National And International News Roundup – 11th February 2021

Cameroonians have celebrated youth day in an unusual atmosphere today. Unlike in previous years, celebrations and march past sessions were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some Cameroonian youths are of the opinion that president Paul Biya’s call for this generation to preserve peace in the country is out of place. To them, leadership has been in the hands of the old since independence thus they are responsible for insecurity in several parts of the country. They are requesting President Paul Biya to restore peace for them to preserve.

The Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF party has signalled an end to his leadership of the party. Fru Ndi during a press dinner today said he had come to an of his mandate and was going to step aside for younger blood.

The Mount Cameroon Race of Hope will take place on Saturday 27th February 2021 in Buea, South West region of Cameroon. The sport event will hold on the theme “Peace, an ingredient for Nation Building”. The yearly event has over the past four years lost popularity given insecurity in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.

Martin Ambang, second vice of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement(CRM) party has resigned from the party. He denounces poor management of the party particularly the fact that the leader Professor Maurice Kamto single-handedly decided that the party will not run for municipal and legislative elections. It should be noted that Martin Ambang resigned from the Social Democratic Front before joining the CRM party.

Bodies of a 22-year old girl and her two kids have been deposited in a mortuary in Yaoundé pending an autopsy. The three died this morning after consuming rice and pork. There have been accusations of food poisoning.

Two suspected bandits have been arrested by the police at Rond Point Deido in Douala this evening. Witnesses say the boys attempted taking away the bag of a woman. Roadside traders at Rond Point attest the boys are notorious thieves in the area.

Pick-up trucks used to transport large numbers of people have been banned in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, as part of measures to halt the spread of coronavirus. The vehicles are known as “My Loves” as passengers are packed in so tightly it looks as if they are embracing. They are a common sight in the city as there is a shortage of public buses.

Officials in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are gearing up to begin an Ebola vaccination campaign following the death of two people in North Kivu province. A 60-year-old female farmer died of Ebola on Wednesday, six days after a 42-year-old woman had died in hospital of the virus near the city of Butembo.

Zimbabwe will receive 800,000 coronavirus vaccine doses developed by China’s Sinopharm by the start of March, the government has said. China is donating 200,000 of the shots while Zimbabwe is paying for the other 600,000. Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in a video posted on Twitter that the first batch of jabs were expected to arrive by Monday.

Most countries in Africa should still roll out the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, despite concerns over its use against a coronavirus variant that emerged in South Africa, the continent’s health agency says. “We will not be walking away from AstraZeneca vaccines at all,” John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said. The variant had now been found in six other African countries – Botswana, Comoros, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia, Dr Nkengasong said.

A top Ghana-born plastic surgeon in the US has successfully removed Gorilla Glue from the scalp of a woman who sprayed it on her hair last month mistaking it for hairspray, TMZ videos show. It took Dr Michael Obeng four hours to remove the glue from Tessica Brown’s head, the celebrity gossip site said. The Harvard-trained, Beverly Hills-based doctor offered to perform the $12,500 (£9,000) procedure for free when he heard about Ms Brown’s plight after she shared a video on TikTok last week.

Foreign news: BBC