Category Archives: Africa

The Nobel committee should resign over the atrocities in Tigray

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Members of the body that awarded the 2019 peace prize to Ethiopia’s premier, Abiy Ahmed, should all depart in protest

The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.

Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.

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Spat at, abused, attacked: healthcare staff face rising violence during Covid

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Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed

Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.

Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.

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Hundreds detained without trial in Uganda in new wave of repression

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Roundup of opposition activists took place in May around date of swearing-in ceremony for President Yoweri Museveni

A new wave of repression in Uganda has led to the abductions of dozens more opposition activists by security forces and at least one alleged death. Several hundred people are thought to have been detained without trial in the east African country in secret prisons where they are subjected to a brutal regime of mistreatment. The country has suffered a series of crackdowns aimed at stamping out dissent since campaigning began for presidential elections late last year.

The trigger for the most recent repression by security services appears to have been the swearing-in ceremony of Uganda’s veteran president, the 76-year-old Yoweri Museveni, in May.

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Education for girls and vaccines can save Africa from disaster | Phillip Inman

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Parts of the continent potentially face a decade of crisis. These two measures are more important than any other in avoiding it

There are so many good causes in the world it is often difficult to know where aid money should go. As leaders line up to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, the most effective destinations for aid money have become clearer – a global vaccination programme and improving girls’ education.

This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where so much can go wrong over the next 10 years – a population explosion, massive biodiversity loss, desertification, famine and mass migration to mention just a few – that unless we focus our efforts on vaccines and girls’ education, whatever is done to alleviate poverty or tackle the climate emergency will be threatened or even sabotaged in almost every other region of the world.

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Suspected extremist attack on Burkina Faso village kills 130 people

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Homes burned in Solhan village in one of worst attacks in country beset by jihadist violence

Suspected extremists have killed more than 130 civilians in an overnight attack on a village in northern Burkina Faso, the government said on Saturday, in one of the worst attacks in the country beset by jihadist violence.

The assailants struck during the night on Friday, killing residents of the village of Solhan in Yagha province, near the eastern border with Niger. They also burned homes and a market, the government said, describing the attackers as terrorists.

Roch Kabore, the president, lamented the attack, the worst recorded since jihadist attacks erupted across the country in 2015, destroying ordinary life for millions of mainly impoverished people. “I bow before the memory of the hundred civilians killed in this barbaric attack and extend my condolences to the families of the victims,” he said.

“Several injured have succumbed to their wounds and new bodies have been discovered. The still provisional toll is 138 deaths,” one local official said to Agence France Presse on Saturday evening. “The bodies were buried in mass graves. There are dozens injured.”

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Myanmar school strikes and a plane diverted to Minsk: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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Nigeria suspends Twitter after president’s tweet was deleted

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Information minister blames use of platform for ‘activities capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence’

Nigeria’s government has announced an indefinite suspension of Twitter in the country, two days after the social media company removed a post from president Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists.

The information minister, Lai Mohammed, said the government had acted because of “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence”.

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‘Running dry’: Zimbabweans turned away for vaccinations after shortages

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As staff sit idle in treatment centres, anger focuses on government failures to secure supplies as fears of a third wave increase

Hundreds of people are being turned away from vaccination centres in Zimbabwe as the country’s supplies of China’s Sinovac vaccine appear to have run out, triggering panic that the government is failing to acquire new stocks.

While the government said that it had taken delivery of more medicines in recent weeks, centres in Harare have not had any stocks for nearly a week and there is growing anger at the failure to communicate acute vaccine shortages, which are being reported around the country.

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‘Africa has so much talent – we can’t even grasp it’: Angélique Kidjo on pop, politics and power

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She’s played with everyone from Tony Allen to David Byrne. Now the Grammy winner is singing with a new generation of African stars, celebrating their continent while confronting its failings

On a video call from Paris, Angélique Kidjo, 60, shifts and leaps in her seat with the restive energy of a teenager. “I’m always changing and innovating and this album is no different,” she says. “Change brings life to things; it keeps me going. In life, you never know what to expect.”

Over a career that spans five decades, the Beninese artist has crossed paths with everyone from Gilberto Gil and Tony Allen to Talking Heads, Bono and Vampire Weekend. She has four Grammy wins in “world music” categories – second only to Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

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Ethiopia rejects calls for ceasefire in Tigray, claiming victory is near

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UN says pause in fight against rebels would enable aid to reach province where 90% of people risk starvation

The Ethiopian government has defiantly brushed aside international calls for a ceasefire in the northern province of Tigray, saying its forces are close to “finalising operations” and will soon eliminate all armed opposition.

In recent days the US, United Nations, UK and many European states have called for a pause in hostilities to allow humanitarian organisations to reach millions of people who observers say face famine.

