Category: General

ABUJA, NIGERIA —

A Chinese official in Nigeria says Beijing plans to invest over $300 billion in Africa to increase African exports and help close the large trade gap with China. China's plans for more investment in Africa have been welcomed by some, but critics worry about Africa's growing debt with Beijing.

The recent signing of a multi-billion-dollar partnership between China and Africa marks a major step in China’s effort to spend more money in Africa in nine industrial sectors, including trade, digital innovation, medical, poverty reduction, culture and peace and security.

A Chinese official, China Africa Business Council head Diana Chen, signed a memorandum of understanding with Lagos Chamber of Commerce officials last week in Lagos.

Chen said the $300 billion will be invested in Africa over the next three years.

Many experts welcome the development and say it could increase the local manufacturing and export capacity of indigenous Nigerian and African brands.

Charles Onunaiji is the director of the Center for China Studies in Abuja.

"It's not just in Lagos, it's been holding across Africa. There have been discussions of the new opportunities of China-Africa cooperation. The Lagos meeting was one of the follow-ups on that very important meeting in Dakar, where the Chinese president offered nine programs to drive China-Africa cooperation to the next level. For me, this is a very important landmark in China-Africa cooperation," he said.

China is Africa's biggest trading partner, with over $30 billion in trade volume, surpassing the United States and Europe. Nigeria is one of China’s largest trading partners in Africa.

Onunaiji said the new partnership is expected to improve Africa's trade with China, which analysts say is lopsided.

"China is responding to some of these concerns by giving more opportunities to Africa to access her market. And in my view, this particular proposal to import from Africa $300 billion worth of goods in three years is a game changer," he said.

Chinese officials say the new partnership will see China establish special economic zones to accept more imports from Africa.

The president of the Nigeria Private Sector Alliance, Adetokunbo Kayode, said he worries the new partnership could further deepen Africa’s debt with China.

"Many African countries have sleep-walked into the debt trap. They're already there, and it's very obvious, because the facilities they've taken from several countries, including China, is such that they do not have the wherewithal to pay back. Secondly, the contracts are end to end," he said.

Kayode said even though Bejing is investing heavily in Africa, Africans are not often part of the execution, creating a knowledge gap.

Experts say the success of the Chinese partnership will be dependent on favorable trade policies that will be drafted among China and African countries.

But Kayode has this to say, "What is our trade policy with China? In spite of my maybe fairly advantaged position in Nigeria, I've not seen any clear document showing the nitty gritty of Nigeria's trade policy with China. I've not seen specific policies on areas like, for instance, how you drive the local contents of this multibillion-dollar contract."

Since 2018, Chinese authorities began hosting the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo in Changsha City in the central China province with the stated aim of exposing African products to the Chinese market.

While more African businesses may try to meet a more welcoming Chinese market for their products, many will be watching to see how the new partnership changes the status quo.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA— A single flash of lightning in the United States nearly two years ago cut across the sky for nearly 770km, setting a new world record, the United Nations said.

The new record for the longest detected “megaflash”, measured in the southern US on Apr 29, 2020, stretched a full 768km, across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

That is equivalent to the distance between New York City and Columbus, Ohio, or between London and the German city of Hamburg, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pointed out in a statement.

That lightning bolt zig-zagged about 60km further than the previous record, set in southern Brazil on Oct 31, 2018.

The WMO’s committee of experts on weather and climate extremes also reported a new world record for the duration of a lightning flash.

A single flash that developed continuously through a thunderstorm over Uruguay and northern Argentina on June 18, 2020, lasted for 17.1 seconds – 0.37 seconds longer than the previous record set on March 4, 2019, also in northern Argentina.

“These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events,” Randall Cerveny, the WMO rapporteur of weather and climate extremes, said in the statement.

“Environmental extremes are living measurements of the power of nature, as well as scientific progress in being able to make such assessments,” he said.

The technology used to detect the length and duration of lightning flashes has improved dramatically in recent years, enabling records far greater than what was once the norm.

The previous megaflash records, from 2018 and 2019, were the first verified with new satellite lightning imagery technology, and were both more than double the prior records using data collected from ground-based technology.

“It is likely that even greater extremes still exist, and that we will be able to observe them as lightning detection technology improves,” Cerveny said.

The WMO highlighted that the new record strikes happened in the Great Plains in North America and the La Plata basin in South America, known as hotspots for so-called mesoscale convective system thunderstorms, which enable megaflashes.

It stressed that the flashes that set the new records were not isolated events, but happened during active and large-scale thunderstorms, making them all the more dangerous.

“Lightning is a major hazard that claims many lives every year,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said in the statement.

“The findings highlight important public lightning safety concerns for electrified clouds where flashes can travel extremely large distances.”

WMO pointed out that the only lightning-safe locations are big buildings with wiring and plumbing, or fully enclosed, metal-topped vehicles.

The UN agency maintains official global records for a range of weather- and climate-related statistics, including temperature, rainfall and wind.

All such records are stored in the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes.

The archive currently includes two other lightning-related extremes.

One is for the most people killed by a single direct strike of lightning, when 21 people died in Zimbabwe in 1975 as they huddled for safety in a hut that was hit.

The other is for an indirect strike, when 469 people died in Dronka, Egypt, when lightning struck a set of oil tanks in 1994, causing burning oil to flood the town.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

An emerging version of the omicron variant of coronavirus does not seem more severe than the variant’s original version, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

Dr. Boris Pavlin of the WHO's COVID-19 Response Team addressed the new variant in an online briefing as omicron’s more common BA.1 subvariant is replaced in Denmark and some other countries with the newer BA.2 subvariant.

"Looking at other countries where BA.2 is now overtaking, we're not seeing any higher bumps in hospitalization than expected," said Pavlin.

Pavlin said his remarks are based on data from Denmark, the first country where BA.2 surpassed BA.1. He added that vaccines continue to provide similar protection against the different forms of omicron.

The new iteration is more transmissible than the more common BA.1 variant, according to a Danish study that analyzed infections in more than 8,500 Danish households in December and January.

Denmark lifts most restrictions

But the spread of the new subvariant, which is also becoming dominant in India, Nepal, the Philippines and Qatar, did not stop Denmark Tuesday from lifting most pandemic restrictions.

Denmark, a country where more than 60% of its population over the age of 12 have received a third shot, said it no longer considers the COVID-19 outbreak “a socially critical disease” because the latest surge in infections is not placing a heavy burden on the country’s health system.

“I dare not say that it is a final goodbye to restrictions," Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday on Danish radio. "We do not know what will happen in the fall, whether there will be a new variant.”

Elsewhere in Europe, Ireland has dropped most restrictions, while the Netherlands and other countries are relaxing containment measures.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA —

A single lightning bolt that leapt across three U.S. states has been identified as the longest ever, the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday. Dubbed a megaflash, the rare low-rate horizontal discharge covered 768 kilometers (477 miles) between clouds in Texas and Mississippi in April 2020.

It was detected by scientists using satellite technology and its distance - beating the previous record by 60 kilometer - confirmed by a World Meteorological Organization committee.

"That trip by air[plane] would take a couple of hours and in this case the distance was covered in a matter of seconds," WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said.

Another megaflash that occurred above Uruguay and Argentina in June 2020 also set a record, as the longest-lasting at 17.1 seconds, the WMO said.

While these two newly cataloged megaflashes never touched the ground, they serve as a reminder of the dangers of a weather phenomenon that kill hundreds of people a year.

"We reiterate our message: when thunder roars, when you see lightning — go indoors. Don’t seek shelter in a beach hut, don't stand under a tree," Nullis said.

Source: Voice of America

GENEVA —

The World Health Organization warns of health care risks posed by discarded COVID-19 equipment and is calling on nations to better manage their systems for disposing of the used gear.

Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic requires the use of huge quantities of personal protective equipment or PPE and the use of needles and syringes to administer vaccines, among other essential products.

A new World Health Organization global analysis finds the quantities of health care waste generated by the goods are enormous and potentially dangerous. Maggie Montgomery is the technical officer for water, sanitation and health in the WHO Department of Environment.

She says COVID-19 has increased health care risks in facilities at up to 10 times previous volumes.

“If you consider that two in three health care facilities in the least developed countries did not have systems to segregate or safely treat waste before this pandemic, you can just imagine how much burden this extra waste load has put on health care workers, on communities, especially where waste is burned," Montgomery said.

The report finds the hazardous disposal of COVID-19 waste potentially exposes health workers to needle stick injuries, burns and pathogenic microorganisms, air pollution and many dangers associated with living near poorly managed landfills and waste disposal sites.

WHO experts analyzed approximately 87,000 tons of PPE that were shipped to needy countries between March 2020 and November 2021 through a joint U.N. emergency initiative. Most of the equipment, they say, was expected to end up as waste.

The report provides an initial indication of the scale of the COVID-19 waste problem that exists only within the health sector, which is enormous. Montgomery says it does not look at the volumes of waste being generated in the wider community.

“In terms of the waste generated by the public, in particular masks. For example, in 2020, there were 4.5 trillion additional disposable masks thrown away by the public, which led to six million tons of additional waste," Montgomery said. "So, certainly, the public is generating the most. At the same time, we feel that the health sector has a really important role and there are many concrete things that can be done to reduce, unnecessary use of PPE.”

WHO recommendations for safer and more environmentally sustainable waste practices include using eco-friendly packaging and shipping, safe and reusable gloves and medical masks, and investing in non-burn waste treatment technologies.

Source: Voice of America