Category Archives: Africa

Changing roles in Burkina Faso – a photo essay

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In one of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso, a very special school gives new hope to orphaned or disadvantaged girls

In Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso in west Africa, a school and training programme is combating entrenched attitudes and gender stereotypes that confine women to low-paid unskilled labour, or worse. At the CFIAM, girls and young women, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, can train to be car mechanics, a trade that offers them the skills necessary to enable them to pursue independent lives and achieve a measure of socio-economic progress. Such is the success of CFIAM and its students that it has been the subject of an award-winning documentary Ouaga Girls

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Kenya suffers worst locust infestation in 70 years as millions of insects swarm farmland

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UN urges immediate action as east African nations already experiencing devastating hunger see large areas of crops destroyed

The worst outbreak of desert locusts in Kenya in 70 years has seen hundreds of millions of the insects swarm into the east African nation from Somalia and Ethiopia. Those two countries have not had an infestation like this in a quarter century, destroying farmland and threatening an already vulnerable region with devastating hunger.

“Even cows are wondering what is happening,” said Ndunda Makanga, who spent hours Friday trying to chase the locusts from his farm. “Corn, sorghum, cowpeas, they have eaten everything.”

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Examining Britain’s part in the Biafran war | Letters

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Robert Bennett says no account of the war should ignore its origins in a mainly Igbo military coup in 1966. Alan Healey thinks too many people still look at Britain’s colonial past as a golden age. Judith Nicoll recalls her father, who was shot down and killed while flying food and medicines into Biafra

Frederick Forsyth (Buried for 50 years: Britain’s shameful role in Biafra, Journal, 21 January) arrived in Biafra shortly after I was evacuated in June 1967 at the start of the war, just 15 miles north of Nsukka, where I was working as a university lecturer.

No account of the Biafran war should ignore its origins in a mainly Igbo military coup in January 1966, a coup in which three Nigerian political leaders were assassinated (none of them Igbo). Among them was a man who, by popular accounts, was a modest and good politician: the prime minister, Tafawa Balewa.

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Billions of locusts swarm through Kenya – in pictures

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Huge locust swarms in east Africa are the result of extreme weather swings and could prove catastrophic for a region still reeling from drought and deadly floods. Dense clouds of the ravenous insects have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya, in the region’s worse infestation in decades

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Threat of jail looms over even mildest critics under Egyptian crackdown

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Nine years after uprising, Egyptians face strict controls on political activity and free speech

Mohammed Abdellatif did not see himself as a political activist. As a dentist in Cairo, his concerns were focused on healthcare and issues such as a lack of medical supplies and low wages for doctors.

Then at 3am one day last September, 50 armed security agents stormed his family home. Abdellatif’s alleged crime was to have launched a social media campaign demanding better pay and conditions for health workers in Egypt. The previous month while working at a public hospital in Giza, he had started the Twitter hashtag “Egyptian doctors are angry”.

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‘Food prices shot up’: floods spark a scramble for survival in east Africa

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From Somalia to South Sudan, torrential rains have devastated crops and made roads impassable, sending the cost of food soaring

Before the floods hit her village, crumpling buildings, ripping out pathways and submerging swathes of land, Nurto Mohamed Hassan could buy a kilogram of rice for the equivalent of about 70p.

Now the cost is more than £1. This may not seem a lot in isolation but, for people with little money and families to feed, it is a significant rise.

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Isabel dos Santos responds to Luanda Leaks investigation

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Former Angolan president’s daughter and her husband deny corruption accusations

Isabel dos Santos issued the following statement on Thursday after being formally named as a suspect by the Angolan attorney general in connection with a criminal inquiry into embezzlement at the state oil company Sonangol.

The allegations which have been made against me over the last few days are extremely misleading and untrue.

We will seek to clarify our position in relation to the latest accusations.

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Luanda Leaks: Isabel dos Santos ‘named as suspect in criminal investigation’

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Allegations against Africa’s richest woman said to relate to maladministration of funds

Africa’s richest woman, Angola’s Isabel dos Santos, has been named as a formal suspect in a criminal investigation, the country’s attorney general is reported to have announced.

Dos Santos amassed a fortune estimated at $2.2bn (£1.7bn) while her father, José Eduardo dos Santos, was president of Angola.

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Millions at risk after toxins found in Harare water supply, study finds

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Unpublished report claims water from contaminated reservoir leaves 3 million in Zimbabwe’s capital at risk of disease

Water being pumped to millions of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital city came from reservoirs contaminated by dangerous toxins, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

A study conducted by South African company Nanotech Water Solutions concluded that the health of 3 million Harare residents may be endangered by the provision of water containing toxins that can cause liver and central nervous system diseases.

