Category Archives: Africa

Ethiopia: leaders of Tigray region admit they attacked neighbouring Amhara

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Fears fighting in country’s north could reopen long-running feuds and spread across national borders

Leaders of Tigray in Ethiopia’s north on Saturday claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on two airports in a nearby region and threatened to strike neighbouring Eritrea, raising concerns that the escalating conflict could spread across national borders.

The attacks – and threats of more – fuelled concern that a conflict Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed vowed would be quick and contained could instead snowball and destabilise the broader Horn of Africa region.

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New museum in Nigeria raises hopes of resolution to Benin bronzes dispute

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Artefacts held by British Museum and other western institutions were looted by British forces in 1897

A new museum designed by Sir David Adjaye is to be built following the most extensive archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Benin City, Nigeria, raising hopes of a resolution to one of the world’s most controversial debates over looted museum artefacts.

The kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria and not to be confused with the modern-day country of Benin, was one of the most important and powerful pre-colonial states of west Africa.

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Jerry Rawlings obituary

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Charismatic military leader and elected president of Ghana who dominated political life in the 1980s and 90s

Jerry Rawlings, the former military leader then twice-elected president of Ghana, who has died aged 73, dominated the country’s political life for two decades in the 1980s and 90s.

In May 1979, Flt Lt Rawlings of the Ghanaian air force burst on to the country’s political scene. With a handful of officers, he launched an unsuccessful coup d’etat against a corrupt and discredited military government headed by Gen Fred Akuffo, shortly before a planned election.

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‘I need money for school’: the children forced to pan for gold in Zimbabwe

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Covid has closed schools and caused economic collapse – now children are taking up the dangerous work of prospecting

Children as young as 10 used to cool themselves from the sweltering heat in the Odzi River on their way back from school in mineral-rich Marange, a village 90km south of Mutare in eastern Zimbabwe.

Now, with the public education system collapsing and the pandemic taking a wrecking ball to their parents’ economic opportunities, children are spending whole days at the river, panning for gold or fishing for an evening meal.

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Eight international peacekeepers killed in Sinai helicopter crash

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Six Americans, one Czech and one French citizen killed and only survivor in critical state

A helicopter carrying members of a multinational peacekeeping force has crashed near Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, killing six Americans, a Czech and a French citizen.

The US-led Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) said in a statement that all but one of the nine people onboard were killed when the aircraft went down “during a routine operation”.

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More than 110 migrants die in Mediterranean in three days

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Bodies of 74 people wash up on beach in western Libya as baby boy dies on rescue boat

Four shipwrecks in the space of three days have claimed the lives of more than 110 people in the Mediterranean, including at least 70 people whose bodies have washed up on the beach of al-Khums, in western Libya.

According to the UN migration agency (IOM), that boat was reported to be carrying more than 120 people, including women and children. Forty-seven survivors had been brought to shore by the coastguard and fishermen, while the bodies of at least 74 people were floating near the water’s edge on Thursday.

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From Burna Boy to Beyoncé: how black culture is embracing its African roots – video

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In recent years, Africans on the continent and in the diaspora have become leading voices in black culture – in music, film, fashion, social media, comedy and even our memes. When Grace Shutti was growing up, black culture usually referred to African Americans. But from Beyoncé's visual album, Black is King, to Marvel's Black Panther and musician Diddy executive producing the Nigerian pop star Burna Boy's album, the shift to embrace African art has been seismic. Grace investigates how this came about

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Spike in yellow fever deaths prompts Nigeria to revive vaccination campaigns

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Resurgence of disease linked to factors including climate crisis and focus of health resources on Covid response

More than 70 people are feared to have died of yellow fever in Nigeria since September, as health authorities warn of a resurgence of the disease.

The country recorded 47 deaths from yellow fever throughout the whole of 2019.

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Dozens of Sudanese migrants held in Cairo after protests

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The killing of a 12-year-old boy sparked calls for justice and action to counter human rights violations of black African refugees in Egypt

Dozens of Sudanese refugees and migrants have been arrested after protests over the murder of a young boy in Cairo.

Amnesty International said about 70 people, including children, were arrested by Egyptian security forces after what it said were two peaceful protests on 29 October.

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Thousands of refugees cross into Sudan to flee fighting in Ethiopia

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Fears grow of humanitarian crisis as conflict in Tigray region pushes 8,000 people across border in two days

Thousands of refugees fleeing fighting in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region have crossed into neighbouring Sudan, as fears grow that conflict between national and provincial forces could prompt a serious humanitarian crisis.

As many as 8,000 Ethiopians are thought to have already crossed the border in the last two days, and aid officials say hundreds of thousands more are likely to leave their homes if the conflict, now entering its second week, does not end.

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Gunmen shoot dead female Libyan dissident in busy Benghazi street

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Hanan al-Barassi was an outspoken critic of abuses in areas controlled by the Libyan National Army

Gunmen have shot dead a prominent female dissident on a busy street in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, in the latest killing of a critic of military strongman Khalifa Haftar.

Hanan al-Barassi, an outspoken critic of abuses in the eastern areas controlled by Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA), was shot dead in her car in broad daylight on 20th Street, a busy artery in Benghazi’s city centre, rights groups and security officials said.

