Category Archives: Africa

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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Ethiopian government moves to replace leadership of Tigray region

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Dispute between former coalition partners has led to clashes and airstrikes in the northern area

Ethiopia has further intensified the pressure on the country’s restive northern Tigray region by moving to replace the local leadership with a new centrally imposed administration.

The move comes amid clashes between Tigrayan and national military forces that have brought Africa’s second most populous nation to the brink of what analysts say could be a long drawn-out and bloody civil war.

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Ivory Coast opposition leader arrested after disputed election

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Pascal Affi N’Guessan charged with creating a rival government after President Alassane Ouattara won third term

The Ivorian opposition leader and former prime minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan has been placed under arrest for creating a rival government after President Alassane Ouattara’s election victory, his wife and a spokeswoman have said.

Prosecutors in Ivory Coast are pursuing terrorism charges against more than a dozen opposition leaders who boycotted the 31 October vote in which Ouattara won a third term in office and announced they were creating a transitional council.

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What’s in a name? How the legacy of slavery endures in Tunisia

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Black people in the north African country suffer hardship and disadvantage, and many still carry the label of ‘liberated’ slaves

Many within Tunisia greeted the news that 81-year-old Hamden Dali had won his two decade-long campaign to have “atig” removed from his name with little more than bemusement.

But for Dali atig – meaning “liberated by” – in his name was a painful reminder of his family’s heritage as former slaves.

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More than 40 fleeing Mozambique violence feared dead after boat sinks

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Children among those reported drowned as Islamist insurgency drives thousands of families from homes in Cabo Delgado

More than 40 people fleeing violence in Mozambique’s conflict-torn north are believed to have drowned after the boat carrying them to safety sank, according to reports.

At least 70 people were on board the vessel when it sank on 29 October in the Indian Ocean just north of the provincial capital of Pemba, where tens of thousands of people have sought refuge from a three-year Islamist insurgency, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Reuters reported.

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Ethiopia’s PM says airstrikes launched against targets in restive Tigray region

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Fears of civil conflict escalate as Abiy Ahmed says operation will continue until ‘junta made accountable by law’

Ethiopia’s air force has carried out strikes in the restive Tigray region, the country’s prime minister has said, in another escalation of a crisis that observers fear could plunge the country into a bitter and bloody civil conflict.

The prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, said the strikes in multiple locations “completely destroyed rockets and other heavy weapons” belonging to the well-armed regional government and made it impossible for a retaliatory attack.

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Ethiopia’s PM threatens restive province as crisis escalates

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Fears of civil conflict as air raids and artillery battles reported in standoff between TPLF and federal government

The prime minister of Ethiopia has issued a new threat to leaders of the restive province of Tigray, warning that there was “no place for criminal elements” in the east African country.

“The proud Ethiopian people of Tigray [and] other citizens cannot be taken hostage by fugitives from justice forever. We shall extract these criminal elements [from Tigray and] relaunch our country on a path to sustainable prosperity for all,” Abiy Ahmed said in a statement on social media.

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Uganda elections: on the campaign trail with the country’s rudest feminist

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From naked protests to spells in prison, Stella Nyanzi has stood up to President Museveni – now she’s standing as an MP

“Stella is my Mama Africa, because she has always fought for women!” shouts Hanifa Nagujja, a 28-year-old cook at akatale kabalema or “market of the disabled” in the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

Nagujja is one of about 15 women in gingham aprons who are jumping in the air in elation, clapping, finger-clicking and ululating as Stella Nyanzi weaves her way through bubbling pots of groundnut sauce, beans and matooke. Some of them chant “Nnalongo! Nnalongo!” – the name given to mothers of twins in Buganda culture.

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Child labour doesn’t have to be exploitation – it gave me life skills | Elizabeth Sibale

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Growing up in Africa taught me to be self-reliant and resilient. Putting children to work must be seen in local context

Aged eight, Tayambile would walk with her mother every day to fetch water. On her 2km return journey in 30C heat, she would carry 20 litres in an aluminium bucket on her head.

She would then help to pound maize in a mortar and prepare food for the family – typically fresh fish caught by her father on the lake.

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Fighting reported in Ethiopia after PM responds to ‘attack’ by regional ruling party

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Abiy Ahmed says defence forces mobilised in Tigray region ‘to save the country’

Fighting has been reported in northern Ethiopia after the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, ordered a military response to an “attack” by the ruling party of the restive Tigray region on a camp housing federal troops.

Analysts and diplomats have been warning for weeks that a standoff between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) could plunge Ethiopia into a bitter and bloody civil conflict.

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