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UK could tap into Africa’s $24bn market for off-grid solar power

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Rapidly growing sector could prove lucrative as Britain seeks post-Brexit trade opportunities

UK investors could seize a $24bn investment opportunity by helping to connect millions of people without access to electricity to off-grid home solar power systems.

The market for pay-as-you-go home solar packages is expected to boom in Africa, where millions of homes are using mobile technology to rent low-cost solar panels.

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Heads could roll at PwC over Isabel dos Santos links, says chairman

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Exclusive: Bob Moritz says he is ‘shocked and disappointed’ by Luanda Leaks disclosures

The global chairman of PwC has warned that heads could roll at the professional services firm over its links to Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, who is battling allegations that she obtained her wealth through corruption and nepotism.

Bob Moritz, whose firm advised companies belonging to Dos Santos and her husband across multiple jurisdictions, told the Guardian he was “shocked and disappointed” by recent disclosures about the British-headquartered accounting firm’s work for the daughter of Angola’s former president.

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Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre

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The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care

A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.

Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.

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Tony Blair is wrong. Africa won’t be the answer to Britain’s post-Brexit problems

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Far from promising an economic miracle, the UK has missed the boat on a continent on the brink of a painful debt crisis

Tony Blair’s cheerleading for the UK-Africa investment summit is of a piece with much of the former prime minister’s recent career. Trading in grand-sounding ideas, often very short on detail, he brings the pitch of an evangelist crossed with a lobbyist to the world’s biggest problems.

Blair’s latest piece of rhetorical woo-woo unites (and promises to address) a series of disparate preoccupations: eradicating poverty and encouraging good governance in Africa while solving the issue of Britain’s trading relationships post-Brexit. All seasoned with just a hint of post-colonial hubris.

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Angola vows to force return of Isabel dos Santos by ‘all possible means’

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Pledge comes as former ruler’s daughter denounces Luanda Leaks investigation

The Angolan government has vowed to use “all possible means” to force the return of Isabel dos Santos following the Luanda Leaks investigation into how the ex-president’s daughter accrued her $2bn fortune.

Angola’s prosecutor general, Hélder Pitra Grós, said on Angolan public radio on Monday that the country would use “all possible means and activate international mechanisms to bring Dos Santos back to the country”.

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Libya oil production nosedives as Haftar ignores calls to end war

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Increasingly erratic general shows no sign of relenting despite international pressure

Libya’s oil production and exports have almost ground to a halt as the increasingly unpredictable Gen Khalifa Haftar, the military leader in the country’s east, ignores international calls to seek a negotiated political settlement to the civil war.

World leaders had convened in Berlin on Sunday to endorse plans to entrench, monitor and enforce a ceasefire intended as a precursor to the disarming of militias and political talks in Geneva to build a reunified government, and a fair distribution of oil revenues between the east and west of the country.

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What are the Luanda Leaks?

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Leak has shown how Africa’s richest woman built her empire, but how did it happen?

Isabel dos Santos, the billionaire daughter of the former president of Angola, claims to be a self-made businesswoman, but a cache of documents investigated by the Guardian and partners appears to tell a different story.

The Luanda Leaks are a trove of 715,000 emails, charts, contracts, audits, and accounts that help explain how Dos Santos built a business empire worth an estimated $2bn.

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World’s 22 richest men wealthier than all the women in Africa, study finds

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Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work

The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa, according to a study.

Women and girls across the globe contribute an estimated £8.28tn ($10.8tn) to the global economy with a total of 12.5bn hours a day of unpaid care work, a figure more than three times the worth of the global tech industry, claims an Oxfam report published on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

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Britain must open a new chapter in its relationship with Africa

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Economic growth in African countries has triggered a global race for influence. Britain cannot afford to be left behind

Africa is the coming continent. Its population is predicted to double to 2 billion people over the next three decades. That growth will mean enormous opportunities for business and investment, but will also create huge challenges around sustainability and the environment.

An Africa focus is therefore essential, particularly for a post-Brexit Britain.

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Libya: Sanctions threatened against countries who break arms embargo

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Johnson says international peacekeeping force could monitor the proposed ceasefire

World leaders seeking an enduring ceasefire in Libya have agreed at a summit to impose sanctions on those breaking an arms embargo and are considering whether to send a multinational force to the country.

The conference in Berlin of 11 countries is aimed at bringing an end to the fighting between the UN-recognised government in Tripoli led by the prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, and the Libyan National Army in the country’s east led by Gen Khalifa Haftar.

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Two months in a barrel: South African man set to break pole-sitting world record

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Vernon Kruger, who has not set foot on the ground since November, says sleeping in the barrel is ‘not very easy’

Vernon Kruger has been sitting in a barrel suspended 25 metres above ground for more than two months.

Overlooking the South African town of Dullstroom, the 52-year old is about to break a Guinness world record ... set by himself in 1997.

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