Thousands of people celebrated at the Amani festival for peace in Goma, an area hit by escalating violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The weekend of music and culture had been postponed due to Covid
Continue reading...Category Archives: Africa
Ethiopia accused of ‘serious’ human rights abuses in Tigray in landmark case
Lawyers bringing first complaint to Africa’s top rights body over conflict in country say violations ‘could amount to war crimes’
Ethiopia has committed a wide range of human rights violations in its war against Tigrayan rebel forces, including mass killings, sexual violence and military targeting of civilians, according to a landmark legal complaint submitted to Africa’s top human rights body.
Lawyers acting for Tigrayan civilians said the complaint, filed on Monday, marked the first time that the African Union’s human rights commission had been asked to look into the conduct of Ethiopian troops in their war with the northern region’s rebel forces.
Continue reading...Desperate Zimbabweans risk police or crocodiles in bid to reach South Africa
Zimbabweans hoping for a better life abroad or smuggling a few goods over the border face police, soldiers and a dangerous river
A bushy pathway leads to the crossing points along the Limpopo River that are the most treacherous part of the journey for Zimbabweans seeking a better life in South Africa. The river has flooded after weeks of incessant rain, resulting in three drownings of “border jumpers” last month alone.
A few kilometres away, where the roar of the river can still be heard, men and women clutching small bags of belongings trudge along a different dusty track near Malindi Transit Shed. At 9am on a Friday morning in February, the route to the bridge connecting South Africa and Zimbabwe is already heavily patrolled by soldiers clasping rifles.
Continue reading...Margaret Atwood joins writers calling for urgent action over missing Rwandan poet
More than 100 authors from around the world have written to the Rwandan president about the case of Innocent Bahati, who disappeared a year ago today
Margaret Atwood, Ben Okri and JM Coetzee have joined more than 100 writers from around the world in calling on the Rwandan president to intervene in the case of the poet Innocent Bahati, who disappeared one year ago today.
According to human rights organisation PEN International, Bahati was last seen at a hotel in Nyanza district, in the Southern Province of Rwanda, on 7 February 2021. The poet, who is well-known in Rwanda and had published poetry on YouTube and Facebook, as well as regularly performing at live events, failed to return to Kigali, and his phones have been switched off since.
Continue reading...Court halts land clearance on edge of protected park in Zambia
Conservationists welcome interim injunction to stop farm development they say threatens migration of 10 million fruit bats
Conservationists in Zambia have hailed a high court injunction preventing deforestation and commercial agriculture on the edge of Kasanka national park, which they say threatens the world’s biggest mammal migration.
Every October, about 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats descend on the swamps of Kasanka from across Africa and beyond. They feast on fruit in and around the park, one of Zambia’s smallest but under the highest level of protection, dispersing seeds across the continent on their epic journey.
Continue reading...Death of Moroccan boy in well draws sympathy from around world
Rayan Oram, five, was found dead after four-day operation to rescue him from shaft 32 metres deep
Tributes have been paid to Rayan Oram, the five-year-old Moroccan boy whose body was recovered from a well on Saturday, and whose plight had moved his country and the world.
News of Rayan’s death after a massive four-day rescue operation pitched Morocco into deep grief and prompted condolences and expressions of gratitude to the search teams.
Continue reading...Breaking the ice: one man’s epic journey from Togo to Greenland
In 1965, Teté-Michel Kpomassie left his African homeland for a new life in Greenland, swapping sunny beaches for icy fjords and spiced food for boiled seal. Now, at 80, he’s planning to retire to his ‘spiritual home’
The warm living room of Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s otherwise neat Parisian home has a coffee table in the middle of it piled high with keepsakes – a mountain of black and white pictures, letters and handwritten diaries. It’s an archive of one remarkable man’s intrepidly adventurous and unconventional life to date. Balanced on top of the overloaded files and folders sits a tattered book, its pages faded. On its cover is a portrait of an Inuit in a sealskin jacket, standing next to an icy shore. The title reads Les Esquimaux du Groenland à l’Alaska (The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska). It’s a 1947 work of nonfiction authored by French anthropologist Robert Gessain.
Decades may have passed since the day Kpomassie first set his teenage eyes upon this image in his native Togo, but the 80-year-old remembers the precise moment as if it had happened just minutes before. How could he not? What he found inside has, since that day, consumed him entirely, shaping every chapter of his own story. He ran away from home at 16 to embark on an epic cross-continental mission that delivered him to Greenland, the world’s northernmost country. He was the first African man to set foot there. The adventure resulted in a travelogue, return visits and countless speaking invitations, and, more recently, a rather acrimonious divorce. Now, his very own sealskin jacket hangs by the door to his home in pride of place.
