For some people, a moment without your phone in your hand can seem like a lifetime.

Now, a study has warned how our obsession with our phones could be taking a toll on our relationships.

Scientists from Nigde Omer Halisdemir University set out to investigate the effects of 'phubbing' - snubbing others for your phone - in married couples. 

Worryingly, they found that couples who regularly phub each other have lower marriage satisfaction. 

'When individuals perceive that their romantic partners phubbing more frequently, they feel more conflict and less intimacy in the relationship,' the team explained in their study.

What is phubbing?

Phubbing is a term created by combining the words 'phone' and 'snubbing'. 

It refers to a person interacting with their phone rather than interacting with a human being - whether it is your partner or in other social situations. 

Two people may also phub at the same time, known as double phubbing. 

Phubbing a friend is known as friend phubbing or Fphubbing.   

Phubbing is a process where a person is distracted by their phone during a conversation with others. 

'Phubbing behavior, which we can be subjected to (phubbee) or the doer of (phubber), manifests itself as a behavior that is widely observed everywhere in today's technologically advanced societies,' the team wrote in their study, published in Elsevier journal Computers in Human Behavior.

In their study, the researchers set out to study the effect of this behaviour on married couples. 

They enlisted 712 married people from Turkey (347 females and 365 males), with an average age of 37. 

These participants were surveyed on their marriage satisfaction, phubbing tendencies, and communication skills. 

The results will come as bad news for those who can't put their phone down - phubbing significantly prediced martial dissatisfaction.     

Izzet Parmaksız, lead author of the study, said: 'Our research demonstrates the power of effective communication, especially among romantic couples. 

'Marital conflict mainly occurs when people are ignored by those they value, and this ignorance leads to lower relationship satisfaction and may impact personal well-being. 

'People should be mindful about being present with their loved ones to show they care, and put their phone away.'

The study comes shortly after a study revealed that phubbers are more likely to have certain mental health issues. 

Researchers from the University of University of Oklahoma found depressed people 'phub' their friends more frequently – either in a social situation such as in a pub or a cafe – than those without depression. 

Socially anxious people who might prefer online social interactions to face-to-face communication, also exhibit more phubbing behaviours, the authors say.   

Daily Mail

The Putrajaya Roundabout in the administrative capital of Malaysia holds the Guinness record for the world’s largest roundabout. It measures 3.4km in circumference and features 15 entry/exit points.

Located in the heart of Putrajaya, the administrative capital of Malaysia, the Persiaran Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Roundabout, aka Putrajaya Roundabout, is one of the most unusual attractions in the Southeast Asian country. It was designed by renowned Malaysian architect Hijjas Kasturi and inaugurated in 2003. A feat of modern infrastructure engineering, the world’s largest roundabout is built around Istana Melawati, the second-largest palace of Malaysia’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Putra Perdana Landmark, and a luxurious five-star hotel. It is also the main access point to Putrajaya’s major attractions, including the prime minister’s green-domed office complex and the city’s enormous mosque.

Measuring over 2 miles (3.4km) in circumference, the Putrajaya Roundabout is humongous by roundabout standards, but because of its elliptical shape and the fact that traffic only flows in one direction, it is a functional roundabout. The same cannot be said about its main rival, a slightly larger roundabout in Trinidad and Tobago’s Port-of-Spain.

Measuring around 2.3 miles (3.7km) in circumference, Queen’s Park Savannah is technically the largest roundabout in the world, but it is yet to be officially recognized as such because of its peculiar shape. This giant roundabout is anything but round. In fact, in order to traverse it, one has to turn no fewer than five 90-degree corners, so even though the traffic has been flowing in one direction since the late 1970s, Queen’s Park Savannah has not been officially recognized as a roundabout.

Oddity Central

The death on Wednesday, 20 July, of our friend, compatriot and fellow writer, Kole Omotoso, came to us with a great shock. But in our sadness we give thanks for his life and his work. “We” here refers to the moribund Positive Review-Ibadan Ife Collective.

By a few years, Kole was the oldest among us. He also came to writing as a serious, committed and lifelong project before all of us.

