Category Archives: Africa

Five, including UN staff, killed in Benghazi car bombing

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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).

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UK government agrees £300m rescue package for British Steel

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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.

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Kenyan MP and baby ejected from parliament session

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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.

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‘I fear for the children’: the families battling to beat the odds in Kibera – photo essay

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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.”

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Burundi malaria outbreak at epidemic levels as half of population infected

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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.

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Son of Congo-Brazzaville president accused of siphoning off $50m

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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.

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Entrepreneurs beat the odds in Kenya’s anarchic mud city

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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.

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I spent 21 years of my life angry before I realised we in the slums must lead change | Kennedy Odede

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Kenya is on the rise. Those living in slums such as Kibera will only share in the progress if urban solutions come from our community

The future is shining in Kenya. By many measures, life is better than it has ever been. A decade of steady economic growth has made Kenya a rising middle-income country. Reports on the health and education of the population show indicators are marching upwards. On the streets, a sense of hope and hustle prevails. This is progress.

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‘If we don’t kill these people they will kill you’: policing Africa’s largest slum

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As Kenya waits to hear if a police officer will be charged over the death of 23-year-old Carliton Maina, alleged unlawful killings in Kenya continue, leaving poor communities wondering if those charged with protecting them are simply killing with impunity

At a meeting between police and community members in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where crime is acutely high and mainly unreported, the two sides try to find common ground.

There are courteous introductions and then an appeal for openness – and information – to help the police tackle Kibera’s crime problems.

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‘They just eliminate us’: Are Kenya’s police getting away with murder? – video

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Promising student Carliton Maina was shot by the police in Nairobi. His mother believes he was murdered. As part of The Guardian's special focus on Kibera, we met residents of Africa's largest slum to explore their deep distrust of the police and find out what Maina's, and other recent deaths, can tell us about the dramatic rise in extrajudicial killings across Kenya.

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How ‘Nigeria’s #MeToo moment’ turned against rape accuser

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Busola Dakolo investigated by police after publicly accusing star pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo

Busola Dakolo said she had been expecting to hear from the police. Three weeks earlier the photographer had filed a case against the flamboyant Nigerian celebrity pastor Biodun Fatoyinbo, accusing him of raping her years before.

However, she recalled that the silver Toyota that tailed her as she was driving into her Lagos housing estate, and the white minibus with tinted windows already parked outside her house, had no police markings. By the time she got to her gate, the minibus had blocked her path. According to Dakolo, a man appeared and told her to get out of the car, get into the bus and speak to his oga – Nigerian pidgin English for boss.

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Tanzanian investigative journalist in court over money laundering

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Erick Kabendera also faces charges of leading organised crime and failure to pay tax

A Tanzanian investigative journalist has appeared in court charged with organised crime and money laundering.

Erick Kabendera, who was arrested by plainclothes policemen last week, appeared in court charged with leading organised crime, failure to pay tax amounting to 173m Tanzanian shillings ($75,000) and money laundering of the same amount. Press freedom advocates have called the charges “clearly retaliatory”.

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Cairo car bomb kills at least 20 outside hospital

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Interior ministry blames Hasm group for blast that injured dozens near cancer institute

Twenty people have been killed and 47 injured after a car bomb collided with other vehicles, triggering an explosion outside a cancer hospital in central Cairo.

The blast occurred around midnight local time on a road running alongside the Nile River in an area outside Egypt’s National Cancer Institute. Pictures taken just after the incident and published by Egypt’s largest newspaper, Al-Ahram, showed two burnt-out cars, with at least one completely blackened and dented from the force of the explosion.

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‘We lose so many women’: the tragedy of unsafe abortion in Kibera

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With terminations outlawed in Kenya, women and girls in its largest slum have to rely on expensive and unreliable under-the-counter pills, toxic chemicals or other homemade remedies. The consequences can be fatal

Podcast: The women fighting back in Kenya’s biggest slum

Edita Ochieng sashays up in her “This is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt – bright and new in a place where clothes are aged and faded.

“Got them,” she stage-whispers, a flash of silver foil in her hand. Four pills carefully cut from a longer strip. Ochieng has just been attempting to buy abortion pills from among the numerous kiosk-sized “quack” chemists in the Nairobi slum of Kibera. Just to show how easy it is.

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The South African teenagers using radio to fight gun crime – in pictures

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Every week a group of South African teenagers crowd into a studio to play hip-hop and discuss neighbourhood gun crime for their community radio show, Bigger Than Life, on Alex FM. They are determined to help stem the violence that blights their densely populated township of Alexandra in Johannesburg

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The women fighting back in Kenya’s biggest slum – podcast

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Edita Ochieng and like-minded women are taking a stand against endemic sexual violence and police corruption in Kibera. Plus: Angelique Chrisafis on why climate protesters in France are stealing portraits of Emmanuel Macron. Warning: this podcast contains references to sexual abuse

Edita Ochieng, like many women in Kibera, has been a victim of sexual violence. But with police corruption rife, she has banded together with several other women to bring perpetrators to justice as well as providing advice and counselling.

The Guardian’s Tracy McVeigh and Rod Austin spent time in Kenya’s largest slum with Ochieng and describe her extraordinary story to India Rakusen.

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Migrant rescue ship with 40 people arrives in Malta after EU deal

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Vessel allowed entry under agreement that other countries will look after those onboard

A group of 40 migrants rescued by a German charity ship have landed in Malta and will be taken care of by other EU member states after a deal negotiated by Berlin.

The 40 people were rescued on Wednesday from a small boat off the Libyan coast by the ship Alan Kurdi, which belongs to the NGO Sea-Eye. The NGO then sailed them to southern Italy, saying the port of Lampedusa was the closest and safest harbour.

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Italy grants asylum to Eritrean man mistaken for years for trafficker

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Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe was put in deportation centre after acquittal but is now free

Italian authorities have granted refugee status to an Eritrean man who was the victim of one of the country’s most embarrassing cases of mistaken identity.

Last month a judge in Palermo acquitted Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of being a human trafficking kingpin, confirming he was the victim of mistaken identity when he was arrested more than three years ago in a joint operation by Italian and British authorities.

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