Riot police charge hundreds of protesters in Zimbabwe hours after a court rejected an opposition attempt to overturn the ban on a planned rally. Witnesses reported chaotic scenes, with many protesters beaten with batons, at least three injured and others loaded into armoured vehicles
Continue reading...Category Archives: Africa
Asylum seeker locked out of home in London despite active claim
Gambian woman, 46, has no access to possessions after being evicted without notice
An asylum seeker with an active case has been locked out of her Home Office accommodation in west London by a government contractor who told her: “When you’re asked to leave this country you have to leave.”
The woman, 46, who fled her country in west Africa after refusing to perform FGM on young girls, has an active asylum claim. She said her life will be at risk if she is forced to return to Gambia where FGM is prevalent because she defied her community by opposing the practice.
Continue reading...Zimbabwe opposition tries to lift protest ban as armed police patrol capital
Demonstrators warned ‘you will rot in jail’ in run-up to planned rally in Harare
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has gone to court to lift a police ban on demonstrations scheduled for Friday, as hundreds of police armed with automatic weapons, batons and water cannon set up checkpoints on major roads and blocked access to the party’s offices in the capital, Harare.
The police banned the street demonstration planned by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Thursday night, after saying it would turn violent, and warned that anyone who took part would be committing a crime.
Continue reading...‘The people have power’: Kenya’s gang leader turned community builder
After rising to the top of the criminal pyramid in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, George Okewa rejected violence in favour of local leadership
George Okewa once terrorised his community. Spurred on by violence, drink and drugs, he believed that one day his lifestyle would cause his death.
The day he met Kennedy Odede, that changed. Following the realisation that their most powerful weapon was not guns but communication, they now use their skills to bring peace and resources to Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
Continue reading...‘Men said we were immoral’: the aphrodisiacs challenging taboos | Wana Udobang
Nigeria’s traditional ‘Kayan Mata’ recipes have grown into a booming industry that’s empowering women to be more open about sex
When Amra Mansur was working as a makeup artist in Abuja, while she studied law, she would overhear conversations between would-be brides and older relatives about how to please their men in the bedroom.
The older, mostly female relatives would recite aphrodisiac recipes that involved ingredients like fenugreek, dates, honey, watermelon and the fruit silky kola.
Continue reading...Fears of violence as Zimbabwe’s opposition plan protests
Government warns of reprisals as protests and strikes planned in country crippled by debt
Zimbabweans are bracing for fresh violence and unrest after the main opposition party unveiled plans for a series of major rallies starting this week and unions called for strike action.
Related: ‘Hungry kids collapse as looters take millions’: life in today’s Zimbabwe
Continue reading...Sharp rise in number of children killed in Mali’s deadly attacks
Death toll reported by Unicef highlights deepening crisis, with recent spate of violent ambushes attributed to ethnic militias
The number of children killed in Mali in the first six months of this year is twice the number who died for the whole of 2018, according to the UN’s children agency.
Inter-communal attacks are the main reason for the sharp rise in children being killed and maimed in the west African country, Unicef said, with most of these attacks concentrated in the central region of Mopti. More than 150 children were killed and 75 injured in violent attacks in the first six months of 2019.
Continue reading...Joy, despair and determination: photographs from Kibera
Despite its poverty, Kibera is a vibrant place where people survive in testing conditions, both physical and mental. These images by four photographers born and bred there capture the spirit of Africa’s largest slum.
An exhibition, ‘Kibera: Living in the slum’, is on show at the Guardian’s London offices until 31 August
Continue reading...British student in South Africa killed by freak wave, inquest hears
Sinead Moodliar, 19, was swept out to sea on sunrise beach visit while on holiday over Christmas
British university student Sinead Moodliar, who went to witness the sunrise on a South African beach, died after a powerful wave swept her from a rock and out to sea, an inquest has heard.
Moodliar, 19, a philosophy student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, was on holiday over Christmas last year. She went to Umhlanga Rocks, a beach area near Durban, on Boxing Day when she was involved in an incident that could not have been foreseen, a hearing was told yesterday.
Continue reading...Ebola now curable after trials of drugs in DRC, say scientists
Congo results show good survival rates for patients treated quickly with antibodies
Ebola can no longer be called an incurable disease, scientists have said, after two of four drugs being trialled in the major outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were found to have significantly reduced the death rate.
ZMapp, used during the massive Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, has been dropped along with Remdesivir after two monoclonal antibodies, which block the virus, had substantially more effect, said the World Health Organization and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was a co-sponsor of the trial.
