Category Archives: Africa

Ethiopian PM on battlefront, says state-affiliated TV

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Abiy Ahmed claims in the footage that the war was ‘being conducted with a high level of success’

A state-affiliated Ethiopian TV channel has broadcast footage purporting to show the country’s Nobel peace prize-winning prime minister on the battlefront of the country’s year-long war against Tigray forces, four days after he announced he would direct the army from there.

Wearing military uniform, Abiy Ahmed claimed in the footage that the war was “being conducted with a high level of success” and referred to locations on the border between the country’s Amhara and Afar regions, which neighbour Tigray.

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Failure to share Covid vaccines ‘coming back to haunt us’, says Gordon Brown

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Ex-PM says world was ‘forewarned’ of dangers of failing to vaccinate poorer countries amid rise of new variant

The failure of the world to get vaccines to the developing world is “coming back to haunt us”, Gordon Brown has warned, as experts said the emergence of variants such as B.1.1.529 could have been avoided if jabs had been more fairly distributed.

Writing in the Guardian, the Labour former prime minister said the world had been “forewarned” that a lack of vaccines in poorer countries could have serious consequences for the pandemic.

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Tanzania to lift ban on teenage mothers returning to school

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Girls to have two years in which to return to school after giving birth, but will still be excluded whilst pregnant

The Tanzanian government has announced it will lift a controversial ban on teenage mothers continuing their education.

Girls will have two years in which to return to school after giving birth, the ministry of education said. However, the move is not legally binding and girls will continue to be banned from class while pregnant.

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Blowing the house down: life on the frontline of extreme weather in the Gambia

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A storm took the roof off Binta Bah’s house before torrential rain destroyed her family’s belongings, as poverty combines with the climate crisis to wreak havoc on Africa’s smallest mainland country

The windstorm arrived in Jalambang late in the evening, when Binta Bah and her family were enjoying the evening cool outside. “But when we first heard the wind, the kids started to run and go in the house,” she says.

First they went in one room but the roof – a sheet of corrugated iron fixed only by a timbere pole – flew off. They ran into another but the roof soon went there too.

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WHO to assess new highly mutated Covid-19 variant as countries ramp up health checks

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Meeting will determine if B.1.1.529 variant warrants a designation as one of ‘interest’ or of ‘concern’

The World Health Organization will meet on Friday to assess a new variant detected in South Africa that is feared to be the worst Covid-19 variant yet identified.

The meeting will determine if the B.1.1.529 variant should be designated a variant of “interest” or of “concern”. The variant, which was identified on Tuesday, initially attracted attention because it carries an “extremely high number” of mutations.

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Action over variant shows government keen to avoid Christmas calamity of 2020

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Analysis: variant provides test of whether relaxation of rules and booster push is effective policy

Last Christmas, as ministers rashly promised five days of festive family gatherings while a new variant gathered pace, Boris Johnson held out until the final hours until he bowed to the inevitable and cancelled Christmas.

Despite rising cases in Europe and new restrictions on the continent, ministers had been bullish about going ahead with Christmas gatherings this year. Cabinet ministers have already sent invites for the Christmas drinks dos.

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Warning on tackling HIV as WHO finds rise in resistance to antiretroviral drugs

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Nearly half of newly diagnosed infants in 10 countries have drug-resistant HIV, study finds, underlining need for new alternatives

HIV drug resistance is on the rise, according to a new report, which found that the number of people with the virus being treated with antiretrovirals had risen to 27.5 million – an annual increase of 2 million.

Four out of five countries with high rates had seen success in suppressing the virus with antiretroviral treatments, according to the World Health Organization’s HIV drug-resistance report.

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‘Battery arms race’: how China has monopolised the electric vehicle industry

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Chinese companies dominate mining, battery and manufacturing sectors, and amid human rights concerns, Europe and the US are struggling to keep pace

Think of an electric car and the first name that comes to mind will probably be Tesla. The California company makes the world’s bestselling electric car and was recently valued at $1tn. But behind this US success story is a tale of China’s manufacturing might.

Tesla’s factory in Shanghai now produces more cars than its plant in California. Some of the batteries that drive them are Chinese-made and the minerals that power the batteries are largely refined and mined by Chinese companies.