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‘We have lost a limb’: Azu Nwagbogu, the visionary curator bringing African art home

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From helping photographers capture the Nigerian protests to exhibiting during a pandemic, the director of LagosPhoto festival has had his work cut out. Now he wants to fight ‘afro-pessimism’ and the posturing around Black Lives Matter

When I first spoke to Azu Nwagbogu, the recent protests against police brutality in his native Nigeria had just entered their second week. The curator was upbeat, describing them as “an incredible awakening”. A week later, when we made contact again, he sounded more sombre, but no less defiant, following the fatal police shootings of at least 12 protesters at the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, the main gathering point for the daily demonstrations.

“This protest is not about ‘the poor masses’,” he tells me. “My sister, who is a medical doctor and a consultant anaesthetist, was active in the protests. Everyone who isn’t in government has had enough. The genie has been let out of the bottle and it won’t go back in without the wishes of the people being fulfilled.”

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Fears for a million livelihoods in Kenya and Tanzania as Mara River fish die out

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Water biodiversity is on the brink, with dire consequences for the region known for the zebra and wildebeest migration, says WWF

Fish are being driven to extinction in the Mara River basin, putting the livelihoods of more than a million people in Kenya and Tanzania in jeopardy, according to WWF.

A report by the wildlife NGO details how farming, deforestation, mining, illegal fishing and invasive species could sound a death knell for the transboundary river.

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Hunger fears in north-east Nigeria as roaming elephants trample crops

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Animals have ventured back into areas largely emptied of people by Boko Haram insurgency

A herd of hundreds of elephants that have returned to north-east Nigeria are under threat from jihadist groups and increasingly in conflict with thousands of refugees whose crops they have trampled weeks before harvest.

More than 250 elephants ventured last month from Chad and Cameroon into Kala-Balge, a district in Nigeria’s Borno state.

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US to send asylum seekers home to Cameroon despite ‘death plane’ warnings

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Move by the Trump administration comes despite reports that other deportees have gone missing since being repatriated

The US is expected to fly Cameroonian asylum seekers back to their home country on Tuesday despite fears that their lives will be at risk and reports that deportees repatriated last month are now missing.

Some of the deportees are activists from the country’s anglophone minority, who face arrest warrants for their political activities from government forces with a well documented record of extrajudicial killings. They and their lawyers refer to Tuesday’s flight as the “death plane”.

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The battle to bring Kenya’s warrior children back to school – a photo essay

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Covid closures coincided with an initiation ceremony that has put many on a path out of education and set back years of progress

Photographs by Joost Bastmeijer

Shortly after sunrise, three boys step off their motorcycle, pat the dust off their checkered shuka cloths, and enter their family’s boma – an enclosure built from thorny acacia branches in eastern Samburu.

Now that they are morans, the teenagers are considered adults and are no longer permitted to sleep in their parents’ house. Instead, they go each evening to sleep in a nearby school building and return home in the morning. The school has been shut since the Covid-19 outbreak, and benches have been moved aside to make room for mattresses, and a makeshift kitchen.

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The Guardian view on Ethiopia: a tragedy in the making? | Editorial

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The government’s military operation against leaders of the Tigray region could have devastating consequences across the Horn of Africa

What a difference a year makes. Just over 12 months ago, Abiy Ahmed won the Nobel peace prize. The Ethiopian prime minister had overseen extraordinary change in his brief tenure: though the committee singled out the peace deal he had signed with Eritrea, ending an apparently intractable dispute, he had also embarked upon sweeping domestic reforms. Yet while the relaxation of intense political repression brought real hope, there was also fear that the improvements were precarious at best, with too much expected of one man.

Now Africa’s second most populous nation is on the brink of civil war. In the early hours of 4 November – as the world’s attention was fixed on the United States – Mr Abiy launched a major military operation in the northern region of Tigray and imposed a state of emergency. He said he was responding to an attack by the region’s ruling party on an army base, which they have denied; the Ethiopian parliament has now voted to replace them with a centrally-imposed administration.

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Ethiopia: reports of heavy casualties in fighting in Tigray

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Country’s prime minister sent in federal troops and aircraft last week in major escalation

Heavy casualties have been reported in ongoing clashes between the Ethiopian army and troops loyal to the ruling party of the restive northern province of Tigray.

At least six people were killed and 60 people wounded in one location along the Tigray border alone, Doctors Without Borders said on Saturday, and a medical official said nearly 100 government soldiers had been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the northern Amhara region.

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PM who won Nobel peace prize takes Ethiopia to brink of civil war

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Abiy Ahmed made his name as a reformer – but was there always an authoritarian waiting to come out?

The beginning of the week saw Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, in one role: a forward-looking statesman, with a vision of peace and prosperity, and a tailored suit. The 44-year-old leader was at Addis Ababa’s recently modernised airport to welcome General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, effective leader of neighbouring Sudan for a two-day visit including trade discussions and tours of the Ethiopian capital’s skyscrapers, a seedling nursery and an industrial park.

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What will President Biden’s United States look like to the rest of the world? | Timothy Garton Ash

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The future of a diminished superpower now lies in being part of a wider network of democracies

What is the best the world can now hope for from the United States under President Joe Biden, now that the election has been called for him? My answer: that the US will be a leading country in a post-hegemonic network of democracies.

Yes, that’s a, not the leading country. Quite a contrast to the beginning of this century, when the “hyperpower” US seemed to bestride the globe like a colossus. The downsizing has two causes: the US’s decline, and others’ rise. Even if Biden had won a landslide victory and the Democrats controlled the Senate, the United States’ power in the world would be much diminished. President Donald Trump has done untold damage to its international reputation. His disastrous record on handling Covid confirmed a widespread sense of a society with deep structural problems, from healthcare, race and infrastructure to media-fuelled hyper-polarisation and a dysfunctional political system.

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