In February 2025, the classical pianist Betsy Arakawa died in her New Mexico home from a virus most people had never heard of. Her husband, the actor Gene Hackman, died a week later of heart disease. The pathogen that killed her was hantavirus, almost certainly picked up from deer mouse droppings on the property. Fourteen…
Kenya Keeps Somalia Border Closed Over Renewed Instability Kenyan President William Ruto has said that renewed instability in Somalia had forced Nairobi to keep its border with neighboring Somalia closed, nearly 15 years after the frontier was first shut. Speaking to France 24 during the Africa Champions Summit in Nairobi, Ruto said Kenya had initially…
Global pop artiste Shakira has released “Dai Dai”, the official song for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in collaboration with Nigerian Grammy-winning Afrobeat superstar Burna Boy. The news agency reports that the Colombian singer announced the release of the highly anticipated song to fans on her social media page on Friday. The song is now…
Physicists have a term for systems that look simple but behave badly: the three-body problem. With two bodies in space, gravity is predictable. Add a third, and the system turns chaotic. Tiny changes cause big swings. Stability becomes rare and fragile. That is exactly where Africa’s health sovereignty agenda sits today. The African Union Strategic…
Nigerian billionaire industrialist Abdul Samad Rabiu has been recognised as the CEO of the Year at the ongoing Africa CEO Forum. He is among the six business leaders and companies that were honoured at the Africa CEO Awards 2026 in Kigali. The Founder of BUA Group, Rabiu leads a major industrial powerhouse driven notably by…
The Africa CEO Forum that went underway in Kigali on Thursday should not end as another gathering where Africa’s ambitions are eloquently stated but weakly acted upon. If there is one urgent message policymakers in the room must take home, it is that the continent cannot build a single market while making it difficult for…
Malaika Uwamahoro on Thursday, May 14, brought a cultural touch to the opening ceremony of the 13th Africa CEO Forum at Kigali Convention Centre, where more than 2,000 heads of state, chief executives and entrepreneurs from 75 countries gathered for two days of discussions on megaprojects, clean energy, intra-African investment and the future of African…
Did France’s first Africa summit outside the Francophonie this week reset its relations with the continent? For two decades, Paris has seemingly been trying to transition beyond Françafrique, its controversial policy of maintaining influence and interests in its former African colonies – a posture widely dubbed the epitome of neo-colonialism. France’s President Emmanuel Macron accelerated…
Gloopro, Africa’s premier enterprise eProcurement and Procurement-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider, is set to host the Digital Procurement Africa (DPA) Summit 2026 at the Lagos Eko Hotel and Suites on May 26. The summit will bring together C-suite executives, policymakers, procurement heads, and supply chain leaders from across the continent for a high-level conversation on the future…
Building on a proven track record across 34 African markets, Ecobank Group has said it will partner with Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), including Proparco, to deploy this $3 billion commitment. “By expanding access to competitive trade finance, the funds will directly fuel the core engines of Africa’s real economy: agribusiness, manufacturing, and general commerce. This…
