Category Archives: Africa

British Vogue hails new era with nine African models on cover

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February issue cover shot is an important statement of anti-tokenism, says magazine’s editor

British Vogue has hailed a new era that spotlights African fashion. The magazine’s February issue features nine dark-skinned models of African heritage on its cover, including Adut Akech.

Seemingly referencing Peter Lindbergh’s “Supers” Vogue cover from 1990, which introduced the world to the idea of the supermodel, the shot is a challenge to the traditionally white fashion industry, which has, since the murder of George Floyd, been under pressure to change and become more inclusive and diverse.

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Term starts in Uganda – but world’s longest shutdown has left schools in crisis

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Pre-Covid the country battled poor learning outcomes, now experts fear fee rises and school closures will see many more children miss out

The gate that once proudly displayed the name of Godwins primary school in Kampala has been removed. The compound, where pupils played at break time, is now a parking area for trucks ferrying goods to the nearby market, while the classrooms have been turned into a travellers’ lodge.

Uganda’s schools were ordered to reopen on Monday 10 January, after nearly two years of closure – the longest school shutdown in the world – but not all were able to welcome pupils back. Godwins, in Kalerwe in Kawempe division, is one of the many schools that will never reopen. It had been in existence for 20 years catering to children whose parents work in nearby Kalerwe market.

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Covid live: Poland advisers quit over concerns government not following science; Netherlands to lift some curbs

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More than two thirds of Poland’s Covid-19 medical advisory body resigns; restrictions in the Netherlands will be eased from Saturday

South Korea will extend tougher social distancing rules for three more weeks amid concerns over a looming Omicron wave ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, officials said on Friday.

The curbs were restored a month ago just six weeks after being eased under a “living with Covid-19” scheme, as record-breaking numbers of new cases and critically ill patients threatened to saturate the country’s medical system.

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World’s poorest bear brunt of climate crisis: 10 underreported emergencies

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Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress

From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.

Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.

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Warning over fuel and food stocks as ‘hellish’ Tigray reels from airstrikes

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Stocks run perilously low, with main supply route into region of northern Ethiopia unusable since December

Humanitarian organisations in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia are running perilously low on food and fuel stocks as an intensified wave of airstrikes further hampers a threadbare aid effort already stymied by lack of access.

In what it calls a de facto blockade, the UN says fighting between Tigrayan rebels and forces loyal to the Ethiopian government has rendered the main supply route into the war-torn region unusable since mid-December.

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‘They saw bigger things’: Richard Leakey, Edward O Wilson and Thomas Lovejoy remembered

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Friends and colleagues pay tribute after the recent deaths of these groundbreaking naturalists, who shifted our understanding of the world and our future

Over Christmas and the new year, three of the world’s leading naturalists died. Thomas Lovejoy, a conservation biologist credited with popularising the term “biodiversity” and a passionate defender of the Amazon, died on 25 December. A day later, Edward O Wilson, known to many as the “modern-day Darwin”, died in Burlington, Massachusetts. On 2 January, Richard Leakey, a world-renowned Kenyan conservationist who helped establish Africa as the birthplace of humankind, died at his home in Nairobi.

From presidents to undergraduate students, thousands have paid tribute to the three men, whose achievements range from developing theories on forest and island ecosystems to reforming the Kenyan civil service and devising proposals to protect half the planet for nature. Alongside grand accomplishments, which were sometimes controversial, their passing has been a chance to reflect on the small and the mundane: fleeting interactions that inspired careers, kind words that propelled research projects, and generosity of spirit that has helped amplify the voices of those that practise and produce science.

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Tented love: how Senegal created a spectacular new African architecture

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After independence in 1960, the country cast off western influences and forged a new African style full of triangular forms, rocket-shaped obelisks and rammed earth. Is this spirit now being suffocated? Our writer takes a tour of the capital

Visiting the International Fair of Dakar is like taking a stroll through the ruins of some ancient Toblerone-worshipping civilisation. A cluster of triangular pavilions rises from a podium, each clad in a rich pattern of seashells and pebbles. These are reached by triangular steps that lead past triangular plant pots to momentous triangular entranceways. All around, great hangar-like sheds extend into the distance, ventilated by triangular windows and topped with serrated triangular roofs. All that’s missing is triangular honey from triangular bees.

Built on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital as a showcase for global trade in 1974, this astonishing city-sized hymn to the three-sided shape was designed by young French architects Jean Francois Lamoureux, Jean-Louis Marin and Fernand Bonamy. Their obsessive geometrical composition was an attempt to answer the call of Senegal’s first president, the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, for a national style that he curiously termed “asymmetrical parallelism”.

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Cameroonian senator and soldier killed in lawless anglophone region

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Opposition figure shot and a soldier killed with an explosive device in a separate attacks in the region

A prominent opposition figure and a soldier have been killed in separate attacks in Cameroon’s restive anglophone regions, intensifying security concerns as the country hosts the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament.

Henry Kemende, a senator for the Social Democratic Front party, was shot dead in Bamenda city in the north-west region. His party, who blamed separatist fighters for the attack, said gunmen forced him from his car and shot him in the chest.

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Driving change: the all-female garage shifting attitudes in northern Nigeria

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The NGO Nana is upending gender norms in conservative Sokoto state, where one in 20 girls finish secondary school

The green-and-red Nana Female Mechanic Garage sign is visible from the main road into Sokoto city. Behind its sliding iron gate, Zainab Dayyabu stomps around in heavy work boots and a blue jumpsuit, her hands callused and oily.

“I love the job I’m doing,” says the 23-year-old, as she opens the bonnet of a Peugeot van to test its battery.