But among us, he was the freest spirit, the most maverick and unpredictable in his positions and actions!

These facts are reflected powerfully and ineluctably in perhaps his two best known and most controversial works, the masterpiece of the hybrid genre of “faction”, Just Before Dawn and Season of Migration to the South, a searing political and intellectual reminiscence on the historic emergence of the Nigerian Diaspora in Africa and the rest of the world.

There are, of course, his other works. And there is his family, the centering, sacramental core of his life: Akin, Pelayo and Yewande, words cannot express our solidarity with you in your loss.

Kole is the first in our group to go, absolutely without our permission and thus in his departure, the free spirit has been true to form. But you were here, Bankole Omotoso, you were here!

Biodun Jeyifo
Yemi Ogunbiyi
John Ohiorhenuan
Femi Osofisan
(For and on behalf of The Positive Review Collective)

The total distributable revenue, available to be shared between the three tiers of the Nigerian government, increased from N786.161 billion in May to about N1.9 trillion in June, over a 100 per cent increase.

The three tiers of the Nigerian government, however, agreed to share less than half of the revenue earned in June among themselves after agreeing to save a large chunk of the revenue, an official has said.

Dele Alake, spokesperson to President Bola Tinubu, said in a statement that the federal government, states and local governments shared N907 billion of the total N1.9 trillion (48 per cent shared) revenue earned in June.

The amount shared in June was still over N100 billion higher than the N786 billion shared between the three tiers of government for May.

Of the almost N1 trillion remaining of the June revenue, Alake said, “N790 billion will be saved, and the rest will be used for statutory deductions.”

The total N786 billion shared for May was after deductions but is still less than half of the distributable revenue for June (N907 billion shared + N790 billion saved).

Alake suggested that saving a large chunk of the June revenue was a way of managing inflation that would have arisen if all the revenue was shared in the aftermath of the recent removal of petrol subsidy.

“The committee also resolved to save a portion of the monthly distributable proceeds to minimize the impact of the increased revenues occasioned by the subsidy removal and exchange rate unification-on money supply, as well as inflation and the exchange rate,” Alake wrote.

Tinubu had on 29 May, during his inauguration, announced the removal of subsidy on petrol which the government was spending almost a trillion naira on monthly.

The removal of the subsidy has caused hardship for many Nigerians with its attendant increase in the prices of goods and services. However, the subsidy removal also led to increased government revenue with total distributable revenue increasing from about N786.161 billion in May to about N1.9 trillion in June as the government earned money that would in the past have been used to subsidize petrol.

Although the government has announced a series of palliatives to cushion the impact of petrol subsidy removal, many Nigerians are still reeling from the policy as petrol prices continue to rise.

In his Thursday statement, Alake said Tinubu also approved “the establishment of the Infrastructure Support Fund (ISF) for the 36 States of the Federation as part of measures to cushion the effects of the petrol subsidy removal on the people.”

“The new Infrastructure fund will enable the states to intervene and invest in the critical areas of Transportation, including farm-to-market road improvements; Agriculture, encompassing livestock and ranching solutions; Health, with a focus on basic healthcare; Education, especially basic education; Power and Water Resources, that will improve economic competitiveness, create jobs and deliver economic prosperity for Nigerians,” the spokesperson wrote.

PT

National Economic Council (NEC) presided over by Vice-President Kashim Shettima, has dumped the national social register compiled under Muhammadu Buhari, immediate past president, for lacking credibility.

The council, instead, proposed the implementation of a cash transfer programme for states based on their social registers and a cash reward policy for public servants for six months.

The decision was part of the outcome of the over five hours meeting by members of the council at the State House on Thursday.

Speaking with journalists, Chukwuma Soludo, governor of Anambra, said NEC agreed that states should come up with their own registers using formal and informal means.

He added that all beneficiaries will be easily identified at the subnational level.

“We need to face the problem of the fact that we don’t have a credible register,” he said.

The Anambra governor said NEC deliberated on ways to cushion the impact of the recent removal of the petrol subsidy.

He added that the council agreed on the need for payment of outstanding liabilities of public servants, including pensions and gratuities, to alleviate their hardships.

