🔅 A $20 billion energy project
Mozambique hopes to resume its LNG project
Good morning ☕
In today’s issue, Kenya’s Ruto cuts expenditure, Somalia faces starvation, and Mozambique might resume its $20 billion LNG project…
Markets Today*
📉 Nigerian Stock Exchange: 48,964.83 (-0.42%)
📉 Johannesburg Stock Exchange: 12,412.41 (-1.02%)
📉 Ghana Stock Exchange: 2,461.46 (-0.03%)
📉 Nairobi Securities Exchange: 131.11 (-0.28%)
📉 US S&P 500: 3,639.55 (-2.14%)
📉 Shanghai Composite: 3,041.20 (-0.13%)
*Market data accurate as of the close of markets the previous day.
UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has stated that he will continue with his growth strategy. The pound has hit a historic low versus the dollar, and UK borrowing prices have skyrocketed, leading the Bank of England to step in. In an effort to calm markets, it has offered to purchase $65 billion in government bonds. The International Monetary Fund has issued rare rebukes. Mr Kwarteng, on the other hand, told reporters on Thursday that his top priorities were improving growth and cutting energy expenses.
Kenya's new President, William Ruto, directed the finance ministry on Thursday to cut $2.5 billion from annual government spending this year in order to "restore sanity" to the country. The economy is dealing with growing inflation, a massive debt load, and a drought. Ruto also stated that he wished to reduce recurring costs. The finance ministry has forecast economic growth of 5.5% this year compared with 7.5% in 2021.
SECURITY
8 million Somalians could face starvation
Following a four-year drought, the United Nations has warned that Somalia could face a terrible famine crisis.
According to the UN, droughts have been affecting Somalian livestock for four years and the country is on the verge of starvation.
According to the UN study, about eight million people in Somalia are facing extreme famine, with more than 200,000 at risk of dying.
A comparable famine plagued the country 11 years earlier, killing roughly 260,000 people in al-Shabab regions alone.
While the UN warns that the country is on the verge of starvation, the World Health Organization notes that people are already starving due to a lack of humanitarian help, which could not keep up with growing demand.
Climate shocks, according to experts, are now occurring more frequently and for more extended periods of time, leaving people and the country less time to recuperate and prepare for the next one.
Furthermore, al-Shabab is said to have made it nearly hard for humanitarian aid to reach areas under its control. Abebe Haile-Gabriel, the Food and Agriculture Organization's Africa regional representative, stated a few days ago in Nigeria that the only permanent answer to food shortages was "peace."
ACROSS THE CONTINENT
Other Headlines
🇷🇼 One of the alleged masterminds and financiers of the 1994 Rwandan genocide has gone on trial at a UN tribunal in The Hague. Mr Kabuga's lawyers have submitted a not guilty plea on his behalf, but he has declined to attend the trial's opening in The Hague. Mr Kabuga is accused of establishing what prosecutors call the genocide's most potent weapon: a radio station meant to mobilise one ethnic group, Hutus, to take up arms against another, Tutsis. At the start of the trial, the presiding judge stated that Mr Kabuga was fine but had elected not to appear in court or watch proceedings through video link from his incarceration centre.
🇸🇳 Senegal's President Macky Sall has requested that the justice ministry investigate an amnesty proposal that would allow two of his main political opponents sentenced on graft charges to restore their voting rights and perhaps compete in the 2024 presidential election. Former Dakar mayor Khalifa Sall and Karim Wade, son of former president Abdoulaye Wade, were sentenced to prison on corruption accusations in 2018 and 2015, respectively. Since then, another fiery opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, has risen to prominence and organised massive protests against the ruling party, which lost its absolute majority in parliament last month to an allied opposition alliance. Sall has remained silent on whether he intends to run for president in 2024.
🇲🇿 Mozambique's Finance Minister, Max Tonela, is optimistic that TotalEnergies would decide by March to resume work on its $20 billion liquefied natural gas project, which was halted due to Islamic State-linked violence. The project has the potential to provide an alternative gas source for European nations scrambling for supplies following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, it is located in an area where the violence that began in 2017 has killed at least 4,200 people and forced nearly 1 million others to evacuate their homes.
AROUND THE WORLD
Russia to formalise annexation of four Ukraine areas
Russia's Vladimir Putin will attend a signing ceremony on Friday to annex four additional parts of Ukraine following self-proclaimed referendums that Ukraine and the West have blasted as a fraud.
Russian-backed officials had earlier claimed that the five-day exercise had almost universal public backing. So-called elections were held in the eastern cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south. A stage has already been put up in Moscow's Red Square, with billboards declaring the four regions' inclusion in Russia and an evening performance scheduled.
The occasion is reminiscent of Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, which was preceded by a Kremlin signing ceremony followed by a presidential victory speech in parliament. The vast majority of the international community has never recognised that initial annexation.
There was no independent monitoring of the Russian process, and poll officials were seen walking door to door, guarded by armed soldiers.
The US has stated that penalties will be imposed on Russia as a result of the staged referendums. Meanwhile EU member states are preparing an eighth round of sanctions, including punishment on anyone participating in the ballots.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Proverb of the Day
"There are no shortcuts to the top of the palm tree."
- Cameroonian Proverb.