Continue reading...Cyclone Batsirai poses ‘serious threat to millions’ in Madagascar
Residents brace for powerful winds and torrential rains forecast to hit east of Indian Ocean island on Saturday
Cyclone Batsirai was expected to reach eastern Madagascar on Saturday, posing a “very serious threat” to millions with powerful winds and torrential rains set to batter the large Indian Ocean island.
Residents hunkered down before the storm’s arrival and winds of more than 124mph (200km/h) were forecast as it bore down on the country still recovering from the deadly Tropical Storm Ana that came in late January.
Continue reading...Moroccan rescuers close in on five-year-old boy trapped in well
Complex and dangerous operation grips residents after Rayan fell 32 metres down an empty shaft in Chefchaouen
Moroccans have been waiting anxiously as rescuers with heavy diggers inched towards Rayan, a five-year-old boy trapped in a deep well for four days.
The complex and dangerous operation has gripped residents of the north African kingdom as well as those in neighbouring Algeria, a regional rival.
Continue reading...My dying grandmother’s pain inspired me to challenge Zimbabwe’s pharmacy system | Dudzai Mureyi
Finding the right medicine at the right price was once a lottery – now the crowdsourcing service I set up is bringing down the cost of illness
In July 2015, as my 82-year-old grandmother, Sophie Mafuku, lay dying of a terminal illness in Zimbabwe, I spent a day speaking to fellow pharmacists as I tried to fill her morphine prescription. If it takes 24 hours for the grandmother of a well-connected medical professional to access scarce drugs, I thought, how long is it taking people with no connections? It set me off on a journey.
In Zimbabwe, systemic shortages are common. Sometimes, only a handful of pharmacies have particular drugs in stock. The shortages are caused by well-documented economic challenges, which affect Zimbabwe’s capacity to manufacture or import medicines.
Continue reading...While the focus is on Ukraine, Russia’s presence in the Sahel is steadily growing | Bruce Mutsvairo, Mirjam de Bruijn, Kristin Skare Orgeret
With Russian mercenaries invited to Mali as European forces withdraw, how worried should the west be about Russia’s increasing influence across Africa?
Even in the turbulent, conflict-wracked Sahel region of Africa, the recent military takeover in Burkina Faso was intriguing. Amid the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation, the decision by neighbouring Mali’s military-led government to invite fighters from the Wagner Group, widely seen as a paramilitary network of mercenaries with Russian connections, is causing growing concern in many western capitals.
Mali’s transitional government faces a rough road to recognition after the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) announced a strengthening of economic and diplomatic sanctions in January in response to the proposal to postpone elections until at least 2026.
Continue reading...Calls for security crackdown as 60 are killed in DRC camp violence
Casualties included 15 children, as families sheltering in a camp for displaced people were caught in escalating violence
At least 60 people, including 15 children, were killed during an attack in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday, the latest in a series of violent assaults on civilians in the area.
Armed men reportedly attacked the Plaine Savo camp in Ituri province, in the east of the country, with machetes and guns. Local sources who spoke to Reuters blamed the militia group Cooperative for the Development of Congo, or Codeco, for the attack.
Continue reading...‘We have to prepare’: Tigray’s neighbours on war footing as peace remains elusive
Ethiopia’s government has declared a new phase of reconciliation, but a cycle of atrocities on all sides has left a legacy of mistrust. War is far from over, say those on the ground
At first sight, it could have been any normal year. Pilgrims, shrouded in white shawls, smiled as they walked the winding cobblestone streets, shaded from the glare of the midday sun by a sea of colourful umbrellas. Young men and women danced and sang, thrusting wooden sticks joyously into the air, as priests blessed onlookers beside a church carved into the mountainside.
The Epiphany of Saint George, an ancient Orthodox Christian tradition, was celebrated in Lalibela on 26 January just as it has always been. The northern Ethiopian town, a Unesco world heritage site renowned for its dazzling rock-hewn churches, is coming back to life after several angst-ridden months on the frontline of Ethiopia’s devastating civil war. “It is a day of double joy for us,” says Father Tsige Mezgebu, the archbishop who officiated the ceremony.
Continue reading...Guinea-Bissau under control, president says, after feared coup attempt
Heavily armed men and gunfire reported near government offices but statement says attack against democracy failed
Guinea-Bissau’s president, Umaro Cissoco Embaló, has said the situation in the country is “under control” following fears of an attempted coup and heavy gunfire in the capital.
Gunshots erupted near the government palace in Guinea-Bissau’s capital on Tuesday afternoon, sparking fears of a coup attempt in the west African country, which has suffered repeated military takeovers.
