Category Archives: Africa

Ancient fish dinners chart Sahara’s shift from savannah to desert

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Bones of fish eaten by humans thousands of years ago offer clue to region’s ancient climate

The Sahara’s shift from savannah with abundant lakes to a largely arid expanse has been traced in the remains of fish eaten thousands of years ago.

Researchers analysing material found in a rock shelter in the Acacus mountains in south-west Libya say they have found more than 17,500 animal remains dating from between 10,200 and 4,650 years ago, 80% of which are fish. About two-thirds of the fish were catfish and the rest were tilapia. The team say telltale marks on the bones reveal the fish were eaten by humans who used the shelter.

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Locusts swarm into crisis-hit South Sudan as plague spreads across east Africa

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Invasion is further food shortages in country struggling with drought and legacy of civil war

Swarms of locusts ravaging crops and grazing land across east Africa have reached South Sudan, already reeling from widespread hunger and years of civil war, the country’s agriculture minister said on Tuesday.

Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti are battling the worst locust outbreak in decades, and swarms have also spread into Tanzania and Uganda.

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Acid attack survivors in Uganda – in pictures

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Acid attacks have been on the rise in Uganda. Organisations such as End Acid Violence Uganda are pushing for a law that would see harsher punishments for perpetrators such as a ‘no bail policy’, satisfactory compensation for victims, and implementation of a medical care policy paid for by the government. End Acid Violence Uganda officers make regular home visits to survivors to offer support and guidance.

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How Sudan’s star of the tambour defied death and dictatorship

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Once lauded as one of Sudan’s finest musicians, Abu Obaida Hassan faded into obscurity under the Bashir regime and was even pronounced dead. Now he is back – to global acclaim

The unpaved outskirts of Omdurman, Sudan’s second city, seem like an unusual place to find a musical superstar, but Abu Obaida Hassan is far from ordinary. The frail man in his 60s who holds court in the shaded yard of a squat brick house represents a musical revolution, one that electrified traditional Sudanese music. Stranger still, in the eyes of the Sudanese public he is back from the dead.

In his 70s heyday, Abu Obaida travelled from Merowe, the home of the Shaigiya people and a centre of Nubian culture, to Khartoum, finding fame as a renegade player of a local stringed instrument known as the tambour.

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EU agrees to deploy warships to enforce Libya arms embargo

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Operation to come into force as mission to save migrants and refugees from sea is wound down

The EU has agreed to deploy warships to stop the flow of weapons into Libya, as the bloc wound down a military mission that had once rescued migrants and refugees from drowning in the Mediterranean.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, announced that 27 foreign ministers had agreed to launch a new operation with naval ships, planes and satellites in order to enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya.

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Unexploded bombs pose rising threat to civilians in Libya

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Rights groups and UN warn of rapidly accelerating danger as banned cluster weapons are deployed

The threat posed by unexploded bombs is rising exponentially in wartorn Libya, experts have warned, with the use of banned cluster weapons a source of particular concern.

The UN’s Mine Action Service (Unmas) said that even parts of the country previously cleared of explosive material had been recontaminated following a surge in fighting since April last year, when the warlord Khalifa Haftar launched a campaign to seize the capital, Tripoli.

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British tourists land in Sharm el-Sheikh on first flights since 2015 plane bombing

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Celebrations as a TUI flight from Gatwick becomes one of the first to land in the Egyptian resort town after the bombing of a Russian airliner

British tourists have arrived on one of the first flights from the UK to the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh since restrictions were lifted.

Flights between Britain and Sharm el-Sheikh were halted in November 2015, following the bombing of a Russian airliner soon after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport, which killed all 224 people on board.

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Libya arms embargo is a joke, says UN envoy as ceasefire talks continue

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Blunt assessment follows Munich meeting to try to mediate between warring sides

The UN-backed arms embargo in Libya has become a joke and the country’s financial position is deteriorating rapidly, the UN deputy special envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, has said after foreign ministers met in Munich to try to enforce a ceasefire between the two warring sides.

Since a meeting of world leaders in Berlin last month to draw up a Libyan peace plan, both sides in the civil war have ignored international appeals and turned back to their external sponsor nations for further arms and mercenary support. Last week the UN security council passed a resolution calling for enforcement of the arms embargo and a ceasefire.

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‘Trump is deciding who is American’: how the new travel ban is tearing families apart

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As six countries are added to the list of restrictions, Nigerian and Eritreans in the US say the ban is devastating their lives

It started out as a joyous day for Olumide. On 31 January, the 32-year-old Nigerian American learned in an email that the US was finally processing the visa applications of his wife and daughter in Nigeria.

Hours later, Donald Trump shattered their celebration, announcing that he was adding six countries to the travel ban, including Nigeria. The decision cuts off pathways to permanent US residency for Nigerians, throwing Olumide’s case into limbo at the final stage of the process. It leaves his wife and and 11-year-old girl stuck across an ocean with little hope of making it to the US.

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More than 6,000 bodies found in six mass grave sites in Burundi

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Discovery largest since excavations launched to help country come to terms with troubled past

More than 6,000 bodies have been found in six mass graves in Burundi. The discovery in Karusi province is the largest since the government launched a nationwide excavation in January.

Pierre Claver Ndayicariye, the chairman of the Burundi’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said the remains of 6,032 victims, as well as thousands of bullets, had been recovered. Clothes, glasses and rosaries were used to identify some of the victims.

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Mali killings: 40 die in inter-ethnic attacks

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Gunmen kill at least 31 people, set huts and crops alight and burn livestock in village of Ogossagou

Forty people, including nine soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks in central Mali, authorities said, with most of the deaths caused by inter-ethnic violence in the deeply troubled region.

