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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Explosion near convoy as Abdalla Hamdok was heading to office in Khartoum
Sudan’s prime minister has survived an apparent assassination attempt after an explosion near his convoy in the capital, Khartoum.
Abdalla Hamdok confirmed he was safe in a tweet shortly after the attack.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...King Djoser’s step pyramid is the main attraction at the Saqqara necropolis. A restoration project that began in 2006 and was paused between 2011 and 2013 worked on the outer facades, internal corridors leading to the burial well, the stone sarcophagus and stairs at two entrances
Continue reading...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.
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