Category Archives: Africa

A tale of two pandemics: the true cost of Covid in the global south | Kwame Anthony Appiah

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• Reconstruction after Covid: a new series of long reads

While the rich nations focus on booster jabs and returning to the office, much of the world is facing devastating second-order coronavirus effects. Now is the time to build a fairer, more responsible international system for the future

For the past year and a half, people everywhere have been in the grip of a pandemic – but not necessarily the same one. In the affluent world, a viral respiratory disease, Covid-19, suddenly became a leading cause of death. In much of the developing world, by contrast, the main engine of destruction wasn’t this new disease, but its second-order effects: measures they took, and we took, in response to the coronavirus. Richer nations and poorer nations differ in their vulnerabilities.

Whenever I talk with members of my family in Ghana, Nigeria and Namibia, I’m reminded that a global event can also be a profoundly local one. Lives and livelihoods have been affected in these places very differently from the way they have in Europe or the US. That’s true in the economic and educational realm, but it’s true, too, in the realm of public health. And across all these realms, the stakes are often life or death.

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Kenyan police launch investigation into death of British BBC employee

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Kate Mitchell’s body was found shortly after an emergency alarm was activated in her hotel room

A murder investigation has been launched in Kenya into the death of a British woman who worked for the BBC’s international development charity.

The body of Kate Mitchell, a senior manager at BBC Media Action, was found on Friday in the capital Nairobi shortly after an emergency alarm was activated in her room. Police in Kenya said the window to her eighth-floor hotel room had been broken and the body of a man Mitchell had been with earlier was found on the ground below.

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Aid workers say Mediterranean a ‘liquid graveyard’ after 75 feared dead off Libya

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People smugglers are putting hundreds to sea this autumn despite stormy weather

More than 75 people are feared dead after their boat capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya while attempting to reach Europe in one of the deadliest shipwrecks this year, according to the UN.

Fifteen survivors were rescued by local fishers and brought to the port of Zuwara in north-western Libya. They said there were about 92 people onboard the vessel when the incident took place on 17 November. Most of those who died came from sub-Saharan Africa.

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Pregnant women at risk in Malawi as drug shortage prevents caesareans

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Patients travelling long distances to find surgery cancelled as lack of anaesthetics shuts operating theatres in half of hospitals

Almost half of Malawi’s district hospitals have closed their operating theatres due to a dire shortage of anaesthetics.

Maternity care has been affected by a lack of drugs, said doctors. Surgery, including caesareans, has been cancelled and patients needing emergency care have been moved hundreds of miles around the country.

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Sudan military agrees to reinstate PM and release political detainees

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Hopes for end to crisis undermined as protests continue despite deal between military and civilian political parties

Sudan’s military coup leader has announced the release of the detained civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and other political prisoners, as the country’s pro-democracy movement vowed to continue with protests.

After weeks of lethal turmoil following the country’s October coup, the agreement to release Hamdok and set up a new largely technocratic cabinet was mediated by US and UN officials.

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Sudanese PM’s release is only small step in resolving crisis

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Analysis: deal satisfies some international demands but route to democratic transition after fall of Omar al-Bashir remains unclear

The deal to secure the release of the detained Sudanese prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, signed by Hamdok and Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who seized power in a military coup on 25 October, leaves Sudan in a continuing crisis.

While the agreement satisfies some of the immediate demands of the international community and mediators from the US and UN – not least securing the release of Hamdok and other political detainees – it leaves many of the country’s most serious issues in its political transition unresolved.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Oxford University identifies 145 artefacts looted in Benin raid

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Plundered items likely to be returned to Nigeria include plaques, bronze figures and musical instruments

The University of Oxford is holding 145 objects looted by British troops during an assault on the city of Benin in 1897 that are likely to be repatriated to Nigeria, a report has said.

More than two-thirds of the plundered items are owned by the university’s Pitt Rivers Museum, and 45 are on loan. They include brass plaques, bronze figures, carved ivory tusks, musical instruments, weaving equipment, jewellery, and ceramic and coral objects dating to the 13th century.

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As millions face famine #CongoIsStarving is calling on Joe Biden to help | Vava Tampa

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Only a UN tribunal, sponsored by the US president, can end the culture of impunity fuelling violence and poverty in the DRC

The numbers are difficult to absorb. According to a new IPC report, a record 27 million Congolese – roughly a quarter of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) population – are facing hunger, with 860,000 children under five acutely malnourished. The DRC is home to more starving people than any other country in the world. This could have been prevented.

Without faith that their own president Félix Tshisekedi will act, people are turning to the US president, hoping that lobbying using the hashtag #CongoIsStarving on Twitter will urge Joe Biden to back the creation of an international criminal tribunal for the DRC to end the impunity fuelling violence and famine risk. Shockingly, it could be that simple to bring an end to this suffering; we are asking for solidarity, not charity, to save lives and end this nightmarish crisis.

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Uganda police kill five men after suicide bombings, including Muslim cleric

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Authorities accuse the five of having ties with the extremist group blamed for bomb blasts in the capital Kampala

Ugandan authorities have killed at least five people, including a Muslim cleric, accused of having ties to the extremist group responsible for Tuesday’s suicide bombings in the capital.

Four men were killed in a shootout in a frontier town near the western border with Congo as they tried to cross back into Uganda, police said on Thursday. A fifth man, a cleric named Muhammad Kirevu, was killed in “a violent confrontation” when security forces raided his home outside Kampala, police spokesperson Fred Enanga said.

