Category Archives: Africa

Pragmatism and ideology drive Kremlin’s interest in Africa

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Attempts to make Africa a zone of influence recall Soviet-era activity on the continent

In spring 2018 a group of foreigners flew to Madagascar. They had not come to see the island’s lemurs or wildlife. The visitors were undercover Russian political consultants. Their mission was to help Madagascar’s ruling president Hery Rajaonarimampianina – or “piano”, as they named him for reasons of brevity – to win re-election.

The plan did not work. Last November the incumbent president failed to make it into a run-off vote. Other Russian-supported candidates did badly. Late in the day Moscow threw its support behind the eventual winner, Andry Rajoelina, who has denied receiving any Russian assistance or money. But after six months on the ground the operatives who arrived on tourist visas went home with little to show for their efforts.

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Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to exert influence in Africa

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Exclusive: Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin leading push to turn continent into strategic hub, documents show

Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal.

The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the former colonial powers the UK and France out of the region. Another is to see off “pro-western” uprisings, the documents say.

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Lights out: the price hikes leaving millions of South Africans in the dark | Kimon de Greef

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Electricity costs have tripled in the past decade under a utility company plagued by debt and corruption claims, wiping out decades of progress

Electricity, when it arrived in Nosisi Rasmeni’s life, seemed to promise a better future.

Like most black South Africans who grew up during apartheid, she was raised with gas stoves, candles and paraffin heaters. Her family’s shack was poorly lit and smelled of fumes. “Electricity was only for whites,” says Rasmeni, 37.

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Sudanese doctors say dozens of people raped during sit-in attack

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Hospitals in Khartoum record more than 70 cases of rape in aftermath of attack on protest

Doctors believe paramilitaries carried out more than 70 rapes during an attack on a protest camp in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, a week ago.

More than 100 people were killed and as many as 700 injured in the attack last Monday on a sit-in and clashes afterwards, as paramilitaries from the Rapid Support Forces spread through the city to quell sporadic unrest.

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Scores killed in attack on Malian village

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Mayor says 95 bodies recovered so far and much of village is still burning

Gunmen killed nearly 100 people in an overnight massacre in Mali, local officials have said, amid a wave of violence in the Sahel region linked to Islamist extremists.

The attackers entered a traditional Dogon village in central Mali under cover of darkness and started “shooting, pillaging and burning”, local media quoted officials as saying. The attackers are believed to belong to the Fulani ethnic group.

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Egypt tries to stop sale of Tutankhamun statue in London

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Officials fear bust of pharaoh might have been looted from Karnak temple in Luxor

Egyptian authorities are trying to stop the auction of a statue of Tutankhamun’s head at Christie’s auction house in London next month after concerns were raised that the bust might have been stolen from the Karnak temple in Luxor.

The statue, a brown quartzite head of the young pharaoh, which portrays him as the ancient god Amun, is expected to raise more than £4m at auction on 4 July.

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Millions join general strike in Sudan aimed at dislodging army

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Shutdown called in protest against bloody crackdown on protesters last week

Millions of people in Sudan have joined a general strike called by ​pro-reform groups, shutting down the centre of cities across the country despite a wave of arrests and intimidation​.

The massive shutdown was called to take place on Sunday, the first day of the working week, and is aimed at relaunching an opposition movement battered by a brutal crackdown and forcing the country’s new military leaders to resign.

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Sudan’s generals launch renewed crackdown to defeat general strike

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Arrests of white-collar workers to discourage protest follow assault by regime’s paramilitaries

The military regime in Sudan has launched a new wave of arrests and violent intimidation in an effort to undermine opposition plans for a widespread campaign of civil disobedience.

Pro-reform groups have warned of a “frenzied campaign launched by the military junta to arrest political activists and revolutionaries” this weekend ahead of a general strike set to start on Sunday.

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In a world full of wars, why are so many of them ignored? | Simon Tisdall

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Instability across central Africa has resulted in a humanitarian crisis. There needs to be greater focus on conflict resolution

Cameroon, a central African state of 24 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, is rarely in the news – which is surprising, given the awful things happening there. In a warring world full of conflict, the country’s troubles barely rate a mention. That’s short-sighted. As Yemen shows, today’s local difficulties have a habit of becoming tomorrow’s international crises.

Long-running tensions between Cameroon’s French and English-speaking communities came to a head last week with the arrest of at least 350 members of the main opposition party, whose leader has been jailed since January. Human Rights Watch accused security forces of using “excessive and indiscriminate force”.

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‘Prejudiced’ Home Office refusing visas to African researchers

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Academics invited to the UK are refused entry on arbitrary and ‘insulting’ grounds

The Home Office is being accused of institutional racism and damaging British research projects through increasingly arbitrary and “insulting” visa refusals for academics.

