Category Archives: Africa

Ghana ‘fix the country’ activist says he was assaulted and illegally detained

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Cambridge doctoral student Oliver Barker-Vormawor says ‘trauma is still there’ as he files lawsuit

A prominent Ghanaian activist has accused authorities of subjecting him to a violent assault and illegal detention after he criticised the government in a series of Facebook posts.

Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge who founded the prominent “fix the country” protest movement, was arrested after he landed at Kotoka airport in Accra in February on a flight from the UK.

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Sudan woman faces death by stoning for adultery in first case for a decade

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Campaigners say sentence amounts to torture amid fears that country’s new regime is rolling back women’s rights

A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the first known case in the country for almost a decade.

Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, 20, was arrested by police in Sudan’s White Nile state last month.

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Climate adaptation bill for African countries to dwarf health spending

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Eleven nations least responsible for global heating must spend up to 22% of GDP on dealing with effects of it

African countries that are the least responsible for the climate crisis will have to spend up to five times more on adapting to global heating than they do on healthcare.

Analysis of 11 nations with a total population of more than 350 million lays bare the huge financial toll of taking action to avert the severe environmental consequences of global heating.

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West must force private lenders to ease Africa’s crippling debt, say campaigners

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Banks and traders have been ‘let off the hook’ by G7 despite being more to blame for the looming crisis than China

Western governments should “compel” private lenders to ease loan repayments from low-income countries to tackle a debt crisis, according to campaigners.

Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said African governments owe three times more debt to western banks, asset managers and oil traders than they do to China, and are charged double the interest. China has been “mistakenly” blamed by western leaders for the failure to make progress on debt restructuring.

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Calls for crackdown on gangs in South Africa after spate of gun attacks

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Attack on tavern near Johannesburg in which 15 were killed was one of several similar incidents over the weekend

Campaigners in South Africa have called for a crackdown on increasingly powerful organised criminals armed with military-grade weapons, blamed for a string of recent deadly attacks.

Police are looking for suspected gang members who killed 15 people in a tavern near Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital, using an assault rifle and 9mm pistols on Saturday night.

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South Africa bar shootings: four killed in KwaZulu-Natal on same night as 15 die in Soweto

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Police investigating if attacks linked, citing similarities as gunmen in both cases said to have fired at people ‘randomly’

Four people have been killed and eight wounded in a bar in eastern South Africa after two men fired indiscriminately at customers, police said, on the same night as a bar shooting in Soweto left 15 dead.

Police were trying to verify if the attacks were linked, they said, noting their similarity.

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South Africa: 15 dead after gunmen open fire at bar in Soweto township

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South African police investigate reports group of men arrived in taxi and opened fire on patrons

Gunmen used automatic rifles and powerful handguns to kill 15 people and injure a further eight in a mass shooting at a tavern in Johannesburg’s Soweto township in the early hours of Sunday.

The attack in the Nomzamo informal settlement occurred shortly after midnight when a group of men arrived in a Toyota minibus and entered the bar, neighbours told the Guardian.

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Angola’s former president José Eduardo dos Santos dies aged 79

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Dos Santos’s near-four-decade rule was marked by brutal civil war lasting almost three decades

Angola’s former president José Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79.

Dos Santos died at the Teknon clinic in Barcelona, Spain, where he was being treated following a prolonged illness, the presidency said.

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Teenager saves baby from shipwreck during Mediterranean crossing

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‘I went to help people,’ says Togolese boy, who was among 71 survivors rescued nine days after boat sank, killing at least 30

The actions of a teenager from Togo have been lauded after video footage was published of him supporting a baby he saved from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea last week in which at least 30 people died.

The 17-year-old, whose identity has not been disclosed, swam to save the child, whom he was holding above water when a rescue team arrived, in footage published by the French media group Brut.

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Suspected Islamist attack frees hundreds of prisoners in Nigeria

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Inmates on the run after gunmen armed with explosives attack prison near capital, Abuja

Hundreds of prisoners, including scores of terrorists, were on the run in Nigeria after suspected Islamist militants attacked a prison near the capital, Abuja.

Gunmen armed with explosives blasted into Kuje medium-security prison, on the outskirts of Abuja, at about 10pm on Tuesday, freeing nearly 900 of the prison’s 994 inmates, government officials said.

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Famine: what is it, where will it strike and how should the world respond?

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A toxic combination of climate emergency, conflict and Covid is pushing some of the poorest countries into an acute hunger crisis

Global hunger toll soars by 150m as Covid and war make their mark

The world is in the grip of an unprecedented hunger crisis. A toxic combination of climate crisis, conflict and Covid had already placed some of the poorest countries under enormous strain, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent grain and fuel prices soaring.

