Oyeleye

MAPUTO, THE POLITICAL CAPITAL of Mozambique on the south eastern fringe of Africa, is significant in many ways. It is symbolic for food security in Africa as a city in which an outlandish and ambitious ‘declaration’ was made in 2003 about Africa’s commitment to prioritising agricultural financing for food security. Seventeen years on, Maputo, however, […]

Last weekend was a defining moment in Africa, with two high profile events of great significance. One was the case of David Beasley, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) criss-crossing Africa when a surprising announcement got to him about the selection of the WFP for the award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. […]

AIRSPACES IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES are already being declared open as the aviation industry returns to business and many international flights are beginning to operate in and out of Africa since the past couple of weeks. The implications of these are many and varied. On economic consideration, Africa is on its road to recovery as it […]

NEW YORK CITY IN the United States during the last week missed the glamour, the excitement and the usual attraction that come with the annual September gatherings that bring diplomats, national political leaders and their retinue of aides to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This year’s UNGA meeting was different in many aspects. The […]

SUDAN’S CAPITAL CITY has been through more than a week-long inundation as the Nile River overflowed its bank, destroying thousands of homes, drenching crops on farms, displacing no fewer than one million residents and leading to at least 90 deaths following heavy rainfall. The flood, reportedly the worst in the history of Sudan in the […]

HISTORY IS NOW IN THE MAKING in Africa. That some related events are happening at about the same time are of great significance for the continent. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has just commenced operations at its official headquarters. The contest for the helmsman of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has three Africans […]

ACCRA, THE CAPITAL OF GHANA, now houses the headquarters of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). In morally equivocal and ambivalent trade diplomacy, Ghana is currently officially trying to enjoy the best possible of two mutually exclusive worlds.  In one breath, it attempts to champion a continental trade area; in another, however, it perpetrates an […]

SUCCESS AND SUSTAINABILITY OF any trans-boundary trade arrangement will rest heavily on national and regional security. Good governance and peace within nations should therefore be important markers or indices for success in regional trade. Post-independence Africa, for the most part, has experienced pockets of hostilities, skirmishes, wars and sectarian crises at different times, sometimes spanning […]

MONDAY, LAST WEEK, was the day of official handing over and commissioning of the secretariat building of the Africa Trade House in Accra, Ghana. The ceremony, attended remotely by many participants from outside Ghana – all over Africa – through online medium, marked the beginning of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) operationally from […]

IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH of the explosion at the port of Beirut, capital of Lebanon, nearly two weeks ago, one of the high profile prompt responses was food supply, to keep the distabilised and devastated people of Beirut from starving and to keep the national supply steady. The World Food Programme (WFP), a prominent humanitarian […]