Defence minister agrees to help in one of most dangerous missions undertaken by the UN
British troops will be deployed in Mali next year to join in the world’s deadliest peacekeeping operation, the Ministry of Defence has announced.
The 250-strong force will provide a long-range reconnaissance capability for the United Nations deployment in the troubled African country which has struggled to decisively counter Islamic militants, armed separatists and traffickers.
Continue reading...Victims include male civilian, 20, with mental health disability and elderly disabled man
Cameroonian forces have killed at least four civilians during security operations in one of the country’s anglophone regions in the past month, according to a human rights organisation, including two men with disabilities.
An uprising by separatists that began two years ago and the response by security forces have caused intense suffering in the anglophone regions of the former German colony, which was carved up by France and Britain during the first world war.
Continue reading...A deadly conflict simmers between the autochthon people forced out of Kahuzi-Biéga national park, and the rangers protecting the land
On a scarred hillside on the edge of the Kahuzi-Biéga national park, smoke rises from the once-forested slope as men cut down trees and burn them for charcoal. Suddenly, warning cries echo across the landscape. Park rangers are arriving. More men come running to the scene, some carrying machetes in anticipation of a confrontation. A tense stand-off follows.
This corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a frontline of a simmering and sometimes deadly conflict between two largely impoverished groups: the autochthon people, forced out of the forest as part of conservation efforts, and the rangers, who are tasked with protecting the land.
Continue reading...Rising inflation has hit those already struggling with food, fuel and medicine shortages
Millions of people in Zimbabwe face hardship, hunger and chaos as the economy comes close to “meltdown” and drought worsens.
More than 18 months after the military coup that removed Robert Mugabe from power, the new government is struggling to overcome the legacy of the dictator’s 30 years of repressive rule and the consequences of its own failure to undertake meaningful political reform.
Continue reading...Services to Egyptian capital halted for seven days to allow for security review, says airline
British Airways has suspended all flights to Cairo for seven days as a security precaution.
The airline made the surprise announcement last night that all flights into the Egyptian capital were halted.
Continue reading...Finsbury Park and Trafalgar Square were deluged with more than 1,000 Algeria supporters after their national football team won the Africa Cup of Nations on Friday night
Continue reading...Former South African president claims he was treated unfairly during cross-examination
The former South African president Jacob Zuma has refused to testify before a major corruption inquiry, claiming he was being questioned unfairly.
Zuma was scheduled to give evidence throughout the week. But when the court reconvened on Friday morning after a 48-hour adjournment at his request, the 77-year-old’s politician’s lawyer, Muzi Sikhakhane, said he would take no further part in proceedings.
Continue reading...Three Isis supporters who killed two Scandinavian women given death sentence
Three men have been sentenced to death in Morocco for the Isis-inspired murder of two Scandinavian hikers in the Atlas mountains last December.
The two victims, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, were beheaded by a group of men who wanted to impress Islamic State. The three men confessed to their murder at a court in Salé, near Rabat.
Continue reading...As the World Health Organization declares a public health emergency in DRC, frontline responders must be allowed a greater role in response efforts
The Ebola crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is already the second deadliest outbreak in history. More than 2,500 cases have been confirmed in DRC and 1,600 deaths have been recorded. The situation is escalating rapidly, with a new case in the transit hub of Goma reported on Sunday.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the crisis a public health emergency of international concern. This raises the stakes and must lead to fundamental changes in the response. The WHO wants more funding to extend and reinforce outbreak control measures, but simply expanding the current approach is unlikely to result in a more effective response.
Continue reading...The Home Office’s hostile handling of visiting African professionals doesn’t bode well for Global Britain
An African passport is the most egalitarian of documents, in that if you have one then class, employment status and professional invitations from the country you are visiting all count for nothing. From university professors to unskilled labourers, anyone holding a passport issued by a country in Africa will be treated the same by UK border officers. They will also show no compassion for or recognition of the need for people to be reunited with family or to see friends.
In fact it’s not too far-fetched to say an African passport is a no-travel document. Even countries within Africa are miserly with each other. I am a veteran visa applicant, and I can tell you there is no respite. A European visa is as prohibitively hard to secure as one to a neighbouring African country. My Sudanese passport meant that I had to become an Olympian visa-applier in order to visit, study and settle in the UK. You can’t slouch with a passport from a country on a terror watchlist.
