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.
Continue reading...The incumbent seeks to extend his family’s half-century political domination
Togo voted Saturday in an election widely expected to see president Faure Gnassingbé claim a fourth term in power and extend his family’s half-century domination of the west African nation.
The incumbent, 53, was running against six other candidates but with the opposition divided they face a mammoth task to persuade the 3.6 million registered voters to oust him.
Continue reading...Defence minister hails ‘cooperation’ in fight against militants after Nigerien and French forces’ offensive in restive Tillaberi region
More than 100 “terrorists” have been killed in south-west Niger by local forces in a joint operation with French troops, the country’s defence ministry said.
As of Thursday “120 terrorists have been neutralised” in the operation in the vast Tillaberi region near the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, the statement on Friday said, adding there had been no losses among Nigerien or French troops. Vehicles and bomb-making equipment were seized.
Continue reading...As the country goes to the polls, the ruling Gnassingbé dynasty has a stranglehold on power that looks unshakeable
A familiar quote in Togo comes from the president, Faure Gnassingbé, who once said: “My father told me to never leave power.”
He has heeded that advice. The first African country where a coup d’etat occurred after independence and where the elected head of state was assassinated, Togo stands to be the last country in Africa to see the lights of a democratic alternation.
Continue reading...Writer and activist who was imprisoned for insulting Ugandan president calls on him to go as 18-month sentence is revoked
The feminist academic and writer Stella Nyanzi has been released from prison after her 18-month sentence for insulting Uganda’s president was quashed.
Nyanzi collapsed as she left court in Kampala on Thursday, and scuffles broke out between her supporters and prison wardens, who fired live rounds into the air to disperse the crowd.
Continue reading...Macron’s autocratic attitude towards dissent in countries such as Niger and Mali is only stoking anti-French sentiment
Large protests have been taking place in Bamako, the capital of Mali, demanding that French troops leave the country. “We marched for them to leave, and now they send 600 more,” one blogger in Mali wrote in response to the news that more French soldiers were to be deployed to the Sahel. In total, roughly 5,100 French troops are deployed in Mali, as well as across Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. Public opposition to French military intervention in the Sahel, seen as undermining national sovereignty, has been growing over the last year across francophone Africa. The popular Cameroonian musician Géneral Valsero recently declared, “The presence of the French army is an insult.”
French troops have been in the region on and off since they occupied it in the 19th century, seeking to secure French access to labour and resources. They have remained, and returned, since independence. The French launched Operation Serval in 2013 in response to gains made by insurgent groups in the north of Mali. Since then, instability has spread and different states in the region are now dealing with repeated attacks and insurgencies from a range of groups, some linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Continue reading...Young people found to be ‘overwhelmingly keen’ to tackle Africa’s challenges head on, challenging negative stereotypes
Young people across Africa are confident that the continent is heading for an era of success fuelled by technology and entrepreneurship, according to a new survey.
The Africa Youth survey, which claims to be the largest of its kind, said there is growing belief in the concept of “Afro-optimism”, fighting persistently negative stereotypes of the continent.
Continue reading...UN warns 25 million people could be affected as wartorn country is beset by fresh wave of insects
Swarms of desert locusts, which have been ravaging crops and grazing land across east Africa, have now crossed the border into South Sudan, a country already struggling from widespread hunger and years of civil war.
The UN has warned that an imminent second hatch of the insects could threaten the food security of 25 million people across the region.
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