African press review 5 July 2011

Video game stand-off in Soweto. A 4 July hoax. Thousands made homeless in Uganda, which has a "war-damaged city" for a capital. And Nigeria tries to get the gen on its citizens.

In South Africa, The Daily Star reports on my worst nightmare: video games. The headline reads “Hundreds turn up for a video soccer game stand-off at mall”.

It’s the first time such an event has been held in Soweto, which according to the article is a “capital of soccer”. The city was also chosen because there were complaints that similar events were only being held in predominantly white areas.

In all, 256 men between eight and 30 signed up for the competition, which lasted 10 hours.

A 4 July hoax is also making the headlines. Apparently hackers took control of the FoxNews twitter feed, tweeting that US President Barack Obama had been shot dead.

A group called The Script Kiddies has claimed responsibility. According to the article, the incident again raised questions about the microblogging site’s security and the integrity of postings on the website.

Moving on to Uganda, with the Daily Monitor. It reports that close to 2,000 families are left homeless in the Nakawa-Naguru region because of redevelopment. The government had given notice and asked residents to vacate their homes, but the notice was largely ignored.

The article however does not mention whether or not the government had offered compensation to those whose homes will make way for the construction of thousands of flats for low-income earners.

The paper also has an article called “Juba, world’s newest capital”. And, while the headline sounds inviting, the rest of the article does not. We are talking “tin-shack housing,” “war-damaged city,” nothing positive.

The city has been the stage of lots of violence in recent years and according to the article. Aid workers have just now moved from tents to hotels built from shipping containers.

The Guardian Nigeria leads with a story about a government initiative to gather data about its population. The article says it’s to help development and generate employment in the country.

The idea is to collect demographic and geographic data on every citizen and issue social security numbers to better serve development needs in every region. Nigeria’s biggest issues are with “power, employment, good governance corruption and criminality”,  the paper says.