According to Soludo, the council also agreed that the government will focus on funding micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with single-digit interest rates to support business growth.

In 2016, the federal government established the national social investments programme (NSIP) to “tackle poverty and hunger” across the country.

For the take-off of the programme, the government had directed the immediate release of N25 billion.

For its implementation, a national social register was created, comprising names of vulnerable people and households across the country.

The Cable

Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has announced a total tax revenue collection of N5.5 trillion for the half-year period of January to June 2023.

This is the highest tax revenue collection ever recorded by the Service in any first six months of a fiscal year, the agency said in a statement Thursday.

The statement noted that Muhammad Nami, Executive Chairman of the FIRS, made the disclosure while presenting the 2023-2024 tax revenue outlook to the National Economic Council at its meeting on Thursday, July 20, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The presentation, which contained FIRS’ 2023 Half-Year Collection Report, showed that the FIRS achieved over one hundred per cent of its target for the first half of the year compared with a mid-year target of N5.3 trillion.

According to the report, tax revenue collected from the oil sector from January to June 2023 was N2.03 trillion, as against a target of N2.3 trillion, while non-oil tax collection was N3.76 trillion, as against a target of N2.98 trillion.

Nami, in his presentation, further stated that the Service collected a total of N1.65 trillion in tax revenues in June 2023. This sum is the highest tax revenue collected by the Service in any single month.

Speaking to what he described as “a good head start, despite stubborn headwinds,” Nami, attributed the excellent performance to improved voluntary tax compliance enabled by the automation of FIRS’ tax administrative processes.

“This is a good head start as we work towards meeting our target for the year. And it was achieved despite stubborn headwinds such as the impact of the currency redesign and 2023 General Elections on the economy in the first and second quarters of 2023,” said Nami.

“This half-year performance was achieved as a result of improved voluntary tax compliance by taxpayers, the continued improvement of automation of our tax administration processes, including the updated VAT filing processes, as well as our dogged engagement with stakeholders in both the formal and informal sectors of the economy,” he concluded.

Commenting on the outlook for the remainder half of the year, the FIRS Executive Chairman gave assurances that the country should expect “better days ahead” in terms of tax revenue collection.

“We believe that the performance in the second half of the year would be better considering the continuing improvement to our tax administration processes and positive impact of current government’s policies on the economy,” said the Executive Chairman.

It would be recalled that the Service achieved a total collection of N10.1 trillion in 2022, being the highest tax collection ever made by the FIRS in a single year.

PT

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has registered a new political party, the Youth Party (YP). National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC, Festus Okoye, said this on Thursday in Abuja in a statement.

This development raised the number of registered political parties in the country to 19.

INEC had on 6 February 2020 deregistered 74 political parties for poor performance in the 2019 general elections and the subsequent re-run elections across the country.

INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said that in addition to the extant provision for the registration of political parties, the Fourth Alteration to the Section 225(a) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, empowers the commission to deregister political parties.

During the 2019 general elections, 91 political parties participated in the exercise, while an additional party, Boot Party, was registered based on the order of a court after the election.

Okoye in the statement recalled that the Youth Party (YP) was registered on 16th August 2018 by virtue of the judgment of the Federal High Court delivered on 16th October 2017.

“Following the commission’s decision to deregister some parties in accordance with Section 225A of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), the Youth Party approached the Federal High Court and secured an order restraining the commission from deregistering it.

“On appeal by the commission, the Court of Appeal set aside the order of the Federal High Court and on further appeal by the party, the Supreme Court set aside the deregistration of the party,” he said.

The statement said that based on the judgment of the Supreme Court, INEC interfaced with officials of the YP on the modalities for its operation based on the Constitution, the Electoral Act 2022, and the Regulations and Guidelines of the Commission.

Daily Trust

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russia bombs Ukraine ports, threatens ships, as Kyiv deploys cluster munitions

Russia jolted world grain markets with an escalation in the Black Sea, mounting a third straight night of air strikes on Ukrainian ports and issuing a threat against Ukraine-bound vessels to which Kyiv responded in kind.

