Minister Breaks New Ground In Nigeria...

With temperatures in Abuja hovering around 38 degrees and with virtually no rain since last October, actually cutting a “sod” on a bone dry plot of land was always going to be a tall order. Nonetheless, on 26 February, FCO Minister for Africa, Mark Simmonds MP and British High Commissioner, Andrew Pocock persevered with their shovels to break the ground for the new British High Commission Building in Nigeria.

The Managing Director of the construction company Bouyges (who have built two other British Embassies in Africa, and the Home Office building in Marsham St, London), hosted the ceremony. As well as witnessing this brave display of digging, invited guests, including a representative from Presiden..

Minister for Africa arrives in Nigeria today for visit to Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, where he’ll join the centenary celebrations.

Mark Simmonds will visit Nigeria this week, his second visit as Minister for Africa. He will join President Goodluck Jonathan and other dignitaries to celebrate 100 years of the creation of Nigeria as a nation.

At the centenary event Minister Simmonds will deliver a keynote speech in which he will address the potential for Africa and Nigeria’s future. “African choices in a new Nigerian century” will be the first of four speeches on the UK’s relationship with Africa that Mark Simmonds plans over the next few months.

His four day programme will also include a visit to Lagos, where he will meet Governor Fashola, and h..

The leader of Nigeria’s main Islamist militant group threatened to attack oil refineries and schools in the West African nation’s mainly Christian south.

“You will in the coming days see your refineries you’re boasting about bombed,” Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram, said in the local Hausa language, addressing residents of the oil-rich Niger River delta in a video released to reporters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. “Our refinery is Allah.”

Boko Haram fighters will extend their attacks beyond Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the three northeastern states where President Goodluck Jonathan declared emergency rule last year to combat the insurgents, Sh..

(Reuters) - A public relations executive for the prominent New York-based Internet media company IAC lost her job on Saturday after she posted a message joking about AIDS in Africa and race on her Twitter account, sparking an online furor.

"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" J..

Unemployment, independent of any other factor, threatens to derail the economic promise that Africa deserves. It's a time bomb with no geographical boundaries: Economists expect Africa to create 54 million new jobs by 2020, but 122 million Africans will enter the labor force during that time frame. Adding to this shortfall are tens of millions currently unemployed or underemployed, making the human and economic consequences nearly too large to imagine.

Thus, even with the strong economic growth we have seen over the past decade, job ..

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- African countries have experienced incredible economic growth over the past several years, and this so-called Africa rising phenomenon has spawned an optimistic new narrative, supplanting outdated ideas about a continent plagued by poverty and riven by ongoing conflicts. The World Bank projects that GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa will hit 4.9 percent this year, rise to 5.3 percent in 2014 and ascend to 5.5 percent in 2015.  

But a new report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development poses a compelling question: What good is economic growth if it only benefits a fraction of the population? UNCTAD's "Least Developed Countries Report 2013" finds that although African economies are recording impressive GDP exp..

Participants at the first symposium on job creation currently holding in Casablanca, Morocco have called on governments on the continent to develop employment policies and boost growth.

The symposium which brought together distinguished national and international panelists from 25 employers’ organizations for days, urged decision-makers to engage in direct and lasting dialogue with different economic and social stakeholders to promote public-private partnership, tailor legislation to suit economies as well as the changing world of work and invest in sectors with future potentials.

Nigeria’s employment generation scheme has received a big boost after the government announced it was receiving from the World Bank a $200 million grant.Confirming the grant on Thursday, Gombe State Governor, Mr. Ibrahim Dankwambo, told journalists the grant was meant to support current schemes to boost the employment generation among young people.

Dankwanbo said the grant is also meant t..

The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, has toughened rules for employee engagement with client companies after a controversy over the way two executives in West Africa jumped to groups that had received investments from the body, Financial Times has reported.

A former IFC Vice-President for Latin America, sub-Sahara Africa and Western Europe, Mr. Thierry Tano..

As Nigeria celebrated its 53rd Independence anniversary in October, the continued closure of the public universities attracts criticism from students who spoke with JAYNE AUGOYE and TEMITAYO FAMUTIMI

These are trying times –Ogunjobi

These are trying times for the nation, I must confess. Nigeria has not faced greater threats and total paralysis in major sectors than this period in its history. The nation’s   journey in the past 53 years was a chequered one replete with many gains and losses in its social, political and economic advancement. Nonetheless, as a Nigerian student trapped in this crisis, the Independence Day should offer the present administration the opportunity to correct the anomalies in the education al system and other key sectors in the economy.?•Oluwafemi Ogunjobi, 400 le..