Category Archives: Africa

British Museum is world’s largest receiver of stolen goods, says QC

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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.”

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‘We are a special country’: South Africa hopes World Cup win can bring unity

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  • Desmond Tutu: victory can boost ‘self-doubting nation’
  • President Cyril Ramaphosa says win is ‘historic moment’

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.

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‘It makes me hopeful for my country’: Springbok rugby fans celebrate

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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.

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Jihadists kill scores of soldiers in Mali attack

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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.

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Tutankhamun’s glitzy farewell tour a timely promotion for Egypt

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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

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Human rights in the tobacco fields of Malawi – in pictures

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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

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WhatsApp ‘hack’ is serious rights violation, say alleged victims

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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.

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Tamba: Senegal’s migration starting point – photo essay

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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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Unaoil executives admit paying multimillion-dollar bribes

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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.

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The children labouring in Malawi’s fields for British American Tobacco

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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.

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BAT faces landmark legal case over Malawi families’ poverty wages

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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.

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Italy to renew anti-migration deal with Libya

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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”.

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Facebook removes Africa accounts linked to Russian troll factory

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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.

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Ugandan doctor under investigation over claims he assaulted LGBT patient

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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.

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‘They see us as slaves’: Kenyan women head for the Gulf despite abuse fears | Jillian Keenan and Njeri Rugene

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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.

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Tanzania president Magufuli condemned for authoritarian regime

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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.

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Libya orders arrest of alleged trafficker who attended Italy migration talks

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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”.

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Ancestral home of modern humans is in Botswana, study finds

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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.

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Kenya turns to Saudi investor to make water drinkable in arid Turkana region

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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.

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Protests against Ethiopia’s Nobel peace prize PM turn deadly

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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.

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