Africa – 12 August 2016
South Africa’s economy regained the position of Africa’s largest in dollar terms more than two years after losing it to Nigeria as the value of the nations’ currencies moved in opposite directions.
Based on gross domestic product at the end of 2015 published by the International Monetary Fund, the size of South Africa’s economy is $301 billion at the rand’s current exchange rate, while Nigeria’s GDP is $296 billion. That’s after the rand gained more than 16 percent against the dollar since the start of 2016, and Nigeria’s naira lost more than a third of its value after the central bank removed a currency peg in June.
IOL
Togo proposes hosting Israeli-African summit in its capital next year
Visiting Togo, President Gnassingbe will take the lead in organizing the first African-Israeli “security and development” summit in his nation’s capital of Lomé next year, diplomatic sources told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to participate in the conference, expected to convene in March or April, some 60 years after Israel established formal ties with Ghana, the first African country with which it did so, in 1956.
Jerusalem
Zambia awaits election result after tense campaign
Zambians waited on Friday for presidential election results that may trigger disputes after a violence-tinged campaign by the two leading candidates in a country usually known for relative stability.
Polling day on Thursday was peaceful, after weeks of clashes between rival supporters of President Edgar Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF) and Hakainde Hichilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND).
IOL
Ex-Botswana leader in Mozambique for peace talks
Former Botswana President Sir Ketumile Masire has arrived in the Mozambican capital Maputo where he is expected to facilitate negotiations to end three years of a low-level war between the armed opposition Mozambique National Resistance Movement (RENAMO) and the government of President Felipe Nyusi.
Sir Masire was nominated by the London-based Global Leadership Foundation (GLF), which is chaired by former SA president F W de Klerk. The board includes Chester Crocker and Baroness Lynda Chalker, a former UK aid minister given honorary Mozambican citizenship by President Armando Guebuza in 2014.
IOL