Category Archives: Africa

Rwandans have long been used to Pegasus-style surveillance | Michela Wrong

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Information-gathering always was a speciality of President Paul Kagame. Modern technology has simply extended his remit

It was a silver BlackBerry, surprisingly heavy in the hand, belonging to a businessman who had flown from Kigali to South Africa to visit the exiled former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya. The businessman, Apollo Kiririsi Gafaranga, boasted that he had bought it in Qatar.

“It cost me $10,000,” a friend of Karegeya’s remembers the businessman telling them. “It’s a model you can only buy in the Middle East, a phone you can’t be tracked on.” Karegeya picked it up, weighed it, and put it back down on the counter where it was charging. “You’ve been robbed,” the ex spy chief joked.

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Violence against Africa’s children is rising. It stains our collective conscience | Graça Machel

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We must apply our own home-grown initiatives if we are to curb abuses of Africa’s most vulnerable

Of all the unspeakable injustices suffered by Africa’s children – and I’ve witnessed many – violence is surely the worst because it is almost entirely preventable. Africa’s children suffer many hardships, including poverty, hunger and disease. Violence against children is avoidable, yet young people in Africa, especially girls, continue to live with sexual violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, forced labour, corporal punishment and countless other forms of abuse.

After decades spent trying to improve young people’s life chances, I had hoped to see at the very least a significant reduction in violence that threatens children. It is now 31 years since the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and we have seen some governments putting into place laws and policies aimed at ending violence against children. There have also been efforts, though insufficient, towards eradicating female genital mutilation and child marriage, which cause untold lifelong suffering.

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Aid is not helping development in Tanzania | Letter

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The country is one of the largest recipients of western aid, and yet poverty and unemployment remain rife, write two healthcare professionals

In response to Benny Dembitzer’s letter (20 July), we are currently working in Tanzania, one of the largest recipients of western aid in the world. We are doing research with the Hadza people, investigating the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in that population. In comparison to our observations from 2018, it appears that very little development has occurred in Tanzania. If anything, Tanzanians appear to be poorer and there appears to be more unemployed people now, which, given the challenges of Covid, is even more worrying. This highlights that the current aid model is not fit for purpose and western governments should rethink the way they support Tanzania and other countries urgently.

In the medical field, we are finding that progress has been halted, and probably reversed. One of the causes is that the rich world takes so many doctors, nurses and other health professionals from the developing world. Countries such as Tanzania have educated these professionals at their expense. We collect the ripe fruits.
Dennis Ougrin and Emma Woodhouse
London

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What sparked the mass violence in South Africa – video explainer

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South Africa has recently experienced its worst violence since the end of the apartheid regime 27 years ago. More than 200 people were killed and thousands arrested in a week of civil unrest during which hundreds of shops were looted, factories set ablaze and government infrastructure destroyed. The Guardian's Africa correspondent, Jason Burke, explains how the violence was sparked by more than just the jailing of the former president Jacob Zuma, and what impact it could have on a country where more than half of the population lives in poverty

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The UK has been linked to Congo’s ‘conflict minerals’ – where are the criminal charges? | Vava Tampa

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Swiss court ruling is not the first time plunder of DRC’s mineral wealth has been linked to the killing of Congolese people. Without accountability, it won’t be the last

According to the Swiss federal criminal court last week, the corruption destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where devastating conflicts over minerals used in our electronics have killed more than six million people – is inextricably linked to the UK, Gibraltar and Switzerland.

It was a significant moment exposing corruption that has fuelled not only grinding poverty, famine and unemployment in DRC but also the impunity and violence required to sustain it. Yet, unless there is accountability, it won’t change.

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Death of 13-year-old girl sparks calls for action on FGM in Somalia

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Fartun Hassan Ahmed bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation, a practice that 98% of women in the east African country undergo

A 13-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia, as activists report a rise in the practice during the pandemic.

Fartun Hassan Ahmed, the daughter of nomadic pastoralists, bled to death after being cut earlier this month in the village of Jeerinle in the state of Galmudug, her mother said.

