🔅 Sierra Leone’s president defends his massive education budget
Today’s Issue: Ghana's President says Islamist insurgency is spreading across West Africa, Cameroon lost a whopping $68 million to corruption last year, and oral cholera vaccines will now be manufactured in South Africa... ☕
Photo of the day: Amboseli national park, Kenya.
Markets
🔺 Nigerian SE: 46,232.37 (+2.90%)
🔺 Johannesburg SE: 72,873.91 (+0.87%)
🔺 Ghana SE: 2,463.08 (+0.09%)
🔺 Nairobi SE: 127.79 (+0.19%)
🔺 US S&P 500: 4,008.55 (+0.12%)
🔺 Shanghai Composite: 3,096.91 (+0.26%)
*Data accurate as of the close of markets across the continent
Congo & South Africa: Shoprite is throwing in the towel on its operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The South African retailer announced its decision on Tuesday, saying it would focus more on its business at home. The latest follows the company's recent decision to close shop in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Madagascar. Shoprite first launched in Congo in 2012, but the company's African expansion plans have hit a few snags. According to the statement, Shoprite's expansion plans have been hindered by currency volatility, double-digit inflation, high import duties, and dollar-based rentals.
Global Markets: Workers at the world's biggest iPhone factory in China are revolting, and it's all because of a little thing we like to call Covid-19. The factory, which Foxconn owns, is located in the city of Zhengzhou. Videos of the protests show hundreds of workers marching, with some being confronted by people in hazmat suits and riot police. The workers claim that Foxconn has changed the terms of their contracts and that they are being asked to share dormitories with workers who have Covid-19. The company has denied these claims, but the workers are not backing down.
APARTHEID
Why Sierra Leone’s president has a colossal education budget
What’s happening?
Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio, is throwing down the gauntlet when it comes to education. He’s allocating an impressive 22% of the national budget to education this year, saying that the country cannot develop unless all children attend school. The president himself attributes his success - having gone from barefoot schoolboy to leader of the nation - to the country's educational system.
The government’s “radical inclusion" programme aims to get millions more children into school by offering free, quality education to all youngsters, particularly those from poor and marginalised groups.
What are the challenges, and where is the money going to go?
The country has some of the world’s worst education metrics: fewer than half of the country’s 8 million citizens are literate. Most of the funding is being used to improve the quality of education by paying and training thousands more teachers. Five charities are trialling different pedagogies across 325 government schools to research the best teaching methods.
Girls’ education is a central component of the programme. More female teachers are to be recruited and trained, while pregnant schoolgirls are being encouraged to stay in class. Until 2020, pregnant schoolgirls were banned from continuing their education.
Everyone must be happy with the new plan, right?
No, not really. Opposition figures argue the government should allocate more resources to help immediate suffering rather than investing in education, which could take years to yield results.
But Bio is adamant that investing in education is the way forward for Sierra Leone. He says, “It’s definitely a risk for a politician. But as much as I am a politician, I’m more of a development person.”
ACROSS THE CONTINENT
Other Headlines
🇰🇪 A building collapse in Kenya has claimed the lives of two people, one of three buildings to fall within a week in the capital and its satellite towns. Industry officials say that the collapse was due to a toxic mix of corruption in planning processes and poor building standards. The National Building Inspectorate found in 2018 that most buildings it had audited were unsafe. Soaring steel and cement prices give developers further incentives to cut corners or to add more floors without ensuring structures can handle the extra weight.
🇬🇭 Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo is sounding the alarm about the Islamist insurgency in West Africa's Sahel region, warning that it is spreading and threatens to engulf the entire region. Akufo-Addo made the remarks at the Accra Initiative security conference, where leaders and European ministers are gathered to discuss regional solutions to the insurgency. The violence has killed thousands of people and displaced more than 2.7 million across the Sahel, according to the U.N. Coastal states such as Benin and Togo have seen rising attacks in recent years, and over 30 million people in the Sahel will require lifesaving assistance and protection in 2022, almost two million more than the previous year. Meanwhile, the Germans are pulling out of Mali after a decade-long mission. The government has decided to extend the mandate for the mission by one year, but after that, it's time to say auf wiedersehen to Mali. The decision to withdraw comes alongside a growing discontent with a Western military presence in the region, with France also pulling out its troops this year.
🇨🇲 A new report from the National Anti-Corruption Commission in Cameroon has revealed that a whopping $68 million was stolen from the country in 2021. That’s more than double the amount taken the previous year, and it doesn’t even include the estimated $281,000 embezzled from coronavirus funds. Earlier this year, the Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore pleaded guilty to acts of corruption in Cameroon and other countries, but the commission’s president did not mention Glencore by name when announcing the report’s findings.
🇿🇦 The Biovac Institute in South Africa has signed a deal with the International Vaccine Institute to develop and manufacture oral cholera vaccines for African and global markets. The partnership aims to boost output and reduce vaccine shortages amid a spate of global outbreaks, with a considerable one currently occurring in Malawi. The technology transfer will start in January next year, with the first clinical trial batches expected in 2024.
IN TECH
Nestcoin: the latest African startup suffering from FTX's collapse
Since Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire — made up of FTX, Alameda Research and FTX Ventures — collapsed last week, there have been various reports of companies with money stuck in FTX, its crypto exchange platform. African web3 startup, Nestcoin, joins that growing list (more names are becoming known by the day), and most, if not all, of its assets are stuck on FTX. It has consequently started laying off its employees. Based on its 23-page bankruptcy filing, FTX has more than 100,000 creditors, with liabilities between $10 billion to $50 billion.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Proverb of the Day
“The day before yesterday and yesterday aren't the same as today.”
— Kenyan Proverb.