Category Archives: Africa

Coronavirus updates: WHO tells countries to ‘test, test, test’, as EU proposes 30-day travel ban – live news

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Director-general of World Health Organization says ‘We cannot fight a fire blindfolded’ and urges governments to test public; US measures ramped up; Germany closes shops. Follow the latest news

Angela Merkel has announced a raft of further drastic measures to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus in Germany, including the closure of places of worship, playgrounds and non-essential shops.

Speaking at a press conference in Berlin on Monday afternoon, the German chancellor issued new guidelines for restricting social gatherings, which the country’s federal state are expected to enforce in the coming days. She said:

These are measures that we have never had in our country, but they are necessary to reduce the number of illnesses and severe illnesses and avoid overwhelming our health services.

The more individuals stick to these rules, the quicker we will get through this phase. The benchmark [for these measures] isn’t what we want to do, but what scientists tell us is the right response”.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, says he will close his country’s border to foreigners. Only four Canadian airports will be allowed to accept international flights, he said.

The closure will not apply to commerce or trade, Trudeau said.

HAPPENING NOW: I’m speaking from Rideau Cottage about the rapidly evolving COVID-19 outbreak and announcing significant new measures we’re taking to protect your health and keep you safe. Watch live: https://t.co/ZWtPbeNPVk

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African nations impose stricter measures as coronavirus spreads

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Governments warn disease will cause huge challenges for continent’s health services

Countries across Africa have imposed wide-ranging and stringent new measures as the coronavirus begins to spread more rapidly across the continent.

Though the continent is still far behind Europe and Asia in the total numbers of Covid-19 cases, the disease has now reached about half of its countries. Algeria has 48 confirmed cases, Egypt 110, while South Africa has 62, according to the World Health Organization and national governments on Monday. Other countries have fewer cases, mostly in single figures.

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Masked men, murder and mass displacement: how terror came to Burkina Faso

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A campaign of indiscriminate killings has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. Now there are fears for the state’s survival

The road south towards Kaya is no longer safe, but thousands take it every day. They come on foot, piled on to scooters or next to donkeys straining at their carts. They testify to atrocities by masked men that are never claimed and whose motives remain unexplained. Women and children are everywhere. The men are looking for work, in hiding, or dead.

A landlocked nation of 19 million people in the heart of west Africa, Burkina Faso was celebrated only a few years ago as a stable, vibrant young democracy. Now it is being eaten away at its eastern and northern fringes.

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West Saharan group takes New Zealand superannuation fund to court over ‘blood phosphate’

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Independence movement lodges documents in high court arguing $45bn fund invests in illegally mined fertiliser

The Western Sahara liberation movement has taken New Zealand’s superannuation fund to the country’s highest court over its investments in farms that use phosphate illegally mined in the occupied territory.

New Zealand is one of the few remaining countries – and last western nation – that accepts imports from the contested territory in West Africa, forcibly occupied by Morocco since 1975. Morocco’s claims to the territory are largely unrecognised internationally.

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‘Do not let this fire burn’: WHO warns Europe over coronavirus

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Europe now centre of pandemic, says WHO, as Spain prepares for state of emergency

The World Health Organization has stepped up its calls for intensified action to fight the coronavirus pandemic, imploring countries “not to let this fire burn”, as Spain said it would declare a 15-day state of emergency from Saturday.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, said Europe – where the virus is present in all 27 EU states and has infected 25,000 people – had become the centre of the epidemic, with more reported cases and deaths than the rest of the world combined apart from China.

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The Dance: the South Africans who finish high school against all odds

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Many South African youths fail to graduate from high school. For the few who do, the ‘Matric’ celebrations are prodigious

In the Cape Flats, the townships and countryside in and around Cape Town, most students drop out of high school due to pregnancy, substance abuse or being recruited by gangs. Many have to leave school to support their families. School fees are a steep price to pay in an area where most families struggle to put food on the table.

Matric dances are held to celebrate those who graduate (matriculate). For months beforehand, families who live in poverty-stricken areas save to buy extravagant ballgowns and tuxedos, and to hire limousines for the big night. If a family is lucky enough to have a student graduate from high school, no effort is spared to give them the night of their dreams. For many, this is the first family member to graduate.

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Zambians brace for water shortage despite recent rainfall

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World’s largest artificial lake drops by six metres in three years after lengthy drought

Zambia is facing severe water and electricity shortages after a lengthy drought, with reservoir levels remaining worryingly low despite recent rains.

Water levels in Lake Kariba, the world’s largest artificial lake at more than 5,500 sq km, have dropped by six metres in the past three years.

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UN under fire over choice of ‘corporate puppet’ as envoy at key food summit

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Organisation accused of kowtowing to big business by appointing former Rwandan agriculture minister with links to agro-industry

A global summit on food security is at risk of being dominated by big business at the expense of farmers and social movements, according to the UN’s former food expert.

