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…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times
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…
Repairs on two undersea cables that provide Internet and phone service to southern African nations have finally been completed after more than a month of disruptions. That’s according to Openserve, the infrastructure arm of South Africa’s Telkom charged with coordinating the repairs on two damaged cable lines, the WACS and…
Tech giant Apple says its operations in China, where much of its iPhone manufacturing is concentrated, have been seriously disrupted by the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. “Work is starting to resume around the country, but we are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated,” said Apple in…
Mobile World Congress (MWC), one of the world’s premier tech and telecom events, has been canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak, its GSMA organizers said Wednesday. “With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has canceled MWC Barcelona 2020 because…
The repairs for two damaged undersea cables that run along the western coast of the African continent – cables that run from South Africa to the United Kingdom – are continuing but they’re not done yet. The work is being done by crews aboard the Leon Thevenin, which left Cape…
A clinical trial of a vaccine that researchers hoped would prevent HIV was stopped by its organizers, according to a statement Monday from The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. “This action was taken because an independent…
There’s light at the end of the tunnel for sub-Saharan Africans who have waited 10 days for repairs to the undersea West Africa Cable System (WACS), but it looks as if the wait is not over yet. The repairs required a ship to leave from Cape Town to travel to…