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Landmine-hunting hero rat dies in Cambodia after stellar career

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Magawa, a giant African pouched rat, was awarded a gold medal for heroism for clearing ordnance from 42 football pitches’ worth of land

A landmine-hunting rat that was awarded a gold medal for heroism for clearing ordnance from the Cambodian countryside has died.

Magawa, a giant African pouched rat originally from Tanzania, helped clear mines from about 225,000 square metres of land – the equivalent of 42 football pitches – over the course of his career.

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President review – an intimate look at Zimbabwe’s collective cry for democracy freedom

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Camilla Nielsson’s thrilling documentary takes a behind-the-scenes look at the 2018 election that followed the ousting of Robert Mugabe

“A free, fair and credible election.” These words of promise echo throughout Camilla Nielsson’s riveting documentary, capturing the fervour of the 2018 presidential vote in Zimbabwe, the country’s first without Robert Mugabe since its independence.

While opening with the rip-roaring rallies for Nelson Chamisa, who is running for the presidency against the incumbent Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former aide, President is more than an intimate portrait of a charismatic opposition leader. Considering the fraudulent electoral practices that existed under Mugabe’s 30-year reign, this election concretises a collective cry for democracy to triumph over decades of corruption and lies. Such a desire, alas, comes with blood, sweat and tears.

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‘I saw myself in RuPaul’: how Drag Race inspired LGBTQ+ Kenyans to find freedom

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Inspired by the hit US show, a Nairobi group is using catwalk events to combat stigma and abuse

An audience wearing face masks sits around the edges of a nondescript room in an unassuming building in the centre of Nairobi. Sparsely furnished and decorated with a few posters advertising PrEP, a drug that reduces chances of contracting HIV, there is a low hum of excited chatter.

Then the speakers crackle into action, playing Sweet Dreams by Beyoncé, and in struts Toyo, a 23-year-old transgender woman, wearing a figure-hugging sparkly blue dress accessorised with bright red painted nails and the ubiqitious face mask, in black. She walks to the end of the room, strikes a pose and struts back out. Toyo is followed by Miss K – or Kelvin, when not in drag – 24, who is wearing a red strappy dress, long black wig, fake Louboutin heels, and plenty of makeup.

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As violence in the Congo escalates, thousands of displaced people are effectively held hostage | Vava Tampa

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The UN has appealed for urgent help following militia attacks on camps for internally displaced people. But money alone won’t solve the crisis

In a bare and violent patch of land in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 75,000 people are living in what one UN field officer described as “hellish conditions”. Food and water are scarce. Even the flimsiest shelters are in short supply and sanitation is nonexistent. Girls have been raped by militiamen while attempting to find food in fields around the site. Ibrahim Cisse of Unicef says people here are effectively being held hostage.

Rhoe – a remote camp of internally displaced people (IDP) approximately 45km northeast of Bunia, the capital of DRC’s Ituri province – is “a tragedy waiting to happen”, according to those who have visited.

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Painting a bigger picture: Senegal’s pioneering ‘first lady’ of graffiti

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Artist, poet and singer, Dieynaba Sidibé, AKA Zeinixx, has made her way to the top of the country’s male-dominated hip-hop scene and wants her messages of hope to inspire young women

When Dieynaba Sidibé discovered graffiti, it was love at first sight. She was 17 and had already begun experimenting with painting and drawing.

“​​It was on TV. I was sitting in my living room and I saw people doing big walls and I thought, ‘This is what I need’,” the Senegalese artist says, one hoop earring shaking as she laughs. “I don’t like small things. I was doing big canvases, and I said to myself: ‘A wall is a bigger surface for expression’.”

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At least 200 villagers killed by bandits in north-west Nigeria

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Militants opened fire and burned homes in Zamfara state after military airstrikes on hideouts

At least 200 people are believed to have been killed in villages in the north-western Nigerian state of Zamfara, in some of the deadliest attacks by armed bandits at large in the region.

Gunmen, themselves fleeing from airstrikes by the Nigerian army, attacked villages for days, opening fire and burning homes between Tuesday and Thursday. Some residents who fled returned to the villages on Saturday after the military organised mass burials. The state government said 58 people had been killed during the attacks, yet distraught residents reported far higher death tolls.

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PEN prize-winning Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija illegally detained and tortured

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The author is being held after tweets criticising President Yoweri Museveni and his son

Ugandan satirical novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, who was named International Writer of Courage by PEN last year, has been illegally detained and tortured for criticising the president and his son, his lawyer said.

Gunmen came to the writer’s house on 28 December after a series of tweets about the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, including one calling him a thief and his son and presumed successor “an incompetent pig-headed curmudgeon”.

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Ethiopia: 56 people killed in airstrike at camp for internally displaced

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At least 30 wounded as aid workers report seeing children among casualties in Tigray region

An airstrike in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray has killed 56 people and wounded at least 30 in a camp for the internally displaced, two aid workers have said.

Both aid workers, who asked not to be named, said the number of dead has been confirmed by the local authorities.

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Desmond Tutu’s funeral and Kazakhstan clashes: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Hong Kong

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More than 100 people killed in northern Nigeria, say survivors

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Authorities say they are searching for bandits who terrorised areas of Zamfara state for three days

More than 100 people have been killed in Nigeria’s troubled northern region, survivors have said, as authorities continued to search for bodies and for suspects after three days of violence.

Bandits arrived in large numbers in the Anka and Bukkuyum local government areas of Zamfara state on Tuesday evening, shooting and burning down houses until Thursday, according to Abubakar Ahmed, a resident in Bukkuyum.

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‘They want to remove us and take the rock’, say Zimbabweans living near Chinese-owned mines

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As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land

A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.

Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.

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