🔅 Mo Ibrahim blasts the West
Mo Ibrahim blasts hypocrisy over Africa's gas reserves
Good morning ☕
In today’s issue, Senegal’s economy will expand the most in Sub-Saharan Africa, Tanzania’s president has expressed concern about the country's birth rate, and floods have so far killed 600 in Nigeria…
Markets
🔻 Nigerian SE: 46,365.95 (-2.53%)
🔺 Johannesburg SE: 66,190.75 (+2.99%)
— Ghana SE: 2,460.44 (0.00%)
🔻 Nairobi SE: 129.78 (-0.09%)
🔺 US S&P 500: 3,681.10 (+2.74%%)
🔺 Shanghai Composite: 3,084.94 (+0.42%)
*Data accurate as of close of markets across the continent
Senegal's economy will expand the most in Sub-Saharan Africa next year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The West African country leads a list of strong performers dominated by countries aspiring to become significant oil and gas exporters, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
Global Markets:Â The British pound rose, and government borrowing costs fell on Monday as investors welcomed the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt's announcement that most of the mini-budget tax measures made by the former chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, would be reversed. The interest rate - or yield - on UK government bonds fell on the news, making government borrowing less expensive.
ENERGY
Billionaire Mo Ibrahim blasts hypocrisy over Africa's gas reserves
Mo Ibrahim, a telecoms billionaire, has criticised developed countries for attempting to discourage African nations from exploiting their vast reserves of gas.
He believes that Africa's gas reserves should be used to provide electricity to its people. The question of whether and how countries can exploit Africa's gas will be a hot topic at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Cairo next month.
In September, Ibrahim's charitable foundation concluded that doubling African energy consumption through gas alone would add less than 1% to global carbon dioxide emissions.
Using gas for cooking instead of wood, dung, coal, paraffin, and other polluting fuels would also save lives in Africa, according to Ibrahim.
Developed countries and civil society organisations have tried to persuade African governments not to drill their reserves. Still, as gas prices rise, exploiting the resources has become more profitable. Multinational corporations and other interested countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, have been looking into ways to invest in the continent.
EU member states have also entered the fray, attempting to import gas from Africa in order to replace fuel imported from Russia.
Ibrahim, a British citizen born in Sudan, rose to prominence as a telecoms entrepreneur, founding Celtel International in 1998 to bring mobile phone networks to 14 African countries where landline infrastructure was lacking. In 2006, he established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which aims to promote good governance and leadership in Africa.
ACROSS THE CONTINENT
Other Headlines
🇹🇿 Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has expressed concern about the country's high birth rate and urged citizens to practise birth control. It is a significant shift from her predecessor, the late John Magufuli, who openly encouraged women not to use contraception. He once called those who use contraception "lazy" during a rally in western Tanzania in 2018. The World Bank estimated Tanzania's fertility rate to be 4.8 births per woman in 2020. While it has declined over the last 30 years, it has not declined as quickly as other countries in the region, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, according to World Bank data.
🇳🇬 The number of people killed in Nigeria's worst floods in a decade has risen. On Sunday, 600 people were confirmed dead. 2,407 people were injured, 2.5 million people were affected, and 82,053 houses were destroyed. The West African country has been dealing with flooding since July. Floods have so far affected 31 of Nigeria's 36 states.
🇺🇬 On Monday, media organisations petitioned Uganda's Supreme Court to overturn a new digital communications law that they claimed violated the constitution and hampered free speech. The "Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act," which went into effect last week, prohibits people from using a computer to send information that could be used to mock or degrade someone. It prohibits, among other things, the recording or videotaping of anyone without their consent and carries penalties ranging from fines to jail time. However, officials from the ruling party have argued that it will reduce hate speech, protect children, and prevent the spread of false or malicious information.
AROUND THE WORLD
Cancer vaccines could be available by 2030
Cancer vaccines could be available by 2030, according to the founders of BioNTech.
Cancer vaccines could be available by the end of the decade, according to the husband and wife team behind one of the pandemic's most successful Covid vaccines.
Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, co-founders of BioNTech, the German company that collaborated with Pfizer to develop a revolutionary mRNA Covid vaccine, said they had made significant breakthroughs.
Prof Türeci believes that the mRNA technology used in BioNTech's Covid vaccine could be repurposed to prime the immune system to attack cancer cells rather than invading coronaviruses.
BioNTech was working on cancer vaccines but shifted to producing Covid vaccines at the start of the pandemic. The company is currently testing several cancer vaccines in clinical trials and is attempting to use the same mRNA vaccine process as the Covid vaccines.
The German company hopes to develop treatments for bowel cancer, melanoma, and other cancer types, but significant obstacles remain.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Proverb of the Day
"Even the king of the forest, the lion, protects himself against flies."
— Ghanain Proverb.