Five things to know to start your Monday

Sierra Leone’s ruling party wins 60% of parliamentary seats in contested vote

The ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party has won 60 percent of the seats in a parliamentary election, the election commission said on Saturday.

This announcement comes as the main opposition party demanded a rerun of the vote that also saw President Julius Maada Bio win a second term.

Mohammed Kenewui Konneh, the commission’s chairman, reading out the results, said the SLPP won 81 seats while the opposition All People’s Congress won 54.

Compared to the previous election, the ruling party made significant gains in the diamond-rich district of Kono, winning seven of the 10 seats where they had none previously.

The gains in the diamond-rich district of Kono were followed by the gains the ruling party made in the opposition heartland of the north and west, especially in the capital Freetown.

NIN enrolment’s hit 101 million as of June 2023

The National Identity Number enrolment rose to 101 million as of June 26, 2023, according to data released by the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).

This figure showed a 1 million increase in fresh enrolments from last month’s (May) figure, which stood at 100 million.

Lagos State, according to the released figures, has the highest number of enrolments in the country with 11 million Nigerians, followed by Kano State with 8.9 million registered NINs.

Unmetered customers hit 7 million as Discos install 560,965 meters

A new fourth quarter 2022 report of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has revealed that power distribution companies (Discos) in the country installed a total of 560,965 meters in 2022, as the number of unmetered registered electricity consumers increased to 7,017,235.

AfDB, African Securities Exchange partner to promote trans-border trading

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group and the African Securities Exchanges Association (ASEA) have entered into a strategic partnership to expand the number of linked African exchanges from seven to 15.

This news was contained in a statement from the AfDB that revealed that the expansion was under the second phase of the African Exchanges Linkage Project (AELP).

Further information revealed that both parties had pledged on June 28 to support the project with a 600,000 U.S. dollar grant.

It said the funds would come from the Korea African Economic Cooperation Fund (KOAFEC) Trust Fund, managed by the AfDB.

The AELP is a flagship project of ASEA and the Bank Group to link African capital markets, thereby promoting cross-border securities trading, increasing liquidity, and diversifying investment opportunities for investors.

UK economy makes slow start to 2023 as inflation weighs

The squeeze on household income in Britain is expected to continue as the Bank of England raised interest rates to a 15-year high of 5 percent on Friday.

The high interest rates show a higher chance of a recession in one of the biggest economies in the world as Britons try to keep up even as inflation eases.

The economy grew by just 0.1 percent in the first three months of the year, unchanged from an initial estimate by the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS), leaving output 0.5 percent lower than it was in the final quarter of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.