Peace campaigner’s car struck by stray bullet while passing airport, security officials say
Almaas Elman, a prominent rights activist, was shot dead in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday.
Almaas, who came from a leading family of peace campaigners, was travelling by car inside the heavily fortified airport compound when she was hit.
Continue reading...Investigation finds thousands of children are scavenging in deadly conditions for mineral widely used by car and electronics firms
Children as young as five make up more than half the number of miners scavenging for mica in Madagascar, according to a leading child rights group.
A year-long investigation by Terre des Hommes Netherlands found that at least 11,000 children between the ages of five and 17 are employed in quarrying and processing the shimmery, heat-resistant mineral, which is used in everything from makeup to car paint and hugely prevalent in the automotive and electronics industry.
Continue reading...Government critics fear purge of sector as more than 12,000 organisations lose registered charity status
More than 12,000 charities have been told they can no longer operate in Uganda as critics raised fears that government regulatory measures effectively amounted to a purge.
The government said a review that took place in August and September would root out poorly performing organisations and create “a reliable data bank on all NGOs” in the country.
Continue reading...Experts say new approach to classify plants’ conservation status suggests 7,000 species at risk
A third of plant species in tropical Africa are threatened with extinction, a new study suggests. Plants are crucial to many ecosystems and life in general, providing food and oxygen, as well as being the source of myriad materials and medicines. However, human activities including logging, mining and agriculture pose a major threat.
While the extinction risk of animals around the world has been well studied, the risk facing many plants remains unclear: 86% of mammal species have been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its Red List, compared with only 8% of plant species. Now experts say they have come up with a rapid approach to give a preliminary classification.
Continue reading...Charity takes action after holes are discovered in two batches of Life Guard condoms
The charity Marie Stopes International is recalling more than a million condoms in Uganda, after officials raised concerns that they were prone to breaking.
The charity began the recall of packets of Life Guard condoms after the National Drug Authority found they contained holes and did not meet quality standards. More than half of the affected products have since been recovered.
Continue reading...Children bear the brunt as extremism and climate crisis drive almost 500,000 people from their homes
The UN food agency has warned of an “escalating humanitarian crisis” in Burkina Faso, driven by growing extremist violence and the long-term impact of climate crisis in the arid central Sahel region.
A sharp increase in attacks, the result of the west African country becoming embroiled in the jihadist insurgency that began in the region in early 2015, has forced almost half a million people from their homes.
Continue reading...Communities already hit by war and drought face fresh disaster as 370,000 are forced from homes
Ciraa Farah Ali was asleep when she heard the flood. It was dark, and the 45-year-old mother of seven was alone with her children in her small home in Beledweyne, central Somalia.
Related: Global heating supercharging Indian Ocean climate system
Continue reading...Indian Ocean dipole events, linked to bushfires and floods, are becoming stronger and more frequent, scientists say
Global heating is “supercharging” an increasingly dangerous climate mechanism in the Indian Ocean that has played a role in disasters this year including bushfires in Australia and floods in Africa.
Scientists and humanitarian officials say this year’s record Indian Ocean dipole, as the phenomenon is known, threatens to reappear more regularly and in a more extreme form as sea surface temperatures rise.
Continue reading...Children as young as seven are doing hazardous work for meagre sums on sugar plantations
The blistering sun beats mercilessly on the Mukwasine sugar plantations near Chiredzi, in south-east Zimbabwe. It is Sunday morning and the soothing sound of hymns reverberate from a nearby church.
For most of the children living near the estate, it is time for Sunday school and listening to Bible stories.
Continue reading...No link found between number of Mediterranean crossings and level of NGO rescue ship activity
No valid statistical link exists between the likelihood that migrants will be rescued at sea and the number of attempted Mediterranean crossings, a study has found. The findings challenge the widespread claim in Europe that NGO search and rescue activity has been a pull factor for migrants.
Fear that the NGOs’ missions attract immigrants has been the basis for measures restricting humanitarian ships including requiring them to sign up to codes of conduct or simply blocking them from leaving port.
Continue reading...A radical experiment to genetically modify a strain of mosquito in order to stop them breeding malaria-carrying daughters is one of the latest efforts to tackle the deadly scourge of malaria
At 6.30am five-year-old Osman Balama and his mother reach the state hospital of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second-largest city in Burkina Faso. He hasn’t been feeling well for a few days and his mother is worried that he has contracted malaria. The waiting room is already full of mothers and grandmothers with young children on their laps, all with the same tired look as Osman.
“The rainy season has started,” says Sami Palm, head of the clinic. “That means more mosquitos. I’m certain that almost everyone here has malaria.”
Continue reading...O’Plérou Grebet designs images that reflect culture of his country, Ivory Coast
In January 2018, O’Plérou Grebet set himself a challenge. For every day of the year, the graphic design student, then aged 20, decided to design an emoji that reflected the culture of his home country, Ivory Coast, and the wider region of West Africa.
“I wanted to create a project to promote African cultures to change the image the Western media have of Africa: hunger, poverty and wars,” he said. “I wanted to show a different and positive side.”
Continue reading...Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions – and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for months
In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.
Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s frontline defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. Along its 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.
Continue reading...Discrimination against girls is still entrenched in the laws of many African countries. Shocking examples are easy to find
I love my job, but it can be pretty depressing. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing the first-ever continental report of the routine, blatant discrimination suffered by African girls.
The fact that girls and women are treated as inferior citizens is hardly news, except that this report reveals the extent to which gender discrimination is frequently state-sanctioned – embedded into the laws, policies and practices of many African nations. We’re talking about legal, institutional discrimination with its roots in a deeply gendered and patriarchal society. We are also talking about the denial of respect for the dignity of the African girl.
Continue reading...US urges Khalifa Haftar to end offensive on Tripoli amid concerns about unofficial Russian influence
Fears that Russian mercenaries, unofficially backed by Moscow, are tipping the scales in Libya in favour of the military leader Khalifa Haftar appears to have prompted the US to issue a strong warning to the general to pull back.
The US has been accused of taking little interest in the eight months of fighting on the outskirts of Tripoli that began when Haftar’s Libyan National Army mounted an assault on Tripoli, provoking a fierce counter-offensive by militia forces supporting the Government of National Accord (GNA).
Continue reading...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...