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‘Exponential’ rise in Covid cases in DRC capital, reports WHO

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City of Kinshasa, home to 15 million people, is amid third wave of infections, authorities confirm

The UN’s health agency said on Thursday that it detected a surge of coronavirus cases late last month in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“An exponential rise in the spread of Sars-CoV-2 virus has been recorded in Kinshasa,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly report.

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China’s ‘splinternet’ will create a state-controlled alternative cyberspace

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Beijing is using blockchain to build a new internet and many developing countries are likely to sign up – but at what cost?

Cyberspace is one huge, unregulated mess. A virtual wild west where sophisticated criminal gangs ply their trade alongside multinational companies, spy agencies, activists, celebrity influencers – and nation states. The question of who governs it is one of the biggest of our time.

Britain needs to be, if not quite ruling the waves, at least a global force for good in the expanding virtual world. The issue has never been so pressing. Six years ago, I acted for a coder in the biggest cyberfraud phishing case in the UK. The malware my client and others created was so sophisticated that the police could not decode it but were able to show it was used for fraud. The financial data harvested was stored on two servers, one in France and one in the US, and the lack of international cooperation meant law enforcement never got their hands on it.

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‘Sex for a fare’ motorcycle taxis threaten Uganda’s fight against Aids

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Study shows pattern of risky sexual behaviour by young men making a living in the booming boda boda industry

Uganda’s motorcycle taxis riders threaten to derail the country’s fight against HIV because of risky sexual behaviours, including sex with clients in lieu of payment, according to a new study.

At least 12% of a sample of 281 commercial riders, a common informal job known as boda boda and dominated by young men, admitted to engaging in transactional sex with customers who failed to pay their fares; 65.7% reported having had sex with more than one partner in the past 12 months; and 23% had had multiple partners in the same period, with 57.1% reporting that they did not use a condom at all in the six months prior to the survey, conducted by Makerere University College of Education and External Studies (CEES).

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‘A question of dignity’: the pathologist identifying migrants drowned in the Med

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Dr Cristina Catteneo made it her mission to put a name to each man, woman and child found in the overcrowded hulls of sunken boats bound for Europe

At a glance, Dr Cristina Cattaneo assessed the lifeless body on the floor of an abandoned Sicilian hospital – a thin, young Eritrean refugee about 180cm tall. While most of the corpse was intact, his face and hands were skeletonised, probably the work of sea animals.

It was the morning of 3 July 2015, and this was the first body to be recovered by a navy robot after a shipwreck on 18 April that year, which left more than 1,000 people dead.

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Twitter deletes Nigerian president’s ‘abusive’ Biafra tweet

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Muhammadu Buhari’s comments come amid escalating violence and resurgence in secessionist sentiment

Twitter has deleted a tweet by Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari in which he threatened to punish pro-Biafra groups blamed for escalating attacks on government and security authorities.

The social media firm said Buhari’s tweet violated its “abusive behaviour” policy, leading to a 12-hour suspension of his account.

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Ethiopia’s human rights chief as war rages in Tigray: ‘we get accused by all ethnic groups’

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Former political prisoner Daniel Bekele has made the commission more autonomous but critics claim he is biased on current conflict

There was a time when a report by Ethiopia’s human rights commission was a staid affair, its findings offering window-dressing for hand-wringing donors and legal cover to the government.

Between 2013 and 2017 the commission systematically “whitewashed human rights violations through compromised methodologies, dismissing credible allegations”, according to a 2019 Amnesty International study that accused it of “brazen bias against victims”.

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Eritrean soldiers killed 19 civilians in latest Tigray atrocity, locals claim

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Killings took place near Ethiopia’s Abuna Yemata church on 8 May, according to multiple testimonies

Eritrean soldiers killed 19 civilians in a village at the foot of an internationally celebrated rock-hewn church in Tigray three weeks ago, witnesses, relatives and local residents have claimed, the latest alleged atrocity in the war-torn Ethiopian region.

Most of the victims in the alleged attack were women and young children.

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UK and France to blame for chaos in Libya, says presidential hopeful

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Former interior minister Fathi Bashagha claims ‘lazy’ UK failing in moral responsibility after 2011 Europe-led regime change

The UK has been distracted by Brexit and “lazy” in fulfilling its moral responsibility to pull Libya out of the chaos that enveloped it after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, a leading presidential candidate claimed.

The candidate, Fathi Bashagha, a former interior minister, who narrowly failed to become prime minister of an interim Libyan government in a UN process in February, said the UK had a special duty to come to Libya’s aid given David Cameron’s role in the country’s 2011 regime change.

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Ugandan minister speaks from hospital bed after assassination attempt – video

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Gunmen fired bullets at a car carrying Katumba Wamala in an attempted assassination on Tuesday, wounding the former army commander and killing his daughter and driver. Speaking from his hospital bed, the government minister said: 'I have survived … the bad guys have done it, but God has given me a second chance. I will pull through.'

There have been several unsolved assassinations and mysterious deaths of high-profile officials in the east African country in recent years that have fuelled speculation about perpetrators and their motivations


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