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Man attempts to stab Mali’s interim leader at Grand Mosque

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Col Assimi Goïta escapes unharmed after incident during Eid al-Adha celebrations in Bamako

A man has tried to stab Mali’s transitional president, Col Assimi Goïta, during Eid al-Adha celebrations at the Grand Mosque in Bamako.

Witnesses said the incident happened after the imam went to slaughter sheep at the mosque in the capital. One man with a knife and another with a gun participated in the attack, the witnesses said.

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‘Contraception divides opinion’: tackling taboos in Zimbabwe as teen pregnancies soar

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With Covid lockdowns blamed for rising rates, MPs and teachers say it’s time to ‘face reality’ and allow younger teens access to birth control

Malet*, 14, stands in the long queue at the maternity clinic in Harare. She is here for her routine checkup. Most of the people in the queue are teenage girls.

Malet fell pregnant the first time she had sex. Her baby is due in two months.

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Outcry after Nigerian TV stations told to curb reporting of security issues

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Regulator’s move comes amid fears that limited press freedoms are being eroded by the government

Nigeria’s broadcasting regulator has told TV stations to limit their reporting of rising insecurity in the country and withhold details of incidents and victims, in a move widely criticised by the country’s media and civil society groups.

In a letter sent to the country’s broadcasters, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) said TV stations should refrain from “giving details of either the security issues or victims of these security challenges”, and they should “collaborate with the government in dealing with the security challenges” by toning down reporting and commentary.

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The Guardian view on Covid and the world: the pandemic’s impact is growing | Editorial

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Cases are soaring in many countries, and the social and political effects are becoming clearer

“At the root of every pandemic is an encounter between a disease-causing microorganism and a human being … It is a social phenomenon as much as it is a biological one,” writes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, arguing that Spanish flu “pushed India closer to independence, South Africa closer to apartheid, and Switzerland to the brink of civil war”.

It will be a long time before we, or our descendants, can fully assess Covid’s impact. But its social and political effects are emerging more clearly. It has played a role in extraordinary turmoil in places from Colombia to Cuba to South Africa, exacerbating poverty and frustration. The unrest is rooted in longstanding social and economic problems. In South Africa, where 10,000 troops have now been deployed, it is the furious response to the jailing of the divisive former president Jacob Zuma, who faces a slew of corruption charges; authorities suspect his followers of orchestrating the violence. But Covid’s erosion of social and economic wellbeing and trust in leaders has surely contributed.

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Gross inequality stoked the violence in South Africa. It’s a warning to us all | Kenan Malik

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The country’s social contract has broken, fuelled by corruption and extreme poverty

‘It feels qualitatively different this time.” There are few people I know in South Africa who don’t think this about the carnage now engulfing the nation. Violence was institutionalised during the years of apartheid. In the post-apartheid years, it has rarely been far from the surface – police violence, gangster violence, the violence of protest. What is being exposed now, however, is just how far the social contract that has held the nation together since the end of apartheid has eroded.

Many aspects of the disorder are peculiar to South Africa. There are also themes with wider resonance. Events in the country demonstrate in a particularly acute fashion a phenomenon we are witnessing in different ways and in degrees of severity across the globe: the old order breaking down, with little to fill the void but sectarian movements or identity politics.

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Where UK aid cuts bite deepest – stories from the sharp end

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As women and children lose out on programmes that could change their lives, Britain’s reputation has been diminished

Bukola Onyishi was delighted when she found out that the British government was going to help her realise a dream in one of the poorest parts of Nigeria. With a grant agreement that was meant to last for three years, she was finally going to be able to launch a female empowerment programme for the women of Bauchi state in the country’s north-east, many of whom had fled the militant Islamist group Boko Haram and were now living in abject poverty in camps for the internally displaced.

“The grant made us very happy,” says Onyishi, country director for Women for Women International. “[Bauchi] was the right place to be.” Setting it up was not easy: Onyishi and her colleagues had a job to persuade community elders of the project’s value, encountering deep-seated patriarchal beliefs that surprised even her in their obstinacy. But they came round in the end, and the first 12-month empowerment programme began, teaching 1,200 carefully selected women about everything from their basic human rights to numeracy and business skills.

