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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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...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.
Continue reading...With novels including Beloved and The Bluest Eye, the acclaimed author who dramatised the African American experience with fierce passion for five decades, has died aged 88
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.
Continue reading...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.
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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