🔅 63,000 extra malaria deaths due to the COVID pandemic
Today’s Issue: D’Banj is arrested, Chipper Cash’s valuation is halved, and Mozambique’s former president’s son is arrested... ☕
baobabnewsletter@substack.com
Photo of the day: Characteristic island cab in Santa Maria on Sal, Cape Verde.
Markets
🔻 Nigerian SE: 48,365.14 (-0.13%)
🔺 Johannesburg SE: 74,467.26 (+0.62%)
— Ghana SE: 2,460.62 (0.00%)
🔺 Nairobi SE: 126.33 (+0.20%)
🔺 US S&P 500: 3,957.61 (+0.60%)
🔻 Shanghai Composite: 3,197.35 (-0.07%)
*Data accurate as of the close of markets across the continent
Nigeria: It’s the ultimate bargain: Airtel Africa is about to get the 5G spectrum licence for Nigeria for the low, low price of…zero! Well, sort of. In the second licensing round, the Nigerian Communications Commission said only Airtel was left in the running. The licence will cost Airtel $273.6 million, with a 10-year tenure. In December 2020, MTN Nigeria and Mafab Communications paid the same amount for their 5G licences.
US: Stocks took another beating yesterday, marking five days of losses in a row. This, as CEOs hit TV airwaves to warn of rough times ahead. Giants, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have already made moves to significantly cut staff.
SECURITY
COVID-19 led to 63,000 extra malaria deaths due to disruptions
What happened?
COVID-19 threw a real curveball at the fight against malaria. According to a new report from the World Health Organization, the pandemic led to 63,000 extra deaths and 13 million more infections of the parasitic disease over the last two years.
Almost all of the 247 million malaria cases and 619,000 deaths in 2020 happened in Africa, and the WHO said progress against the disease was already starting to stall before the pandemic hit.
Why the increase?
The surge in cases was down to the interruption in malaria prevention efforts due to the pandemic. The distribution of bed nets, for instance, and the wider rollout of the world’s first authorised malaria vaccine were all disrupted because of lockdowns and such.
A new, invasive, resistant mosquito species has also been discovered in the Horn of Africa, which has been attributed to a huge spike in cases.
What’s the solution?
With an ease in COVID-19 restrictions, we should expect cases to drop back down significantly. As an example, about a quarter of mosquito nets provided by donors have yet to be distributed and should finally make their way through to those in need.
The world’s first malaria vaccine is also set to roll out in 2022 and should have a big impact, even though it is only 30% effective.
But the real elephant in the room is the lack of funding malaria efforts receive. WHO estimates that the total investment into malaria is less than half of what’s needed to reduce its impact considerably.
ACROSS THE CONTINENT
Other Headlines
🇳🇬 Afrobeats star, D’banj, has been arrested over allegations of fraud involving the N-Power scheme, a government initiative designed to help young people start businesses. According to the anti-corruption agency, “billions of naira” have gone missing from the project, and D’banj has been accused of ignoring multiple summonses to turn himself in. If you’re wondering how D’banj is connected to the scheme, he claimed he was the project’s brand ambassador, even though the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs has denied any official engagement with him. It’s a sad turn of events for the star, who won over fans across the continent and the diaspora with his 2012 hit Oliver Twist.
🇳🇬 Nigeria’s Defence Chief General Lucky Irabor has said he wouldn’t waste his time investigating a Reuters report about the military running a secret mass abortion programme in the country’s northeast because the report is “not true”. Speaking at a news conference in Abuja, Irabor said that he had never seen anything like what was reported and that the cases referred to in the report had never occurred. The report, published on Wednesday, claims that the Nigerian Army has run a systematic and illegal abortion programme since 2013, terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies of women and girls who had been kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.
🇲🇿 Justice is finally being served in Mozambique’s $2 billion “hidden debt” scandal. On Wednesday, a court in Maputo handed down sentences of 10 to 12 years to 11 defendants, including Armando Ndambi Guebuza, the son of a former president, and two former spy bosses. The scandal started in 2013 and 2014 when government-backed loans disappeared and the country’s economy tanked. The judge noted that Ndambi Guebuza had acted “to exert influence on his father” and take a $33 million bribe to satisfy his “desire for luxury.” As part of his sentence, he has to pay a fine of $2,500 and forfeit all his luxury cars and a 10-million-rand mansion in South Africa. Credit Suisse was fined $475 million last year for issuing the loans, and former Finance Minister Manuel Chang is being extradited to the US for allegedly using the US financial system to carry out the fraudulent scheme.
🇺🇬 It’s not every day you get to be a guinea pig for science, but that will be the case for 3,000 Ugandans. The World Health Organization has donated 1,200 experimental vaccine doses designed to work against the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus. The country is about to conduct scientific trials on the general public. Since September, Uganda has reported 142 cases of the Sudan strain of Ebola, with 56 deaths. Right now, there’s no vaccine proven to be effective against this strain, so fingers crossed these experimental doses will do the trick. The vaccine, made by the Sabin Institute in the US, has already been proven safe for human trials, so the participants are in good hands. It’s been almost three weeks since Uganda has seen a new positive case, so the vaccine doses have arrived at the tail end of the epidemic. But the country’s Health Minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, says the study is still necessary to equip the country with all the public health tools it needs to fight similar outbreaks in future. Who knows — maybe you’ll be one of the ones to save the day.
IN TECH
Chipper Cash's valuation almost halved
It’s been a rough week for African fintech startup Chipper Cash. Not only did the company have to lay off about 50 employees, but its valuation was also just taken down a notch. A big notch. According to documents obtained by the Financial Times, the cross-border payments company valuation was marked down from $2 billion to $1.25 billion by FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform led by Sam Bankman-Fried. That’s a 37.5% drop from Chipper Cash's valuation only a few months ago. Ouch. The news comes after Chipper Cash raised over $250 million in 2021, including a $40 million injection from FTX. It’s unclear how much additional money the four-year-old startup raised this year, but FTX chipped in an extra $35 million at the new valuation.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Proverb of the Day
“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”
— Kenyan Proverb.