Category Archives: Africa

Covid live news: more than 50 million have received at least one jab in France; UK records 32,651 new cases

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French president says close to 90% of people in country of 67 million have had at least one vaccine dose; UK reports 178 Covid-linked deaths

The US administered 383,994,877 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the country as of Friday morning and distributed 464,315,725 doses, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Those figures are up from the 383,038,403 vaccine doses the CDC said had gone into arms by Sept. 16 out of 462,384,885 doses delivered, Reuters reports.

A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport criticised the Scottish government’s “decision to diverge yet again and further curtail Scotland’s aviation and travel industries in their recovery”.

He said: “We are now the most restrictive country in Europe yet there is no justification or health benefit to retaining testing measures, something clinical professionals and experts have themselves said.

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‘It helped me get away from crime’: Cape Town’s College of Magic – a photo essay

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Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents students whose stories of transformation at the Hogwarts of South Africa are more than just fairytales

To fans of JK Rowling’s books, the story may sound somewhat familiar: a young boy living in difficult circumstances is enrolled in a mysterious school far from home, where his life is changed for ever by the transformative power of magic.

Anele Dyasi’s story is no fairytale, though, and the school in question is not Hogwarts, but the College of Magic in Cape Town, a unique institution that has been training some of the continent’s most skilled illusionists since the 1980s.

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The murder of Fikile: the woman who took on a coal mine

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Fikile Ntshangase was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine when she was shot dead in her home. Her daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells her story to Rachel Humphreys

In October last year, Fikile Ntshangase, 65, was at her home in Ophondweni in South Africa when three men burst in and she was shot dead. The murder was witnessed by her 13-year-old grandson. No one has so far been charged with any part in the crime.

Ntshangase’s daughter Malungelo Kakaza tells Rachel Humphreys that her mother had been involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, close to Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. She campaigned as part of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation.

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France says it has killed Islamic State leader in Greater Sahara

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Emmanuel Macron claims ‘another major success’ after death of Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi

Emmanuel Macron has said French military forces have killed the leader of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, claiming “another major success” in the fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel.

The French president, who recently moved to reduce French troop deployment in the troubled sub-Saharan region amid broad consensus that the intervention was not achieving its aim, gave no further details in his statement on Wednesday night, though he mentioned French casualties.

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UK aid cuts make it vital to address anti-black bias in funding | Kennedy Odede

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Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power

The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.

New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.

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Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

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National disaster declared as crops fail after poor rains and locusts, while ethnic conflicts add to crisis

An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.

The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year.

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Sebastião Salgado receives Praemium Imperiale 2021 award – in pictures

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The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has been named as one of four winners of a £400,000 award given by the Japan Art Association. Amazonia, an exhibition by Salgado, opens at the Science Museum in London from 13 October. An exhibition of collectors prints, organised by the Photographers’ Gallery, is on show at Cromwell Place Art Centre from 20 October

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The battle for Mekelle: Ethiopia’s civil war over Tigray goes on – in pictures

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An estimated 2.2 million people have been forced from their homes and thousands have been killed in the civil war that broke out in Ethiopia last November when government troops entered Mekelle, capital of the Tigray region. Witnessed by photographer Sergio Ramazzotti, the city was retaken by the Tigray Defence Forces in June, but peace in the region seems a long way off

  • All photographs by Sergio Ramazzotti/Parallelozero

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‘A very cruel exit’: UK’s aid cuts risk rapid return of treatable diseases

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£200m project to eliminate avoidable blindness and disfigurement in Africa ends after funding is prematurely axed

A chandelier sparkling in the background, the grandeur of Downing Street gleaming behind him, Boris Johnson looks into the camera and speaks with solemnity. He is marking World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, he says, to raise awareness of these “terrible afflictions … which impose an immense burden of suffering in developing countries”.

Huge progress has been made, he says, in the fight against the diseases, not least as a result of British aid to some of the poorest parts of the world. But there is more – much more – to be done: more than a billion people are still at risk, he warns, and that is why the UK “fully supports” the World Health Organization’s big elimination push over the next decade.

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Louis Armstrong and the spy: how the CIA used him as a ‘trojan horse’ in Congo

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Book reveals how the jazz musician unwittingly became party to secret cold war manoeuvres by the US in Africa

It was a memorable evening: Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo.

