Uganda: Covid-19 Spurs Uganda to Suspend Flights From India

Wakanda News Details

Uganda: Covid-19 Spurs Uganda to Suspend Flights From India

[VOA] Kampala -- Uganda has suspended all flights coming into the country from India after recording new variants of the coronavirus, including the COVID-19 variant from India.

Source: allAfrica.com

Interview - On the occasion of Zimbabwe's 41st Independence Day, Zimbabwe's envoy to Ankara Alfred Mutiwazuka said his country is "a friend to all and an enemy to none". Speaking to Anadolu Agency exclusively, Ambassador Mutiwazuka highlighted the Sothern African country's post-independence journey, and the current foreign policy. He said Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has seen the country make significant progress, improving governance, opening up domestic political space, upholding the rule of law and prope

AFRICAN governments have been cheated for decades by Western countries through the assistance given to them under the auspices of aid and loans.

Why do African governments balance their budgets with aid from the developed nations that have lesser natural resources than African governments?

African governments have always attributed their failures to colonialism or sanctions whereas all such conditions took place decades ago and could have easily been averted and or could prompt them to strategise and come up with new ways of life.

The best African countries have managed to achieve towards that line is to have assembly points for forein car manufacturers — Japanese and German cars.

Why should individual African countries prefer trading with China or Europe when there is an abundance of markets within the continent of Africa and among African countries?

The Ugandan government has said people like Musasizi are partly to blame for the floods, and wants them to leave the wetlands for good.

Last year, wetlands covered just 8.4 percent of Uganda, down from 15.5 percent in 1994, according to the environment ministry.

In 2014 the government ordered the cancellation of all land titles there, issued illegally by local officials because the law prohibits private ownership of wetlands.

A subsequent survey of four central districts identified 1,700 titles in wetlands, said Collins Oloya, the acting director of environmental affairs at the environment ministry.

Now the rising waters are forcing people out of the wetlands, doing Oloya’s work for him.

\"Ours is not going to be the politics of praise and favour; it will be politics of a service, inclusiveness and humanity,\" Dr Lina Zedriga Waru Abuku said after being unveiled as People Power deputy principal by Kyadondo East MP Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, last month.

Having held different positions in many organisations, including at the Centre for Peace and Security Governance in Juba, South Sudan, and the Uganda National Committee for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Dr Zedriga, a lawyer by profession, says she had opted to retire and concentrate on empowering girls in northern Uganda.

According to Bobi Wine, Dr Zedriga has been tested on all fronts and qualifies for any position that would cause impact to their political group that is eyeing the presidential seat in 2021.

Dr Zedriga says the turn of events that brought about the death of two People Power supporters, Ritah Nabukenya, who was allegedly knocked down by a police vehicle in Nakawa, Kampala, and Dan Kyeyune, who was shot dead in Nansana, Wakiso District, cemented her decision to join the political pressure group.

Bobi Wine says Dr Zedriga will be charged with grassroots mobilisation, especially among the women.

When the Palestinian Olympic delegation of five athletes - adorned in traditional Palestinian attire and carrying the Palestinian flag - crossed into the Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium during the inauguration ceremony on July 23, I was overcome with ...

The Minister of Infrastructure Claver Gatete has said that cross border trade is progressing well, despite the measures in place to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 25 hours, we receive between 400 and 500 cross border trucks at Rusumo border.

Gatete disclosed this during a news conference held in Kigali on Friday, to give an update on cross border movement of goods.

In May, over 1,000 trucks destined for Rwanda were stuck at the Tanzanian border town of Benako, after some Tanzanian truck drivers protested the requirements by Rwanda to adopt a relay system handing over their trucks to Rwandan drivers.

This was solved, after it was agreed that goods destined for Rwanda would be offloaded at border points with the exception of perishable goods and petroleum products which are escorted at no cost to their final destinations, among other resolutions.

[Independent (Kampala)] Kampala, Uganda -- Hours after Uganda Police Spokesperson CP Fred Enanga warned against parallel swearing-in ceremonies, and stated his forces readiness ahead of the swearing in of President Yoweri Museveni due Wednesday, a mysterious fire incident and case of a petrol bomb being hurled, have been reported.

Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine has claimed victory in presidential elections, rejecting as a \"complete sham\" early results that gave President Yoweri Museveni a wide lead.

[DW] The Cairo Declaration calls for a ceasefire starting on Monday and the departure of foreign militias from the war-ravaged country. The plan has the backing of Libyan National Army head Khalifa Haftar.

