Activists warn muzzling of press under President Buhari could herald return to dark days of military rule
Fisayo Soyombo was eating an evening snack in Lagos in late October when a colleague called to warn him about a plan hatched by Nigerian government officials at a clandestine meeting to arrest him.
Hours earlier, the second in a three-part undercover series by the Abuja-based investigative journalist on corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system had been published.
Continue reading...Artist becomes first African to win the prestigious prize, for embroidered pictures created following terrorist attack
• See a photo essay of the Prix Pictet 2019 shortlist
Joana Choumali, a 45-year-old photographer from Ivory Coast, has become the first African artist to win the Prix Pictet. The announcement was made this evening in a ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for the opening of an exhibition of the 12 shortlisted artists.
The theme of the eighth Prix Pictet, a global award for photography and sustainability, was Hope. The jury, which included last year’s winner, Richard Mosse, praised Choumali’s “brilliantly original meditation on the ability of the human spirit to wrest hope and resilience from even the most traumatic events”.
Continue reading...Parks agency plans to move hundreds of animals in ‘biggest translocation of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s history’
Hundreds of elephants and tens of lions in Zimbabwe will be moved by the country’s wildlife agency as part of a major operation to save the animals from a devastating drought.
More than 200 elephants have died over the last two months due to a lack of water at the country’s main conservation zones in Mana Pools and Hwange National Park.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch said people were chained and faced physical and sexual violence in both state and religious centres
Nigeria has been urged to end all forms of abuse in state-run mental health institutions as well as religious healing centres.
In a report published on Monday Human Rights Watch (HRW) said thousands of Nigerians with mental health conditions face prolonged detention, chaining, physical and sexual violence or forced treatment, including electroshock therapy.
Continue reading...I was saddened to read that many of the African soldiers and carriers who served with the British Army in east Africa during the First World War were buried in unmarked graves (“No graves, no dignity. How Britain dishonoured its African war dead”, Focus). The acknowledgment by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission of its past unequal treatment is at least a start in redressing the balance.
However, while it may be true that memorials in east Africa do not give the names of individuals who fell, the situation is not the same in at least one southern African former colony: Nyasaland, now the independent state of Malawi. In the old colonial capital, Zomba, lies a memorial to men of the King’s African Rifles who fell in the war.
Continue reading...Irregularity known as Indian Ocean dipole bringing weather extremes across region
Twenty years ago in 1999 a new weather pattern was described for the first time. Now it has shifted up a gear and is causing devastation across east Africa.
The Indian Ocean dipole, sometimes called the Indian El Niño, is an irregular oscillation in which the surface temperature of the sea is alternatively greater in the ocean’s west and its east. The positive phase, when it is warmer in the west, sees more rain in the west and greater chance of drought in the east. These are reversed in a negative phase.
Continue reading...Continent is set for massive urbanisation but can avoid relying on fossil fuels, says IEA
Africa is poised to lead the world’s cleanest economic revolution by using renewable energy sources to power a massive spread of urbanisation, says an IEA report.
The IEA, or International Energy Agency, predicts that solar energy will play a big role in supporting the continent’s growing population and industrialisation over the next 20 years.
Continue reading...Continent is embarking on a huge expansion of power stations, most of which will burn coal
Last week the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for an end to new coal-fired power plants. Many European countries including the UK and Germany are decreasing their dependence on coal, but this is not the case everywhere. Across Africa many people rely on standby diesel generators to supplement erratic electricity supplies, leading to local air pollution problems and high emissions of climate-heating carbon dioxide.
Although Africa is in a unique position to leapfrog dependence on fossil fuels and utilise abundant renewable sources such as wind and solar, the continent is embarking on a massive expansion of fossil fuel electricity. More than 200 new power stations are planned, the majority of which will burn coal. Power ships – vast floating power stations, some burning highly polluting bunker oil – are already moored in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Mozambique.
Continue reading...Workers’ buses hit near Semafo’s Boungou mine in Est province, as military struggles to control Islamist violence
Thirty-seven civilians were killed and more than 60 wounded when gunmen ambushed a convoy transporting workers of Canadian gold miner Semafo in eastern Burkina Faso, regional authorities have said.
The attack on Wednesday is the deadliest in recent years as the military struggles to contain Islamist violence that has overrun parts of Burkina Faso, located in west Africa. Semafo tightened security last year following armed incidents near two of its mines in the country.