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South Africa’s leaders fear fresh wave of violence by Zuma loyalists

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Attacks by supporters of jailed former president ‘are bid for pardon or to unseat government’

South African authorities fear a new wave of attacks aimed at undermining the economy, investment and the rule of law as networks loyal to former president Jacob Zuma seek to force his return to power.

Investigators believe the unrest last week, which killed more than 200 and caused massive damage across a swath of the country, was deliberately provoked as part of a broader strategy by political opponents to force president Cyril Ramaphosa to pardon Zuma or even step down.

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No man’s land: three people seeking asylum stuck in Cyprus’s buffer zone

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The Cameroonians, who had ‘no idea’ they had jumped into the demilitarised area, have been trapped for almost two months

A few months after Grace Ngo flew into Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus from her native Cameroon, she decided to head “for the west”. Smugglers pointed the student in the direction of the Venetian walls that cut through the heart of Nicosia, Europe’s last divided capital.

A little before midnight on 24 May, Ngo leapt from the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic into what she hoped would be the war-divided island’s internationally recognised Greek south.

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Casablanca Beats review – Morocco’s answer to Fame strikes a chord

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A group of talented teens push the boundaries of their religious society by putting on a concert in Nabil Ayouch’s earnest film

Franco-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch has made a likable, high-energy youth movie that could almost be called the Moroccan answer to Fame and which features that time-honoured plot device: putting on a concert.

Using nonprofessionals playing docu-fictionalised versions of themselves, Ayouch has created a drama revolving around an arts centre for young people that he himself helped to set up in the tough district of Sidi Moumen, called by someone here the Bronx of Casablanca. The school includes a special programme called the Positive School of Hip-Hop. A crowd of smart, talented teens join the class and we watch as they find out the challenges, limits and opportunities of learning self-expression through western-style rap in a Muslim society.

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Fresh evidence of violence at Libyan detention centres as boats turned back

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Amnesty International says sexual abuse and beatings rife at camps for those forcibly returned after trying to cross the Med

New evidence of starvation and abuses inside migrant detention centres has been collected from migrants inside seven facilities across Libya.

A report by Amnesty International comes less than a month after Médecins Sans Frontières announced it was suspending its operations at two centres in Libya because of increasing violence towards refugees and migrants.

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South Africa: 10,000 troops deployed and reservists called up to quell unrest

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Warnings of looming humanitarian crisis as looting and violence hits food, fuel and medicine chains

South Africa says it has put 10,000 soldiers on the streets and is calling up reservists for the first time for decades following days of looting and violence that have threatened food and fuel supplies across the country.

The death toll stands at 117, and more than 3,000 people have been arrested according to official figures, since the former president Jacob Zuma began a 15-month jail term, sparking protests that rapidly turned into a wave of looting of shops, malls and warehouses.

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Vigilante groups form in South Africa to tackle looting and violence

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Officials warn citizens not to take law into own hands to protect homes and business from protests

Senior officials in South Africa have appealed to ordinary citizens not to take the law into their own hands as vigilante groups form following days of unchecked looting and violent protests across a swath of the country.

Though thousands of soldiers have joined police on the streets, law enforcement agencies still appear unable to stem ongoing attacks by crowds on warehouses, supermarkets, shopping malls, clinics and factories.

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South Africa grapples with unrest as looting and violence continue – video

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Unrest in South Africa triggered by the jailing of the former president Jacob Zuma has intensified, despite the deployment of thousands of soldiers on to the streets to reinforce struggling police. There has been widespread looting and shopping centres have been set alight. In one tense scene in Durban, a mother dropped her toddler from a burning building to a group of people below, who caught the child. The wave of violence has also hit South Africa’s faltering Covid vaccination rollout, which has been halted amid safety concerns

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‘I haven’t been paid a cent’: Jerusalema singer’s claim stirs row in South Africa

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Nomcebo Zikode threatens legal action, claiming she was never paid for the song that became a global hit during the pandemic

While her haunting vocals on the global hit song Jerusalema continue to reverberate around the world, the South African singer Nomcebo Zikode claims she is yet to receive any money for her work.

The singer took to social media on Sunday threatening legal action against Open Mic Productions, the label that recorded Jerusalema in late 2019.

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