Former Harambee Starlets midfielder Jacky Ogol has found her footing at the Federation of Uganda Football Association (Fufa) Super League side She Corporates Club.

Ogol, who was part of the national team that participated in 2016 Africa Women's Cup of Nations tournament in Limbe, Cameroon, said having been made a regular starter has given her confidence as a professional player.

She previously played for Football Kenya Federation's Women's Premier League side Spedag for five seasons and Matuu FC for one season before moving to Uganda in 2018 where she signed a three-year contract.

Playing for both Spedag and Starlets groomed me to be a better player and also to understand that every platform you are given is a chance to grow outside your home teams.

More than half of Uganda’s commercial banks would have collapsed if the Central Bank had enforced a three-month customer loans repayments holiday at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the sector regulator has revealed.

Results of the stress test informed the decision to spread customer loan restructuring over a 12-month period instead of offering an outright repayment holiday, Bank of Uganda (BoU) said in a Zoom webinar.

Uganda’s National Social Security Fund (NSSF) says about 100,000 contributors have dropped off its register since the beginning of the lockdown; pointing to rising unemployment levels, reduced payroll tax collections and potential loss of many salary deposit accounts held by commercial banks.

The minimum paid up capital requirement for Ugandan banks currently stands at Ush25 billion ($6.7 million), while the minimum liquid assets to total deposits ratio stands at 20 per cent.

A senior Citibank Uganda executive said the pandemic has created a situation where there is a disproportionately high number of commercial banks chasing after a few, high-value clients.

Idi Amin , in full Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born 1924/25, Koboko, Uganda—died August 16, 2003, Jiddah, Saudi Arabia), military officer and president (1971–79) of Uganda whose regime was noted for the sheer scale of its brutality.

Tanzania’s government bought the book-sized stones weighing 20 pounds (9 kg) and 11 pounds (5 kg) from miner Saniniu Laizer for $3.4 million.

“We’re signing agreements today in public to facilitate the cash transfer … and the government recognizes Laizer is a new billionaire,” he said, speaking in terms of the local currency.

Tanzania is a rich country, President John Magufuli said when congratulating him.

Mining activities accounted for 17% of the East African country’s GDP in 2019.

The Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) has denied that it plans to resume passenger flight operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

This comes a day after an internal memo by JKIA Airport Manager Abel Godo to officials from the Aeronautical Operational Control (AOC), all government agencies, concessionaires, contractors, suppliers and service providers about the imminent resumption of passenger flights for a meeting leaked.

“In preparation of the imminent resumption of passenger operations at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, you are hereby invited to a virtual meeting to be held on Wednesday 13th May 2020 at 11.00hrs,” read the memo.

Moi International Airport Manager Paul Wafula confirmed that they do routine meetings internally to brainstorm on the measures to put in place just in case the travel ban is lifted.

\tFor the first time, Kenya recorded a three-digit increase in new cases over a 24-hour period.

\tGovernment is intensify calls for people to submit themselves for voluntary testing as the steady rise of cases continue across the country.

\tThirty-one new cases were registered today taking the tally to 1,192; President Kenyatta disclosed in an address.

\tKenya’s case count reached 830 as pf today President Uhuru Kenyatta announced in an address today.

\tGovernment reports that a new area of focus in the fight against the virus are the frontiers.

An effort to clean up plastic waste and turn it into building materials shifts gear as COVID-19 arrives and protective gear falls short

GULU, Uganda - When the Ugandan government ordered all non-essential workplaces shut to contain the coronavirus pandemic in late March, Peter Okwoko and his colleague Paige Balcom kept working.

But the pair - who had been turning collected plastic waste into building materials such as roofing tiles and pavers since last year - shifted gear and instead began manufacturing makeshift plastic face shields from discarded plastic bottles.

\"The doctor from Gulu regional referral hospital requested we make 10 face shield masks urgently because they didn't have enough\" and the hospital had just received its first COVID-19 patient, said Okwoko, 29, a co-founder of Takataka Plastics.

Late last month, the Ministry of Health said Uganda's public hospitals are likely to run out of existing stocks of protective equipment within three months.

Balcom, 26, a mechanical engineer who met Okwoko in 2019 while doing research on plastic pollution in Uganda, said some of the material used in the face shields now comes from hospital waste, such as used intravenous drip bottles.

