Nigeria Is Going Crypto

 

Going Crypto

NIGERIA

Nigeria became the first African country to roll out a digital currency this week, joining a growing list of nations that are betting on virtual money to cut transaction costs and boost participation in the formal financial system, Bloomberg reported.

The new eNaira currency comes months after the country’s central bank outlawed banks and other financial institutions from using cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, saying the latter two posed a threat to the financial system.

The eNaira is considered a national currency, unlike its crypto counterparts which are prized – in part – because they are connected to the fiat currency.

Nigeria’s new digital currency, instead, will complement the physical naira, which has weakened 5.6 percent this year despite the central bank’s efforts to stabilize it.

Officials said the eNaira is expected to boost cross-border trade and financial inclusion. President Muhammadu Buhari said it could “increase Nigeria’s gross domestic product by $29 billion over the next 10 years.” The International Monetary Fund estimates that Nigeria’s GDP will reach $480 billion in 2021.

Nigeria joins the Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in being the first jurisdictions in the world to issue national digital currencies. Earlier this year, China launched a pilot version of its “digital renminbi.”

T

Cape Verde-A Working Democracy

 

A Working Democracy

CAPE VERDE

The people of Cape Verde work hard to improve their country.

Some have formed citizens groups to document illegal fishing and preserve the legacy of the sea for their children, as the Guardian wrote. Others have set up boxing programs for impoverished children who might otherwise turn to crime and violence on the country’s streets, as Deutsche Welle reported in a remarkable video. Volunteers band together to protect endangered sea turtles.

“It’s incredible. It’s a feeling of duty done because we spend 60 days here, 45 days preserving a nest, waiting for it to hatch,” University of Cape Verde student Lusa Rafaela Tavares told Africanews. “It is an enormous satisfaction when we manage to put those little turtles to the sea.”

An archipelago of islands off the coast of Senegal in West Africa, Cape Verde is expected to conduct a well-run presidential election on Oct. 17, as strategic communication consultant Paul Ejime wrote in Global News Network Liberia. Freedom House agrees, ranking the country high on its index of civil rights and other criteria that affect liberty.

The two frontrunners in the race are Carlos Veiga of the ruling Movement for Democracy and José Maria Neves of the opposition African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde, explained Global Voices. Both are former prime ministers. Neves is campaigning on a platform of social justice and change while Veiga is appealing to unity in the face of the pandemic.

Prime Minister José Ulisses Correia e Silva and his Movement for Democracy won parliamentary elections earlier this year, giving him a second term in power, despite critics who said he could have handled the coronavirus pandemic and a controversial extradition case involving Venezuela and the US better.

The country’s tourism-dependent economy shrank 14 percent in 2020, Al Jazeera reported, citing the International Monetary Fund. It was expected to bounce only halfway back this year. Tourism officials now see the industry gaining momentum, however, as the worst of the pandemic appears to have faded in Europe, noted Macau Business.

Correia e Silva couldn’t have necessarily done much to prevent the country’s overreliance on tourism, the World Bank concluded. He and future leaders could push to develop other sources of commercial activity that would help ordinary Cape Verdeans rather than the owners of seaside resorts and other mega projects that soak up investment in the country, the report added.

If they follow the lead of their people, either Veiga or Neves will do just fine.

A Man From Tanzania Wins The Nobel Prize In Literature

 

Time To Shine

TANZANIA

Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, becoming the first black African in almost two decades to win the world’s most prestigious literary award, the New York Times reported.

The Swedish Academy – which awards the prize – recognized Gurnah for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Born in 1948 in Zanzibar, which is now part of Tanzania, Gurnah became the fifth laureate from Africa to receive the prize, a list that includes Wole Soyinka of Nigeria (1986), Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt (1988) and the South African winners, Nadine Gordimer (1991) and John Maxwell Coetzee (2003).

The author – currently living in Britain – left Tanzania at the age of 18 following a violent 1964 uprising against the government led by soldiers. His works predominately focus on immigrant experiences in Britain, the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and the impact of exile on identity and a sense of belonging.

Gurnah’s award follows criticism of the academy for how its choices have lacked diversity: The Nobel Peace Prize for Literature has been awarded 118 times but 95 of those laureates were from Europe or North America.

Only 16 winners had been women.

Ethiopia-Sentence To Hunger

Sentenced to Hunger

ETHIOPIA

Ethiopia ordered the expulsion of seven senior United Nations officials over accusations of “meddling in internal affairs” amid a worsening famine in the country’s war-torn Tigray region, the Guardian reported.

The government said the individuals which include staff from the UN human rights office and the children’s agency, UNICEF, have to leave the country within 72 hours.

The decision came following warnings from UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths over Ethiopia’s blockade of aid in the northern Tigray region, causing widespread famine affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Griffiths said that children have been dying of hunger and medicine stocks have been running out.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the expulsion and said the UN staff in Ethiopia was “delivering lifesaving aid… to people in desperate need.”

In recent months, the international community has criticized Ethiopia’s handling of the situation in the Tigray region. Since November, the federal government has been engaged in a bloody conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Thousands have died.

The Ethiopian government has halted food, medicine and fuel deliveries from entering Tigray in an effort to block support for the TPLF.

However, the blockade, locusts swarms decimating crops and a potentially poor harvest risks worsening the situation in the region. Griffiths warned that child malnutrition is at its highest rate since the Somalia famine of 2010-2012, which killed up to 260,000 people.

Meanwhile, the United States criticized the Ethiopian government and urged the international community “to employ all appropriate tools to apply pressure on the government of Ethiopia and any other actors impeding humanitarian access.”