Researchers use supercomputer to predict potential breeding areas as food security fears grow
Scientists monitoring the movements of the worst locust outbreak in Kenya in 70 years are hopeful that a new tracking programme they will be able to prevent a second surge of the crop-ravaging insects.
The UN has described the locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa, and the widespread breeding of the insects in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia that has followed, as “extremely alarming”.
Continue reading...Trachoma is the most common infectious cause of blindness in the world. Kenya aims to eliminate the disease in four years, helped by teams who traverse desert and bushland to reach scattered communities
Continue reading...Canadian Humanitarian members deny distributing expired medication or acting without approval
Authorities in Ethiopia have detained 13 Canadian healthcare workers and volunteers, alleging the group were improperly practising medicine in the country.
Canadian Humanitarian, a non-profit organisation based in the province of Alberta, confirmed the detentions but denied allegations it had distributed expired medication or was offering medical services without prior approval.
Continue reading...Move follows Ghassan Salamé’s failure to get nations to use their leverage to end civil war
International efforts to broker a Libyan ceasefire have been plunged further into chaos by the unexpected resignation of Ghassan Salamé, the UN special envoy to the country.
Salamé’s move, amid UN-led talks in Geneva, is an admission that he has been unable to persuade major powers to use their leverage to end the civil war between Khalifa Haftar, the leader of so-called Libyan National Army forces in the country’s east, and the UN-recognised government of Fayez al-Sarraj, based in the capital, Tripoli.
Continue reading...Two men sue over alleged HIV and gonorrhoea infections that they claim were caused by defective contraceptives
Two Ugandan men have taken court action against an international charity for distributing faulty condoms which, they claim, led to one of them contracting HIV and the other gonorrhoea.
In a lawsuit, Joseph Kintu and Sulaiman Balinya say they bought Life Guard condoms from stores supplied by the Marie Stopes organisation in Uganda in October last year.
Continue reading...Imagine the reaction in Britain if armed Islamist jihadists were to burst in on a Sunday church service in a Surrey village, spraying automatic weapon fire at the congregation and killing the vicar and at least 23 worshippers. Horror and fury would be unconfined. The attack would be an immediate worldwide media sensation.
This is exactly what happened to Protestant churchgoers in Pansi, a village in northern Burkina Faso, on 16 February – though you would hardly know it, judging by the ensuing international silence. The increasing frequency of such atrocities in Africa’s Sahel region is one possible explanation for this apparent indifference, although there are others.
Continue reading...Police discover trafficked minors coerced into exploitative work and men from Ghana who were recruited online and enslaved
Children as young as 10 were among more than 230 people rescued last month during a series of raids combating trafficking and forced labour in Niger.
Operation Sarraounia uncovered 46 children who had been sexually abused or forced to beg and hundreds of Ghanaian men who had been recruited online and then enslaved in the capital, Niamey, said Interpol, which provided assistance.
Continue reading...Fire reportedly started by protesters opposed to concert nearby by Congolese singer
Police evacuated the Gare de Lyon in Paris after scooters and rubbish bins were set alight outside the station, reportedly by protesters opposed to a concert being given by a Congolese singer.
Photos on social media showed flames reaching several metres into the sky and a cloud of black smoke around the station, which was evacuated at the height of rush hour.
Continue reading...Emmerson Mnangagwa makes passionate plea for support as he targets upper middle-income status by 2030
The president of Zimbabwe has appealed for help in pulling his debt-ridden country out of “financial isolation”.
Emmerson Mnangagwa made his passionate call for international funding after he failed to secure new loans from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, African Development Bank and the Paris Club due to outstanding foreign debts of $8bn (£6.2bn).
Continue reading...Law change hailed by supporters as chance for country to benefit from rising global demand for medicinal cannabis products
Malawi has passed a bill decriminalising cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes, almost five years after a motion to legalise industrial hemp was adopted.
The country follows in the footsteps of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho, neighbouring south-east African states that have legalised medicinal cannabis, as well as South Africa, where medicinal and recreational use was decriminalised in 2018.
“Today is a very glorious day for me personally and, I think, for the entire nation,” said Boniface Kadzamira, the former MP who tabled the topic in 2015, following the successful passage of the bill on Thursday.
The economic potential of the fast-growing global medicinal and industrial cannabis industry has been the main driver of the law change in Malawi. In 2019, the World Bank said Malawi “remains one of the poorest countries in the world despite making significant economic and structural reforms to sustain economic growth”. The national poverty rate was more than 50% in 2016.
While Malawi is famous internationally for its recreational cannabis strain “Malawi Gold”, the bill to legalise medicinal and industrial production faced huge opposition from social and religious conservatives in the country.
“It is my strong view that cannabis will in the long run replace tobacco to become our major cash crop – that will contribute hugely to the GDP,” said Kadzamira, who explained that the industry will create employment opportunities in the farming and industrial sectors.
Agriculture offers employment to nearly 80% of Malawi’s population. Tobacco is the country’s major export, and the global decline in its use has impacted the economy. Malawi’s tobacco industry is also marred by exploitation, as international companies such as British American Tobacco have sought cheap labour – including child labour – and low tariffs on raw tobacco for export.
