The U.K. has become the first western country to license a Covid-19 vaccine, opening up mass immunization campaigns starting next week ahead of similar decisions in the U.S. and European Union. The U.K. regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, said on Wednesday that the vaccine “met its strict standards of safety, quality and…
Ivory Coast and Ghana – the world’s top two cocoa producers – have withdrawn their membership of a U.S. cocoa industry association, accusing the body of aiding U.S. chocolate companies avoid paying a cocoa premium aimed at tackling farmer poverty. A document signed by both nations cocoa regulators indicates that the Cocoa Merchants Association of…
The UN says that the coronavirus pandemic is rapidly accelerating to record highs the number of people worldwide who need humanitarian assistance to survive. As a result there has been a sharp increase in extreme poverty in just one year, with 235 million people worldwide now living in extreme poverty. The largest concentrations are in…
Mozambique and Tanzania will launch joint operations to combat an Islamist insurgency under an agreement that will also see some 500 suspected insurgents extradited, a report in Mozambique’s state-owned newspaper Noticias indicates. Mozambique’s army has been battling an insurgency that started three years ago in its northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, separated from Tanzania by…
British oil giant Tullow Oil will focus on its core assets in West Africa as part of a plan to boost cash generation and generate $7 billion of operating cash flow over the next decade, the firm announced. Of this, $2.7 billion will be invested back into the company, predominantly on recovering as much as…