Africa Business News

Seven members of the Sudan military have been arrested and will be prosecuted in connection with the killing of two demonstrators in the capital, Khartoum, last week.The head of the interim sovereign council running the country, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, ordered an investigation into Tuesday’s deaths that happened outside the army headquarters in Khartoum.The seven soldiers are due to be prosecuted however many people in Sudan are angry that there has still not been any justice for a far bigger atrocity that happened almost two years ago.

South Africa health minister says the country will launch phase two of its vaccine rollout on Monday with the aim of inoculating five million citizens aged over 60 by the end of June.Zweli Mkhize says this is provided that the supply of vaccines flows as anticipated. By the end of June, they expect to have received 4.5 million doses of Pfizer and 2 million doses from Johnson & Johnson.Mkhize says that more than 325,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine would arrive at midnight on Sunday, bringing the total of Pfizer doses up to 975,780.The health minister says the country was still awaiting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to be released by the United States Food and Drug Administration after its administration was paused and then restarted two weeks later due to concerns over blood clots.

The authorities in South Sudan reported that Twelve civilians have been killed by members of a militia in the oil-rich Abyei region.South Sudan in an official statement accused neighbouring Sudan of assisting the Misseriya militia in the attack early on Sunday.The Sudanese government has not commented.The Abyei region has long been claimed by both countries and has seen frequent clashes between people from the Dinka ethnic group and the Arab Misseriya militia.The UN recently said relations between the two communities were tense and described the area as both volatile and unpredictable.

Algeria Presidency says the country will reopen air and land borders on June 1, but strict measures will be imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.President Abdelmadjid Tebboune says only five flights a day from and to Algerian airports will be allowed with full adherence to strict precautions.He added that more details would be announced in a week.Algeria closed borders and suspended all flights in March 2020 when the number of COVID-19 infections started to increase, but domestic flights resumed in December last year.The North African country has so far recorded 125,311 coronavirus cases, including 3,374 deaths.

Senator Rochas Okorocha says that Nigeria loses billions of dollars from cattle business, urging the Federal Government to invest in the business.He noted that if the cattle business is being tapped well, it could create one million jobs for Nigerians.Okorocha advised that the nation’s challenges should not be politicised.He also commended the 17 southern governors for meeting in Asaba, the Delta State capital to discuss sensitive issues that concern their region, describing the meeting as the first in the nation’s history.

The Nigerian Labour Congress and its affiliate unions will on Monday embark on a five-day warning strike over the recent disengagement of civil servants by the state government.The NLC has vowed to resist the action of the state government, accusing the governor of not being sensitive to the plight of the workers.The NLC Chairman in the state, Ayuba Suleiman, disclosed that the industrial action will be accompanied by a peaceful protest which will be led by the President of the Union, Ayuba Wabba and other labour leaders across the country.

Former Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, has supported the call for national dialogue by southern governors to address the issue of insecurity and other challenges in the country.He stated that those who have faulted the action of the governors misunderstood their motive of making such a move.He says they put aside their political differences and called for a national dialogue, as well as restructuring of the country along with fiscal federalism, devolution of powers, and state police, among other demands.

The number of recorded COVID-19 infections in India climbed above 24 million on Friday amid reports that the highly transmissible coronavirus mutant first detected in the country was spreading across the globe.A WHO infectious diseases expert, Jairo Mendez says the Indian B.1.617 variant of the virus has been found in cases in eight countries of the Americas, including Canada and the United States.He says the variants have a greater capacity for transmission, but so far they have not found any collateral consequences.Public Health England says the total number of confirmed cases of the variant had more than doubled in the past week to 1,313 across the United Kingdom.

Canada’s Quebec province unveiled sweeping legislation aimed at curbing the decline of the French language in the former French colony, particularly in Montreal where businesses are using English more and more.The bill is a revamp of a 1977 law, reaffirming French as Quebec’s main language and promoting its use locally on signage, in education and in workplaces.Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec minister responsible for the French language says the French language is in decline across parts of the society.He says the updated law affirms that French is the only official language in Quebec and the common language of the Quebec nation.

South Africa-born pharmaceutical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong says that his family's foundation will spend $211m to help develop vaccine production in South Africa.Dr Soon-Shiong, however, told a meeting of the World Health Organization on access to the means to fight the spread of Covid-19 that he wanted the donation to transfer the know-how around vaccine development and build self-sufficiency and innovation.Dr Soon-Shiong says he is concerned about the variants that have been prevalent in India and says second-generation vaccines now need to be developed.He added that he was motivated to act as a South African-born Asian American.