Continue reading...‘We won’t refuse someone in need’: the paramedics taking on Nairobi’s slum | Rod Austin
In Kenya’s Kibera, where government ambulance teams daren’t go, a local has taken matters into her own hands
No day is the same for Evalyne Nyangweso, entrepreneur and owner of an ambulance service dedicated to an unforgiving community prone to poor health, disease and high crime rates.
Operating in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, where traditional ambulances daren’t go and even police tread carefully, Nyangweso and her crew are the first responders to medical emergencies.
Continue reading...Libya drone strike heightens fears of air war and risk of civilian deaths
Strike in Murzuq last week, blamed on Haftar forces, killed at least 45 people
An air war in Libya is intensifying as rival forces in the divided country try to break a military stalemate, heightening significantly the risk of civilian casualties.
At least 45 people were killed and dozens wounded in an airstrike last Sunday that targeted a town hall meeting in south-western Libya. The forces of Khalifa Haftar, the 75-year-old military strongman who controls much of the east of the country, have been blamed.
Continue reading...Five, including UN staff, killed in Benghazi car bombing
Explosion shattered Libyan conflict ceasefire agreed during Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha
A car bomb explosion in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi killed three UN staff members and two other mission members on Saturday, the United Nations said.
The UN is trying to broker a truce in the capital Tripoli, where the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA) launched a surprise attack in April. A Reuters reporter at a Benghazi hospital where casualties of the blast were taken saw a list of names of those killed identifying them as part of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).
Continue reading...Eating and drinking in Africa’s largest slum – in pictures
Despite poverty, lack of refrigeration and a constant battle for cleanliness, the residents of Kibera are resourceful with the food they eat and sell. Fried fish, samosas, and bean dishes are all on the menu, reflecting the cultural mix of those who call the area home
Continue reading...UK government agrees £300m rescue package for British Steel
New funds thought to be enough to secure a sale to widening list of interested private bidders
The government has moved to rescue British Steel with a financial support package worth as much as £300m that ministers believe will be enough to secure backing from a private bidder.
It is understood that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has agreed to substantially increase support to bidders for British Steel, which employs more than 4,000 people, after months of wrangling following the company’s collapse into administration.
Continue reading...Kenyan MP and baby ejected from parliament session
Several colleagues walked out of parliament after Zuleikha Hassan was forced to leave
Some Kenyan lawmakers are protesting against a decision by the temporary speaker of parliament’s lower house to eject their colleague who was holding her young child during a session of the legislature.
Zuleikha Hassan was ejected from the floor of the National Assembly on Wednesday with her five-month-old baby.
Continue reading...‘I fear for the children’: the families battling to beat the odds in Kibera – photo essay
Family takes many shapes and guises – and in Africa’s largest slum the ties of love and blood are especially tested, cruelly sculpted by epidemics like HIV as well as strained by economic and climate crises
Rosemary Achia, 53, has two daughters. One has a job washing clothes in Nairobi and the other works in a hotel, so all seven grandchildren live with her.
“I am a little old for this,” she says. “I have been 11 years a widow. He was a good man but God gives and God takes away.”
Continue reading...Burundi malaria outbreak at epidemic levels as half of population infected
World Health Organization records 1,800 malaria deaths since start of year, almost equalling number of lives claimed by Ebola in DRC
A serious outbreak of malaria in Burundi has reached epidemic proportions, killing almost as many people as the Ebola crisis in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The outbreak in the tiny Great Lakes country has infected almost half the total population, killing about 1,800 people since the beginning of the year.
Continue reading...Son of Congo-Brazzaville president accused of siphoning off $50m
Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso allegedly used money-laundering scheme spanning six European countries
The son of Congo-Brazzaville’s president has misappropriated $50m (£41m) of public money by routing it through shell companies and secrecy jurisdictions, according to a new investigation.
Six countries in the EU, the US state of Delaware and the British Virgin Islands all played a key role in Denis Christel Sassou-Nguesso’s scheme, according to Global Witness. The campaign group said the money was siphoned off through an apparent sham contract Congo-Brazzaville had with a Brazilian infrastructure company.
Continue reading...Entrepreneurs beat the odds in Kenya’s anarchic mud city
Despite the poverty, lawlessness and pollution of life in Kibera, creativity still thrives thanks to a mix of determination, guts and luck. The Guardian spoke to people who have all three
Living in a slum is the reality for 1 billion people and rising across the world. More than half of Africa’s city dwellers live in “informal settlements” and the continent’s biggest is Kibera, in Kenya. We heard from people there about their struggles, aspirations and their innovation, busting the myths and stereotypes about being poor and powerless.
Continue reading...