Continue reading...‘We relied on the lake. Now it’s killing us’: climate crisis threatens future of Kenya’s El Molo people
Lake Turkana’s shores have been home to the El Molo for millennia but as rising waters swallow homes and sacred sites they face losing everything
Mombasa Lenapir briefly strokes the waters of Kenya’s Lake Turkana with his hand as he boards the rickety canoe. A piece of hippo tooth or kalate, dangles from his right earlobe, evidence that he once killed a hippo in his younger years as a rite of passage.
Lenapir, who says he is 70 but looks older, is a member of the El Molo community that has lived on the shores of Lake Turkana for millennia. Two years ago, he was forced to move out of his home when rising waters engulfed his village, Komote, turning it into an island. Fearing being marooned by the expanding lake, Lenapir and other families built new homes on the mainland, while some opted to remain on the new island and use canoes to travel between the two settlements.
Continue reading...‘Families are starving’: Chinese trawlers’ overfishing is destroying lives, say Sierra Leoneans
As illegal industrial-scale fishing by foreign fleets pillages fish populations, despairing coastal communities feel powerless
Along Tombo’s crumbling waterfront, dozens of hand-painted wooden boats are arriving in the blistering midday sun with the day’s catch for the scrum of the market in one of Sierra Leone’s largest fishing ports.
In a scrap of shade at the bustling dock, Joseph Fofana, a 36-year-old fisherman, is repairing a torn net. Fofana says he earns about 50,000 leone (£3.30) for a brutal, 14-hour day at sea, crammed in with 20 men, all paying the owner for use of his vessel. “This is the only job we can do,” he says. “It’s not my choice. God carried me here. But we are suffering.”
Continue reading...Glasshouse review – dreamy dystopian horror with a Picnic at Hanging Rock vibe
A mother and her daughters hole up in a Victorian conservatory, hiding from a devastating pandemic that lays waste to human memory
Shot in a Victorian hothouse in South Africa with a mixed cast of local actors and the odd imported Brit – including Jessica Alexander, soon be seen in Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid – this tense dystopian horror-thriller feels geographically non-specific, almost as if it were taking place in some kind of dream world. That touch of hazy vagueness is just right for SA director and co-writer Kelsey Egan’s cracking feature debut (co-written with Emma Lungiswa De Wet) which imagines a family of survivors hiding out in the title’s botanical conservatory after a pandemic has ravaged most of the world’s population.
The invisible threat here is an airborne virus called “the shred” which wipes out memories and leaves its victims in a bestial state, unable to remember even their own names. A matriarchal woman known only as Mother (Adrienne Pearce) guides her three female progeny – cautious Evie (Anja Taljaard), dreamy Bee (Alexander) and adolescent Daisy (Kitty Harris), alongside shred-infected brother Gabe (Brent Vermeulen) – by teaching them how to garden (they have to pollinate the plants themselves because the bees are all gone), to read, paint, and pass on the stories of the Before Times.
Continue reading...‘I wanted my art to resonate’: The Zimbabwean sculptor responding to Covid with creativity
When the pandemic hit, David Ngwerume began creating pieces to inspire and raise awareness. Now, one of his pieces will feature in the Beijing biennale
When the pandemic first hit the world, Zimbabwean stone sculptor David Ngwerume took his hammer and chisel and started work on the first of a collection of Covid-inspired pieces.
Almost two years and 14 sculptures later, one has made its way to China after being selected for the ninth Beijing International Art Biennale, an exhibition showcasing work from thousands of artists from more than 100 countries.
Continue reading...Libya elite told to end ‘game of musical chairs and focus on elections’
UN special adviser Stephanie Williams warns of resurgence of Islamic State if country is divided
Libya’s political class should stop conducting musical chairs to stay in power and focus instead on preparing for nationwide elections to be held by June, the special adviser to the UN secretary general has said.
Stephanie Williams also warned of a possible resurgence of Islamic State if Libya were to fall back into total division.
Continue reading...‘We pray for rain’: Ethiopia faces catastrophic hunger as cattle perish in severe drought
Animal carcasses litter the land in areas where the rains have failed, as millions go without enough food and water in a country already grappling with civil war
The circumference of Nimo Abdi Duh’s upper arm measures just 12cm and, while the number means nothing to her, it does to the health workers treating her. Nimo, two, like so many children in the arid lowlands of Ethiopia, is suffering from malnutrition.
“We have been affected by the drought,” says her mother, Shems Dire, looking anxiously on. “We don’t have milk to give to the children. My child is sick due to lack of food, and this happened because of the drought … Our cattle have been harmed by the drought. We have lost so many.
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