Category Archives: Africa

Coronavirus live news: number of confirmed global cases passes 200,000

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Belgium goes into lockdown; EU implements strictest travel ban in history; outbreak reaches every US state. Follow the latest updates

Breaking: Nicola Sturgeon announces schools and nurseries in Scotland will close to pupils at the end of the week.

The first minister said there will be further announcements to support low income students on free school meals as well as students who have exams.

A person has died from coronavirus in Burkina Faso, the first known death from the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, writes the Guardian’s international correspondent Michael Safi.

The country, where security has been deteriorating for months due to attacks by armed groups including some linked to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, has emerged as a hotspot in Africa, with 27 confirmed cases and at least 200 more people suspected of having the disease.

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Beaten, raped and forced to work: why I’m exposing the scandal of Nigeria’s house girls

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Mariam and Edna were just two of millions of children trapped in domestic slavery. Their tragic stories inspired me to write a novel targeting a practice that is rife in the country

One day, when my daughter was eight, I asked her to help me unload the dishwasher. She moaned, dragged her feet and pleaded for Haribo in exchange for this simple task. I asked her if she knew how lucky she was and told her that, in many homes in Nigeria, girls as young as her were forced to do chores all day, every day. They were not allowed to go to school, or eat at the table, or watch TV. She was amazed. Looking into her face, the horror of what was considered so normal during my childhood really hit me. It was child slavery – and it continues today. It was for these forgotten girls, trapped in domestic slavery, that I wrote my debut novel, The Girl With the Louding Voice.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the number of working children under the age of 14 in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 15 million, but due to the nature of the problem it is almost impossible to land on an accurate number. A large proportion of these children are young girls, who work as “house girls”: domestic servants who are often underage and forced against their will into this kind of work. Many of them never see their “wages”, as they are paid directly to agents or family members.

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Coronavirus news: UK measures to last at least ‘several months’ as restrictions increased globally – live updates

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England’s deputy chief medical officer does not rule out further curbs; Ohio primary polls ordered to close; France in lockdown; WHO urges widespread testing. Follow the latest updates

Iran has temporarily freed a total of 85,000 prisoners, including political prisoners, a spokesman for its judiciary said on Tuesday, adding that the prisons were responding to the threat of a coronavirus epidemic in jails.

“Some 50% of those released are security-related prisoners . Also in the jails we have taken precautionary measures to confront the outbreak,” the spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili.

The #Iranian government feels it is appropriate to release 80k+ prisoners due to #Covid_19 ,including murderers&drug dealers,but continuously refuse to release the innocent political prisoners,because they hold too much value as bargaining chips #freeanoosheh

On the island of Jamaica, political and social messages have long been spread through the dancehalls and music, and so it is with coronavirus.

Just days after the island’s first confirmed case, an educational single, New Hail, was released to teach listeners how to avoid spreading the virus.

Mi just ah think, we cyan a guh roun’ and touch touch people like we used to. Then me link wid one of my G dem - and you know da likkle supm deh weh we ah rub off big finga? Mi seh dah hail deh now, it haffi guh cut out. Because dis nuh good fi we health, right now. Right deh so now, di song pop inna mi head, like yow, we need fi hail wid we foot enuh.

It a affect yuh, and it nuh care ‘bout race, riches or gender. A nuh everything make fi gimmick and joke ‘bout. As an artiste, I’m all about the fun, but this is not a fun thing and me coulda never do a dance fi some people siddung and joke and laugh about. Yuh know how much street dance cancel over this thing, how many people livelihood affected? Yuh know how much a my show dem get cancel because no travelling nah gwaan?

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Kenya split over campaign to give women the right to safe abortions

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MP Esther Passaris says lives are being put at risk in a country where 40% of pregnancies are unplanned

The pills arrived with no instructions. Delivered on a Sunday to Joy’s home in Kayole, an informal settlement in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, by someone she didn’t know.

She had ordered them because she was pregnant, and didn’t want to be. At 19, she said, she couldn’t support a baby, and the father had stopped answering his phone after she told him. Desperate, she had asked an older friend, who said she knew someone who could help.

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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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