Author: Padili Mikomangwa

Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to face its first recession in 25 years as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is cutting life from the continent’s economies, disrupts world trade, according to information from the World Bank.

According to information from Bloomberg, the lender said, the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) will probably contract 2.1 per cent to 5.1 per cent in 2020, compared with 2.4 per cent growth a year earlier.

World Bank Vice President for Africa, Hafez Ghanem said in a statement following the Africa Pulse report, that “The COVID-19 pandemic is testing the limits of societies and economies across the world, and African countries are likely to be hit particularly hard,”

The global investment bank, Goldman Sachs Group gave their prediction on African governments funding needs, saying that sub-Saharan Africa funding may rise by $75 billion due to COVID-19 hammering their economies.

Further, the growth downgrade is based on …

Nigeria, Africa’s populous and largest economy is planning to raise about $6.9 billion from various multilateral lenders to assist their efforts towards curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

According to information from Bloomberg, the nation’s Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed told reporters Monday in the capital, Abuja that, the government will seek $3.4 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), $2.5 billion from the World Bank and a further $1 billion.

The highly contagious pandemic has hit the region’s largest economy hard as plummeting oil prices and capital flight threaten to push the economy into recession. Nigeria has reported over 230 cases of the coronavirus and 5 deaths so far.

Bloomberg reported that Fitch Ratings earlier on Monday followed S&P’s March 26 decision to downgrade Nigeria’s credit rating further into junk territory, citing its dependence on oil, which represent about half of the government revenue.

However, Nonso Obikili, head …

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is creating chaos all over the globe, taking lives, unevenly infecting a large number of people over space and time, and also affecting markets performance. Despite, these scenarios, African nations are keeping up the fight in curbing the virus impacts.

The continent’s central banks are trying to cushion their respective nation’s economies against the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to information from Bloomberg, as many central banks in the region of more than 1.2 billion target inflation and have to prop up volatile currencies, they have also used non-traditional policy tools, to cut interest rates to salvage economic growth and encourage more lending to consumers and businesses.

The pandemic which has infected more than 1 million people and killed over 69,000 people worldwide is hurting fragile African economies so bad.

According to a study conducted by African Union, the previously projected Gross Domestic Product (GDP) …

Rwanda coronavirus (COVID-19) containment landscape just got stronger as the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday approved the disbursement of $109.4 million to be drawn under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF), IMF statement said.

According to information from the IMF, this will serve to meet Rwanda’s urgent balance of payment needs stemming from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rwanda is one of the East African nations to be hurt by the pandemic, whereby—COVID-19 cases stand at 84.

The lender noted that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is rapidly unfolding, with the near-term outlook deteriorating quickly.

According to the IMF statement, the pandemic has triggered a rise to significant fiscal and external financing needs.

Hence, in curbing possible devastating impacts of the outbreak, authorities have acted fast by putting in place measures to help contain and mitigate the spread of the disease.

According to …

The South African rand got firmer against the dollar on Thursday, as it has recovered from its record fall the previous session, according to information from Reuters.

Earlier today at 0630GMT, the rand traded at 18.110 per dollar, 0.6 per cent firmer than its previous close. Hence, Reuters reported that investor confidence remained fragile as concerns over the economy linger.

The second-largest economy in Africa, which went into another recession in two years, is hurting from various economic scenarios including the ripple effect of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and the current power crisis.

South Africa has imposed some of the toughest restrictions on the continent to try to contain the pandemic that has already taken more than 170 lives and infected over 5,500 people. COVID-19 has killed 5 people in South Africa, infected more than 1,300 others.

The Southern African nation has rolled out various measures including deploying the army …

World Bank Group, Tanzania’s biggest lender has approved a $500 million education loan, after a series of delays triggered by various concerns related to banning pregnant students from public schools, drawing harsh criticism from human rights activists and politicians.

The lender froze $1.7 billion in loans to Tanzania in 2018 following both the pregnant student ban and a harsh statistics law. It started releasing funds again to the East African country last September.

According to information from the World Bank, the $500 million Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project (SEQUIP) will directly benefit about 6.5 million secondary school students by strengthening government-run schools and establishing stronger educational pathways for students who leave the formal school system.

However, the terms of the loan, which is designed to improve secondary school access, give pregnant students – who were forced to drop out – a chance to complete their schooling through alternative public education …

African nations (via their ministers) have agreed to call a debt relief support from bilateral, multilateral and commercial partners with the support of the multilateral and bilateral financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank Group, and European Union (EU), amid coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) revealed in a statement.

The agreement was germinated from the second virtual meeting on Tuesday, hosted by Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, and co-chaired by Ministers Tito Mboweni of South Africa and Ken Ofori-Atta of Ghana.

The meeting stressed the need to take possible actions to downplay and bring the spread of COVID-19 under control in the short term.

“The call for debt relief, it was emphasized, should be for all of Africa and should be undertaken in a coordinated and collaborative way. They called for a special purpose vehicle …

Tanzania, East Africa’s populous nation has confirmed today April 1 another coronavirus (COVID-19) case, totalling the national case at number 20, the Ministry of Health revealed.

According to the ministry, the patients is a 42-year-old female American national, who was in contact with an infected person, who also travelled abroad before returning to Tanzania.

So far, the patients are spread out in three regions, and according to the Minister of Health Ummy Mwalimu statement to the public, two patients have already recovered, and one died yesterday March 31.

The highly contagious pandemic made its way to Tanzania a month ago via a female Tanzanian national who returned from Belgium, since then—Tanzania has been on its toes rolling in several measures to curb the spread of the COVID-19.

Also, coronavirus cases have reached over 5,500 and almost more than 170 death have been reported across the continent.

Currently, Tanzania has closed-down …

Climate change is hurting the world including Africa. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts, and it is weak on various angles including having less strong adaptation capacities, and high dependence on natural ecosystems for the livelihood of its populations.

As the world strives to set the greenhouse emissions to at least 1.5 centigrade –the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) argues that in all African regions, negative climate change impacts would progressively compound and lead to decreasing GDP per capita.

The warming scenarios entail losses by 2030 (as compared to a baseline GDP per capita scenario) that range from -0.6 per cent in Northern Africa in the low-warming scenario, to -3.6 per cent in Eastern African in the high-warming scenario.

However, in the current world where research and development as well as technological advancement simplifies life and …

It is not only smiling for the camera that makes photos important to us but also—photography is a means to earn a living. The industry has drawn over $77.66 billion market value in 2015 and is expected to reach $110.79 billion by 2021, according to Zion Market Research.

With less than 200 years since its inception, photography is the real example of a technological breakthrough, from using crude processes of using chemicals to simpler processes, taking less than one minute, where instant high-quality photos can be taken via our handheld gadgets— our smartphones.

The photography industry has evolved remarkably over the years, sweeping away some jobs along other blunt lines of the industry, such as photo processing workers, film lab technicians and photography equipment repairers, who are now replaced by more robust and efficient digital technology processes.

Photography as the activity or job of taking photographs or filming is practised …