Category Archives: Africa

Julian Lloyd Webber: The rich world of African classical music

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Musician Rebeca Omordia has spent years unearthing the classical music of a whole continent, culminating in the hugely successful African Concert Series

While the Wigmore Hall has rightly garnered plaudits for keeping classical music alive during lockdown, another pioneering concert series has also beaten the odds with its series of online live events.

The African Concert Series is the brainchild of my former duo partner, the pianist Rebeca Omordia. She has half-Romanian, half-Nigerian heritage. But while we would often discuss world-renowned Romanian classical musicians such as composer Georges Enescu, pianist Dinu Lipatti and conductor Sergiu Celibidache, when it came to Nigerian classical composers, we drew a blank. “There aren’t any,” said Rebeca. I told her there must be, and challenged her to find them. This was back in 2013, and her subsequent research has uncovered more than 200 composers of African art music, Nigerians among them.

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Death without answers: an agonising 24-hour hunt for medical help in Guinea-Bissau

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Bernardo Catchura spent a last desperate night seeking treatment in the healthcare system he had spent decades campaigning to improve. His wife is still unsure how he died

In their 15 years together, Maimuna Catchura had not known her husband to be ill. But one night in late January, 39-year-old lawyer, activist and musician Bernardo Catchura could not sleep, and complained of severe stomach pain.

The pain forced Catchura from his bed at his house in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau’s capital. That night he would navigate the country’s medical care maze, visiting pharmacies, clinics and hospitals. Before the night was through, he even considered crossing the border into Senegal to get help.

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Russian mercenaries accused of human rights abuses in CAR

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UN group of experts deeply disturbed by connections between Wagner Group and violence since election

Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, a private military contractor, have committed human rights abuses in the Central African Republic while fighting alongside government forces, according to a group of independent UN experts.

The UN working group said it was “deeply disturbed” by the connections between Russian mercenaries and a series of violent attacks that have taken place in the CAR since elections in December.

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Who pays for Suez blockage? Ever Given grounding could spark years of litigation

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Ship likely to be centre of protracted legal battle over what caused it to run aground in the Suez and who is to blame

After hauling its 220,000-ton bulk down the Suez canal a week after blocking the essential waterway, the Ever Given container ship is likely to become the centre of a protracted battle over who will pay for its rescue.

The 400-metre-long vessel was aground on the banks of the Suez canal for a week, causing an estimated £7bn loss each day in trade owing to ships stuck on either side, and up to £10.9m a day for the canal. “We managed to refloat the ship in record time. If such a crisis had occurred anywhere else in the world, it would have taken three months to be solved,” said Osama Rabie, the head of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

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Hilarious, literal, preciously simple: Big Boat Stuck in the Suez Canal was the narrative we needed | Ben Jenkins

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Finally, a global news event that we weren’t screaming at each other on Twitter about – and which was simple enough to explain to a child

As the Ever Given was freed from the Suez Canal on Monday — just under a week after it jammed itself in there like a husky gentleman in a waterslide — the prevailing attitude online was not one of relief or celebration.

The hashtag #putitback started trending as people, with varying degrees of sincerity, immediately became nostalgic for the time when the whole world’s attention was fixed on huge oaf of a boat gunking up 200km of canal.

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Osinbajo defies expectations as Nigeria’s vice-president

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Analysis: Buhari’s deputy wants to create jobs, feed pupils and cut red tape. Is he too high-profile for his critics?

The role of vice-president is one that John Adams, the first person in the US to hold the position, called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived”.

Nigeria’s Patience Jonathan captured the situation in her sarcastic response to a journalist who asked about her husband, Goodluck Jonathan, when he was vice-president. She said: “He is in his office reading newspapers.”

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Isis claims deadly attack in northern Mozambique

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Attack on port town of Palma has forced hundreds of people to flee amid fierce fighting

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a town in northern Mozambique last week that forced hundreds of foreign contractors to flee amid fierce fighting.

Local police and soldiers were reported to have secured control of most of Palma on Monday, after hundreds of Islamist insurgents who overran the small port last week withdrew to surrounding forests and fields leaving a trail of devastation.

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Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve spent a year in one place with my mind in two | Chibundu Onuzo

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My family is in Lagos. I’m in London – and there’s no chance of a flight home. Zoom does many things, but it can’t give hugs

It’s been two years since I last saw my father. He lives in Nigeria, just a six-hour flight away, but the last time either of us set foot in an airport was 2019. I don’t miss the cramped seating and recycled oxygen of planes. Nor do I miss the anxious buzz of airports – of standing in my socks on a cold floor, queuing to walk through a metal detector. But I do miss my father and he is at the other end of a plane journey in a world where, for now, the skies are almost empty.

Mostly, I see my father on a screen. His beard is slightly more grizzled but he’s obviously drinking enough water. His skin looks great on camera. I hope the rest of his body is well. Three years ago he was ill and admitted into hospital. We don’t talk about his health but we do talk about Nigeria, about politics and the EndSars protest for example, and whether Nigerians are taking the pandemic seriously enough.

