Sudan billionaire urges more vaccines for Africa

Mo Ibrahim
Short Url
Updated 10 June 2021
Follow

Sudan billionaire urges more vaccines for Africa

  • Ibrahim, a British mobile phone magnate who was born in Sudan, is hailed as a voice of moral authority across Africa

KAMPALA: Billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim is sharply criticizing the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by wealthy nations, urging the international community to “walk the talk” of equitable distribution as Africa desperately lags behind.

Ibrahim, a British mobile phone magnate who was born in Sudan, is hailed as a voice of moral authority across Africa. The 75-year-old earned his fortune by establishing the Celtel mobile phone network across Africa in the 1990s.

He is now using that fortune to promote democracy and political accountability on the continent, including through his sponsorship of the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for African leaders who govern responsibly and who give up their power peacefully.

He lamented the global “competition” for vaccines. He said he views the pandemic-era phrase “nobody is safe until everybody is safe” as a meaningless slogan until there is an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

“They say that while they are hoarding the vaccine. Can you walk the talk? Stop just talking like parrots, you know, and do you really mean what you said?” Ibrahim said in a Zoom call from London, where he is based.

He argued that “at least a reasonable portion” of the vaccines should go to frontline workers in Africa.

The World Health Organization said that COVID-19 vaccine shipments have ground to “a near halt” in Africa at a time when some countries face a spike in cases.

Africa has administered vaccine doses to 31 million of its 1.3 billion people. But only 7 million people are fully vaccinated, according to WHO Africa director Matshidiso Moeti.

Sub-Saharan Africa has on average administered only one vaccine dose per 100 people, compared to a global average of 23 doses per 100 people, she said, reiterating Africa’s ongoing plea for richer countries with significant vaccination coverage to share some of their remaining doses.

President Joe Biden has said the US would share some of its vaccines.

Ibrahim warned also that Africa cannot afford to sit back, citing a need for greater accountability by governments which pledged in 2001 to spend at least 15 percent of their national budgets on public health.


Morocco to spend $260 mln on flood relief

Updated 6 sec ago
Follow

Morocco to spend $260 mln on flood relief

  • Government will offer 80,000 Dirhams for partially demolished homes and 140,000 dirhams for totally collapsed ones
RABAT: The Moroccan government said on Thursday it plans to spend 2.5 billion dirhams ($ 260 million) on a flood relief plan that includes reconstruction aid, infrastructure upgrades and farming support.
Floods ravaged several villages in the country’s south-east last month, killing at least 28 people and destroying roads.
The government will offer 80,000 Dirhams for partially demolished homes and 140,000 dirhams for totally collapsed ones, the prime minister’s office said.
The plan includes upgrading destroyed infrastructure and support to affected farmers.
Separately, the government said it will continue, for the next five months, to offer cash handouts of 2500 dirhams to some 60,000 households affected by an earthquake that hit the High Atlas mountains in September 2023.
One year on, just 1000 homes have been built, according to official data, as the government continues its gradual construction aid plan for some 57,000 damaged or totally destroyed homes.

Belgian journalists injured in Beirut bombing

Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Belgian journalists injured in Beirut bombing

  • Israel has been carrying out a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and has also sent its troops across the border
  • The bombardments in Lebanon have cost more than 1,000 lives

Brussels: Two Belgian journalists were injured in Lebanon while reporting on overnight air raids in Beirut, their employer said Thursday, as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah.
VTM correspondent Robin Ramaekers suffered facial injuries and cameraman Stijn De Smet was being treated for a leg wound, said a statement by the broadcaster’s parent company, DPG Media.
“Last night there was a bombing in central Beirut. When Robin and Stijn wanted to run a report on that, they got injured,” the firm said, adding the pair were being treated in hospital.
“Both are now in safety and are being cared for.”
The circumstances of the incident were not yet clear, the company said. Belgium’s foreign ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation.
Israel has been carrying out a bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and has also sent its troops across the border.
On Thursday, the Israeli military pounded Beirut with overnight air raids. A total of 17 strikes had hit the capital by dawn, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.
One of the strikes hit a Hezbollah rescue facility, a source close to the group told AFP, killing at least six people, according to a Lebanese health ministry toll.
Israel says it is trying to secure its border with Lebanon so tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by nearly a year of hostilities with Hezbollah can return home.
The bombardments in Lebanon have cost more than 1,000 lives and seen Hezbollah’s long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah killed.
Authorities in Lebanon say that around a million people have been displaced.
Last year, a journalist was killed and six other reporters, including two from AFP, wounded by Israeli shelling while covering the cross-border fighting in southern Lebanon.


