Category Archives: Africa

UK asylum seeker deal leaves Rwanda hostel residents homeless

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Survivors of Rwandan genocide were told to vacate hostel two days after Priti Patel signed £120m deal

Former residents of a hostel in Rwanda who were forced to leave under a controversial deal to house asylum seekers flown from the UK say they have been left homeless and destitute while the property remains unused.

The men, all of whom are survivors of the Rwandan genocide, had lived in Hope Hostel in Kigali for up to eight years. But they were told to vacate two days after Priti Patel, the British home secretary, signed a £120m agreement to send refugees arriving in the UK by small boats to the east African country.

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First ship carrying grain from Ukraine docks on Horn of Africa

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Food experts say shipment is drop in bucket for drought-hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia but hope supplies pick up

The first ship carrying grain from Ukraine for people in the hungriest parts of the world has docked at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, as areas of east Africa are badly affected by deadly drought and conflict.

Food security experts say it is a drop in the bucket for the vast needs in the worst-hit countries of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the country to which the shipment is going. But the flow of Ukrainian grain to other hungry parts of the world is expected to continue, with another ship leaving on Tuesday for Yemen. The UN World Food Programme has said it was working on multiple ships.

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Sudan journalists defy military rule by forming first union in 30 years

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‘Historic’ move sees media professionals claim rights after years of persecution under Omar al-Bashir and crackdown after 2021 coup

Sudanese journalists have formed the country’s first independent union in more than three decades.

Abdulmoniem Abu Idrees, 58, Khartoum correspondent for the Agence France-Presse news agency, was elected the union’s first president in a vote on Sunday.

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Angola’s ruling party claims victory in tightly contested vote

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João Lourenço’s MPLA, which has been in power for decades, declared winners but opposition Unita rejects results

Angola’s electoral commission has declared the incumbent president, João Lourenço, and the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) winners of last week’s elections.

The polls were the most tightly contested vote in the country’s democratic history, and have been described by analysts as an “existential moment”.

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Ethiopia: airstrike hits playground in Tigray, killing at least seven

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Medical officials say three children among those killed as fighting resumes in northern Ethiopia days after a truce collapsed

An airstrike on a children’s playground has killed at least seven people in the capital of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, medical officials there said, in the first such attack after a four-month-old ceasefire collapsed this week.

The officials said three children were among the dead but a federal government spokesperson denied any civilian casualties.

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Angola’s incumbent claims election lead amid rising tensions

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Provisional results give João Lourenço more than 52% of the vote despite surge for rival party Unita

Provisional results from elections in Angola have put the incumbent president, João Lourenço, and the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) ahead.

The polls are the most tightly contested vote in the country’s democratic history, and have been described by analysts as an “existential moment”.

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Home Office planning new deportation flight to Rwanda

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Some asylum seekers have received letters saying government intends to remove them, the Guardian has learned

The Home Office is planning a new deportation flight to Rwanda, the Guardian has learned.

Some newly arrived asylum seekers in hotels have received letters from the department telling them their asylum claims are deemed inadmissible for consideration in the UK.

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Togo achieves ‘major feat’ of eradicating four neglected tropical diseases

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WHO hails west African country as first in world to stamp out Guinea worm, lymphatic filariasis, sleeping sickness and trachoma

Togo has been praised by the World Health Organization for becoming the first country in the world to eliminate four neglected tropical diseases.

The WHO presented the west African country with an outstanding achievement award this week for eliminating Guinea worm, lymphatic filariasis, sleeping sickness and trachoma in just 11 years.

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Kenyan tea pickers on Scottish-run farm to pursue health issues in UK court

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Prolonged bending to gather tea for James Finlay Kenya is argued to accelerate ageing of pickers’ backs by up to 20 years

More than a 1,000 Kenyan tea pickers who say that harsh and exploitative working conditions on a Scottish-run tea farm have caused them crippling health complaints can now pursue their class action in an Edinburgh court.

Lawyers acting for the tea pickers have won an order from the court of session, Scotland’s highest civil court, telling James Finlay Kenya Ltd (JFK) to abandon attempts to block the suit through the Kenyan courts.

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Fighting in northern Ethiopia shatters months-long truce

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Tigrayan rebels and government each accuse the other of striking first as conflict resumes

Fighting has erupted between government forces and Tigrayan rebels in northern Ethiopia, shattering a five-month truce between the warring sides.

