Category Archives: Africa

My story proves Rwanda’s lack of respect for good governance and human rights | Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

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Responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for must not pass to the country without reforms

If Rwanda had hosted the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which has been cancelled for the second time due to Covid-19, the UK was due to hand the country the Commonwealth chair.

Rwanda would have held the responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for – despite violating those same values for decades. When Rwanda was admitted as a member in 2009, I had hoped our government would apply Commonwealth values in its governance. But this did not happen.

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Migrant guards in Qatar ‘still paid under £1 an hour’ ahead of World Cup

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Promises of better working conditions ring hollow for tens of thousands of security guards, who say they still work long hours for low pay

Every day at 5pm, Samuel boards the company bus that takes him to his night shift as a guard at a luxury high-rise tower near Qatar’s capital, Doha. When his shift ends 12 hours later, he says he will have earned £9, just 75p an hour.

Samuel, who is from Uganda, says he almost never has a day off. “You have to tell lies, like ‘you are sick, you’re not feeling good’, so that you get a day off,” he says.

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Gunmen in Nigeria abduct about 150 students from Islamic school

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One person shot dead after armed gang on motorcycles attack town in north-central Nigeria, ‘shooting indiscriminately’

An armed gang has abducted students from an Islamic school in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger.

The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told Reuters he witnessed the attack and estimated about 150 students had been taken. “I personally saw between 20 and 25 motorcycles with heavily armed people. They entered the school and went away with about 150 or more of the students,” said Tegina, who lives around 150 metres from the school.

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Uganda police killings reconstructed using mobile phone footage

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Interviews with more than 30 witnesses also used in investigation by BBC Africa Eye into deaths in Kampala

A single truck carrying eight police officers was responsible for a mass shooting in the centre of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in November last year in which at least four people died and many more were injured, an investigation by BBC Africa Eye has found.

The shootings were part of a crackdown on protests in Kampala following the arrest of opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, a singer turned politician known as Bobi Wine, who was campaigning as a candidate for presidential elections held two months later.

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Vaccine inequality exposed by dire situation in world’s poorest nations

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Analysis: the failings of the Covax programme, logistical issues and governments’ own inadequacies are making a bad situation worse

Only 1% of the 1.3 billion vaccines injected around the world have been administered in Africa – and that comparative percentage has been declining in recent weeks. It is a stark figure that underlines just how serious a problem global vaccine inequity has become. But the answer for the developing world is not as simple as delivering more vaccines.

From Africa to Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean, the same issues have been replicated. On top of finding enough doses, there have been logistical difficulties with delivery, problems over healthcare infrastructure and, in some countries, public hesitancy towards vaccines.

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Macron seeks African reset with new view of France’s troubled history on continent

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Honest examination of French colonial record in Africa and responsibilty in Rwanda key to new strategy, though critics say little has changed

With the golden winter sun slanting across the palm trees and yellow sandstone, the scene was perfect. Emmanuel Macron and his host, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, walked down the red carpet of the Union buildings in Pretoria as the Marseillaise resonated through the clean, crisp air.

The historic setting was apt. Since taking power in 2017, the French president has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa. He has chosen a very contemporary way to do this: by re-examining the past.

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Woman shot dead in Lesotho as factory workers’ clashes with police escalate

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Trade unions say they have lost control of protests over pay as employers cite impact of Covid for restraint

A woman has died after being shot during violent clashes between factory workers and police in Lesotho as trade unions say they have lost control over angry protests over pay.

Demonstrations spilled over into violence in what is the second week of industrial action, with looting and damage to several businesses in the capital Maseru.

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Protesters call on banks to ‘drop African debt’ in wake of Covid

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World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting

Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.

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I Am Samuel: the film aiming to ‘change the narrative’ on being gay in Kenya

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The young star of Peter Murimi’s intimate documentary is as poor, religious and conservative as his peers – and fearful of a violent backlash, he says

Samuel Asilikwa grew up in rural Kenya. There was a strict template for masculinity, informed by centuries of tradition – and intolerance. In a new documentary about his life, we see his father, a pastor, question Asilikwa about why he is yet to find a wife. We then watch as he relocates to Nairobi in search of work and adventure. He finds community, friendship and intense romance with a man called Alex.

Peter Murimi’s film I Am Samuel, shot verité-style over the course of five years, is at its most powerful contrasting city and countryside. Kenya’s farmland, clay roads, shrubbery and corn fields are evidence of a still, yet cyclical, pattern of life compared with the infinite noise and claustrophobia of Nairobi. But it is also a film about a shifting political landscape, where “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” is punishable by 14 years’ imprisonment.

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Germany agrees to pay Namibia €1.1bn over historical Herero-Nama genocide

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It is understood the text of the joint declaration will call German atrocities ‘genocide’ but omit the words ‘reparations’ or ‘compensation’

Germany has to agreed to pay Namibia €1.1bn (£940m) to fund projects among communities affected by the Herero-Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century, in what Angela Merkel’s government says amounts to a gesture of reconciliation but not legally binding reparations.

Tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot, tortured or driven into the Kalahari desert to starve by German troops between 1904 and 1908 after the Herero and Nama tribes rebelled against colonial rule in what was then named German South West Africa and is now Namibia.

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DRC volcano: thousands flee amid fears of further eruptions – video

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Thousands of people have fled the Congolese city of Goma, some picking their way across landscapes scarred with lava, after officials said a second volcanic eruption could happen at any time.

Thirty-one people were killed on Saturday evening when Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, sent a wall of orange lava downhill towards the city, destroying 17 villages on the way. The lava stopped just 300 metres short of Goma airport, the main hub for aid operations in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo


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Kagame the winner as Macron gives genocide speech in Rwanda

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French president says his country bears a responsibility for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but was not complicit

France bears a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, President Emmanuel Macron has said, in a long-anticipated speech in Kigali, the capital of the east African country.

Speaking at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where 250,000 victims of the massacres are buried, Macron said that France had not been complicit in the tragedy but had made errors of judgment that had appalling consequences.

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After the inferno: Sierra Leone’s poorest struggle to recover from slum fire – in pictures

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A blaze ripped through the overcrowded settlement of Susan’s Bay in Freetown in March, injuring hundreds. British photographer Henry Kamara, of Sierra Leone descent, documents the aftermath in this coastal community as people try to rebuild their lives

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Kenya’s high court overturns president’s bid to amend constitution

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Judges rule that Uhuru Kenyatta, who claimed BBI plan was to end country’s cycle of post-election violence, overstepped his authority and can be sued

The high court in Nairobi has overturned the president’s three-year quest to amend Kenya’s 11-year-old constitution.

In a ruling heavily critical of President Uhuru Kenyatta, five judges said he had no authority to bring forward plans to create more executive positions and parliamentary constituencies.

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Mali’s interim president and PM ‘resign’ while under military arrest

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Aide of the vice-president who led last year’s coup claims both leaders have stood down while in detention

Mali’s interim president and prime minister have reportedly “resigned”, two days after they were arrested by the military in a widely condemned coup, according to an aide to the military-appointed interim vice-president.

Both civilian leaders, the president, Bah Ndaw, and the prime minister, Moctar Ouane, remained under military arrest on Wednesday in the Kati army base, outside the Malian capital Bamako, amid widespread international condemnation and promises of sanctions.

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Nigeria’s court strike paralyses underfunded justice system

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Defendants left in prison for months awaiting trial as staff strike over judicial system’s financial autonomy

A nationwide strike of court workers in Nigeria is paralysing the justice system, resulting in extended prison remands for those awaiting trial or sentencing and lengthy delays for everyone else.

In March last year, Taiwo Ebun*, 27, was arrested for alleged armed robbery in Lagos. Since then he has been in detention.

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Anger in Zimbabwe at Nehanda statue amid collapsing economy

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Criticism of priorities as tribute to liberation leader unveiled despite foreign food aid and lack of jobs

The Zimbabwean government unveiled a statue of the liberation heroine and anti-colonialism figurehead Mbuya Nehanda in the capital, Harare, on Tuesday amid controversy about its priorities while the economy and health system collapse.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa vowed that the government would “repatriate Mbuya Nehanda’s skull and the skulls of others from the UK”, and said discussions about this were “on course”. The human remains of Nehanda and others who fought British colonisers are widely rumoured to be held at the Natural History Museum in London.

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‘I had to step up’: Child labour in poorest countries rose during Covid, says report

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Study finds children in Ghana, Nepal and Uganda in dangerous, exploitative work, with long hours and little pay

Gopal Magar’s father has had a drinking problem for as long as he can remember, but when Kathmandu went into lockdown last spring, it got worse. With five members of his family confined to a small room in the south of the city, tempers frayed and the 14-year-old saw his father beat his mother again and again. One day Gopal could stand it no longer. He fought back, and then fled, leaving his parents, and his school, behind.

Gopal now lives with his older brother on the other side of the city, and has swapped his classroom for a construction site. “I have fewer problems now, but I need to work really hard,” he says. He starts work at six in the morning and for the next 12 hours hauls sand, loads bricks and mixes concrete. He earns about £7 a day and sends some of it to his mother to help her buy food and pay the rent.

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Children’s bodies wash up on Libyan beach after migrant boats sink

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Charities post photographs of dead babies and toddlers said to have left Libya in dinghies in recent days

Photographs have emerged of the bodies of babies and toddlers washed up on a beach in Libya, highlighting the human tragedy of the migration crisis on Europe’s borders.

According to one of the charities that posted the photos on Twitter, the children had been travelling with their parents on one of the many dinghies that set off from Libya in recent days.

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