Shutdowns

The wife of Kwara governor and Founder Ajike People Support Centre, Dr Olufolake AbdulRazaq, has called on Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to be proactive in adapting new trends of doing business in the face of pandemic.

Oil demand recovery will take a hit from a spike in new coronavirus cases before vaccine roll-outs and stimulus measures help in the second half of the year, International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

Rwanda's capital Kigali was back under total lockdown on Tuesday after a surge in coronavirus cases in a country that has adopted some of Africa's toughest anti-Covid measures.

Internet was partially restored in Uganda on Monday almost five days after a near-total blackout was imposed across the country ahead of elections the opposition says were rigged.

“It is alarming that the Ugandan authorities have suspended social media networks including Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp and restricted people’s right to freedom of expression and access to information,” said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes, in a press release.

Cities across Iran have been cloaked in thick layers of toxic smog and darkened by blackouts, as the alleged use of low-quality fuel and power-sucking cryptocurrency mining deepen the country’s hardships.

The United States marked the New Year on Friday by passing the extraordinary milestone of 20 million Covid-19 cases, after global celebrations welcoming in 2021 were largely muted by the pandemic.

The gross revenue realised from crude oil and gas sales by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in November 2020 rose by 37.31 percent to N223.34 billion.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold crisis talks Sunday with regional leaders of Germany’s 16 states to agree tougher curbs including the closure of shops ahead of Christmas, as coronavirus infections surge unabated.

Iran has extended many coronavirus-related restrictions across the country as its COVID-19 death toll went past 50,000 on Saturday.

Wall Street’s main stock indexes opened lower on Friday, putting them on track to cap off another week of highs and lows as vaccine optimism is overshadowed by surging COVID-19 infections and the return of business sapping restrictions and shutdowns.

US giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech prepared Friday to file an emergency request to roll out their vaunted vaccine while New York shut its schools and California braced for nighttime curfews heading into the US holiday season.

The world would move from COVID-19 pandemic this year to hunger pandemic in 2021, David Beasly, Head of the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

The government of Canada has launched a fund to make up to $37m (c$50m) available to compensate Canadian productions for COVID-19-related filming delays.

The world’s top gold miners are retrenching after COVID-19 related shutdowns despite record prices for the yellow metal, with cost-conscious executives prioritizing investor returns over production growth.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy will contract this year after shutdowns disrupted activity and as daily cases of coronavirus are still rising in the region but a recovery is expected next year, a Reuters poll found on Friday.

The coronavirus may never go away and populations will have to learn to live with it just as they have HIV, the World Health Organization has warned, as the global death toll from the disease nears 300,000.

The U.S. Treasury announced its borrowing will reach a record $3 trillion in the current quarter, as the coronavirus batters the economy and government spending increased, including through massive stimulus programmes.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling on federal prosecutors to open a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon, as laid out in a letter released on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia on Sunday partially eased a 24-hour curfew in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic, except for in hotspots including the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

Hospitalisation rates and reported deaths from the novel coronavirus continued to decrease in New York state on Sunday as Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state appears to be past a plateau of coronavirus cases.

The rapidly-spreading coronavirus outbreak is expected to push sub-Saharan Africa into recession in 2020 for the first time in 25 years, the World Bank said in a new forecast on Thursday.