Newscast - Africa

The Federal Government has directed telecommunication companies in the country to bar all outgoing calls on unlinked lines from Monday, April 4, 2022.
Unlinked lines are Subscriber Identity Modules not yet registered and linked with the National Identification Number by users.
The government says over 125 million SIMs have had their NINs submitted for linkage, verification, and authentication and NIMC has issued over 78 million unique NINs to date.
The government explained that the NIN-SIM linkage had been extended on multiple occasions to allow Nigerians to freely comply with the policy.
It added that the enrolment for NIN was a continuous exercise as it was a precondition for service in telecommunication companies, banks, Nigerian Immigration Service, and several other government agencies.

The Taliban has issued a decree banning the cultivation of opium poppy, as the group tries to assuage international concerns regarding drug control in the impoverished South Asian country.
Haibatullah Akhunzada says all Afghans are informed that the cultivation of poppy has been strictly prohibited across the country.
He added that If anyone violates the decree, the crop will be destroyed immediately and the violator will be treated according to Sharia law.
The order says the production, use or transport of other narcotics was also banned.
The Taliban has issued a decree banning the cultivation of opium poppy, as the group tries to assuage international concerns regarding drug control in the impoverished South Asian country.

The education minister says Sri Lanka’s cabinet members have resigned en masse from their positions as anti-government protests escalated despite curfews.
Education Minister Dinesh Gunawardena says all 26 ministers aside from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his elder brother Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down.
Gunawardena says all the ministers submitted their letters of resignation so that the president can constitute a new cabinet adding that the decision was taken after discussing the worsening economic crisis.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says he was deeply shocked by images of dead civilians in the town of Bucha, near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv and calls for an independent investigation.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general says the bodies of 410 civilians have been recovered from areas in the wider Kyiv region from which Russian forces withdrew.

FIFA faced calls to sanction Iran and even throw its team out of the 2022 World Cup finals over the Islamic republic’s renewed failure to allow women to attend an international football match.
The United for Navid group of exiled Iranian athletes and activists, set up after the execution of wrestling champion Navid Afkari in September 2020, said Iran should be suspended from international football until it changes its stance.
They formally request that FIFA immediately suspend Iran and prohibit its participation in the World Cup 2022 as long as the Football Federation of Iran continues to violate the Olympic Charter and FIFA regulations.
It says that Iran had pledged to FIFA that it would end its policy of gender apartheid by allowing women to attend matches.

The Ukraine war has led the World Trade Organization to cut its global trade growth forecast for this year.
WTO boss Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says the previous 4.7% growth forecast has been cut to 2.5% due to the impact of the war and related policies.
She says disruptions would make food more costly, saying that a food crisis is brewing.
Dr Okonjo-Iweala told the BBC that although Russia and Ukraine only make up about 2.5% of global merchandise exports, they are very, very significant in certain sectors.

Angola's government has suspended the salaries of more than 5,000 doctors, describing their strike action as illegal.
The National Union of Angola Medical Doctors began an indefinite nationwide strike last week to press for better wages and working conditions.
Doctors say that in addition to poor salaries, health facilities are woefully under-equipped with frequent shortages of supplies and medicines.
The strike is the second in four months. In December, medics took industrial action over the death of 20 children in a hospital in the capital, Luanda.
Doctors allege they died because of shortages of medicine and medical equipment.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa has told an inquiry that riots and looting in two major provinces last July were a deliberate attempt to derail the economy.
President Ramaphosa told the inquiry by the South African Human Rights Commission that although the initial protests were presented as a political grievance, they were in fact an attempt to undermine the country’s democracy.
The deadliest unrest since the end of apartheid cost the economy $3.3bn.
Mr Ramaphosa says investigations to find the suspected masterminds were still continuing.

South Sudan rivals have signed an agreement on the formation of a unified armed forces command, a key pillar of a peace agreement signed in 2018.
Tensions between President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar had recently led to clashes between their respective forces.
The deal sets out terms for integrating opposition commanders into the armed forces.
President Kiir’s faction will have a 60% representation in key positions in the army, police and security forces while Mr Machar’s SPLM-IO and other opposition groups will occupy the remaining 40%.

Chief Executive Officer, Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Gbenga Komolafe, says the federal government is targeting to add 800,000 barrels to Nigeria’s daily oil production from some important upstream projects being executed by Shell, TotalEnergies, and other oil companies, which had stalled due to funding and other reasons.
Komolafe listed some of the projects government was relying on to boost production including TotalEnergies’ Preowei project, Shell’s Bonga South-west Aparo, and Bonga North projects, as well as other projects being executed by other companies.