Both have repeatedly blamed the other for a lack of progress towards negotiations to end the 21-month conflict in Africa’s second most populous nation.

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Egyptian NGOs complain of being shut out of Cop27 climate summit

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Civil society groups say covert screening process excluded government’s critics

A group of Egyptian civil society organisations have been prevented from attending the Cop27 climate summit by a covert registration process that filtered out groups critical of the Egyptian government.

Egypt’s foreign, environment and social solidarity ministries privately selected and screened NGOs that would be permitted to apply for one-time registration for Cop27, a separate process from applications for official observer status, which closed last year.

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Angolans go to polls in most competitive election in decades

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Ruling MPLA party faces major challenge from opposition parties, with turnout expected to be high

Angolans are voting in an election in which the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) faces the most significant challenge from opposition parties for decades.

More than 14 million people in the oil and diamond rich country are eligible to vote, with a high turnout likely after polls showed the main opposition party closer to victory than many expected.

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Kenya elections bring new wave of female leaders to the fore

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Record win for women is a cause for celebration as acrimony over the presidency continues

More women won parliamentary seats in Kenya’s elections this month than ever before.

The National Gender and Equality Commission said Kenyans elected 30 female MPs, up from 23 in 2017, seven female governors, up from three in 2017, and three female senators, the same number as in 2017.

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Kenya opposition leader files court challenge to election result

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Raila Odinga submits case to supreme court in move that could heighten the country’s political dispute

Kenya’s longtime opposition leader, Raila Odinga, has filed a case with the country’s supreme court to challenge the results of the 9 August presidential election in which his opponent, William Ruto, was declared the winner with 50.49% of the vote.

Ruto, who has served as deputy president since 2013, was named president-elect amid protests from four of the seven electoral commissioners, who renounced the results, calling them “opaque”. They claimed that the chair of the electoral commission, Wafula Chebukati, had hijacked the process leading up to the announcement and declared the results unilaterally.

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Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, one of Somalia’s greatest poets, dies aged 79

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Somali social media has been flooded with tributes to the man better known as ‘Hadraawi’

Messages of condolences continue to pour in from around the world following the death of Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, regarded as one of Somalia’s greatest poets.

Warsame, better known as “Hadraawi”, died in Hargeisa, in Somaliland, on Thursday at the age of 79.

The snake sneaks in the castle:

although it’s carpeted with thorns

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Angola’s young voters prepare to call for change in ‘existential’ election

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A new generation could end decades of MPLA rule this week and serve notice on Africa’s veteran leaders in polls seen as test of democracy

Millions of Angolans will vote this week in a landmark election described as an “existential moment” for the key oil-rich central African state, and a test for democracy across a swath of the continent.

The poll on Wednesday pits veteran politicians against a generation of young voters just beginning to grasp that they can bring about a radical change and escape from the shadow of the cold war.

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Tigray: almost one in three children under five malnourished, UN says

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Urgent action needed to avert further disaster in war-torn country as funding ‘fast running out’

Nearly one in three children under five in the Ethiopian region of Tigray are malnourished and the UN said urgent action is needed to prevent them from dying.

According to a new emergency assessment carried out by the World Food Programme (WFP), 29% of very young children are suffering from global acute malnutrition (GAM). More than half of pregnant or breastfeeding woman are also malnourished.

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Several killed as jihadist group seizes hotel in Somali capital

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Government forces retake Hayat in Mogadishu after it was overrun by al-Shabaab fighters

Somali forces have ended the siege at a hotel in the capital Mogadishu after it was overrun by Islamic extremist gunmen in one of the most deadly and high-profile attacks in recent years.

According to police and witnesses, at least 20 people are believed to have been killed and 40 wounded during the attack, which has been claimed by the al-Qaida-linked group al-Shabaab.

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Drought in Horn of Africa places 22m people at risk of starvation, says UN

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Four years of failed rains in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have left the region facing catastrophe this year

The number of people at risk of starvation in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa has increased to 22 million, the UN’s world food programme (WFP) says.

Years of insufficient rainfall across Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia have caused the worst drought in 40 years and conditions akin to famine in the hardest-hit areas, aid groups say.

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