At least 27 civilians were reported hurt in the air strikes on the ports, which set buildings ablaze and damaged China's consulate in Odesa.

The United States said Russia's warning to ships indicated Moscow might attack vessels at sea following Moscow's withdrawal on Monday from a U.N.-brokered deal to let Ukraine export grain. The signal that Russia was willing to use force to reimpose its blockade on one of the world's biggest food exporters set global prices soaring.

Moscow says it will not participate in the year-old grain deal without better terms for its own food and fertiliser sales.

The U.N. Security Council will meet on Friday over "the humanitarian consequences" of Russia's withdrawal, said Britain's U.N mission.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the Russian attacks on Ukraine's Black Sea ports and warned the "destruction of civilian infrastructure may constitute a violation of international humanitarian law."

"These attacks are also having an impact well beyond Ukraine," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, adding higher wheat and corn prices hurt everyone, especially vulnerable people in the global south.

Kyiv is hoping to resume exports without Russia's participation. But no ships have sailed from its ports since Moscow pulled out of the deal, and insurers have had doubts about whether to underwrite policies for trade in a war zone.

Since quitting the deal, Moscow has rained missiles down nightly on Ukraine's two biggest port cities, Odesa and Mykolaiv. Thursday's strikes appeared to be the worst yet.

Odesa regional governor Oleh Kiper posted an image online of China's consulate building with broken windows. It is located in Odesa's city centre just across railway tracks from the port.

"The aggressor is deliberately hitting the port infrastructure - administrative and residential buildings nearby were damaged," Kiper said on Telegram.

The Chinese foreign ministry said the shock wave of the explosion "knocked down parts of the walls and window panes of the consulate."

In Mykolaiv, firefighters battled a huge blaze at a pink stucco residential building, blasted into a ruin. Several other residential buildings there were also damaged.

Moscow has described the port attacks as revenge for a Ukrainian strike on Russia's bridge to Crimea on Monday. It said on Thursday its retaliatory strikes were continuing and it had hit all its targets in Odesa and Mykolaiv.

In its most explicit threat yet, Russia's military announced it would deem all ships heading for Ukrainian waters from Thursday morning to be potentially carrying weapons, and their flag countries as parties to the war on the Ukrainian side. It said it was declaring parts of the Black Sea to be unsafe.

Kyiv responded on Thursday by announcing similar measures, saying it would consider vessels bound for Russia or Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory also to be carrying arms.

Washington called Russia's threat a signal that Moscow might attack civilian shipping. Russia's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said his country was not preparing to do so.

CLUSTER MUNITIONS

The Black Sea escalation comes as Kyiv reports a new attempt by Russia to return to the offensive in the northeast of Ukraine, where it says Moscow has massed 100,000 troops and hundreds of tanks.

U.S.-supplied cluster munitions are being deployed in the field as part of Kyiv's battle against Russia, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said.

"We have gotten some initial feedback from the Ukrainians, and they're using them quite effectively," Kirby said at a news briefing. He added the cluster munitions are having an impact on Russian defensive formations and maneuvering.

Ukraine has pledged to use the cluster bombs only to dislodge concentrations of Russian enemy soldiers. Many countries have banned the munitions, which contain scores of small bomblets that rain shrapnel over an area, as a potential danger to civilians.

Since last month, Ukrainian forces have been on the march in the east and the south, recapturing small amounts of territory in their first big counteroffensive since last year. But the going has been slow, and they are yet to take on Russia's main defensive lines.

The Black Sea escalation pushed U.S. wheat futures up on Thursday, after they jumped 8.5% on Wednesday, their fastest single-day rise since the initial days of Russia's invasion in February last year.

Major grain importers in the Middle East and North Africa have reacted calmly however to the end of the safe shipping corridor, European commodity traders said, and there was no panic buying.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia launches more ‘retaliatory strikes’ on Ukraine – MOD

The Russian Defense Ministry has reported conducting “retaliatory strikes”on targets in Ukrainian port cities for a third consecutive day. It comes in response to a naval drone attack on the Crimean Bridge, which killed two civilians on Monday morning.