\"Test, test, test\" has been the mantra for defeating the novel coronavirus, but African countries are finding themselves at the end of a long global queue for the chemical reagents and other commodities necessary for administering diagnostic tests, according to public health experts.

Although mass testing is seen as a key component to slowing transmission, African health authorities are struggling to compete with richer, more powerful countries when it comes to procuring the scarce testing material on the global market, notes a new commentary published in The Lancet scientific journal.

Many African researchers foresaw this scarcity and the consequent need for African countries to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to diagnostic tests.

Given the global shortages - particularly the reagents necessary to run polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which remain almost exclusively the basis for diagnosis - African countries need to take two paths forward, suggests Dr. Misaki Wayengera of Uganda's Makerere University.

But there are only a few diagnostics manufacturing facilities across Africa that have developed RDTs and could work on COVID-19 solutions, acknowledged Dr. Moses Alobo of the African Academy of Sciences, who is leading the effort to coordinate elite researchers across the continent.

He also said whereas government will distribute free masks to all Ugandans aged six years and above, others are free to buy their own facemasks.

Dr Aceng recommended that facemasks should preferably be made of cotton fabrics and have filters that they can wash or replace after use.

Dr Julius Lutwama, a virologist at the Uganda Virus Research Institute, said one has to change their facemasks at least three times a day, especially those working from public places such as markets, since the mask lets in tiny particles due to moist from saliva.

Dr Aceng said there is a shortage of fabric masks, especially N95, and urged Ugandans to reserve them for health workers.

A person wearing a mask needs to stay two metres away from other people while in public because coronavirus can still go through the eyes and touching other surfaces.

The group is part of the 130 Rwandans that Uganda government officials promised to set free during a meeting with their Rwandan counterparts last week.

Plans to set the Rwandans free were announced last week as senior Rwandan and Ugandan officials held a video conference as part of both countries' continuing effort to work on normalising relations between both countries.

During the June 4 meeting, the Rwandan delegation was led by foreign affairs minister Vincent Biruta while the Ugandan side was led by Sam Kutesa, the Ugandan foreign minister.

Angola and the DR Congo are facilitators in the ongoing process to normalize the relations between Rwanda and Uganda, which was kick-started by a Memorandum of Understanding signed between both countries in the Angolan capital Luanda in September last year.

Last week, Kutesa told the meeting that in May, up to 130 Rwandans detained in Uganda were set free and were being processed to be returned home.

There are now more than over 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.

According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when.

As of May 13, every African country had recorded an infection, the last being Lesotho.

We shall keep updating this list largely sourced from the John Hopkins University tallies, Africa CDC and from official government data.

The African Union is one of the worlds most important intergovernmental organizations. It is composed of 53 countries in Africa and is loosely based on the European Union. These African countries work diplomatically with each other despite differences in geography, history, race, language, and religion to try to improve the political, economic, and social situations for the approximately one billion people that live on the African continent.

The African Union promises to protect Africas rich cultures, some of which have existed for thousands of years.

The African Union, or AU, includes every independent African country except Morocco. Additionally, the African Union recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is a portion of Western Sahara; this recognition by the AU caused Morocco to resign. South Sudan is the newest member of the African Union, joining on July 28, 2011, less than three weeks after it became an independent country.

The African Union was formed after the dissolution of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 2002. The OAU was formed in 1963 when many African leaders wanted to accelerate the process of European decolonization and gain independence for a number of new nations. It also wanted to promote peaceful solutions to conflicts, ensure sovereignty forever, and raise living standards.

However, the OAU was largely criticized from the beginning. Some countries still had deep ties to its colonial masters. Many countries associated themselves with the ideologies of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

Although the OAU gave weapons to rebels and was successful in eliminating colonization, it could not eliminate the massive poverty problem.

Its leaders were seen as corrupt and unconcerned for the welfare of the common people. Many civil wars occurred and the OAU could not intervene. In 1984, Morocco left the OAU because it opposed the membership of Western Sahara. In 1994, South Africa joined the OAU after the fall of apartheid.

Mombasa county accounted for half of the Covid-19 cases in Kenya over the past 24 hours after reporting 67 new cases out of the 134 recorded in the country.

Nairobi county and Busia counties had the second and third highest incidents in the country with 31 and 15 cases, respectively.

Other cases were reported in Machakos county, which had five cases and Taita Taveta county four as Kilifi and Nakuru each had two cases.