Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
As Covid-19 creeps across the region, fears mount over how it will unfold. Will a young population help stem the spread of disease, or will it unleash catastrophe on creaking health systems?
Just seven weeks after Africa recorded its first case of Covid-19 – an Italian national in Algeria – the virus is creeping across the continent, infecting more than 10,000 people and causing 487 deaths. Three of the region’s 54 countries – São Tome and Principe, Comoros, and Lesotho – remain apparently virus-free.
“Case numbers are increasing exponentially in the African region,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa. “It took 16 days from the first confirmed case in the region to reach 100 cases. It took a further 10 days to reach the first thousand. Three days after this, there were 2,000 cases, and two days later we were at 3,000.”
He’s been attacked by pastors and jailed by the authorities. But the outspoken rapper will not be silenced. He talks about his cult-like following – and the weird rules ‘Marlians’ live by
Depending on who you talk to, Naira Marley is either the scourge of the next generation of Nigerians or their saviour. But whoever’s talking, the pop star – arguably the most controversial in Africa – is spoken about in near-mythological tones, which makes his amiability very arresting when we meet in London a few weeks before lockdown.
He arrives flanked by an entourage, photoshoot-ready in a reflective puffer, and oscillates between class clown and deep thought. To some, the 25-year-old’s meteoric rise over the past two years has been sudden: selling out Brixton Academy in three minutes; accruing three million Instagram followers, tens of millions of streams, and a cult-like fandom. But the signs of stardom have always been there.
In the visitors’ books of Eshowe’s many guesthouses and hotels, tourists inspired by verdant sugar cane fields and blossoming trees write about “a corner of Eden”.
Locals and specialists know the small town set high among the rolling hills that run along South Africa’s eastern coast for another reason.
Letter calls for $8bn emergency fund to bolster health systems in world’s poorer countries
A group of 165 global leaders has called for immediate and coordinated international action to tackle the twin health and economic emergencies caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Past and present politicians – including three former UK prime ministers – joined academics and civil society representatives to warn the G20 that the virus will return unless urgent action is taken to bolster health systems in poor countries of Africa and Latin America.
‘The virus does not discriminate,” suggested Michael Gove after both Boris Johnson and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, were struck down by Covid-19. But societies do. And in so doing, they ensure that the devastation wreaked by the virus is not equally shared.
We can see this in the way that the low paid both disproportionately have to continue to work and are more likely to be laid off; in the sacking of an Amazon worker for leading a protest against unsafe conditions; in the rich having access to coronavirus tests denied to even most NHS workers.
If Europe, the US and China are struggling to contain it, what chance for millions of people in less developed countries?
It is a terrible thing to see a disaster in the making and be unable to prevent it. Yet this is the prospect confronting us if we dare to look beyond the walls and parapets of a Britain besieged by the coronavirus invader. Tens of millions of people in poorer, less developed countries across the world face a looming catastrophe that appears as unstoppable as it is potentially lethal.
The moment has not quite arrived. But an axe is poised to fall on untold numbers of largely defenceless heads, a massacre almost too appalling to contemplate. As the relatively wealthy countries of the northern hemisphere engage in a noisy struggle to repulse Covid-19, alarm bells are ringing from south Asia to the Middle East and Africa. Mostly they have not yet been heard.
Tunisia’s interior ministry has sent a police robot to patrol the streets of the capital and enforce a lockdown imposed last month as the country battles the spread of coronavirus.
Known as PGuard, the “robocop” is remotely operated and equipped with infrared and thermal imaging cameras, in addition to a sound and light alarm system.
When the overcrowded, long-distance bus from Johannesburg arrived at the Malawian border post of Mwanza last week, one passenger was dead. Fearing he had picked up Covid-19 in South Africa and infected all his fellow travellers, the guards sent everyone to a hastily built quarantine centre for 14 days.
The man had died of other causes but Malawi, which is well used to devastating diseases like HIV and Aids, cholera and malaria, is taking no chances. Along with São Tomé, Comoros, South Sudan, Burundi, and Sierra Leone in Africa, it is one of the last countries in the world not to have confirmed a single Covid-19 case yet.
US military vows to be more open about activities after allegations that teenager and farmer were killed in Somalia airstrikes
Faced with new allegations of killing civilians with drone strikes in Somalia, the US military has announced plans to make its operations across Africa more transparent.
Amnesty International accused the US military on Wednesday of providing “zero accountability” for civilian victims of airstrikes by its Africa command, Africom.
We are about to wrap up our coverage on this blog for the day, but you can follow all developments on our new global live blog here. In the interim, you can catch up on all the day’s latest news here, on our latest At a Glance:
Once hailed as a champion of democracy, Alpha Condé is threatening to outstay his welcome as Guinea’s president
Even before the pandemic there were postponements. Before that, there were protests. From a large armchair positioned beneath his own portrait, the 82-year-old president of Guinea is not answering the key question preoccupying his country whether or not he wants to remain in situ until he is 94.
In the Sekhoutoureah presidential palace in Conakry, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers, Alpha Condé is flanked on one side by a large photograph of himself alongside Barack Obama in the White House. On the other, framed photographs on a table show him shaking hands with the Turkish leader, Recep Erdoğan, and with China’s Xi Jinping. There’s also a golden bust of Chairman Mao and a hefty book about the Beninese politician Robert Dossou.
