pandemic - The African Mirror

Jul

2020

Coronavirus fans flames of love in Nigeria’s online dating scene

NNEKA CHILE and ANGELA UKOMADU OREULUWA Akinnawo is in his element. Lagos's bars and restaurants are shut and Nigerians are struggling to socialise. The pandemic is his perfect time to find a soul mate online. "The dating thing during this restriction works perfectly for me because I'm really an indoors person," said Akinnawo, a 25-year-old digital marketer. Sparked by coronavirus, Akinnawo and others like him are part of a boom in internet dating tailored for Nigerian professionals. In Lagos, pre-outbreak courtship often revolved around social functions, as well as couples meeting through church or their mosque's social networks. Vybe, an…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

Ethiopian maids ‘dumped’ in the streets in Lebanon as COVID hits

COVID-19

ETHIOPIAN mother Alemtsehay Nasir went to Lebanon dreaming that her maid's job would let her earn money to make a better life for her young son. But she was fired when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and her employers dumped her on the streets. The 32-year-old was left on the curb outside the Ethiopian consulate in a suburb of Beirut, one of hundreds of women abandoned by employers without the means to get home after the pandemic hit, on top of a financial crisis that has devastated the Lebanese economy. Lebanese labour laws offer little protection for migrant workers. The best…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

Zimbabwe economy to shrink by 4.5%

BUSINESS

ZIMBABWE's economy is expected to shrink by 4.5% this year owing to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and a brutal climate change-related drought, the finance minister said on Thursday. The crucial mining sector will contract by 4%, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube added in a mid-term budget speech, although he projected that GDP would rebound to 7.4% growth in 2021. Ncube added that inflation was expected to gradually decline to 300% by December, compared with 737.36% currently. Zimbabwe's economy was in a mess even before COVID-19 struck, with rampant inflation, chronic shortages of food, foreign currency and medicines, all worsened…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

Gabon appoints first woman prime minister amid government shakeup

NEWS

GABON President Ali Bongo has promoted his defence minister, Rose Christiane Ossouka Raponda, to prime minister, the first time a woman has held the role in the country. Ossouka Raponda, 56, is the sixth prime minister appointed since Bongo succeeded his father in 2009. Her first job is to form a new government after her predecessor, Julien Nkoghe Bekale, stepped down earlier in the day. She will take on two major challenges: declining oil production and prices, which have weighed on growth in recent years, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Central African country has registered nearly 6,000 cases to date.…

Jul

2020

By The African Mirror

S.Africa COVID-19 cases set to reach 300,000 despite early lockdown

COVID-19

TIM COCKS SOUTH Africa's cases of COVID-19 were set to reach 300,000 on Wednesday, the most in Africa and in the top 10 in the world, despite a swiftly imposed lockdown aimed at preventing infections spiralling as they did in the West. Africa's most industrialised nation has 298,292 cases at the last count, and with positive tests now increasing at a rate of more than 10,000 a day, it is all but certain to vault over the 300,000 mark when the ministry releases nightly figures on Wednesday. At the end of March, President Cyril Ramaphosa took aggressive, early action, shutting…