Newscast - Africa

Ethiopia’s state-run broadcaster says government forces were in control of the town of Chifra in the Afar region, their first major seizure since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said earlier this week he would head to the front lines to lead federal troops against fighters from the northern Tigray region.
The Tigrayan forces captured Chifra, on the border between the northern Afar and Amhara regions, after fighting intensified last month.
Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation says Ethiopian Defense Forces and Afar Special Forces have controlled Chifra without providing further details

The government in Rwanda has announced new measures that include the suspension of flights to and from southern African countries.
All arriving passengers must have a negative test and do a repeat test on arrival and seven days after arriving in the country.
A seven-day quarantine has also been reintroduced for travellers coming from countries recently affected by the new waves.
The national carrier Rwandair has halted services to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia

The US-based pro-government ESAT TV reported that the Ethiopian army chief has denied accusations that Ethiopian forces killed Sudanese soldiers at the border between the two countries.
Gen Birhanu Jula says there was no reason to attack Sudan and that the country was not in a position to carry out such attacks as it was fighting the rebels in the north.
The army chief hopes the issues could be resolved peacefully through dialogue.
Sudanese media had claimed that Ethiopian forces killed dozens of Sudanese soldiers in a disputed border area.

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority said that it had established a new Domestic Base Price framework and applicable gas wholesale price for the sector.
Chief Executive Officer of the organisation, Mr Farouk Ahmed stated that the new framework was in fulfilment of the relevant sections of the new Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021.
Ahmed indicated that the applicable wholesale gas price for the power sector shall be the established domestic gas price.
He hinted that the base price would be determined annually based on the criteria set in the third schedule of the Act, which are to reference base prices in Nigeria to prices of gas in countries with significant reserves and production of natural gas.

The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation says it was reviewing its approach for determining the premium by banks to its Deposit Insurance Fund with a view to adopting a risk-based approach.
Managing Director of NDIC, Mr Bello Hassan explained NDIC had commenced the review of its approach to the determination of premium/contribution by banks to our DIF to a more risk-based approach to ensure that, the probability of the risk crystallising becomes a major factor in the pricing methodology of our premium going forward.”
The NDIC, in calculating premiums from deposit money banks, usually chose between adopting a flat-rate premium or a system that sought to differentiate premiums on the basis of individual-bank risk profiles.

The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, says that the social media platform, Twitter, has agreed to all the conditions laid out by the Federal Government regarding its operations in Nigeria.
Keyamo says the committee set up to review the operations of the platform since its ban in the country has made significant progress so far.
He says Twitter reached out to the Federal Government to know what and what they can do to straighten up the relationship with the Federal Government.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control says it was monitoring emerging evidence on the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, which was first recently identified in Southern Africa.
The NCDC in a statement signed by its Director-General, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, said the fears about its ability to evade protective immune responses and/or its being vaccine-resistant are only theoretical so far.
The NCDC urged Nigerians to take necessary precautions while noting that the WHO and researchers across the world are working at speed to gain an understanding of the likely impact of this variant on the severity of COVID-19 and on the potency of existing vaccines and therapeutics.

India parliament in an announcement says the country’s government will introduce a bill to ban private cryptocurrencies and create a framework for a central bank-backed digital money,
The Lok Sabha says the proposed bill seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that Bitcoin presents a risk to younger generations and could spoil the youth if it ends up in the wrong hands.
Kashif Raza, founder of crypto-education platform Bitinning says the wording has created a panic adding that the industry expected the government to take a more favourable view after recent consultations with the industry.
He added that obviously there will be a shutter-down on the industry adding that the industry will die in its natural way. Intellectual capital will move away, investors will face losses.

Europe reached the grim milestone of 1.5 million coronavirus deaths as nations scramble to tackle a worsening crisis with winter approaching.
France accelerated its Covid booster rollout and Germany, with fatalities and infections surging, weighed new measures.
Paris’s Health Minister Olivier Veran said Covid-19 booster shots, until now only available to people over 65 or with health problems, would be accessible to all adults starting this weekend.
The minister said the stringent measure could see France through the fifth wave without recourse to another lockdown, which the government is desperately trying to avoid.
The EU Commission recommended that the bloc’s vaccination certificate should become invalid once the holder’s latest dose is more than nine months old.

The European Union’s drug regulator approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11 paving the way for them to be given the first shot as Europe struggles to contain a surge in infections.
The European Medicines Agency recommended that Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, approved for EU use in teenagers between 12 and 17 years old be given as an injection in the upper arm in two 10 microgram doses, three weeks apart.
The approval comes as Europe is again the epicentre of the pandemic, accounting for about half of cases and deaths.