Wednesday March 30, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Jessica Hannah

Making headlines:

Those debating the nationalisation of mines need to look at how well government-controlled entities function, before deciding "what works", South African Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus said in Soweto on Tuesday. "If we want to look at the nationalisation of anything in South Africa, look at entities we do control and ask is that the most efficient and effective.” "I ask let this not be an ideological debate. It should be what delivers for the economy." Marcus said inflation was likely to come under pressure from a sustained major demand for oil. Conflicts in North Africa meanwhile, were expected to affect supply.

An ally of Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was re-elected Speaker of Parliament on Tuesday in a bitter political battle against President Robert Mugabe's party ahead of a possible general election.
The post became vacant after the Supreme Court nullified the election of Lovemore Moyo from Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party two weeks ago because the original vote in 2008, following disputed parliamentary elections, was procedurally flawed. Moyo was re-elected as speaker with 105 votes, defeating the ZANU-PF candidate Simon Khaya Moyo who drew 93 votes.

The African Development Bank has established a $57-million fund for renewable enery projects across the continent, the bank's chief sector specialist said on Tuesday. The Denmark-backed Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa joins two other similar green energy funds in the region worth $6-billion being run by the AfDB and twelve non-African donor countries. "It is a clean investment... in only clean renewables," Youseff Arfaoui, the bank's chief renewable energy specialist, said on the sidelines of an African power conference in South Africa's commercial capital, Johannesburg.

Also making headlines:
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's better armed and organised troops reversed the westward charge of rebels, and world powers meeting in London piled pressure on the Libyan leader to end his 41-year rule.
Forces loyal to the Côte d’Ivoire’s presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara advanced on Tuesday to within 200 km of the two main port cities in an intensifying offensive against incumbent Laurent Gbagbo.
And, an immigration crisis on Italy's southern islands has deepened as more boats arrived from North Africa overnight and local people furious at the government's halting response stepped up protests.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines.