Newscast - Africa

President Muhammadu Buhari has given assurances that Nigeria will support the Republic of Burundi in diverse ways as necessary in the spirit of African solidarity and brotherliness.
Buhari acknowledged the feeling of suffering from energy shortage, promising that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited would be drafted to look into the request.
The Special adviser to the President on media and publicity, Femi Adeshina, says the Nigerian President affirmed that he was looking forward to the polls and retirement, having satisfied the constitutional requirement of two terms in office

President Muhammadu Buhari has signed into law the Appropriation Bill, 2023 totalling N21.83 trillion.
The President said the aggregate expenditures of N21.83 trillion, is an increase of N1.32 trillion over the initial Executive Proposal for a total expenditure of N20.51 trillion.
President Buhari explained that the 2022 Supplementary Appropriation Act would enable the administration to respond to the havoc caused by the recent nationwide floods in the infrastructure and agriculture sectors.
He also said the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning will subsequently provide more details of the approved budget and the supporting 2022 Finance Act.

TSB has been fined nearly £49m for an IT meltdown in 2018 that caused chaos and left its customers unable to access online accounts for several weeks.
The UK's financial regulator says the failings were widespread and serious and led to significant disruption.
All areas of TSB's services were affected, including branch, telephone and online banking.
The Financial Conduct Authority says the problems were not fully resolved for eight months and a significant proportion of its 5.2 million customers were affected by the initial issues.

Japan’s central bank tweaked its longstanding monetary easing programme on Tuesday, in a surprise move that saw the yen strengthen quickly against the dollar and prompted falls on Tokyo bourses.
The bank says it would widen the band in which it would allow rates for 10-year Japan government bonds to move, saying it would improve market functioning.
The Bank will expand the range of 10-year JGB yield fluctuations from the target level: from between around plus and minus 0.25 percentage points to between around plus and minus 0.5 percentage points.
The bank left the rest of its longstanding loose monetary programme intact, including its years-old inflation target of two percent.

Elon Musk says he will resign as Twitter's chief executive officer when he finds someone foolish enough to take the job.
The billionaire promised earlier to abide by the result of a Twitter poll which saw 57.5% of users vote "yes" to him quitting the role.
He says he will still run the software and servers teams after his replacement is found.
Changes on the platform since his takeover have been much criticised.
Civil liberties groups have also criticised his approach to content moderation, accusing him of taking steps that will increase hate speech and misinformation.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers banned university education for females nationwide, as the hard-line Islamists continue to crush women’s right to education and freedom.
The Taliban have ratcheted up restrictions on all aspects of women’s lives, ignoring international outrage.
The spokesman for the ministry, Ziaullah Hashimi, who tweeted the letter, confirmed the order.
State Department spokesman Ned Price in Washington says the Taliban should expect that this decision, which is in contravention to the commitments they have made repeatedly and publicly to their own people, will carry concrete costs for them.
The ban on higher education comes less than three months after thousands of girls and women sat university entrance exams across the country, with many aspiring to choose teaching and medicine as future careers.

Tanzania signed a $2.2-billion contract with a Chinese company to build the final section of a railway line aimed at linking the country’s main port with its neighbours.
The 2,561-kilometre line will link the Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam to Mwanza on Lake Victoria, with eventual spurs to Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, says the construction of the final section of the Standard Gauge Railway from Tabora to Kigoma in western Tanzania would be completed in 2026, nine years after it began.
She says the new railway would reduce cargo transportation costs between the Dar es Salaam port and the DRC from a minimum of $6,000 per tonne to about $4,000 once it becomes fully operational.

The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia says that it has resumed financial services in Shire, Alamata and Korem, allowing people to deposit money and receive funds from abroad.
The announcement comes after the federal government and Tigrayan rebels signed a peace deal on 2 November that would reopen access to Tigray, which has been severely limited during the two-year conflict.
The United Nations says the conflict has displaced more than two million people and driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine.
The UN World Food Programme, says more than 13 million people in northern Ethiopia now depend on humanitarian aid, including more than 90 percent of Tigray's population of six million.

Nigerian Lawmakers insisted that the Central Bank of Nigeria must not proceed with its cash withdrawal policy.
Although the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, for the second time, failed to appear before the House, the lawmakers said their December 8 directive to the apex bank to put the policy on hold had not changed.
The CBN indicated that beginning from January 9, 2023, the amounts individuals and corporate organisations could withdraw per week would not exceed N100,000 and N500,000, respectively.
The Deputy Governor, Corporate Services, CBN, Edward Adamu, told the lawmakers that Emefiele was part of the entourage of President Muhammadu Buhari on an official trip to the United States.

The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, has declined an application by the Department of State Services to arrest and detain the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Godwin Emefiele.
Justice Tsoho, while declining the motion ex-parte filed by an applicant in the absence of the respondent, says the secret police did not provide any concrete evidence to substantiate its claims that Emefiele was involved in terrorism financing and economic crimes.
The Judge noted that the name of the respondent was given simply as ‘Godwin Emefiele’ without a material disclosure that he is the same person as the CBN Governor.