In its latest briefing on Thursday, the Russian ministry identified “manufacturing workshops and storage locations of naval drones” in the Black Sea port of Odessa and its satellite port of Ilyichevsk, which Ukraine calls Chornomorsk, as the targets of the latest attacks.

The Russian military also hit fuel infrastructure and ammunition depots in the city of Nikolaev, another major Ukrainian port, the statement added. The ministry said the strikes had achieved their intended goals.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian military claimed to have intercepted five cruise missiles and 13 kamikaze drones out of 19 missiles and an equal number of UAVs, which it claimed were launched by Russian forces at Odessa and Nikolaev. The Russian ministry offered few details about the munitions used, only stating that they were “precision naval-launched and air-launched weapons.”

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian port cities every night since Monday. Odessa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov described the barrage on Wednesday morning as the largest he had seen since hostilities between the two nations broke out in February last year.

The drone attack on the Crimean Bridge on Monday, which Russia called a Ukrainian terrorist attack, killed a couple and seriously injured their 14-year-old daughter, who was traveling in the same car. Investigators claim the key transport link was attacked by naval drones.

Ukrainian media cited government sources as confirming that the strike had been launched by Kiev. The SBU, the security service that allegedly co-organized the operation with the Ukrainian military, reacted by promising to release details about the incident after the conflict with Russia is over.

** Russian forces wipe out signal center, command post of two Ukrainian army brigades

Russian forces struck a signal center and a command post of two Ukrainian army brigades over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov reported on Thursday.

"In areas near the settlements of Avdeyevka and Torskoye in the Donetsk People’s Republic, a signal center of the Ukrainian army’s 110th mechanized brigade and a command post of the Ukrainian army’s 63rd mechanized brigade were destroyed," the spokesman said.

** West to shift Ukraine weapons strategy

The US and its allies are pivoting from delivering more weapons to Ukraine to fixing Western hardware that has already been sent to Kiev and damaged during the conflict with Russia, Politico has reported.

Ukraine has been having problems with maintaining the “international hodgepodge of equipment” provided to it by the US, Germany, UK, Poland and many other countries since the start of the fighting in February 2022, the US news website noted in an article on Wednesday.

The ability to quickly fix the damaged hardware has become even more crucial since the launch of the counteroffensive in early June, which has proven “difficult” for Kiev’s forces and “led to some well-publicized losses of US-made Bradley fighting vehicles and hulking mine-resistant troop carriers, along with some damaged German Leopard tanks,” it said.

The Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment chief, William LaPlante, told Politico that in order to assist Ukraine, the US and its allies are “setting up repair facilities in Europe, we’re translating [training and repair] manuals, we have to do much more together so there’s going to be more of a focus on that.”

Politico described LaPlante as leading a “22-nation working group, led by the US, Poland and the UK,” tasked with making sure that Western-supplied weapons remain in working order during Ukraine’s conflict with Russia.

“We have regular conversations” with Kiev, the Pentagon official said. “What more do they need? Are there more parts we can send? We’re actually tracking what’s called the availability rate of each one of these systems,” in near real-time.

The group has already assisted Ukraine in setting up a support effort to track over 4,000 supply lines for high-demand spare parts for foreign hardware, according to the report. The US has also translated into Ukrainian over 700 technical manuals for the weapons sent to Kiev, so that local technicians can fix them on the spot.

“We’re making sure that they [the Ukrainians] have everything that they need. And if the parts have to come from a country halfway around the world, we make sure we get it to them. So the sustainment is actually most of the work going on right now,” LaPlante said.

However, at the moment “much of the most serious repair work still needs to be shipped to places such as Poland or Czechia before making the long trip back to Ukraine,” Politico added.

Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, arguing that they will only prolong the fighting, but not prevent Moscow from achieving the goals of its military operation. The Kremlin argues that the provision of weapons, intelligence sharing, and training to Kiev’s troops already means that the US and its allies are de facto parties to the conflict.

Reuters/RT/Tass

There’s a trending video from nine years ago. If you watched it casually, you might in fact think that it was done yesterday. It was a clip of Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, narrating what happened in 2014 when a delegation of African heads of state was asked by AU to mediate the Libyan crisis at the time.