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Return to the refugee camp: Malawi orders thousands back to ‘congested’ Dzaleka

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People who’ve integrated into society are expected to return to the country’s oldest refugee camp, as cost of living and anti-refugee sentiment rises

Dzaleka, Malawi’s first refugee camp, is about 25 miles north of the capital Lilongwe. Built 25 years ago in response to a surge of people fleeing genocide and wars in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was then home to between 10,000 and 14,000 refugees. But the camp now houses more than 48,000 people from east and southern African countries – four times more than its initial capacity.

Several hundred continue to arrive each month, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and in August 181 babies were born there. The deteriorating situation in neighbouring Mozambique is swelling the numbers further, as is the government’s recent decree that an estimated 2,000 refugees who had over the years left Dzaleka to integrate into wider Malawian society should go back, citing them as a possible danger to national security.

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Scientists warn of new Covid variant with high number of mutations

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The B.1.1.529 variant was first spotted in Botswana and six cases have been found in South Africa

Scientists have said a new Covid variant that carries an “extremely high number” of mutations may drive further waves of disease by evading the body’s defences.

Only 10 cases in three countries have been confirmed by genomic sequencing, but the variant has sparked serious concern among some researchers because a number of the mutations may help the virus evade immunity.

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Haile Gebrselassie says he is joining Ethiopian army to fight insurgency

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Two-time Olympic gold medallist enlists as alarm grows over war that threatens to engulf Addis Ababa

The two-time Olympic gold medallist Haile Gebrselassie has announced he is enlisting in the Ethiopian military to fight an insurgency that threatens the capital, Addis Ababa.

Gebrselassie, who set 27 long-distance running records, told Reuters he was joining up on Wednesday. The Olympic silver medallist runner Feyisa Lilesa would also enlist, local media reported.

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Fabrice Monteiro’s best photograph: a spirit emerges from a rubbish dump in Senegal

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‘The model is holding a child’s doll, looking out over the wreckage. It represents the future generations we’re condemning to environmental catastrophe’

Outside Dakar, Senegal’s capital, is a rubbish dump with its own name: Mbeubeuss. The land on which it sits was once flat swampland. It began as a landfill site in 1968; today, it is a mountain of rubbish. It has accumulated so much plastic waste from the city that to reach it you have to drive on a road of compacted trash.

This is not the Africa I grew up in. As a child here in the 1970s and 80s, it was not like this. But when I returned in 2012, I was shocked at what I found. Here in Senegal, there was plastic waste everywhere – at roadsides, in trees, everywhere. The younger generation don’t know any different: it’s just part of their environment now. I decided I wanted to shoot a series to raise awareness of environmental issues in Senegal, in the hope that people would realise that things do not have to be this way. I wanted to connect environmental issues with the cultural interests of the population, and started researching animism – the belief that objects and the natural world are imbued with spirits.

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Libya: UN special envoy quits a month before presidential elections

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Ján Kubiš gives no reason for resignation, having only taken post in war-torn country in January

The UN special envoy for Libya, Ján Kubiš, has quit just a month before crucial presidential elections in the war-torn nation – without giving security council members a clear reason for his sudden departure.

“Mr Kubiš has tendered his resignation to the secretary general, who has accepted it with regret,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters, adding that António Guterres was “working on an appropriate replacement”.

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Camels bearing healthcare deliver hope in Kenya – photo essay

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When the roads are not up to it, a mobile clinic on hooves brings family planning and other medical supplies to remote communities. Photographer Ami Vitale visits Lekiji to see how the villagers have reaped the benefits

Thirteen camels amble their way across the dusty, drought-stricken landscape, accompanied by seven men in bright yellow T-shirts and three nurses. The camels are loaded with trunks full of medicines, bandages and family planning products. It’s a mobile health clinic on hooves. When the camels arrive at their destination, men, women and children form a line as they wait for the handlers to unload the boxes and set up tables and tents.

Among those waiting is Jacinta Peresia, who first encountered the health visitors six years ago after she nearly died giving birth to her 11th child, a daughter called Emali.

No roads, no problem. Communities Health Africa Trust (Chat) delivers health care to hard-to-reach areas of Kenya

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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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