alert chorus rising up thank you so very much for sharing your very deeply personal experiences with us we greatly appreciate it thank you thank you. you're watching the coming up next on d w business africa to help solve chronic traffic problems kenya considers banning car. sometimes. just that sorry no more from our business team and just a moment of mylar rock n roll and thank you for watching. earth. home. is of species. worth seeing if you can. get those are big changes and most start with small steps or global interiors tell stories of communities people and innovative projects around the world. to use the country's digital least drainage solutions and the

first edition. to interactive content teaching the next generation doesn't want to touch it. using the channels available to people just to get attention and were determined to build something here for the next generation gloomily as the environment series of global three thousand on t.w. and online. the next big thing in european merges just to take for european authorities the european commission vetoes the merger between german engineering giant siemens and france's i'll stop him citing serious competition concepts. also on the show that kenyan government wants to introduce free days in nairobi in

a bitch to solve the city's traffic problems. welcome to the show i want to get jobs 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 giants siemens and francis 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 signaling markets and for very high speed trains. the merged company would

have become by far the largest player in europe and in some signaling markets there would be no competition there now 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 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. way of defining competition i think as long as there's a possibility to enter the markets 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 decision it's 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 aid for example she loved italy to bail out a bank that just passed just well the whimper. 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 speech a killing any such a vision. no quite on 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 you're of 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 competition it also needs a level playing field we need to strike a balance between open markets level playing field and keep critical infrastructure in safe hands how do you strike that balance well i think if we just allow the market 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 think the job of the european commission should be to safeguard its competition within europe is fair and to make sure 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. there 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. 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 new buses a light railway and a rapid bus transit 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 occupy these spaces be

had to be registered so there was a biometric capturing of the date that was going on and by the time they hoped they were going to commence the car free days and this had not 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 all of 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 it in a single week and that was actually very impractical for last of the employers and employees who are do ply the routes 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 open 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 and space if it hours of the day and this is just the same problem across most african cities not their cities like rwanda that 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 there o.b. thank you so much for bringing us up to speed. and staying in the region candy ass president or ok after today a short saying bob way of kenya support to ensure that the sanctions imposed on the southern african nation are lifted speaking at the state house in nairobi kenya has said that the sanctions are actually holding some back undermining its efforts to effectively self its citizens. children aged fourteen and below 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 education which changes their future life course and the future life chances and of course also has really big impacts on society 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 jack up the 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 tourism 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 doesn't go down to 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 on d w for now thank you for watching and state you.

center of the conflict zone confronting the powerful. the situation in venezuela could hardly be more complex margaret this week here in brussels it is probably some cocoa very poor voters warning those ambassador to the european union with the record of the cooling he remarked abuses of mr mcgurk desire to stay in office the

. conflict. in sixty minutes p.w. . good job it is coming. from africa and the world the link to exceptional stories and discussions phone uses easy to i want would say d w two comes to join us on facebook at g.w. africa. this is steve happy news africa coming up in the next fifteen minutes it's international day off near zero tolerance for female genital mutilation we'll hear from the young african women championing the fight against the practice in their communities. and we'll introduce you to the twelve year old boy that has studied the odd community in lagos president emmanuel caught.