Newscast - Africa

The Federal Government hopes to push its public debt stock to N50.22tn by 2023, with domestic debt at N28.75tn and external debt at N21.47tn.
The Debt Management Office says that Nigeriaʼs public debt was N38tn as of the end of the third quarter of 2021, with the total debt stock rising by N2.540tn in three months from July to September 2021.
The government also discloses that it needs money to finance the plan of N348.1tn, and the borrowing framework in the plan is 45 per cent each for both foreign and domestic borrowing.

The National Assembly has transmitted the 2022 Appropriation Bill to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent.
The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the Federal Governmentʼs budget on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, respectively, raising the total estimates from the proposed N16.391tn to N17.126tn. The oil benchmark was raised from the proposed $57 per barrel to $62.
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, had said the budget would be transmitted to Buhari by Thursday.
The National Assembly had with the 2022 budget returned the country to a January-December budget cycle.
Buhari had signed the 2021 Appropriation Bill into law on January 1, 2021, while itʼs life cycle was expected to expire on December 31, but for the recent extension of the lifespan of its capital component three months by the National Assembly.
The President is expected to assent to the money bill by Saturday.

A spokesman for the government says the Taliban has dissolved Afghanistan’s election commission, a panel that supervised polls during the previous Western-backed administration.
Spokesman Bilal Karimi says there is no need for these commissions to exist and operate while referring to the Independent Election Commission and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission.
He says if they ever feel a need, the Islamic Emirate will revive these commissions.

A Moscow court says it was imposing a fine on Alphabet’s Google $98m for what it said was a repeated failure to delete content Russia deems illegal, the first revenue-based penalty of its kind in Russia.
Moscow has increased pressure on Big Tech this year in a campaign that critics characterise as an attempt by the Russian authorities to exert tighter control over the internet, something they say threatens individual and corporate freedom.
Google in an email says it would study the court ruling on Friday before deciding on further steps.
The court fined Meta Platforms $27.15m on the same grounds. Russia’s communication watchdog Roskomnadzor said that Facebook and Instagram failed to remove 2,000 pieces that violate Russian laws whereas Google keeps 2,600 pieces of banned content

TikTok is the world's new most popular online destination over Google
Cloudflare, an IT security company says the viral video app gets more hits than the American search engine,The rankings show that TikTok knocked Google off the top spot in February, March and June this year, and has held the number one position since August.
Cloudfare says it tracks data using its tool Cloudflare Radar, which monitors web traffic.
It is believed one of the reasons for the surge in Tiktok's popularity is because of the Covid pandemic, as lockdowns meant people were stuck at home and looking for entertainment.

China’s central bank has vowed to promote the healthy development of the country’s real estate market, saying it will safeguard the legal rights of home buyers and better satisfy their reasonable living needs.
The statement from the People’s Bank of China says it will prioritise economic stability, amid an increasingly severe external environment and the unrelenting global pandemic.
The PBOC said it will keep its monetary policy flexible and appropriate, and liquidity reasonably ample. It will strengthen support to the real economy, with a bias toward small companies.

Russia has received a NATO proposal to commence talks on Moscow’s security concerns on Jan. 12 and is considering it.
Russia unveiled a wish list of security proposals it wants to negotiate, including a promise NATO would give up any military activity in Eastern Europe and Ukraine The United States and Ukraine say Russia may be preparing an invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbour.
Russia denies that and says it is Ukraine’s growing relationship with NATO that has caused the standoff to escalate. It has compared it to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the world came to the brink of nuclear war.
President Vladimir Putin says Russia wanted to avoid conflict but needed an immediate response from the United States and its allies to its demands for security guarantees.
Moscow says it expects talks with U.S. officials on the subject to start in January in Geneva.

Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has welcomed the Constitutional Court judgment dismissing an application challenging the cancellation of an R1.5 billion Electronic Document Management System contract.
The Department of Home Affairs said the matter started when it wanted to digitise its records.
The department says in terms of the law, SITA had to issue a tender looking for a service provider on behalf of the department.
The tender had initially been awarded to three companies - New Dawn, Valor IT and Ideco.
The department says as long as a public institution had contingent liability on its books, the Auditor-General would flag it each year as a risk.

Cassava Smartech now trading as EcoCash Limited saw its six months to August 2021 revenue grow to $11 billion representing a 36 per cent increase from the same period last month.
The company said growth was driven largely by an increase in transactional volumes for the fintech business units. Cassava's fintech business remains the largest contributor to revenue, constituting 80 per cent of the total.
Cassava's management said it will continue to focus on revenue diversification as a strategy for revenue growth.
The Cassava board Chairperson, Sherree Shereni, in a statement says insurtech businesses implemented various initiatives to reach previously uninsured communities, and the business section revenue contribution grew from 14 per cent in the same period last year to 19 per cent on the back of the growing strength of our short-term insurance corporate book.

Petroleum Minister Tareq el Mulla and CEO of the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation Abed Ezz el Regal and CEO of Natural Resources Activities at the Italian company Eni Alessandro Politi signed a deal on oil exploration and exploitation in the Gulf of Suez and the Nile Delta, with total investments exceeding dlrs 1 billion.
The Petroleum Ministry says that under the deal, Eni company is abiding by spending at least additional dlrs 20 million to dig four wells.
The ministry says the deal falls within the Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ministry's strategy on increasing production rates and facing the natural decline in the wells via using the latest technologies in oil-producing areas.
The ministry's strategy also aims at encouraging partners to pump more investments into the field of oil and gas exploration and back the country's proven oil reserves.