in berlin and in a moment we'll have the latest business news from africa but first a mega merger set to create a european rail champion strong enough to counter chinese competition has been stopped in its tracks the european commission has just blocks a plan to tie up between german engineering giant siemens and france's alstom the two companies were set to merge their railway businesses to enable them to take on big o. foreign rivals in particular chinese industry leaders c r c but in a rare move the e.u. antitrust office rejected the plan over what it calls serious competition concerns let's just listen in to what your competition commission. had to say our investigation showed that the merger would significantly reduce competition in several signalling markets and for very high speed trains. the merged company would have become by far the largest grain europe and in some signaling markets there would be no competition there all right so it's all about competition let's talk

a little bit more about that with our financial market correspondent blitzer joins us in frankfurt and to peter klepper from the open europe think tank in brussels hello to both of you and i'd like to start with you peter open in europe of course is known to be let's say quite critical of the e.u. what do you make off today's detail is it time to take perhaps a victory lap. i don't think this is a good decision. or way of defining competition i think as long as there's a possibility to enter the market even if there's only one player there's effective competition and indeed in the past the european commission has been complicating all their mergers like for example the woman telecoms between vodafone and mannesmann and only a few years later the same commission was complaining that there were no european champions. in telecom so this is

a weird decisions also strange that mrs vest dog is so keen to double down on controversial aspects of her job wall sort of ignoring the core of her job which is to police state for example she allowed italy to bail out a bank that just passed just with all the whimper right so the e.u. commission they're not painted in a very nice light paul were talking about competition we just heard that this decision makes the e.u. prop possibly less competitive we certainly know the german economy minister presented a national industry strategy only yesterday that aids to create a national champion is today's need to killing any such a mission. no quite the contrary it's only going to refuel the debate neither french finance minister. is going to be happy about this nor is. german and economic minister in fact he's already said there will be

a french german initiative to rewrite european competition law in order to allow for these for these kind of mergers until then however europe will have to ward off china in a different way maybe by enabling its companies to to actually innovate and compete there by and become stronger against a possible chinese threat all right peter just very briefly i mean competition it also needs a level playing field we need to strike a balance between open markets level playing field keep critical infrastructure in safe hands how do you strike that balance well i think if we just allow the markets to play then we will make the european economy and the environment strong i mean it's possible for a chinese for american firms to enter the european markets and think the job of the european commission should be to safeguard its competition within europe is fair

and to make sure that there are as little hurdles as possible for non european companies to help sort of european consumers because at the end of the day does the only thing that matters the interest of the consumer all right clip of their from open europe think tank in brussels and to pakistan but it's joining us from frankfurt thank you so much to both. now the governments of morocco and germany have struck two financial cooperation agreements totaling more than three hundred thirteen million euros the moroccan finance minister and german ambassador signed off on a series of loans and grants aimed at promoting sustainable development some of the cash will go towards renewable energy and water projects morocco's mohamed about. the deals show to the excellent relations between his country and germany. congestion is a problem in cities across the world including in the kenyan capital nairobi well

now the government wants to address the problem by introducing two car free days a week in the busiest parts of the city it also wants to introduce more buses a light rail way and a rapid bus translates system to encourage people to use public transport instead the plan seems to have encountered a few stumbling blocks. and let's talk a little bit about that with joy green beer our correspondent in nairobi good to have you with us so i understand that nairobi has just postponed its car free days why's that. well yeah they did will spawn the car free days a reason being they want it the days when they're not because of private cars in the city to be occupied by hawkers and for them to actually occupied spaces be had to be registered so there was a bio metric capturing that was going on and by the time they hoped they were going

to commence the car free days and this had happened and so on they had to postpone it as a security concern and that's what the government says but even when they announce that you know the car free days we're going to start they put out two days and that means nairobi would be the only city or maybe one of the few cities across the world that have to cover free days in a single week and that was actually very impractical for last of the employers and employees who are like the roots getting into the central business district and it would be of course it also has you know this is a charming idea to have a big city with today's traffic creep but how big a problem is traffic congestion for robie actually. a very big problem and it's not just a problem of for narrow b. or kenya for that matter it's just a general problem across most african cities and this has a lot to do with the planning or the other planning in most of the cities in fact

according to the government they say that we lose about five hundred seventy thousand us dollars i day that is in lost productivity because of the time spent in traffic that is to and from work for most of the employees and so that actually if you look at the numbers it's quite huge because most people spend between an hour and two on their way to whack in another hour or two going back home for work and that means that these quite a lot of traffic going into the central business district and out of it at specific hours of the day and this is just the same problem across most african cities not their cities like rwanda introduced caffrey days but they did this for one day in a month that is since twenty sixteen now if an iraqi to come out and say they're going to introduce two days that's actually creating more congestion in the city because it's always chaotic even when we have the public service because plying the routes into the central business district right i understand the system still needs

a little bit of work joy the reindeer are in nairobi thank you so much for bringing us up to speed. and staying in the region can be as president or ok as today a short saying bob way of kenya's support to ensure that the sanctions imposed on the southern african nation a lift it speaking at the state house in nairobi kenya has said that the sanctions are actually holding some back undermining its efforts to effectively serve its citizens. children aged fourteen and below all represent twenty five percent of the world's population that's according to the united nations but in many parts of the world children are disproportionately affected by poverty a joint report by unicef and the un's labor standards agency aisle zero shows two out of three children have no access to social protection. millions of children are

forced to work every day in many countries often their parents have no other option children have to supplement the family income so that there's enough food on the table. for so many kids poverty is what is preventing them from going to school from having health from having nutrition and what it shows is if you provide cash transfers to these children you see really significant improvements in their health and in their education which changes their future life course and their future life chances and of course also has really big impacts on societies today half of the children who live in extreme poverty are in sub-saharan africa and the problem could get worse for the region which could house ninety percent of children living in extreme poverty by the end of the next decade according to the u.n. it says governments need to increase cash transfer programs for children. and anticorruption whistleblower is among five people arrested in south africa over the alleged illegal awarding of prison contracts according to local reports angelo

agree to see the former chief operations officer of a contract opened up about the alleged corruption during a judge led inquiry last month he's now reported to have been detained alongside people he implicated south african president cyril ramaphosa has promised prosecutions following a stream of claims about activities under his predecessor jacob summa. well boosting tourism can be a challenge but in uganda the government's latest strategy to attract visitors has tickets quite a controversy so what's all the fuss about well take a look at this here is uganda's tourist minister got tricky one they're launching a beauty pageant called miss curvy uganda among the winners duty's using their curves to promote tourism in the country well and surprisingly the idea has been going down too well in many quarters responding to the campaign ugandan journalist

faye cack i tweeted this is not how we promote tourism in this country and she urged people to sign a petition demanding that the ugandan government counsel the competition the uganda women's network also weighed in saying women are not a tourist attraction they are not an object for pleasure while the campaign has certainly got people talking possibly not for the right reasons and that's business africa here and d.-w. for now thank you for watching and state you.

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be present during its most. at its most exciting to a most creative. class. truly the taste of innovation brilliant charming. thank you. elizabeth. cohen. on t.w. . if you plan to be our fighters want to start families to become farmers or engineers every one of them as a plan would be an issue for you. so nothing is just around the children who have already been there all. and those that will follow are part of a new. they could be the future of. granting opportunities global news that matters d. w. made some minds.

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