Thirty-one people were killed in an attack overnight Friday in Ogossagou, a village mainly inhabited by Fulani people, where 160 died last March in a massacre blamed on Dogon militiamen, the government said.

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Giulio Regeni’s parents urge Italy to help student held in Egypt

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Human rights activist Patrick Zaky had been studying at the University of Bologna

The family of an Italian doctoral student murdered in Cairo have urged “democratic governments” to intervene in the case of an Egyptian master’s student in Italy who was detained on arrival in Egypt last week.

Paola and Claudio Regeni, the parents of Giulio Regeni, whose mutilated corpse was found in 2016, called on Italy to do more to help Patrick Zaky, an Egyptian student and activist studying at the University of Bologna who was detained and reportedly tortured on arrival in Cairo to visit his family.

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DJ Diaki: Balani Fou review | Ammar Kalia’s global album of the month

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(Nyege Nyege Tapes)
DJ Diaki’s debut is a speeding cascade of sound that skilfully re-creates the pounding atmosphere of Malian street party Balani Show

Recent years have seen some of the most exciting dancefloor-focused music moving further and further away from its spiritual homes of Detroit, Chicago, Berlin or London. Now, styles such as South African gqom or Angolan kuduro-techno are pushing their way into club sound systems with rattling tempos in excess of 200bpm and unpredictable polyrhythms replacing the familiar four-to-the-floor kick.

The work released by Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes is among the most inventive of these styles. Encompassing sounds from the ground-shaking rhythms of Tanzanian singeli to the electro-synths of Ugandan acholi, the label has been challenging a recent trend towards often purposefully punishing “deconstructed” club music with their joyous reimaginings of east African music. Their latest release by Malian DJ Diaki is no less formidable. A stalwart of the Balani Show sound system – a party setup playing electronic, layered versions of the marimba-style instrument balafon – Diaki now releases his debut on Nyege Nyege.

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European court under fire for backing Spain’s express deportations

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ECHR accused of ‘ignoring reality’ in ruling on men who entered north African enclave

The European court of human rights has been accused of “completely ignoring the reality” along the continent’s borders after it ruled that Spain acted lawfully when it summarily deported two people who tried to scale the border fence separating Morocco from Spanish territory six years ago.

The Strasbourg court announced its decision on Thursday in the case brought by the two men, who are from Mali and Ivory Coast.

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Healing hands: the Italian surgeon treating Libya torture camp survivors

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Prof Massimo Del Bene aids African migrants whose captors inflicted horrific injuries to extort ransom payments

The first patient was a young Ghanaian man who had been tortured every day for more than a year in Libya by traffickers trying to extort a ransom for his release, says Prof Massimo Del Bene, head of reconstructive surgery at the San Gerardo hospital in Monza, north of Milan.

Since then, the surgeon renowned for performing the first double hand transplant in Italy, has adapted his expertise to what he calls “torture surgery”, helping African migrants who have survived Libyan detention camps, where traffickers and criminal gangs are documented to have tortured captives to extort ransom money.

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Scientists find evidence of ‘ghost population’ of ancient humans

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Traces of unknown ancestor emerged when researchers analysed genomes from west African populations

Scientists have found evidence for a mysterious “ghost population” of ancient humans that lived in Africa about half a million years ago and whose genes live on in people today.

Traces of the unknown ancestor emerged when researchers analysed genomes from west African populations and found that up to a fifth of their DNA appeared to have come from the missing relatives.

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African countries braced for ‘inevitable’ arrival of coronavirus

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Health centres step up preparations as World Health Organization raises fears about ability to cope with major outbreak

African health authorities are stepping up preparedness for coronavirus after the head of the World Health Organzation described the outbreak as a “very grave threat for the rest of the world”.

The number of African countries that can test for the virus tripled to 15 this week, with more expected to have testing labs up and running in the coming days. The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said health centres were on “high alert” for new cases.

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When Lambs Become Lions review – on the trail of Kenya’s elephant killers

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This coolly even-handed documentary dips into the lives of an ivory poacher and a stressed-out wildlife ranger trying to obstruct the illegal trade

Jon Kasbe’s documentary When Lambs Become Lions has been much praised on the festival circuit, and it is cleverly and effectively made, seeking to grip you the way a thriller would. Yet I’m not sure that I was completely on board with this film, which appears to have smoothly carpentered its narrative in the edit. Is it almost too good to be true?

The film gives us a coolly even-handed study of some ivory hunters in Kenya – and also the rangers, the hunters of the hunters, who have to roam through the landscape, in their camouflage gear and assault rifles, on the lookout for those who are illegally killing elephants for their tusks.

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UN passes UK-backed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Libya

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Proposal for multinational operation to oversee truce comes as fighting grew more complex by the day

The UN security council has passed a resolution mandating a multinational operation to oversee a ceasefire in Libya, despite serious doubts that any of the conflict’s key players will abide by its terms.

The UK-backed resolution, calling for a ceasefire without preconditions and an immediate end to the supply of arms to both sides, was passed by 14 votes to zero, with one abstention from Russia.

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A humanitarian crisis looms in Africa unless we act fast to stop the desert locust

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The destructive migratory pest threatens catastrophe as it swarms through countries already plagued by food insecurity

A colleague at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tells a terrifying story about the desert locust.

In 2005 she visited farmers in Niger as they prepared to harvest their crops. Just hours later, a swarm of locusts swept through the area and destroyed everything. One month later, truckloads of families were forced to leave their homes because they had nothing to eat.

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