Olivier De Schutter, the former UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said food security groups around the world had expressed misgivings about the UN food systems summit, which is due to take place in 2021 and could be crucial to making agriculture more sustainable.

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Zambia: boy arrested for allegedly defaming president on Facebook

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Teenager’s arrest adds to fears Edgar Lungu is becoming increasingly authoritarian

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested in Zambia for allegedly defaming the country’s president in Facebook posts, as critics accuse the administration of turning increasingly authoritarian.

The unnamed teenager, based in the small central town of Kapiri Mposhi, was arrested on Monday and charged with three counts of libel against Edgar Lungu. He will appear in court soon, police said.

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Kenya’s rare white female giraffe ‘killed by poachers’

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Death of giraffe and her calf leave just one male specimen alive

Kenya’s only female white giraffe and her calf have been killed by poachers, conservationists have said, in a major blow to conservation of the rare animals found nowhere else in the world.

The bodies of the two giraffes were found “in a skeletal state after being killed by armed poachers” in Garissa in eastern Kenya, the Ishaqbini Hirola Community Conservancy said in a statement.

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‘Not just where people kill each other’: the man hoping to transform Burundi

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With an election looming, Dieudonné Nahimana shares his vision for unity in a country scarred by ethnic violence

When civil war erupted in Burundi in 1993, like many children, the teenage Dieudonné Nahimana fled to the capital, Bujumbura, and ended up destitute.

He became the de facto leader of a group of 40 street children, surviving in the shelter of abandoned buildings. It was an experience that drove his ambition higher, sowing the seeds for a nation-building project and his decision to run for president.

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Human rights activist ‘forced to flee DRC’ over child cobalt mining lawsuit

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Landmark legal action against world’s biggest tech companies lead to death threats, says activist Auguste Mutombo

A Congolese human rights activist has said he was forced to flee the country with his family after being linked to a lawsuit accusing the world’s largest tech companies of being complicit in the deaths of children in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

In December, the Guardian revealed that a group of families from DRC were launching landmark legal action against Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft and Dell. They claim they aided and abetted the deaths and injuries of their children, who were working in mines that they say were linked to the tech companies.

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Schools close in north-east Kenya after al-Shabaab targets teachers

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Authorities face criticism for withdrawing teaching staff from an already marginalised region where education is badly needed

A series of targeted killings of schoolteachers by a militia group in Kenya has seen an exodus of staff and the closure of hundreds of schools across the north-east of the country.

Thousands of teachers have left their posts in the past two months following several suspected al-Shabaab attacks in the region.

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UK urged to act over men facing death in Egypt for alleged childhood crimes

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Foreign secretary asked to intervene as death penalty hangs over four young men at mass trial in Cairo

A group of British MPs has called on the foreign secretary to intervene in the case of four young men facing a death sentence in Cairo for crimes they allegedly committed as children.

One of them is Ammar El Sudany, who was in the bath when Egyptian security forces raided his home.

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Snapshot sisterhood: women train the lens on women – in pictures

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To mark International Women’s Day, ActionAid is staging a photography exhibition that celebrates female trailblazers in poor countries – from the Guatemalan hip-hop artist who uses her music to champion feminism, to the founder of Kabul’s first yoga studio. All of the images, which are on show at the Oxo Tower in London until 8 March, are taken by female photographers

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Will Europe’s museums rise to the challenge of decolonisation? | Dan Hicks

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With new museums opening in Africa, and calls for restitution increasing, old institutions are being forced to address the legacies of empire

Anthropology and archaeology were among the most important of the colonial disciplines. They derived their power from the trick of collapsing time and space. In his classic 1983 book Time and the Other, Amsterdam-based anthropologist Johannes Fabian described how this illusion operated. It was as if the further the colonial explorer travelled from the metropolis, the further back in time they went – until they found themselves, whether in Africa, Tasmania, or Tierra del Fuego, no longer in the present, but in the Stone Age.

Anthropology museums – which hold “world culture” collections – first developed in Europe, especially Germany and Britain, in the late 19th century. They were designed to realise these exoticising time-warps. In these places, the racist ideologies that sought to justify and naturalise European imperialism were institutionalised, helping create the idea of a distinction between “primitive art” and “civilisation”. Today the colonial mindset of European anthropology museums is being questioned and rethought – and we should all be paying attention.

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We learned four valuable lessons from Ebola. They can help us fight the coronavirus | Chris Withington

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Working in the poorest countries in the world, I saw firsthand that dysfunctional health systems can’t contain an epidemic

The world is on the brink of a global pandemic, and it’s the poorest countries with the weakest health systems that will likely be hit the worst.

I was part of the Ebola response in West Africa. We learned important lessons during that crisis that can help us fight the spread of coronavirus here and overseas.

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