South Africa’s new COVID-19 cases cross 10,000

As if the barrage of economic woes occasioned by the epileptic electricity supply was not stressing South Africa enough, reports from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases of South Africa (NICDs) on Wednesday said that there are now 10,017 new cases of COVID-19 in the country.

This is the first time since the institute has reported more than 10,000 new infections this year.

Earlier in April, after scientists in the country discovered a new strain of the Omicron variant called BA.4 and BA.5, health authorities warned that the country was about to enter into a fifth wave of infection.

The rainbow country has been the worse hit since COVID-19 broke into the country in 2020 with the country only exiting a fourth wave in January.

With a fifth wave fast approaching, experts have warned that a large number of unvaccinated people could be in danger.

However, the encouraging news is that more than 50 percent of the country’s adult population have been vaccinated either once or taken the second dose of the vaccine.

With the number of new infection picking up the health authorities has warned people not to relax but to take this threat more seriously and ensure that they get vaccinated and keep to safety protocol.

AFC plans to drive Africa’s economic revival with a $2 billion support fund

With the continent still trying to overcome the negative impact of the COVID-19, along with the challenges the ongoing war in Ukraine is causing, the African Finance Company (AFC) has decided to set up a $2 billion support fund to assist institutions operating on the continent recover quickly.

The Pan-African Multilateral Development Financial Institution said that it has decided to assist institutions through its equity support, which will take as much as 50 percent of its personal funding, while the remaining 50 percent will come from investors and development financiers.

The AFC said that it has perfected plans to provide foreign currency lending to companies for trade through its partnership with some commercial lenders, regional development institutions, and central banks.

According to Bloomberg, Banji Fehintola, Head of Treasury and Financial Institutions, told reporters at a virtual briefing that the development institution will give out loans that are even up to 10 years but based on the risk associated with them.

The development financial institution is targeting a 45-day to 90-day disbursement cycle to enable the needed funds to get to the right channel. According to Fehintola, “Our turnaround time is expected to be between 45 days and 90 days, give or take, depending on what we are looking at,” he said.

The international lender based in Lagos, Nigeria, has played a very critical role in driving economic development on the continent, with more than $9.5 billion invested in various energy, logistics, and exploration projects and industries cut across 35 African countries since its inception.

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Ukraine disrupts gas deliveries to Europe

For the first time since the war started, a major gas pipeline that supplies gas to Europe was shut down.

According to information from Rystad Energy analyst, Zongqiang Luo, made available to Rigzone, Ukraine had declared a force majeure for the first time, disrupting gas supplies to Europe for the first time.

Due to the event, it may take some time to restore delivery capacity to Europe, Luo stated in his note.

Luo added that more than half of Europe is now cut off from Russian gas as a result of this cut. This follows earlier action by Russia to stop the supply of gas to Bulgaria and Poland.

“Bulgaria and Poland are already cut off from Russian supplies and with the key transit Sokhranivka pipeline now closed, up to a third of Europe’s gas supplies could be disrupted,” he stated.

“As previously stated, the most realistic scenario of a complete halt in gas exports from Russia to Europe would be if infrastructure were attacked… this decision is a small preview of what might happen if gas installations are hit by live fire and face the risk of extended downtime,” Luo added.

“The knock-on effect of removing a further pipeline from Europe’s gas grid and the loss of 10 mcm/d of gas flow per day will make it harder for countries to meet their storage targets and hasten Europe’s plans to move away from imports of Russian gas,” Luo continued.

Luo believes that no European country is going to suffer as a result of this shut down as their gas grid is well integrated, but added that this would impact negatively on the system and most likely drive up the price of gas.

NIMC admits failure in SIM-NIN registration

The capacity limitation of only 100 million Nigerians by the Nigeria Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has forced most Nigerian telecommunication users to lament the decision of the federal government to link customers’ National Identity Number (NIN) with their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM).

The National Identity Management Commission, Aliyu Aziz, who said in a recent television interview on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) that the commission’s database is at 80 percent of its capacity with over 80 million unique NINs issued.

However, the DG informed us that the commission was working on building its capacity to accommodate more people.

Aziz said, “We built it (the database) to cater for a 100 million. Right now, we are at eighty million. Also, we have the government’s approval to upgrade it. So, before we reach there, we must have upgraded to about 250 million.

“So, we don’t have issues with that. Most of the time, our major challenges are either power or the bandwidth of the connectivity that we have but not the infrastructure.”

He admitted that the current limited capacity was causing a lot of challenges for the commission but, however, assured that when funds get disbursed, everything will be sorted out.

He added, “We are trying to upgrade the system. We have gotten the government’s approval since July last year. We are following up to get the funding. Funding is a challenge, but I don’t want to call it a challenge because it is a challenge for everyone.”

Aziz stated that Nigerians who wish to do a fresh registration in the future may be required to pay for enrolment.

US futures rise, Wall Street heads for weekly loss

After a rocky overnight session, US stock futures rebounded on Friday, but the key averages were still on course for large weekly losses as rising interest rates, rising inflation, and an even worse global economic outlook continued to weigh on markets.

The Dow Jones futures rose 0.4 percent, the S&P 500 futures rose 0.6 percent, and the Nasdaq 100 futures rose 1 percent, according to tradingeconomics. The Dow and S&P 500 are down 3.55 percent and 4.69 percent, respectively, for the week, while the Nasdaq Composite is down 6.37 percent.

Despite corporate earnings reports and a recent Fed rate hike, the stock market has had bad months for some time now, following unprofitable high-growth technology businesses late last year.

Unfortunately, a massive selloff that occurred erased most of the quick gains made by equities since their epidemic lows in March 2020.