With a voice adored by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and millions across the Arab world, Umm Kulthum rejected gender norms with her powerful, political music. But can her 90-minute songs work in a new stage musical?
You hear the Umm Kulthum cafe before you see it. Violins swoon and a monumental voice surges from a doorway in Cairo’s Tawfiqia neighbourhood. Outside, couples smoke shisha on plastic chairs, dwarfed by two immense golden busts depicting the singer known variously as “the star of the east”, “mother of the Arabs” and “Egypt’s fourth pyramid”.
Umm Kulthum recorded about 300 songs over a 60-year career and her words of love, loss and longing drift reliably from taxis, radios and cafes across the Arab world today, 45 years after her death. Despite singing complex Arabic poetry, she influenced some of the west’s greatest singers. Bob Dylan said: “She’s great. She really is.” Shakira and Beyoncé have performed dance routines to her music. Maria Callas called her “the incomparable voice”.
Continue reading...The late dictator’s downfall is a cautionary tale for those who seek to obliterate dissent in a country of 100 million people
On 28 January 2011, a reporter colleague and I boarded a ghostly Cairo metro train travelling east below the Nile, from Giza to the city centre. Far above us, the capital was ablaze. Pockets of fighting between anti-government protesters and police shook the streets; bridges across the river were revolutionary battlegrounds; ribbons of smoke and teargas filled the sky. In a final, futile attempt at self-preservation, the country’s authoritarian regime had shut down mobile networks and switched off the internet, so reliable news was hard to come by and we didn’t know who would emerge triumphant from what had already been termed Egypt’s “day of rage”.
Related: Hosni Mubarak obituary
Continue reading...Ishaq Usman Bello is shaking the conscience of the courts – and nearly 4,000 wrongly detained prisoners are grateful for it
In a crowded prison courtyard in Suleja, Nigeria, a judge flipped through a battered folder detailing the case against a young woman who stood quietly before him in a faded pink dress.
She was charged with “issuing a dud cheque”, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. But she’d already spent three years in prison awaiting the outcome of her trial.
Continue reading...The army has been called in to eliminate the insects swarming across Africa, but their mission is dangerous and unending
Sitting at a plastic table in the garden of Timisha hotel in Soroti, eastern Uganda, Major General Samuel Kavuma takes a drag of his cigarette and looks down at his phone, which has barely stopped ringing for the past hour.
A military figure for nearly 40 years, Kavuma fought the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgent group. Now, he’s become the “locust commander”, the man leading the fight against the country’s worst locust outbreak in decades.
Continue reading...Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s autocratic former president who ruled with an iron fist for three decades before being toppled during the Arab spring protests in 2011, has died aged 91. We look back at the life and legacy of one of Egypt's most notorious leaders, and the corruption, incompetence and human rights violations that took place under his rule
Continue reading...Erick Kabendera, a known critic of the government, faces steep fine after pleading guilty to tax evasion charges in case widely seen as part of President Magufuli’s media crackdown
An investigative journalist known for holding the Tanzanian government to account has been released from prison after pleading guilty to charges widely discredited as politically motivated.
Erick Kabendera, who has written for the Guardian and various other publications, was arrested by plainclothes police officers in July last year. This week he has been ordered to pay 275m Tanzanian shillings (£92,180) on charges of tax evasion and money laundering.
Continue reading...Instead of becoming ‘factories for babies’, women who’ve fled South Sudan to Uganda are trying new options for managing their reproductive health
Christine Lamwaka and her husband gathered their six children and fled. It was April 2017 and their town in South Sudan had just been attacked. They walked for two days from Eastern Equatoria before crossing the border into Uganda.
“It was hard to flee with the young children. We struggled to run. I thought we couldn’t make it alive,” says Lamwaka, who was 22 at the time of the attack.
Continue reading...Lawyer argues that Thomas Thabane’s office gives him immunity from prosecution
Lesotho’s prime minister has made a surprise appearance in court, where his lawyer argued that his office granted him immunity from prosecution for allegedly murdering his estranged wife shortly before he took power.
Thomas Thabane sat in the public gallery of the court in Maseru, the capital of the small mountain kingdom, with his present spouse. He had been due to appear on Friday to be charged with murder, but had not appeared, saying he had to travel to neighbouring South Africa for medical treatment.
Continue reading...Landmark law expected to replace clan system and lay groundwork for long-awaited ‘one person, one vote’ poll
The president of Somalia has signed a landmark federal law, paving the way for the country to hold its first popular election in half a century.
A long awaited “one person, one vote” election could be held by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Art fair founder says western institutions belatedly investing in contemporary art from Africa
Major western culture institutions – including Tate and MoMA – are “playing catch up” to create truly global collections that recognise modern art from the Africa, according to the founder of an influential art fair devoted for contemporary African art.
Touria El Glaoui, the director and founder of 1-54, said that only in the last decade have institutions begun to take it seriously.
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