“We thought it couldn’t get any worse,” said David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in June. “But this war has been devastating.”

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Sierra Leone backs bill to legalise abortion and end colonial-era law

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Country hails ‘monumental step’ towards expanding reproductive rights at a time when the US has overturned them

Ministers in Sierra Leone have taken a major step towards decriminalising abortion and overturning the country’s colonial-era law, in a move hailed by campaigners and women’s rights activists.

President Julius Maada Bio said his cabinet had unanimously backed a bill on risk-free motherhood, which would expand access to abortion in a country where terminations are only permitted when a mother’s life is at risk.

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Lean times for Ghana’s yam traders as cost of living crisis bites

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People are buying less, costs are up, and profits are dwindling for traders at Kaneshi market in Accra

On a quiet stretch amid the sprawling buzz of Kaneshie market in Accra, a group of traders sheltering under canopies from the blazing sun sell yams stacked along the roadside.

Rita Oboh, 32, has worked the spot, or one nearby, since she was six, following in the footsteps of her mother who also traded yams. “My mother lived good, really good,” Oboh says with pride. “She built houses, she looked after everybody, her family, people who relied on her. She was successful.”

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Zimbabwe to introduce gold coins as local currency tumbles

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Soaring inflation piling pressure on country already struggling with shortages and stirring memories of Mugabe chaos

Zimbabwe will start issuing gold coins as legal tender in late July, its central bank has said, as the country battles to control runaway inflation that has considerably weakened the local currency.

The inflation rate more than doubled last month to 191%, stoking memories of the hyperinflation of the 2000s that saw the Zimbabwean dollar redenominated three times before being effectively abandoned in 2009.

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Villagers massacred in western Ethiopia, says state-appointed body

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Prime minister Abiy Ahmed blames Oromo Liberation Army but group says government-allied militias behind attacks

An unknown number of villagers have been killed in an ethnically motivated massacre in western Ethiopia, the country’s state-appointed rights body said, in the latest wave of violence following a mass killing in mid-June.

The Oromia region, where the Amhara are a minority ethnic group, has experienced outbreaks of violence for many years, rooted in grievances about political marginalisation and neglect by the central government.

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Female trafficking survivor targeted for UK removal to Rwanda, says charity

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Exclusive: Women for Refugee Women says it is in touch with first woman considered for removal

A woman in immigration detention has been targeted for removal to Rwanda, a UK refugee charity has said.

Women for Refugee Women said it was in touch with a survivor of trafficking who was recently issued with a notice of intent that she was being considered for removal to Rwanda.

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Anger as families of US detainees in Middle East left off Blinken call

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‘Infuriating’ exclusions made just weeks before Joe Biden’s Saudi visit and expected rapprochement with the crown prince

Family members of several US nationals who are being held in Saudi Arabia and Egypt were not invited to attend a recent call with Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in a move that was called “infuriating and discriminatory” by one critic.

The apparent decision to exclude the families from a 22 June call between Blinken and relatives of US nationals who are hostages or otherwise wrongfully detained in Russia, Venezuela, Rwanda and other countries, was made just weeks before Joe Biden’s controversial trip to the Middle East and an expected rapprochement between the US president and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince.

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Neglect Africa now and we will face labour shortages globally, IMF warns

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West’s response to effects of Covid and Ukraine war condemned as shortsighted ‘collective failure’ to invest in future human capital

The international community would be “playing with fire” if it failed to help Africa recover from Covid and the impact of the Ukraine war, the International Monetary Fund’s director for the continent has said.

Failure to invest and support the continent was shortsighted and detrimental to the global economy, as half of the new entrants into the global workforce over the next decade would come from sub-Saharan Africa, Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF’s Africa department, told the Guardian.

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Two women killed in shark attacks in Egypt’s Red Sea

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A Romanian and an Austrian die within 600 metres of each other south of city of Hurghada

Two women have been killed in shark attacks in Egypt’s Red Sea, south of the city of Hurghada, the Egyptian environment ministry has said.

Two sources told Reuters that the body of a Romanian tourist in her late forties was discovered hours after an attack that left a 68-year-old Austrian woman dead. Both attacks happened within 600 metres of each other, off the coast of Sahl Hasheesh, according to the sources.

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UK Home Office plans second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda

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Flight could take off within weeks and before court has ruled on whether scheme is lawful

The Home Office is planning a second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which could take off before the courts have ruled on whether the scheme is lawful, the Guardian has learned.

It is understood that a second flight could take off in a matter of weeks despite the fact that the full high court hearing to examine the government’s Rwanda plans does not begin until 19 July.

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