Three UK businessmen plead guilty in US to bribing officials in nine countries over 17 years
Three British businessmen have admitted their roles in paying multimillion-dollar bribes to officials in nine countries over 17 years, American prosecutors have said.
Two brothers from the Ahsani family, who ran the energy consultancy Unaoil, have pleaded guilty to facilitating the payment of bribes between 1999 and 2016 to officials in Africa and the Middle East.
Continue reading...Lawyers argue that while farming families toil over backbreaking work in desperate poverty, BAT is reaping the rewards
Even Dickens did not describe harder toil. Life for the child of a tenant farmer who works the tobacco fields of Malawi is unimaginably arduous: up at 4am for several hours of labour with no breakfast, cutting into the earth with a heavy hoe.
School – if they go to school – is a brief respite. The first and often only meal of the day, maize porridge, is eaten when they get home, before more digging. Sleep is on the bare earth under a straw roof.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Lawyers seeking compensation in UK for child labourers and their parents
Human rights lawyers are preparing to bring a landmark case against British American Tobacco on behalf of hundreds of children and their families forced by poverty wages to work in conditions of gruelling hard labour in the fields of Malawi.
Leigh Day’s lawyers are seeking compensation for more than 350 child labourers and their parents in the high court in London, arguing that the British company is guilty of “unjust enrichment”. Leigh Day says it anticipates the number of child labourer claimants to rise as high as 15,000. While BAT claims it has told farmers not to use their children as unpaid labour, the lawyers say the families cannot afford to work their fields otherwise, because they receive so little money for their crop.
Continue reading...Foreign minister says deal has reduced number of arrivals and deaths at sea
Italy is to renew its deal with the UN-backed government in Libya under which the Libyan coastguard stops migrant boats at sea and sends their passengers back to the north African country, where aid agencies say they face torture and abuse.
The foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, told the lower house of parliament that it would be “unwise for Italy to break off its agreement with Libya on handling asylum seekers and combating human trafficking”.
Continue reading...Fake networks in eight nations are connected to man allegedly behind disinformation empire
Facebook has taken down accounts linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin – the businessman allegedly behind Russia’s notorious troll factory – which were actively seeking to influence the domestic politics of a range of African countries.
The company said on Wednesday it had suspended three networks of “inauthentic” Russian accounts. The Facebook pages targeted eight countries across the continent: Madagascar, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Sudan and Libya.
Continue reading...Minister of health refers case to Uganda’s medical council as assault on LGBT rights in Uganda intensifies
A doctor in Uganda faces charges of professional misconduct over allegations he assaulted a lesbian patient.
The country’s minister of health, Jane Aceng, referred Ben Kiwanuka Mukwaya to the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council (UMDPC) over allegations he assaulted the patient at his private health facility in a suburb of the capital, Kampala, on 19 October.
Continue reading...Kenyan government reforms promise to make domestic work safer in a region notorious for labour trafficking – but are they working?
In a busy recruitment agency in Nairobi’s central business district, dozens of women line the halls. All hope that today they will secure a job as a domestic worker in the Gulf states, cooking, cleaning and caring for another family thousands of miles from their own homes.
Pamela Mbogo* is one of them. The 29-year-old has found a job in Saudi Arabia starting next month. It’s not her first time as a domestic worker. On the previous occasion she lived and worked for a family in Bahrain, where she was abused and locked inside the house for days at a time. Yet, this time, Mbogo believes it will be different.
Continue reading...Amnesty and Human Rights Watch raise concerns over rising levels of abuses against activists, opponents and the press – including arrest of journalist Erick Kabendera
Tanzania’s president John Magufuli is presiding over an escalating campaign of repression that has targeted journalists, human rights defenders and political opponents ahead of his plans to run for re-election next year, two reports claim.
Magufuli – nicknamed “the Bulldozer” – is accused in two independent reports, by the human rights organisations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, of presiding over rising levels of abuses against activists and opponents since his election in 2015.
Continue reading...Arrest warrant issued for Abd al-Rahman Milad, suspected of drowning dozens of people
The UN-backed government in Libya has ordered the arrest of a man described as one of the world’s most notorious human traffickers who was this month revealed to have attended meetings between Italian officials and a Libyan delegation to discuss controls on migration flows from north Africa.
In a note released on Monday by the interior ministry in Tripoli, authorities said Abd al-Rahman Milad, described by the UN security council as a ruthless human trafficker suspected of drowning dozens of people, was “a wanted man and an arrest warrant was issued against him”.
Continue reading...Other scientists raise questions about results, which were based on DNA samples
Scientists claim to have traced the ancestral home region of all living humans to a vast wetland that sprawled over much of modern day Botswana and served as an oasis in an otherwise parched expanse of Africa.
The swathe of land south of the Zambezi River became a thriving home to Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, the researchers suggest, and sustained an isolated, founder population of modern humans for at least 70,000 years.