Museveni’s account of the outcome of the assignment, which has so far not been denied by NATO, was a scandal – an African shame – on steroids. It’s surprising how the incident remained largely unreported until this video resurfaced again recently.

It wasn’t the usual anti-Western trope about colonialism, neo-colonialism or imperialism that caught my attention. It was what appeared, if Museveni were to be believed, to be the brazen, daylight interference of NATO in the peace mission of the African leaders and how they responded to it.

Museveni told a meeting of the Pan-African parliament in Midrand, South Africa, that a plane conveying six African heads of state to Tripoli, including his own minister who represented him, was asked not to proceed by NATO as the aircraft approached the Libyan airspace on its mission. 

“How can African leaders nominated by an African continental body, on African soil, be stopped by NATO from doing their duty,” he asked the parliament, pointing out that even the Mauritanian President, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, who was chair of that session of the parliament, was also on the trip. 

The Ugandan leader described the incident as a classic case of African elite betrayal. As the camera panned the helpless, forlorn look on the faces of the leaders present in the hall, you could almost hear a pin drop. 

I don’t know what Museveni might have done if he was on the plane on that day, and he didn’t say either. It however appears improbable to me that a man who had been in bed with the West for decades would have done anything other than what the delegation on that Tripoli mission did: meekly accepted his fate, like the rest, while the plane returned to base. How could Museveni not see that he was a part of the African elite betrayal story?

Helen Epstein wrote in her book, Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda And the War on Terror, that Museveni owes his longevity in power to billions of American dollars that have been used to train and buy equipment for his army and prop his government. Western aid to Uganda accounts for over 10 percent of that country’s GDP, and was, in fact, up to 42 percent of the budget in 2006. To put it politely, western pipers have always called Uganda’s tune.

Things only began to fall apart between Museveni and his sponsors after the homosexual rights wars broke out, worsened by his strong-arm tactics against the opposition in that country’s last general election. Not that he suddenly discovered the despicable history of western colonialism and exploitation in Africa or the treachery of the elite.

Since watching that video of Museveni’s blood boiling over what was apparently a latter-day moment of African epiphany, made after he had been in power for 28 years, I’ve been asking myself if NATO might have asked a plane conveying Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe and Olusegun Obasanjo on that kind of mission to make a mid-air return. Very unlikely. 

If the current crop of African leaders had not eaten the sour grapes of betrayal, it is improbable that NATO would treat them with such contempt. So, what would NATO have done if the airplane defied the return-to-base order? Shot down an aircraft carrying six African leaders on an AU peace mission in Africa? Sadly, the mission is a metaphor for the current state of leadership on the continent; they love life too much to dare. 

Interestingly, there was not even a word of protest from the AU after the aborted mission, allegedly directed by NATO in name only. The mastermind, obviously, was Barack Obama, the first Black American president, who would later unleash perhaps one of the most consequential destabilising forces on the Sahel after the brutal elimination of Moummar Ghaddafi. I’m not sure it was a moment that Obama would look back on with pride. Yet, for the AU, too busy with the politics of subservience to care, it was business as usual.

Another African leader has been talking lately, making statements that re-echo memories of Museveni’s bluster. William Ruto, Kenya’s president while addressing the Djibouti parliament in June, said something fairly radical. Why, he asked Djibouti, should that country or any other African country for that matter, conduct bilateral trade amongst themselves in US dollars?

Although Ruto said he was not opposed to settling accounts for trade with the US in dollars, his statement was the diplomatic equivalent of what should have been the appropriate response of that AU-Libya mission to NATO’s meddling: that the alliance had no business stopping the AU delegation from landing on the soil of an African country which, in any case, was not a member of NATO.

On the face of it, there’s really no reason intra-African trade should be settled in dollars. The EU, perhaps the largest single currency union, conducts intra-European trade in euros. So, why can’t AU, especially if the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the continent’s financial provider, set up a payment and settlement mechanism to facilitate intra-African trade? As tempting as this option may be and in spite of the obvious advantages including reduction of transaction costs among others, the devil is in the detail. Ruto knows.