Local communities flee as boundaries with Lake Chad become a war zone following ambush in which almost 100 soldiers died
The Chadian army that lost nearly 100 soldiers to a Boko Haram ambush a week ago has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone, heightening fears that civilians will suffer an escalation in violence.
President Idriss Débytravelled to the region to announce the Wrath of Boma operation, named after the island where Boko Haram launched a seven-hour assault that Déby said was the worst the country’s military had ever suffered.
The European Commission has proposed a short-time work scheme to avoid mass lay-offs across the bloc during the coronavirus pandemic.
The scheme, which is modelled on Germany’s Kurzabeit programme, was announced by Commission head Ursula von der Leyen in a video message.
Companies are paying salaries to their employees, even if, right now, they are not making money. Europe is now coming to their support, with a new initiative.
“It is intended to help Italy, Spain and all other countries that have been hard hit. And it will do so thanks to the solidarity of other member states,” she said.
Italy has extended lockdown restrictions until 13 April as signs emerge indicating the coronavirus contagion might be reaching a “plateau”.
“Italians have shown great maturity,” Roberto Speranza, the health minister, told parliament on Wednesday. “Experts say we are on the right track, and that the drastic measures taken are starting to give results.”
However, Speranza warned “we must not drop our guard” as the recovery will be “prudent and gradual”.
“It would be unforgiveable to mistake this first result for a definitive defeat of Covid, it’s a long battle.”
The number of new confirmed infections rose by 2,107 on Tuesday, taking the total number of current cases to 77,635, according to figures from Italy’s civil protection authority.
The rise in infections was higher than the daily increase registered on Monday (1,648), but lower than Sunday’s increase of 3,815.
On Tuesday, there was a 2.8% increase in new (i.e current) infections, compared with an average daily rise of 15% during one of the most critical weeks.
The death toll rose by 837 on Tuesday to 12,428, higher than the 812 deaths registered on Monday. The number of people who have recovered from the virus rose by 1,109 to 15,729 on Tuesday, following a record leap of 1,590 on Monday.
The daily death toll and infection rate have also started to slow in Lombardy, the region worst-affected by the virus.
“The curve tells us that we’re at a plateau,” said Silvio Brusaferro, the president of the Higher Health Institute (ISS).
As coronavirus lockdowns have been expanded globally, billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. Police across the world have been given licence to control behaviour in a way that would normally be extreme even for an authoritarian state.
Decision hailed as ‘victory’ comes amid warnings that coronavirus could close schools and leave teenagers vulnerable in quarantine
Sierra Leone has lifted an internationally criticised ban that prohibited pregnant schoolgirls from attending school and sitting exams, in a move heralded by activists as a “victory for feminism” in the west African nation.
The decision, announced on Monday, follows a judgment last December by a top regional court that ordered the immediate overturn of the ban, which effectively barred tens of thousands of girls the right to finish their education. The Economic Community of West African States court instructed Sierra Leone to establish nationwide programmes to help pregnant girls return to school.
Do you ever run out of questions, you people? Trump asks a room full of reporters.
Trump is talking about the impeachment. “They probably illegally impeached me... you don’t hear much about that nowadays because everyone’s talking about the virus,” which he is happy about, the US president says.
“The democrats their whole live their whole being their whole existence was to try and get me out of office any way they can even if it was a phony deal.”
"I think I'm getting A pluses now for how I handled myself during a phony impeachment," Trump says.
My mentor and friend Eldred Jones, who has died aged 95, was principal and pro-vice-chancellor of Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone, the oldest university institution in sub-Saharan Africa. A literary scholar and critic, he was one of the pioneers of the study of modern African literature and introduced unique perspectives in Shakespearean studies.
Eldred was an outstanding lecturer and his students learned how to think about literature by emulating his example. His 1965 book, Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, won the criticism prize in the first World Festival of Negro Arts (now World Festival of Black Arts) held in Dakar in 1966; however, as Eldred was then Commonwealth fellow at the University of Leeds, he was unaware of the fact until his landlord gave him a copy of the Guardian report.
Coronavirus has given President Yoweri Museveni an opportunity to further clamp down on freedoms
In Uganda, for the first time since 2013, more than three people can legally meet without needing to inform the police. Last week, parts of the Public Order Management Act, a law used to gag political opponents, was declared unconstitutional. But most Ugandans are staying away from crowds and keeping at home to control the spread of coronavirus.
The government moved quickly to close schools and universities. Measures became more and more stringent – closing borders, compulsory quarantine, banning public transport and the sale of non-food items at open markets.
Swipe at lawmakers as judge says only ‘undemocratic and authoritarian regimes’ seek to ban peaceful protests
Government opponents and human rights activists have welcomed a decision by Uganda’s constitutional court to overturn legislation that gave police “supernatural powers” to stop public gatherings and protests.
“It is only in undemocratic and authoritarian regimes that peaceful protests and public gatherings of a political nature are not tolerated,” said Justice Cheborion Barishaki in a ruling on Thursday.