Continue reading...Cross-party inquiry finds people from African countries often perceive reasons given for failed applications as biased or discriminatory
British MPs have warned that the UK visitor visa system is “broken” and doing “severe damage” to UK-Africa relations.
The problems faced by experts trying to visit the UK are so widespread that many Africans believe the Home Office to be prejudiced against them and deliberately trying to reduce visitor numbers.
Continue reading...R&B star announces numerous African pop and rap stars on album out Friday, as well as Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams and daughter Blue Ivy
Beyoncé has outlined details for her 14-track new album to accompany The Lion King remake, entitled The Lion King: The Gift, to be released on Friday. The album features four new solo songs alongside collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, Childish Gambino, Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy and more. It is separate from the soundtrack to The Lion King, though the Beyoncé song Spirit appears on both. The singer voices the character Nala in the new 3D-animated version of the 1994 Disney classic.
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Continue reading...From second-hand train seats to old school cupboards, the artist has transported discarded objects from his west African homeland to create a ‘parliament of ghosts’
‘We’re haunted all the time by ghosts of the past,” says Ibrahim Mahama as we sit on dirty old plastic second-class Ghana Railways carriage seats in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. Even these seats from an abandoned railway? “Especially these,” he says, smiling.
Mahama, a junkyard utopian whose art involves recycling stuff that’s lost its purpose, bought up rows and rows of these seats. He packed them into shipping containers and sent them on a 5,000-mile trip, from his west African homeland to the Whitworth, along with some school cupboards no longer fit for purpose, exercise books of children now grown up, and the minutes of Ghanaian parliamentary debates now deemed obsolete.
Continue reading...Former president faces allegations he presided over vast corruption network
South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma has told a judicial inquiry into corruption allegations that he is the victim of a plot by foreign intelligence agencies to seek his downfall.
Speaking on the first day of five days of testimony, Zuma denied he had presided over an immense system of corruption and patronage that drained billions from the country’s exchequer.
Continue reading...Ripping off the bandage of food aid and investing in self-sufficiency is the only way to fight malnutrition
Billions are spent on humanitarian aid, yet nearly 60 million children across Africa go to bed hungry.
Efforts to alleviate the constant cycle of droughts, poverty and war have caused new problems. The biggest of these is a crippling dependency on food aid that is undermining much of the continent’s efforts to feed itself.
Continue reading...Health experts have long feared the virus it could make its way to the city, which is on the Rwandan border
The Ebola virus has reached the Congolese city of Goma, home to two million people, for the first time since the epidemic began nearly a year ago.
The Congolese health ministry said a man who had arrived in the regional centre on Sunday had been quickly transported to an Ebola treatment centre.
Continue reading...Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s former president, will make an unprecedented appearance before a judicial inquiry for a five-day grilling this week over corruption allegations relating to his years in power.
Zuma has been accused of presiding over an immense system of corruption and patronage that drained billions from the exchequer and damaged the reputation of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) beyond repair.
Continue reading...Briton and Canadian-Somali journalist among dead in suicide bombing and shooting in Kismayo claimed by al-Shabaab
Special forces in Somalia have ended an all-night siege at a hotel raided by armed Islamic militants, officials have said.
The death toll from the attack in the southern port city of Kismayo, which began on Friday evening, has risen to 26 people, including a prominent Canadian-Somali journalist and several foreigners.
Continue reading...Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe wrongly arrested based on tipoffs from NCA and GCHQ
The acquittal of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe by an Italian court of being a human trafficking kingpin is a major embarrassment for Britain’s National Crime Agency and the GCHQ intelligence service.
Berhe’s arrest in 2016 was trumpeted as a major coup in the battle against international people-smuggling, but unbeknown to them at the time, the Italian and British authorities had mistaken the Eritrean for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.
Continue reading...Judge acquits Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of being a human trafficking kingpin
A Palermo judge has acquitted an Eritrean man 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 between Italian and British authorities.
The arrest of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe in 2016 was presented to the press as a brilliant coup by Italian and British authorities, who mistook him for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.
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