Continue reading...Authorities seek to build desalination plant in drought-stricken area sitting on top of a vast reservoir of salty water
Authorities in Kenya’s driest region are in talks with a Saudi investor to build a desalination plant, after hopes of finding drinking water from an aquifer were dashed.
Tito Ochieng, the director of water services in Turkana, in the north of the country, said the potential investor – Saudi-owned Almar Water – has already signed a deal to build a $160m (£125m) desalination plant in Mombasa.
Continue reading...Violent clashes leave at least 67 dead as activist compares Abiy Ahmed to a dictator
Violence in Ethiopia that began with protests against the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and quickly morphed into ethnic clashes has left 67 people dead in Oromia state, a police official said on Friday.
“The total number dead in Oromia is 67,” said Kefyalew Tefera, the regional police chief, adding that five of the dead were police officers.
Continue reading...EU and Britain ramp up pressure on government to act as street demonstrators converge on Lilongwe
Hundreds of rights campaigners have taken to the streets of Malawi’s capital to call for a government investigation into allegations of rape by police officers during ongoing post-election violence.
The EU ambassador to Malawi condemned the alleged sexual violence and called for “light to be shed on what happened.” The British high commissioner also reportedly called for a thorough investigation.
Continue reading...From Table Mountain to District 6, cartoonist Brandan Reynolds explores the complicated past and present of the city often referred to as South Africa’s ‘Mother City’
Continue reading...Kremlin denies discussion at Russia-Africa summit but CAR president says countries’ defence ministries were reviewing idea
The president of Central African Republic has said his country would consider hosting a Russian military base, as Vladimir Putin woos dozens of African leaders in an effort to spread Moscow’s influence at an investment summit in southern Russia.
In an interview with Russian state media, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra said he had also asked Russia for new weapons shipments for CAR’s soldiers, who have fought a civil war against rebel forces in the country since 2012. Asked about a potential military base, Russia’s first in Africa, he said that his government was “considering the possibilities”.
Continue reading...In a 2016 study of Diepsloot, 56% of men surveyed admitted to raping or beating a women in the previous 12 months – a lack of policing is just the start of the problem
The violence usually starts on a Thursday night, worsens on a Friday and reaches a peak over Saturday into the early hours of the morning. At the start of spring in September, temperatures rise and tempers flare. By the hot, heady weeks of the festive season in December, domestic abuse reaches its worst, outdoing the incidents of violence that have become common over long weekends throughout the year. In Diepsloot, an impoverished community north west of Johannesburg, gender-based violence has become so common that it follows a recognisable pattern.
Some would survive if a car comes by while they are raping her or before she was killed
Continue reading...When Magnum nominee Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s mother worked as a live-in help in this one-time white-dominated community, the family wouldn’t let him inside. He returned as a photographer to document the town’s transformation
“I first went because my mother used to be employed there as a domestic worker,” says photojournalist Lindokuhle Sobekwa. “When I first visited Daleside, to me it seemed an isolated place, a ghost town.”
Daleside used to be a white-dominated area, but now it is mixed. In the early 2000s Sobekwa’s mother took a job as live-in help with a white family in this town south of Johannesburg. As she struggled alone to support her four children he only saw her on weekends and during school holidays.
Continue reading...Twenty-five years after apartheid, black people cannot live and work in this small South African city
Photographs by Madelene Cronjé
October in Orania can be charming. When the sun sets, long ribbons of burnt orange settle on the horizon. The flies and mosquitoes that come with the summer’s oppressive heat haven’t arrived yet. It is Magdalene Kleynhans’ favourite time of year. “You can sit outside until late into the night,” says the businesswoman, whose family spends much of their time outdoors. Her children fish from the banks of the Orange River whenever they choose. Kleynhans leaves the house unlocked. “It’s a good life. It’s a big privilege.”
But there is much more to small Northern Cape town than the bucolic ideal painted by Kleynhans. Incredibly, 25 years after the fall of apartheid, Orania is a place for white people only.
Continue reading...Men could face life in jail as campaigners warn of escalating attacks on sexual minorities
Uganda has said it has arrested 16 LGBT activists on suspicion of gay sex, which is punishable with life imprisonment, in what fellow activists called an escalating campaign against sexual minorities.
The 16 men, believed to be aged between 22 and 35, were taken into custody late on Monday at the office of a sexual health charity where they all worked and lived, fellow activists said.
Continue reading...Authorities believed Mimi Mefo, an award-winning journalist who works for Deutsche Welle in Berlin, might try to stay
A Berlin-based journalist who was due to speak at a press freedom conference in Brisbane has said she was denied a visa by the Australian government because they believed she might try to stay.
Mimi Mefo, an award-winning Cameroonian journalist who currently works for Deutsche Welle, was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Integrity 20 conference on Friday.
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