Newscast - Africa

France has granted citizenship to over 12,000 foreign-born health workers, security guards, checkout assistants and other frontline workers to thank them for their services during the Covid crisis.
Marlene Schiappa, junior interior minister in charge of citizenship, says over 16,000 people had applied for a French passport over the past year under a special scheme allowing workers in essential services to apply for citizenship after just two years in France, instead of the usual five.
She says among the other categories of employees eligible for the scheme are garbage collectors, home-care providers and nannies.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged countries in the G7 group of richest nations to quickly implement a global tax reform aimed at curbing tax avoidance.
The Treasury says G20 finance ministers backed the deal in July, followed by 134 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries representing more than 90 per cent of the world’s GDP.
Treasury in a statement following a meeting of G7 finance ministers held virtually says Secretary Yellen expressed support for ongoing efforts to improve the international tax system and the importance of swift implementation of the new system.
Yellen says the policy will generate funding for a sustained increase in critical investments in education, research, and clean energy.

Europe's medicines regulator has added the nerve-damaging disorder, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, as a possible side-effect of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, which is widely used in Africa.
The European Medicines Agency says a causal relationship between GBS and the jab was at least a reasonable possibility.
The EMA however said the side-effect was very rare, saying there has been fewer than one case in 10,000 people.
The EMA stressed that the vaccine's benefits outweighed the potential risks.

The World Health Organization says African countries will receive over 100 million doses of Covid vaccines less than they were to get from Covax by the end of the year.
WHO says Africa was to receive 520 million doses by December. So far Covax has been able to deliver more than five million doses.
The UN global sharing scheme says bilateral deals that manufacturing companies have with rich countries, as well as delays in regulatory approvals, are partly to blame for the reduced target.
Out of the 54 countries, only 12 will achieve a global target of vaccinating 10% of their population by the end of September.

Guinea's military junta has ordered banks to freeze all government-related accounts so as to secure state assets.
The junta says the order affects institutional and individual accounts of the outgoing government.
Senior officials of the ousted President Alpha Condé's government will not be able to access their accounts.
The coup leaders seized power said they wanted to end rampant corruption, human rights abuses and mismanagement.
The West African regional bloc Ecowas has deployed a mission to hold talks with the Guinean authorities.

Data released by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute has indicated that Global sovereign wealth fund assets, including Nigeria’s, have reached $9 trillion.
The report revealed that Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management with $1.4 trillion in assets, is the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund.
A breakdown of the sovereign wealth fund market share by region as of September 9, 2021, indicated that Asia accounts for 41.7 per cent of the assets, followed by the Middle East with 32.8 per cent and Europe with 18.1per cent.
The SWFI noted that the key difference from 2000 to 2012 versus 2012 to 2021 was investment returns in the current period, especially in markets fueled by central bank quantitative easing action.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities asked Nigerians to hold the President Muhammadu Buhari administration responsible should the educational system at the ivory towers be engulfed in another crisis based on the alleged irresponsibility on the part of the federal government.
ASUU says another strike by members of the union was imminent and a time bomb following the refusal of the federal government to honour the Memorandum of Action signed with it.
The Coordinator, Ibadan Zone of the union, Prof. Oyebamiji Oyegoke says the only salary shortfall and setting up of visitation panels to federal government-owned universities had been addressed while the renegotiation of conditions of service, injection of revitalisation funds, payment of earned academic allowances which were all contained on December 22, 2020, Memorandum of Action have not been addressed.

The Federal Government has approved the National Policy on the fifth-generation network in Nigeria.
The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, explained that the benefits that accrue from using the 5G network include larger capacity, higher data rates, among others.
He says a memo that was presented before the Federal Executive Council has also been approved after deliberation.
He says the policy has been approved by the Federal Executive Council.
He added that the policy discusses the benefits to be attained through the deployment of 5G in Nigeria and in any part of the world which includes lower latency, larger capacity, and higher data rate.

The Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, has called for stricter measures taken against nations where the military takes over the government by force.
He says one of such stricter measures that could be taken would be a suspension from the international community.
Professor Osinbajo believes such a measure will prevent subsequent coups d’etat in the sub-region, and even on the continent.
The meeting, attended by 10 of the ECOWAS leaders, alongside others, including representatives from the United Nations, comes after Guinean President, Alpha Conde, was ousted by a coup d’etat in the West African country on September 5.

The Lagos State House of Assembly has passed the Value Added Tax bill, along with a bill that prohibits the open grazing of cattle in the state.
The two bills were passed after unanimous votes by the lawmakers during Thursday’s plenary after they were read for the third time.
The Speaker of the House, Mudashiru Obasa, commended his colleagues for their passion to see that the state continues to grow.
Obasa also directed the Acting Clerk of the House, Mr Olalekan Onafeko, to transmit clean copies of the bills to the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, for assent.