With 54 countries in Africa, it would be interesting to test a continental payment clearing house that is not even contemplating optimum currency area – a slightly different system that would have allowed trading in one or more frequently used regional currencies – but is instead thinking of dealing with 42 different currencies on the continent simultaneously. 

Given the current disastrously low volume of intra-African trade, which is about 18.2 percent or $169.7 billion in 2021, a common clearing house is hardly as important as removing the barriers to trade that have stunted the impact of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).

Unnecessary restrictions and obstacles to the movement of people and goods, shambolic customs regulations and border policing — not to mention poor infrastructure and protectionist policies by countries that fear, not always irrationally, that their neighbours are conduits for cheap foreign products — have severely limited trade among African countries and denied citizens prosperity. 

These are not problems that can be solved by settling bank notes or making sound bites. Until African countries develop the capacity to go beyond being just primary commodity markets, always looking outside the continent to consume, in excess, what they cannot produce, Ruto’s wishes would remain what they are – wishes. 

Does Ruto know, for example, that a number of Francophone countries in West and Central Africa which are part of the CFA franc zone still maintain 50 percent of their reserves in the French Treasury in Paris? It isn’t a big secret that France torpedoed the attempt by ECOWAS to introduce the ‘ECO’ as a subregional currency three years ago. How will an African payment settlement system extricate Francophone West Africa from decades of French namby-pamby?

Also, when Britain announced recently, for example, that it was adding Nigeria’s naira to its list of pre-approved currencies, allowing it to provide financing for transactions with Nigerian businesses in the local currency, it was hardly an act of charity. It was, instead, that country’s calculated response to the new reality of its post-Brexit misery. 

African leaders may chew the microphone all they want in Midrand, South Africa or in Djibouti. Ruto and his colleagues would soon find, as the six African leaders on that aborted AU mission to Libya found many years ago, that the strong have the weak for lunch. 

When vested interests push back against the fancy idea of an African payment and settlement system, as they will, would the mission return to base? 

** Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP

File this under 'That's not supposed to happen!': Scientists observed a metal healing itself, something never seen before. If this process can be fully understood and controlled, we could be at the start of a whole new era of engineering.

A team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University was testing the resilience of the metal, using a specialized transmission electron microscope technique to pull the ends of the metal 200 times every second. They then observed the self-healing at ultra-small scales in a 40-nanometer-thick piece of platinum suspended in a vacuum.

Cracks caused by the kind of strain described above are known as fatigue damage: repeated stress and motion that causes microscopic breaks, eventually causing machines or structures to break. Amazingly, after about 40 minutes of observation, the crack in the platinum started to fuse back together and mend itself before starting again in a different direction.

"This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand," says materials scientist Brad Boyce from Sandia National Laboratories. "We certainly weren't looking for it."

"What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale."

These are exact conditions, and we don't know yet exactly how this is happening or how we can use it. However, if you think about the costs and effort required for repairing everything from bridges to engines to phones, there's no telling how much difference self-healing metals could make.

And while the observation is unprecedented, it's not wholly unexpected. In 2013, Texas A&M University materials scientist Michael Demkowicz worked on a study predicting that this kind of nanocrack healing could happen, driven by the tiny crystalline grains inside metals essentially shifting their boundaries in response to stress.

Demkowicz also worked on this latest study, using updated computer models to show that his decade-old theories about metal's self-healing behavior at the nanoscale matched what was happening here.

That the automatic mending process happened at room temperature is another promising aspect of the research. Metal usually requires lots of heat to shift its form, but the experiment was carried out in a vacuum; it remains to be seen whether the same process will happen in conventional metals in a typical environment.

A possible explanation involves a process known as cold welding, which occurs under ambient temperatures whenever metal surfaces come close enough together for their respective atoms to tangle together. Typically, thin layers of air or contaminants interfere with the process; in environments like the vacuum of space, pure metals can be forced close enough together to literally stick.

"My hope is that this finding will encourage materials researchers to consider that, under the right circumstances, materials can do things we never expected," says Demkowicz.

ScienceAlert