspend the Nigeria Press Council and the National Broadcasting Commission Amendment bill.
Odebunmi explained that the suspension is to allow for proper consultations over the bill.
The lawmaker had earlier faulted claims that the bill was targeted at gagging the media.
He rather maintained that it is aimed at removing identified hindrances to optimum performance.

The head of the World Health Organization has urged wealthy nations to focus on providing coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries, rather than booster shots for their own populations.
Tedros Adhanom Ghrebreyesus says the distribution of vaccines was still hugely uneven at a time when the Delta variant was threatening to cause health systems to collapse.
WHO director of health emergencies, Dr Mike Ryan complained that rich countries were behaving selfishly.

Ethiopia's state-linked broadcaster Fana reports that Ethiopia and Russia have signed a military cooperation deal following three days of talks.
The Ethiopian Defence Force's finance division signed the deal, which it said will boost long-standing relations between the two nations to a higher degree.
The agreement will reportedly focus on improving the national defence force's knowledge, skill, and technical capabilities.
Ethiopia's foreign policy alignment has recently shifted to Russia and China as a result of substantial pressure from the US government over the war in the Tigray region.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has urged member states to consider imposing sanctions over the crisis in the Ethiopian region of Tigray.
He believes that the situation in Ethiopia would certainly require that they consider the possibility of all options at our disposal, and the option of restrictive measures.
Mr Borrell says the EU wanted a ceasefire declared by the Ethiopian government to be implemented on the ground.
He says the region was instead being cut off from the rest of the world. Last month rebel fighters retook large parts of Tigray.
The Ethiopian government has been accused of shutting down essential services there - including electricity and telecommunications.

South African chemists helping the government’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign warned that the unrest gripping the country would slow inoculations in the continent’s worst-hit country by the pandemic.
An association representing more than 1,100 pharmacies says the violence had left drugstores looted and destroyed with millions of rand of much-needed medication lost.
The Independent Community Pharmacy Association however says vaccination is now impossible since pharmacy vaccination sites have been destroyed and looted.
It also warned that the frenzied looting itself created potential super-spreaders gatherings.

The World Bank is set to disburse an additional $750 million to strengthen the implementation of the States Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability scheme.
The scheme was approved for Nigeria in December 2020 to support the implementation of the National Executive Council’s COVID-19 Plan.
Programme Manager of the SFTAS/Open Government Partnership, Nigeria, Mr Andrew Onyeanakwe, says additional financing of $ 750 million to expand the programme to support state governments to implement the NEC COVID-19 Plan in response to COVID-19 was approved by the World Bank Board in December 2020.
He added that the disbursement is a loan from the World Bank to the federal government to be provided as conditional performance-based grants to state governments that actually achieved results under the SFTAS programme.

The federal government has earmarked N4.8 billion for the National Intelligence Agency to monitor WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging application, and Thuraya, a satellite telephone.
The provision seen by an online newspaper, TheCable, is contained in the supplementary 2021 budget passed by the National Assembly.
The National Assembly had approved the sum of N982 billion as the supplementary budget for 2021. While N123 billion was approved for recurrent expenditure, N895 billion was earmarked for capital expenditure.
The budget is meant to boost military operations and to facilitate the procurement of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The line items of the budget showed that police “commands and formation” got N33.6 billion for some projects, including the fumigation of 19 training institutes at N200 million.

The federal government pledged its renewed commitment to full compliance with the country’s crude oil production quota, which is pegged at 1.554 million barrels per day in June.
Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Mr Timipre Sylva says that rationing production was the right thing to do at the moment.
The minister stated that apportioning quotas did not hurt the country’s production, adding that if not because of the cartel’s intervention, the price of crude oil would still fall below.
Sylva says the 1.554 million barrels per day which were allocated to Nigeria for June, excluded condensates, stressing that as of today Nigeria has fully complied without exceeding the total allocated to the country since the OPEC member countries agreed to cut production.
He stated that it is the way things work in OPEC wherein every member has to agree on every issue before it can be resolved.

Several newspapers in Nigeria on Monday published an advertorial against media regulations bills being considered at the National Assembly.
The advertorial was sponsored by the Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Nigerian Guild of Editors and the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria.
The advertorial says the NPC and NBC (Media) Act amendment bills being considered by federal lawmakers was geared against the right of citizens to information.
The bills, which are already at the public hearing stage, are being sponsored by Olusegun Odebunmi, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values.