Palestinian activist Issa Amro wins prize for peaceful resistance

Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Palestinian activist Issa Amro wins prize for peaceful resistance

  • 44-year-old founded Youth Against Settlements group, which campaigns against proliferation of Jewish settlements in West Bank
  • When university where he was studying closed in 2003 during Second Intifada, Amro successfully led six-month civil disobedience campaign

Stockholm: Palestinian activist Issa Amro on Thursday accepted the Right Livelihood prize — considered by some an alternative Nobel — for his “nonviolent resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation” in the West Bank, the jury said.
Amro was born in the city of Hebron, a flashpoint West Bank city where roughly 1,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy Israeli military protection amid some 200,000 Palestinians.
He has dedicated his life to fighting against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
The 44-year-old founded the Youth Against Settlements group, which campaigns against the proliferation of Jewish settlements in the territory — communities widely regarded as illegal under international law.
The rights campaigner has been repeatedly detained and tortured by both the Palestinian Authority and by Israel, the foundation said.
“It’s a miracle that I still exist,” said Amro.
When Palestine Polytechnic University, where he was studying, closed in 2003 during the Second Intifada, Amro successfully led a six-month civil disobedience campaign.
“I managed to reopen the university with other students,” Amro said in a statement.
“I graduated as an engineer and as an activist — it became part of my character,” he added.
The Sweden-based Right Livelihood Foundation also honored Joan Carling, a Filipino champion of indigenous rights and Anabela Lemos, a climate activist from Mozambique.
It also gave the nod to research agency Forensic Architecture for its work in uncovering human rights violations around the world.
The foundation said the four prize winners had “each made a profound impact on their communities and the global stage.”
“Their unwavering commitment to speaking out against forces of oppression and exploitation, while strictly adhering to non-violent methods, resonates far beyond their communities,” Right Livelihood said in a statement.
Carling from the Philippines was recognized for having defended the rights of indigenous communities for three decades, particularly in their fight against mining projects.
The foundation celebrated Lemos, who heads the NGO Justica Ambiental (JA!), for her role in opposing liquefied natural gas extraction projects in northern Mozambique.
Forensic Architecture, a London-based research laboratory known for 3D modelling conflict zones, won the distinction for “pioneering digital forensic methods” to ensure accountability of human rights violations around the world.
By teaming up with Ukraine’s Center for Spatial Technologies to reconstruct Mariupol’s Drama Theatre before it was destroyed in 2022, the firm highlighted Russia’s “strategies of terror” and “attempts to obscure evidence of their own crimes,” the foundation said.
Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull sold part of his stamp collection to found the Right Livelihood award in 1980, after the foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create new distinctions honoring efforts in the fields of environment and international development.


41,788 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7, health ministry says

Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

41,788 Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive since Oct. 7, health ministry says

  • Ninety-nine Palestinians have been killed and 169 wounded in the past 24 hours

CAIRO: Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 41,788 Palestinians and wounded 96,794 since Oct. 7, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Thursday.
Ninety-nine Palestinians have been killed and 169 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement.
Medics said scores of people were killed a day before in an Israeli strike that hit a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, while another struck the Al-Amal Orphan Society, which also houses displaced persons.
As the war in Gaza triggered by the cross-border Hamas attack on Israel nears its first anniversary on Oct. 7, there has been no let-up in Israeli military operations against the Palestinian Islamist group. The enclave has been left in ruins.


Iran Revolutionary Guards consultant dies from injuries in Israeli strike on Damascus

Updated 03 October 2024
Follow

Iran Revolutionary Guards consultant dies from injuries in Israeli strike on Damascus

  • The attack appeared to be the same as one reported by Syrian state media,which said that three civilians were killed and nine others injured

DUBAI: A consultant working for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air attack on the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, Iran’s Student News Network reported on Thursday.
It identified the consultant as Majid Divani, without giving further details.
The attack appeared to be the same as one reported by Syrian state media, which said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed and nine others injured in an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus.
Syrian air defenses intercepted “hostile targets” over the vicinity of Damascus three times in a row in one night, following explosions that were heard in the capital, state media said on Tuesday.
When asked about the reported attack, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that it does not comment on foreign media reports.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel.