NEWS

• Nigeria election: Muhammadu Buhari re-elected as president

  Feb 27, 2019 by Admin / 586 Views

  

  Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has been re-elected for a second four-year term, the election commission says.

  The 76-year-old defeated his main rival, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, with a margin of nearly four million votes.

  Mr Abubakar's People's Democratic Party (PDP) has rejected the result. Turnout was a record low at just 35.6%.

  Delays and violence marred the run-up to Saturday's poll but no independent observer has cited electoral fraud.

  "The new administration will intensify its efforts in security, restructuring the economy and fighting corruption," Mr Buhari said after his victory was officially announced.

  • Africa Live: Buhari tells supporters not to gloat
  • Why Nigeria's 'generation democracy' didn't vote
  • Is Africa going backwards on democracy?

  Overall, the APC got 15.2 million votes while the PDP received 11.3 million.

  Mr Buhari swept the north, while Mr Abubakar, 72, did better in the south and east.

  

  • Full results by state

  Although turnout was low across the country, it was higher in the northern states - one factor behind Mr Buhari's victory.

  

  Who is Buhari?

  A former soldier, Mr Buhari led a military regime for 20 months in the 1980s and was first elected president in 2015, becoming the first opposition candidate to defeat an incumbent and win the presidency.

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• The Rwandan design school re-shaping Africa's future

  Feb 27, 2019 by Admin / 382 Views

  

  I was immediately sold on what they were trying to do and teach, and I felt they were taking an approach to education and architecture that was not readily accessible anywhere on the continent, maybe anywhere in the world," said Mokholo.

  Last summer, the first cohort of ADC graduates completed its inaugural 20-month fellowship in Kigali, Rwanda, with Mokholo among them.

  The ten fellows, hailing from eight African nations, are now upending architecture, design and construction across a continent where rapid urbanization and population growth are presenting severe challenges to governments, with the needs of the poorest left unmet.

   

   

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• Eritrean Press: Reporting on Africa's most secretive state

  Feb 27, 2019 by Admin / 403 Views

  

  According to Reporters Without Borders, only North Korea has less press freedom.

  The international media monitoring organisation describes Eritrea as "a dictatorship in which the media have no rights".

  All news outlets inside the north-eastern African country are state-owned, and journalists have been imprisoned without trial or charge.

  That makes J's page, Eritrean Press, unusual - and perhaps unique. It has more than 250,000 followers, and is independent of the Eritrean government. J lives in Britain, but makes occasional trips back to Eritrea, and he agreed to give his first interview to the BBC on condition we keep his identity a secret.

  Not even the page's eight volunteer writers - based in Eritrea, Britain and the US - know his real name.

  "No-one knows who I am," he says. "I'd be in prison."

  Cycling and satire

  The content on the Facebook page covers the broad sweep of Eritrean life. Alongside politics and satire, there are reports about the national cycling team, human interest stories and posts original art deco architecture in the capital Asmara.

  It's a mix that on average reaches about 1.25 million people each week. Its address is the slightly misspelled @EritreanPresss, because the page with the correct spelling is an overtly pro-government fake, with a tenth of the followers. It's unclear who runs that page.

  Most readers of the genuine Eritrean Press are part of the Eritrean diaspora around the world.

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• White House manages expectations for the summit

  Feb 27, 2019 by Admin / 337 Views

  

   

  White House manages expectations for the summit

  Senior White House staffers and the president himself have tried to lower expectations for this second summit, after North Korea showed little tangible progress towards denuclearization since last year's meeting in Singapore.

  White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News that only the media have high expectations for the summit, because they want to see the president fail.

  "I think that the only one setting high expectations is probably the media because they're looking for reasons to attack this president," Sanders told Fox News last Friday. "They hate the idea that he's done so well on something his predecessors couldn't do anything on."

  Mr. Trump has taken a wait-and-see approach to the summit. He told the governors at the White House Sunday that he believes he and Kim "see eye to eye, I believe, but you'll be seeing it more and more over the next couple of days one way or the other."

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• US government shuts down over Mexican wall standoff

  Dec 24, 2018 by Admin / 529 Views

  

  The US goverment has partially shut down following a deadlock between Democrats and Republicans on funding President Donald Trump's proposed wall at the Mexican border.

  The US government began a Christmas shutdown early Saturday, after Congress adjourned without passing a federal spending bill or addressing President Donald Trump's demand for money to build a border wall.

  Operations for several key agencies ceased at 12:01 am Saturday (0501 GMT), despite last-ditch talks that continued on Capitol Hill between White House officials and congressional leaders in both parties.

  Trump has dug in on his demand for $5 billion for construction of a wall on the US border with Mexico. Democrats are staunchly opposed, and the absence of a deal means federal funds for dozens of agencies lapsed when the clock struck midnight.

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