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No play, no pay: Covid drives Zimbabwe’s pros to unofficial football matches

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Informal games are a lifeline while the Premier League is locked down, but at what risk to players?

Sweaty and tired, the players tussle before the winning goal is scored on a red-dust pitch at the No 1 ground in Mufakose, a township west of Harare. The football fans start up a chant on the touchline, triggering a frenzied response from opposing supporters, who break into rapturous song.

This parched pitch and others like it have become a source of livelihood for some Zimbabwean footballers, struggling to earn a living during the Covid-19 pandemic’s lockdown regulations.

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Mozambique: up to 60 missing after insurgents attack convoy

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Seven confirmed dead and several more injured after assault on Palma, near a large gas project

As many as 60 people – mostly foreign citizens – are unaccounted for following a deadly ambush on their convoy by Islamist militants in northern Mozambique.

According to recordings of security calls reviewed by the Guardian describing the aftermath of the attack, only seven vehicles in a convoy of 17 made it to safety after the attack on Friday, with seven confirmed dead and many injured in the recovered vehicles. Everyone in the other vehicles is assumed dead.

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Stranding of Ever Given in Suez canal was foreseen by many – analysis

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Analysis: As ships ballooned in size, worst-case scenario was flagged up by organisations such as OECD

Authorities have blamed strong winds, possible technical faults or human error for the stranding of the Ever Given in the Suez canal.

But the running aground of the “megaship” – which salvage teams continued to try to free on Sunday as preparations were made for the possible removal of some of its containers – and the disruption of more than 10% of global trade, has been in the making for years longer according to analysts, who say an accident of this magnitude was foreseeable and warnings were ignored.

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Four-fifths of Sudan’s £861m debt to UK is interest

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Freedom of information data will increase calls for country to be granted debt amnesty

When Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was in Sudan in January he offered £40m in aid to help its poorest people, who are facing unprecedented food scarcity in a debt-laden country where austerity is deepening.

Sudan, ruled by an unelected military-led transitional government after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was deposed in 2019, owes the UK almost £900m. But the Observer can reveal that almost 80% of that was accrued from interest, leading to calls for an unconditional debt amnesty.

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Mozambique: several dead as insurgents seize control of town

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At least one foreign worker among those killed after assault on Palma, near a huge gas project

Islamist militants seized control of a town in northern Mozambique, killing several people including at least one foreign worker, near a huge gas project involving France’s Total and other energy companies, security sources said on Saturday.

Militants raided the town of Palma in the northern province of Cabo Delgado on Wednesday, forcing nearly 200 people including foreign gas workers to be evacuated from a hotel where they had sought refuge.

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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Mozambique: 180 workers trapped in hotel amid insurgent attack

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Military tries to airlift people to safety from strategic port town of Palma, near Total gas project

More than 180 people, including expatriate workers, have been trapped inside a hotel in a northern Mozambique town under attack by insurgents for three days.

The military was trying on Friday to airlift the workers to safety from Palma town which is situated near the multibillion-dollar gas site on the Afungi peninsula in Cabo Delgado province, according to the trapped workers.

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Regional museums break ranks with UK government on return of Benin bronzes

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Aberdeen says it will repatriate a bust while Cambridge museum has ‘expectation’ its collection could be returned

Regional UK museums could lead a wave of repatriations of disputed Benin bronzes – most of them looted by British forces in 1897 – in defiance of the British government’s stance that institutions should “retain and explain” contested artefacts.

On Thursday, the University of Aberdeen confirmed it would repatriate a bust of an Oba, or king of Benin, which it has had since the 1950s, “within weeks”, a landmark move for a British institution.

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France not complicit in Rwanda genocide, says Macron commission

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Report says France did not do enough to halt the 1994 killings but found no evidence of complicity

France bears the burden of “heavy and damning responsibilities” in the Rwandan genocide but was not complicit in the slaughter, according to the findings of an official commission set up by Emmanuel Macron.

As many as 800,000 people, mainly from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic population, were massacred in a wave of killings in 1994. The report released on Friday confirmed long and persistent accusations that France did not do enough to halt the killings, but said there was no evidence of complicity in the massacres.

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At least 20 livestock ships caught in Suez canal logjam

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Concerns for animals’ welfare if Ever Given blockage crisis is protracted


At least 20 of the boats delayed due to a stricken container ship in the Suez canal are carrying livestock, according to marine tracking data, raising concerns about the welfare of the animals if the logjam becomes protracted.

The 220,000-ton Ever Given is causing the longest closure of the Suez canal in decades with more than 200 ships estimated to be unable to pass, and incoming vessels diverting around southern Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

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Dozens killed in train crash in southern Egypt, say authorities

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At least 32 people and 100 injured after collision between two trains in Sohag province

At least 32 people were killed and more than a hundred injured when two trains collided in southern Egypt. Authorities blamed a passenger activating the emergency brakes.

Two passenger cars flipped on their side from the force of the collision, the latest in a series of deadly accidents along Egypt’s troubled rail system, plagued by poor maintenance and management.

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Covid third wave may overrun Africa’s healthcare, warns WHO

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Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’

Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.

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