Electron Native

Facebook says it will fight fake news on its platform, using Nigeria’s Yoruba and Igbo languages. According to Facebook’s Head of Public policy, Africa, Kojo Boakye, the two languages are in addition to the Hausa language, already supported by the platform. The social media platform is collaborating with Africa Check, an independent fact-checking organisation to add new local language support for several African languages as part of its Third-Party Fact-Checking programme. The programme intends to assess the accuracy of news on Facebook and reduce the spread of misinformation. Launched in 2018, the programme has also expanded its local language coverage across Kenya in   (Swahili), Senegal in (Wolof), and South Africa in (Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Southern Ndebele). Senegal and Cameroon are also included in the coverage

Kenya Commercial Bank or KCB Group, commonly called Kenya’s biggest lender by assets, posted a 5percent rise in first-half (H1) pretax profit. This has been boosted by growth across all its segments, and it had been able set aside more money to cover bad loans. The bank, has a pretax profit of 17.93 billion shillings or 173.82 million US dollars, announced this in a statement. It adds that it has boosted its provisions for bad debts with 3 billion shillings during the period, from 0.8 billion shillings a year earlier. Non-performing loans dropped to 7.8percent of the total loan book, from 8.4percent in the same period last year, and well below the industry average of 12.7percent, said KCB, which also operates in Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan. Net interest income rose by 5percent to 25.4 billion shillings mainly due to a 14% expansion in lending. It expects to complete its takeover of National Bank of Keny...

The Nigerian central bank auctioned treasury bills on Wednesday at higher rates. The transaction was meant to lure foreign investors hours after President Buhari told the bank to ban access to dollars for food imports. The decision is seen as a means of reducing the decline in the nations foreign reserves. The bank auctioned 34.4billion Naira worth of treasury bills, paying 12 percent for the longest tenor one-year paper, up from 11.2 percent it paid at its last sale, on ample demand for the bills, traders said. Pressure has been building on the Naira currency as oil prices drop and foreign investors book profits on local bonds in response to falling yields. Crude sales account for 90percent of foreign exchange earnings and two-thirds of government revenues in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer. Banking stocks fell 1.26 percent on Wednesday, to help drag the main share index to a more than two-year low as negative sentime...

Source:   TNAU Agritech Portal Morocco is making a downward review of its cereal harvest for 2019. The North African country‘s cereal production dips by 49 percent year on year, despite reaching 5.2 million tonnes in the 2018-2019 acording to the Moroccan ministry of agriculture. The report added that cereal production was affected by poor rainfall which reached only an average of 290.5 mm by the end of May 2019, down by 23 percent year on year. Morocco relies heavily on wheat imports to cover its consumption needs. Data from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates Morocco's cereal import requirements in the 2019-2020. This forecast was pegged at 8.2 million tonnes, almost 30 percent more than in 2018-2019 and about 15 percent above average.