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Sudan pro-democracy activists call for escalation after lethal crackdown

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Demonstrations against military coup expected to continue after 15 protesters reportedly killed in a day

Pro-democracy protesters and Sudan’s military appeared set for a cycle of escalation on both sides after a day in which at least 15 demonstrators were killed by security forces.

Despite a heavy-handed crackdown by the military in the capital, Khartoum, and other cities, activists called on Thursday for an escalation of protests against last month’s military coup, a day after the deadliest security clampdown to date on demonstrators demanding the restoration of a civilian government.

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‘Horrific’: 10 people suffocate in overcrowded migrant boat off Libya

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MSF rescue 99 survivors who spent 13 hours on vessel trying to reach Europe as authorities accused of ignoring distress call

Ten people were found dead in the lower deck of a severely overcrowded wooden boat off the coast of Libya, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has reported.

According to survivors, those who died on Tuesday suffocated after 13 hours on the cramped lower deck, where there had been a strong smell of fuel.

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There’s a brutal conflict in Ethiopia. My family there ask: why does no one hear us? | Magdalene Abraha

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People in Tigray are crying out for the world’s help, as war has left them starving and fearing for their lives

On 4 November 2020 the world was occupied with the results of the US election. For myself and many others with family and friends in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, however, that day marked the beginning of a year-long nightmare. And it’s one which the world has, for the most part, ignored.

When on that day the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel peace prizewinner, announced a military offensive in Tigray, it was hard to predict the scale of the human suffering that would ensue. But almost instantly Tigray, a region in the far north of the country that is home to more than 7 million people, was cut off from the world: phone lines were shut down, the internet was cut off, banks were closed and journalists were barred from the region.

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Dirty dollars: how tattered US notes became the latest street hustle in Zimbabwe

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In country hit by hyperinflation, a shortage of dollars means those struggling to survive can make a profit dealing torn notes

In time-honoured street hawker tradition, Kaitano Kasani is using charm and persuasion to get people to sell him their tattered US banknotes.

Kasani, 42, bellows through a megaphone as he walks through Glen Norah, a township in Harare, in the sweltering November heat.

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Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar to run for president

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Head of self-styled Libyan National Army to stand in country’s first presidential elections in December

A Libyan warlord who led a 14-month assault on the capital and once said the country was not ready for democracy has announced his candidacy in its first presidential elections at the end of next month

Khalifa Haftar, the head of the self-styled Libyan National Army, which fought against its internationally recognised government in the 2014-2020 civil war, declared he wanted to bring the Libyan people “glory, progress and prosperity” as he joined a contest that also includes the son of Libya’s former dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, among its hopefuls.

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Covid now a pandemic of poor nations, WHO envoy tells UK MPs

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Rich counties taking risk by ‘hoovering up’ boosters, all-party group on coronavirus told

Covid is now a pandemic of poor nations, a leading global expert has told a cross-party group of MPs, adding that governments that are attempting to vaccinate their way out of the pandemic are taking a huge risk.

Dr David Nabarro, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on Covid, told the all-party group on coronavirus that the world was still deep in the pandemic, with 5,413 reported deaths in the past 24 hours alone. “This is a disease now fundamentally of poor people and poor nations,” he added.

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Scores of children killed by starvation in Tigray, says health official

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Research suggests terrible suffering amid communications and aid blockade affecting Ethiopian region

Almost 200 children under the age of five died of starvation in 14 hospitals across Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region between late June and October, according to data collected by local doctors and researchers.

The research, shared with Agence France-Presse by Dr Hagos Godefay, the former head of the health bureau in the pre-conflict Tigrayan government, offers a snapshot of the suffering in Tigray, where a communications blackout by federal authorities has prevented a full examination of the toll of the war.

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At least three killed in suicide bomb attacks in Ugandan capital, Kampala

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Two explosions within minutes in attack blamed on Allied Democratic Forces extremist group

Two explosions rocked Uganda’s capital, Kampala, early on Tuesday, killing at least three civilians in what police described as a coordinated attack by extremists.

Three suicide bombers also died in the blasts, police said. The explosions caused chaos in Kampala as terrified residents fled the city’s centre.

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Kenyan police officers jailed for manslaughter of British aristocrat

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Alexander Monson was found dead in police cell in May 2012 after arrest in beach town of Diani

Four police officers have been jailed after Kenya’s high court found them guilty of the manslaughter of Alexander Monson, a British aristocrat who was found dead in a police cell in the beach town of Diani in 2012.

Two reports by government pathologists concluded that Monson, who had moved to Kenya in 2008 to live with his mother, had died after suffering a traumatic blow to the head.

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Stop talking, start acting, says Africa’s first extreme heat official

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Rising temperatures are already killing people in Sierra Leone’s Freetown, says Eugenia Kargbo, who is planning how best to protect the hundreds of thousands living in informal settlements

When she was growing up, Eugenia Kargbo could have a leisurely stroll, jog or cycle around the streets of Freetown. But that easy life no longer exists in Sierra Leone’s capital for her two children. The city is so swelteringly hot that children run the constant risk of sunburn or heat rashes if they are outdoors for very long.

“Over the past 10 years, there has been a dramatic change,” says Kargbo, 34, who has been appointed as Freetown’s chief heat officer – the first such post in Africa and only the third globally, after Athens and Miami.

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