In April, a team of six Ebola researchers from Sierra Leone were unable to attend vital training in the UK, funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of a £1.5m flagship pandemic preparedness programme. At the LSE Africa summit, also in April, 24 out of 25 researchers were missing from a single workshop. Shortly afterwards, the Save the Children centenary events were marred by multiple visa refusals of key guests.

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Protests in Liberia over George Weah’s failure to tackle corruption

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Ex-footballer under pressure 18 months into presidency, as thousands take to the streets

Thousands of people have gathered in Liberia’s capital to protest against failures to tackle corruption, economic mismanagement and injustice under the former footballer turned president George Weah.

Riot police lined the streets of Monrovia where more than 5,000 people turned out despite the rain for one of the city’s biggest protests in living memory, according to witnesses. The protesters walked to Capitol Hill to present the government with a list of demands.

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Two Canadian volunteers missing in rare kidnapping in Ghana

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The women were abducted in Kumasi, and security sources have suggested it was a kidnapping for ransom

Two Canadian women who were volunteering with an international development organisation have been abducted in Ghana, a rare attack in a country seen as one of the most secure in the West African region.

The Canadians, who are ages 19 and 20, were taken on Tuesday evening in Kumasi, Ghana’s second city, some 200km (125 miles) north-west of the capital Accra.

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Leopard kills toddler in South Africa’s Kruger park

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Big cat that attacked two-year-old was hunted down and shot dead to avoid risk of a repeat

A leopard has killed a two-year-old boy inside a fenced-off staff compound at South Africa’s Kruger national park, officials said.

“The toddler was only 30 months old,” the park said in a statement on Thursday. “The boy was certified dead by doctors at the Shongwe hospital after being rushed there by family members.”

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As a gay man, my life will be over if I’m deported to Kenya. I urge the Home Office for mercy | Ken Macharia

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After making my home in England for 10 years, I have received a notice to leave everything I love behind

On Monday, I opened the letter I never wanted to receive. After 10 years living in the UK I was told that I am no longer welcome and should make arrangements to leave the country “without delay” or risk being deported in the middle of the night. As a gay man, whose country of birth, Kenya, persecutes homosexuals, I felt my whole world collapse around me as I read the matter-of-fact words on the Home Office headed paper.

Related: Gay rugby player faces deportation to Kenya as asylum claim rejected

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Two million people at risk of starvation as drought returns to Somalia

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Agencies sound the alarm over ‘climate crisis’ after devastation of crops and livestock

More than 2 million people could face starvation by the end of the summer, unless there are urgent efforts to respond to the drought in Somalia.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s humanitarian chief, said the country is facing one of the driest rainy seasons in more than three decades, and a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation”.

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African Union suspends Sudan over violence against protestors – video

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The African Union has suspended Sudan amid reports more than 100 people were killed when security forces raided pro-democracy camps. The sound of gunfire can be heard in footage filmed during a raid by Sudanese security forces on a peaceful Khartoum protest. More than 40 bodies were pulled from the Nile, medical groups associated with the demonstrators have said. Internet access has been cut, restricting protesters from communicating and sharing video evidence of the incident. There are growing fears that splits among the ruling military regime could lead to civil war

 

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Sudan paramilitaries threw dead protesters into Nile, doctors say

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Death toll from attack on pro-democracy camp reaches 100 as details of tactics emerge

Paramilitaries in Khartoum threw dozens of bodies into the Nile to try to hide the number of casualties inflicted during a dawn attack on pro-democracy protesters in the Sudanese capital earlier this week, doctors and activists have said.

At least 100 people are thought to have been killed in the crackdown across Sudan, which has been under military rule since President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April.

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Nearly half of all child deaths in Africa stem from hunger, study shows

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Almost 60 million children deprived of food despite continent’s economic growth, in what is ‘fundamentally a political problem’

One in three African children are stunted and hunger accounts for almost half of all child deaths across the continent, an Addis Ababa-based thinktank has warned.

In an urgent call for action, a study by the African Child Policy Forum said that nearly 60 million children in Africa do not have enough food despite the continent’s economic growth in recent years.

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Fight the fakes: how to beat the $200bn medicine counterfeiters | Helen Lock

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Armed with blockchain and AI, health workers and campaigners are battling the bogus business that kills thousands

By the time the teenage boy was standing in front of Bernice Bornmai, feverish and delirious, it was already too late.

It wasn’t just the malaria that was killing the 17-year-old, it was the time he’d wasted taking fake medicine. The antimalarials did nothing to stop the disease marching through the young Ghanaian’s body: his organs were already shutting down.

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Uganda bans giving to child beggars in bid to stop exploitation

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Kampala officials say law aims to protect children and keep them off the streets but activists fear exploiters will develop new tactics

Ugandan officials have passed a law making it an offence to offer money, food or clothing to children living on the streets of the capital, in a controversial bid to stop exploitation and sexual abuse.

The Kampala Child Protection Ordinance 2019 also criminalises children loitering in public places, begging or soliciting, vending or hawking, and bans the sale of alcohol and drugs to children.

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