Nairobi facility will be largest of its kind in Africa, boosting Kenyan economy and supplying 23 countries
Construction has started on a multimillion dollar Aids drug factory that will become the largest in Africa when it opens later this year.
The $100m (£75m) facility will bring 1,000 jobs to Kenya and reduce the reliance of almost half of the continent’s countries on European imports.
Continue reading...Yahya Jammeh accused of orchestrating huge theft of government funds
Yahya Jammeh, the former president of the Gambia, orchestrated the theft of almost $1bn (£760m) from his country before his flight into exile two years ago, investigative reporters have alleged.
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said it had reviewed thousands of leaked documents that detailed how government funds had been looted over 22 years.
Continue reading...The 108 people picked up by Elhiblu 1 reportedly hijacked it when they learned they were being returned to Libya
A merchant ship has been hijacked by refugees and migrants that it had rescued off the coast of Libya, and is now heading towards Malta, the Italian deputy prime minister and Maltese authorities have said.
Corriere della Sera and Italian news agencies reported that 108 people were picked up by the tanker Elhiblu 1, and hijacked the vessel when it became clear that it planned to take them back to Libya.
Continue reading...Daniel Forestier had been investigated over alleged plot to assassinate opposition figure
The body of a former French intelligence agent linked to an assassination plot has been found riddled with bullets in a layby in the Alps.
Daniel Forestier was discovered in a pool of blood in a parking area off a little-used road in Haute-Savoie near Lake Léman. Police said the killing was a “professional job”, and a postmortem revealed he had been shot five times.
Continue reading...Five people test positive for waterborne disease in flooded port city of Beira amid warnings outbreak will spread
The first cases of cholera have been reported in the cyclone-ravaged Mozambican city of Beira, complicating an already massive and complex emergency in the southern African country.
The announcement of five cases of the waterborne disease follows days of mounting fears that cholera and other diseases could break out in the squalid conditions in which tens of thousands have been living since Cyclone Idai struck on 14 March, killing at least 700 people across the region.
Continue reading...Civil war has ravaged the world’s youngest state, killing 400,000 people. The international community must prioritise peace
I have met both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the course of my work. You might associate one man with his campaign to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, and the other with Brexit. But I was trying to convince them to spare a thought for my country, South Sudan.
I quite understand that they have other things on their minds. When I visited parliament on the fraught opening day of the Brexit debate, Johnson recognised me from his trip to South Sudan, and sought to reassure me. But he had resigned as foreign secretary, because of Brexit.
Continue reading...The devastating impact of oil spills is widely recognised. The past decade has witnessed the destruction caused to human life and the environment from spills including the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Montara spill in Australia in 2009.
On each occasion the global community has reacted with horror, demanding the oil industry clean up local ecosystems and communities. Yet in Nigeria, and particularly in Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, these calls are ignored.
Continue reading...Abuse often filmed and sent to victims’ relatives, Women’s Refugee Commission finds
Refugees and migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa are being subjected to horrific and routine sexual violence in Libyan detention centres, a survey has found.
People arriving at the centres are “often immediately raped by guards who conduct violent anal cavity searches, which serves the dual purpose of retrieving money, as well as humiliation and subjugation”, the report by the Women’s Refugee Commission says. Many of the victims have been forcibly returned to the country by the Libyan coastguard under policies endorsed by the European Union.
Continue reading...Devastated areas of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi brace for the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and malaria
Cyclone Idai’s death toll has risen above 750 in the three southern African countries hit 10 days ago by the storm, as workers try to restore electricity and water and prevent an outbreak of cholera.
In Mozambique the number of dead has risen to 446, with 259 dead in Zimbabwe and at least 56 dead in Malawi.
Continue reading...One of nature’s most remarkable creatures, the pangolin, is being driven to extinction as hunting and trafficking have soared in recent years. Studies have discovered that hundreds of thousands of these distinctive, scaly animals are now being killed every year to satisfy markets in Asia, making it the most trafficked and poached mammal on Earth.
The pangolin is hunted for its meat – and also for its scales, which are believed to have important medicinal properties as cures for poor circulation, skin complaints and asthma.