Continue reading...Thirty years from the fall of the Berlin Wall, new global tensions are polarising our world – and our cities feel more divided than ever. From today and for the next four weeks, our international film series will tell the stories of five cities that reflect these divisions in surprising and troubling ways
Thirty years ago, a rapt world watched the unfolding of one of the great city stories of all time. Every hammer blow chipping away the imposing grey blocks of the Berlin Wall, which had come to embody global geopolitical divisions, seemed to herald a more united future.
Since then, however, our world has fractured anew and our cities feel more divided than ever. When the Berlin Wall fell, there were two border walls in Europe; now there are 15. Nor is this fracture merely physical: many cities are havens of wealth and privilege for those who hold the access codes, hives of struggle and poverty for those who do not. Wherever I travel to report I have always been struck by how different people can have such contrasting experiences of the same city – and it’s no different at home, in my neighbourhood of Camberwell, south London, where upscale coffee shops and gang violence occupy the same stretches of road.
Continue reading...Everyone in Melilla has some connection to the city’s most visible and controversial feature: a huge barbed-wire fence, which separates this Spanish port city from the rest of north Africa. Asylum seekers like Aboubacar wait for months in hidden forest camps to scale the fence, populist politicians like Jesús want to strengthen it, and both the Moroccan and Melillan economy depend on the 30,000 Moroccans like Youssra who cross through it every day to work. Will Melilla embrace its fate as a city embedded in Africa – or will it succumb to populist Trump-style demands to build a wall?
My friend Nigel Cross, who has died aged 66, coolly straddled the worlds of literature and international development.
Born in Cambridge to Barry Cross, a university academic who became president of Corpus Christi College, and his wife, Audrey (nee Crow), Nigel was educated at Clifton college, Bristol, and Sussex University, where he studied English.
Continue reading...Geoffrey Robertson says it should ‘wash its hands of blood and return Elgin’s loot’
The British Museum has been accused of exhibiting “pilfered cultural property”, by a leading human rights lawyer who is calling for European and US institutions to return treasures taken from “subjugated peoples” by “conquerors or colonial masters”.
Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”
Continue reading...South Africans continued to celebrate their Rugby World Cup triumph on Sunday, with many in the sometimes fractious and troubled nation echoing Springbok captain Siya Kolisi’s post-match message of unity and strength.
Images of Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, congratulating South African players in the changing room – including half-naked scrum-half Faf de Klerk – went viral on social media and was broadcast repeatedly by TV networks.
Continue reading...World victory in game that once symbolised apartheid brings unity to South African streets
The crowd swelled as the game went on. From scores to hundreds to a thousand or more, young and old, men and women, all gathered in front of the big screen in the square of Newtown Junction, in the very centre of Johannesburg.
No one spread the word that victory for the Springboks was possible, let alone imminent. No one needed to. By the middle of the second half, there were no more shoppers hunting for bargains. The gym in the mall was empty. The queues at KFC, the Indian takeaway and the grilled sausage stand had disappeared.
Continue reading...At least 53 soldiers and one civilian dead after second attack on military in a month
Jihadists have attacked the Malian military near the border with Niger, killing at least 53 soldiers and one civilian in the second major assault on the armed forces in a month, the government said.
The latest attack happened on Friday in Indelimane, located in the volatile Menaka region.
Continue reading...Riches to move permanently to new Grand Museum, so London show is being milked by country’s PR department
In the manner of an ageing rock star with a faltering voice but a hefty tax bill, King Tutankhamun and his entourage rolled into London this weekend for the latest stop in what his handlers insist will be absolutely, without question, his last world tour.
Related: Tutankhamun review – thrills and fun as King Tut gets the Hollywood treatment
Continue reading...Photographer David Levene visited Malawi with Sarah Boseley, to document the impact of the tobacco industry on the wellbeing of the local farming communities whose livelihood depends on it. Human rights lawyers Leigh Day are working with Malawian translators and paralegals interviewing potential clients to join the watershed legal action against British American Tobacco
Activists speak out after being warned of alleged cyber-attack to infiltrate mobile phones
More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones.
The individuals received alerts saying they were among more than 100 human rights campaigners whose phones were believed to have been hacked using malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberweapons company.
Continue reading...People of Tamba is a project by the Italian artist Giovanni Hänninen, consisting of 200 portraits taken across the Tambacounda region in Senegal and accompanied by Senegal/Sicily, a series of documentaries created with the film-maker Alberto Amoretti, courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa
People of Tamba, inspired by German photographer August Sander’s seminal work, People of the 20th Century, was conceived as a catalogue of the society of Tambacounda, the largest city in the most remote and rural region of Senegal, and the point of departure for the majority of Senegalese migration.
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