The trumpeter, singer and band leader, nicknamed Satchmo as a child, was in the middle of a tour of Africa that would stretch over months, organised and sponsored by the State Department in a bid to improve the image of the US in dozens of countries which had just won freedom from colonial regimes.

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The disappeared in Mexico, Afghan female footballers and a giant puppet: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas

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Criticism of animal farming in the west risks health of world’s poorest | Emma Naluyima Mugerwa and Lora Iannotti

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In the developing world most people are not factory farming and livestock is essential to preventing poverty and malnutrition

The pandemic has pushed poverty and malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, wiping out years of progress. In 2020, the number of people in extreme poverty rose by 97 million and the number of malnourished people by between 118 million and 161 million.

Recent data from the World Bank and the UN shows how poverty is heavily concentrated in rural communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people are surviving by smallholder farming. This autumn there will be two key events that could rally support for them.

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Rebel forces accused of killing more than 100 civilians in north Ethiopia

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Massacre was perpetrated by fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, officials say

Rebel forces in northern Ethiopia have been accused of killing more than a hundred civilians during fierce battles.

Local government officials said the massacre in a village 6 miles (10km) from the town of Dabat took place just over a week ago and was perpetrated by fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

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Case of missing spy aggravates tensions among fractious Somali leadership

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President and prime minister in row over disappearance of cybersecurity expert, reportedly killed by al-Shabaab

The Somali prime minister, Mohamed Hussein Roble, has fired the head of the country’s intelligence unit over the disappearance of a female spy.

Roble accused the spy chief, Fahad Yasin Haji Dahir, a former close ally of the president, of mixing politics and security and ordered him to hand over power within three days. He said the handling of the case of the missing 24-year-old was “inappropriate”.

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Egypt accused of widespread state-sanctioned killings of dissidents

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Analysis of alleged anti-terrorist shootouts reveals security forces routinely suppressing opposition, claims Human Rights Watch

Egyptian security forces engaged in an extended campaign of extrajudicial killings of detainees, routinely masked as shootouts with alleged terrorists, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The report details what it alleges are a pattern of extrajudicial assassinations between 2015 and last year, a period in which the Egyptian interior ministry said publicly that 755 people were killed in alleged exchanges of fire with security forces, while naming just 141.

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‘No one may be compelled’: Zimbabwe unions go to court over Covid jabs

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Firms accused of ‘rounding up workers like animals’ for compulsory vaccination as country acts to stop spread of virus

Thousands of workers in Zimbabwe have been told they will face the sack if they refuse to be vaccinated with one of the Covid-19 jabs, according to the country’s biggest worker’s union.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), an amalgamation of 35 labour unions representing 189,000 people, has accused employers of infringing workers’ rights, saying there is no law providing for compulsory vaccinations. It has taken the government and six companies to court for ordering employees to have the vaccine, arguing that the companies are “taking the law into their own hands” by forcing the issue.

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Guinea president held in military detention, say army coup leaders

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International community condemns takeover but many in impoverished west African country welcome it

Guinea’s president, Alpha Condé, is being held in military detention, according to an elite unit of the army who have led a coup condemned by the international community but welcomed by many in Guinea.

The coup leader and head of the country’s special forces, Col Mamadi Doumbouya, announced in state broadcasts on Sunday that the country’s constitution had been suspended, the government dissolved and the borders closed, with a 24-hour curfew imposed.

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‘Their future could be destroyed’: the global struggle for schooling after Covid closures

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Hundreds of millions of children fell behind around the world as schools closed during the pandemic. We look at four countries as pupils try to resume their education

Children’s mental health suffers as schools remain shut

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‘Lost generation’: education in quarter of countries at risk of collapse, study warns

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Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes

The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.

As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.

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Guinea military unit stages coup, claims to have detained president – video

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Guinea's special forces soldiers surrounded the presidential palace in the capital, Conakry, after they appeared to have ousted the country's long-serving president. Videos shared on social media showed president Alpha Condé in a room surrounded by army special forces. Residents in the Guinean capital could be seen celebrating as lines of special forces soldiers drove through the city. 

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