CUTTING EDGE

Alexander Nix, a director of companies linked to the former Cambridge Analytica firm and its role in elections in Kenya, Nigeria and other nations, will serve a seven-year suspension from acting as any firm’s director without court permission. The decision announced Thursday by the British government follows a high-profile investigation…

Social media giant Facebook announced Friday a new office in Lagos, Nigeria, meant to support operations in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected to be operational next year. The office will be home to several teams for sales, partnerships and communication, as well as becoming the first Facebook office on the…

Back in 2015, Liberia was among the highest-ranked countries in the world with citizens who said they think vaccines are safe, while Ethiopia was atop the list of those whose people said vaccines were important. Morocco, conversely, was among the lowest on both measures. But now, at a time when…

When extremists attacked a Côte d’Ivoire checkpoint last month at the border with Burkina Faso, killing several Ivorian military personnel, the incident underscored growing concern that the threat of West Africa’s armed groups was creeping into yet another nation. At least 30 suspected militants including Burkinabe leader Ali Sidibe were…

In Nigeria, the Gokada delivery service continues on despite the gruesome murder of CEO Fahim Saleh, whose body was discovered in New York City on Tuesday. “As painful as these last days have been for us, we at Gokada owe it to ourselves and to Fahim’s memory to act and…

Senegal’s capital Dakar is facing yet another water shortage, though this time concerns have been exacerbated by the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic and the greater need for personal hygiene. “How do you wash your hands during a coronavirus crisis when the heat is coming?” Papa Mbodj, the father of a 9-month-old…

Roughly 200 Iranian fishing boats operating illegally have been detected in waters off Somalia and Yemen, according to a new NGO investigation. Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Trygg Mat Tracking (TMT) are partners in a study that relied on increasingly available tracking technology – used to help boats avoid collisions…

South Africa’s Telkom wasn’t the only service to suffer an outage on Monday, although the nationwide disruption in its 086 call center services and its 0800 toll-free numbers caused plenty of business disruption. In the United States, it seemed like every communications service was down as what many suspect was…

There’s a new tool in the fight against COVID-19, and it’s a tech tool from the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that shows the impact of the coronavirus pandemic across the continent in one easy-to-use dashboard. The interactive COVID-19 dashboard linked here keeps real-time cumulative case totals for…

Egypt is advancing its goals in space, following approval last week of a 10-year development plan for the Egyptian Space Agency (EgSA) established in August. The agency launched its first communications satellite in November, as part of a plan to ensure mobile and Internet services for all of Egypt as…

When Nigeria discovered its first coronavirus patient – an Italian citizen who works in the country – public health officials weren’t the only ones who responded quickly. So did a group of scientists and researchers who got to work and sequenced the genome of the COVID-19 virus found in the…

Social media giant Facebook says it has removed a network of accounts based in Egypt that targeted countries across North Africa and the Middle East with inauthentic political messages, including some of the same groups it took offline in August and October 2019. “Although the people behind this activity attempted…