Continue reading...President of Peulh ethnic group says ‘pregnant women, young and elderly’ targeted by Dogon group in remote area
Militia fighters descended on a village in central Mali before dawn on Saturday, killing at least 115 people in the latest deadly attack blamed on an ethnic militia, local authorities said.
The massacre in the village of Ogossogou left the village chief and his grandchildren dead in the ethnic Peulh community, according to a local official who had received detailed accounts from the remote area.
Continue reading...Beneath the crumbling arcade of the municipal council building in Beira, in Mozambique, a group of families has set up a dismal camp. They sleep on dirty concrete pavement and cook with branches from the trees brought down by Cyclone Idai which swept through southern Africa last week.
Winds of more than 100mph triggered devastating floods and more than 400 people were killed, according to government sources. Land and environment minister Celso Correia said that the situation in the country was now critical.
Continue reading...People rescued by boat are arriving at Beira in hope of first aid, shelter and reunion with their families
Standing in the fishing port in Beira, Mozambique, Jose Mala scans the faces of those evacuated by boat from Buzi – one of the towns hardest hit by Cyclone Idai – searching for anyone he knows.
He had hopeful news the day before, says Mala, 27. He met a neighbour at the port who told him his sister and two nephews had survived the cyclone that destroyed large parts of their hometown.
Continue reading...One of the buses involved in latest collision on Ghana’s roads caught fire, say police
At least 60 people have been killed in a head-on collision between two buses in Ghana, police have said.
The incident – the latest deadly crash on Ghana’s roads – happened on Friday at about 2am local time in the Bono East region, about 270 miles (430km) north of the capital, Accra.
Continue reading...In cities and villages across Mozambique the huge need for aid and assistance is not being met by a chaotic rescue effort
The main road connecting the cyclone-devastated Mozambican city of Beira to neighbouring Zimbabwe comes to an abrupt end. A section almost 100 metres wide is almost entirely underwater, an angry muddy gash where the tarmac was ripped away by the floods and raging currents.
A week after the onset of Cyclone Idai, as the waters have receded in some places, some of those trapped in villages in the midst of the flood waters have at last managed to get out with huge effort.
Continue reading...Rescuers race to reach tens of thousands of people trapped by vast areas of flooding
Idai first hit Mozambique on 4 March as a tropical depression with torrential rain that also affected southern Malawi. It then changed course, moving back over the sea where the storm strengthened to a cyclone with the equivalent force of a category 3 hurricane.
Continue reading...His first guitar was made from wood and bicycle parts and his first songs were shared via Bluetooth in the desert. But the Niger musician has become international – and is taking aim at France
How do you even dream of making music when your family and religious leaders disapprove, when you live at the edge of the Sahara desert, and you cannot afford an instrument?
It helps that the Tuareg musician Mdou Moctar, from Niger, is not easily discouraged. Unable to acquire a guitar, he made one out of a piece of wood with brake wires from an old bicycle for strings, and taught himself to play in secret. “I was from a religious family and music was not welcome, but I would go and listen to local musicians and dream of being like them,” the 32-year-old singer-songwriter says over the phone while on tour in the US.
Continue reading...Fears situation far worse than official death toll, as communities ‘totally obliterated’
Entire villages have been destroyed in Mozambique and Zimbabwe and most of their inhabitants swept away, as rescuers race to save tens of thousands of people trapped by flood waters from Cyclone Idai.
Testimony collected from areas entirely cut off by flooding shows a situation far worse than indicated by official figures, with estimates from some witnesses suggesting that the death toll will reach the thousands.
Continue reading...World Food Programme halts distribution of fortified cereal as four people die and hundreds suffer suspected food poisoning
The World Food Programme and Ugandan government have launched an investigation into deaths linked with the distribution of fortified porridge to refugees and people suffering from malnourishment.
The health ministry was alerted to reports of possible food poisoning among people who had consumed Super Cereal, a blended food designed to prevent malnutrition, in the north-east region of Karamoja on 12 March.
Continue reading...Power Natural High Energy Drink SX removed from shelves after complaint by regulator
Zambia has banned an energy drink after it was shown to have been adulterated with Viagra, according to local authorities.
The ban followed a complaint from the country’s medicine regulator in December suggesting the Power Natural High Energy Drink SX had been spiked with erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.
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