Kenyan Women Move out of the Slum to Acquire Decent Housing

The thought of getting old, retiring and still living in a slum used to scare Emma Ochieng. Now the 55-year-old primary teacher has a new house on an estate about a 45-minute drive from the city of Kisumu in western Kenya.

“Staying in a decent neighborhood was beyond my means,” Ochieng told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Owning a house in the city was but a wild dream!”

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South Africa’s PIC Would be dead without the Eskon Loan

South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation (PIC), Africa’s biggest investment fund, said on Tuesday that without a 5 billion rand ($420 million) loan it advanced to cash-strapped utility Eskom, the utility would have defaulted on its existing debts with lenders.

The PIC, which holds a large chunk of government bonds and stakes in leading South African companies, said last week it had given the country’s sole power supplier the loan to fund the utility’s operations in February

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Angola’s Central Bank Gives Go Ahead for Banks to Sell Foreign Currency to Public

Angola’s central bank said on Monday it was the sole responsibility of commercial banks to sell foreign currency to the public and that it would sell forex only to large importers of essential goods.

The southern African nation in January abandoned the kwanza’s peg to the U.S. dollar, devaluing it by about 10 percent, in a bid to attract capital to the oil-exporting country, which was hit hard by a slide in global crude prices.

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Zuma’s refusal to Leave Power a Test to Democracy

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma is digging in his heels and refusing to relinquish the top job despite mounting pressure from his own party, the African National Congress.

His determination to stay put is being widely condemned by a range of South African voices. But there’s a case to be made that his reluctance is doing South Africans a favor as it is forcing them to clarify various constitutional and political issues. Most obviously, albeit inadvertently, he is asserting the supremacy of parliament over the authority of the party.

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