Airline cannot confirm number of casualties after Boeing 737-800 MAX crashes 40 miles from Addis Ababa
An Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard, a spokesman for the airline has said.
Flight ET 302 crashed near the town of Bishoftu, 40 miles south-east of the capital, Addis Ababa, the airline said, confirming the plane was a Boeing 737-800 MAX.
Continue reading...For more than a century, the stuffed body of an African man was displayed as a grotesque exhibit in European museums. His body had been stolen from his grave by a pair of French taxidermists who dug him up in the dead of night and had him shipped to France, along with a collection of similarly preserved animals.
In 2000, following a vociferous campaign for common decency to prevail, the man’s remains were reburied in African soil.
Continue reading...Park in DRC was shut last year for more than eight months after series of attacks on staff
A forest ranger has been killed in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, weeks after the reserve was reopened to tourists.
Virunga, home to critically endangered mountain gorillas as well as hundreds of other rare species, was shut for more than eight months for a review of security after a series of attacks on staff last year.
Continue reading...Biggest demonstrations since 2011 Arab spring call for a ‘free and democratic’ Algeria
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Algeria as popular resistance grows to the president’s decision to stand for a fifth term.
Crowds gathered in Algiers throughout the morning despite train services being stopped by authorities, and huge numbers demonstrated in every other major city and most towns. Some chanted slogans calling for a “free and democratic Algeria” and shouted “peaceful, peaceful”.
Continue reading...A visit to the world’s fifth poorest country has shown me that battling early and forced marriage begins with communities
Islam, for me, is a way of life and the core of my world. As a Muslim woman I have always been encouraged to be who I want to be.
I get frustrated when people say: “Why do you wear a hijab? Isn’t that a sign of women’s oppression?” I choose to wear a hijab; I choose to be an educated and liberated woman and I choose to follow Islam.
Continue reading...If protesters allow ‘infiltration’ by unspecified forces it may provoke chaos, says Bouteflika
The Algerian president has warned of chaos on the eve of anticipated large demonstrations if protesters challenging his decision to stand for a fifth term allow the “infiltration” of their movement by unspecified forces.
People from a wide range of social and economic backgrounds have taken to the streets across Algeria in recent weeks in what have been the biggest demonstrations in the country since the 2011 Arab spring.
Continue reading...When the south London-raised musician visited his home country, Ghana, he fell in love with it. Now, he is building schools and organising festivals there, and calling for others to return and rebuild a nation
It was in 2011 that Fuse ODG had an awakening. Frustrated with his experiences growing up in south London, he decided to take a trip to Ghana, the country of his birth. “I saw a whole new Africa that I had never seen on TV,” he says. “You’re just a human here, you don’t feel like a minority. It feels like home. That’s the energy I got from coming back: peace of mind.”
That trip was a catalyst for what happened next: a string of hit Afrobeats singles that melded old African highlife rhythms with western rap and R&B melodies. Now, the 30-year-old is about to release his second album, New Africa Nation, which comes hand in hand with a vastly more ambitious project: to build schools, bring together communities and change the way Africa is perceived.
Continue reading...Reach of extremist groups could spread to Ghana, Togo and Benin, says US military chief
A rapid and alarming deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso is threatening to spread to its three southern neighbours, a senior US military figure has warned, heralding the potential destabilisation of a vast area of west Africa.
Related: Kidnapped Canadian found dead, Burkina Faso officials say
Continue reading...Sweeping health reforms, which also include free provision for pregnant women, heralded as national ‘turning point’
After decades of suffering some of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world, Mali has vowed to provide free healthcare for pregnant women and children under five in a “brave and bold” move to revamp its dismal healthcare system.
Following a raft of reforms announced by President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, free contraceptives will also be provided across the country as tens of thousands of community health workers are introduced in a bid to provide more localised healthcare to Mali’s population of 18 million people.
Continue reading...Many of the Sudanese protesters demanding an end to Omar al-Bashir’s regime have known no other rule. They were not yet born when he seized power in a coup three decades ago – their country’s median age is just below 20. But they are certain they want something better.
The ruthless Sudanese president is now facing a sustained and unprecedented challenge. The killings of more than 50 peaceful protesters, the beating and arrests of hundreds more and the declaration of a state of emergency last month have, if anything, spurred on demonstrators. The protests were triggered in December by a subsidy cut which sent bread prices soaring, but fuelled by anger going far beyond the country’s dire economic straits to corruption, government sclerosis and brutality.
Continue reading...European commission combats ‘untruths’ over issue after row with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
The European commission has declared the migration crisis over, as it sharpened its attack on “fake news” and “misinformation” about the issue.
Frans Timmermans, the European commission’s first vice-president, said: “Europe is no longer experiencing the migration crisis we lived in 2015, but structural problems remain.”
Continue reading...National Army Museum says it has agreed to a formal request for two locks of hair of Tewodros II
A British museum has agreed to repatriate to Ethiopia two locks of hair taken from the head of the 19th-century emperor Tewodros II.
The National Army Museum on Monday said it had agreed to a formal request for the return of objects “considered to be of cultural sensitivity to Ethiopian citizens”.
Continue reading...The Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid, better known as Shawkan, was jailed in 2013 for reporting on anti-government protests. Today, after almost six years, he was finally released. 'I feel like I am flying,' he said as he was reunited with family and friends
Continue reading...World Wide Fund for Nature launches inquiry into claims that it works with paramilitaries allegedly involved in serious abuses
One of the world’s largest charities has launched an investigation into claims that it funds, equips and works with paramilitary forces accused of beating, torturing, sexually assaulting and murdering scores of people in national parks across Africa and Asia.
Human rights specialists will lead an independent review of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) conservation charity, following allegations of abuse in six countries, published by BuzzFeed news on Monday.
Continue reading...Sihem Bensedrine’s explosive report into human rights abuses is written. Now those in power must be persuaded to read it
When Sihem Bensedrine, the head of Tunisia’s truth and dignity commission, tried to give a speech in parliament last year, she was drowned out.
Politicians banged on the wooden desks and yelled, some standing up to hurl accusations and gesture in her direction. As the drumbeats got louder, Bensedrine left the chamber. The MPs applauded.
Continue reading...Thousands have taken to the streets to oppose Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term
Algeria’s ailing president has sacked his campaign manager as the nation’s elite moved to consolidate its power in the face of historic mass protests.
Tension continued to rise on Sunday, with students taking to the streets as the protests entered their second week. Observers waited to see if the president, AbdelazizBouteflika, would return from medical treatment in Geneva to submit his candidacy before Sunday’s midnight deadline.
Continue reading...Spillage following blaze sparked stampede in Nembe kingdom, Bayelsa state
More than 50 people are missing after a leaking oil pipeline exploded and caused a stampede in southern Nigeria, a local official said on Saturday.
The blast early on Friday caused massive oil spillage in the Nembe kingdom in Bayelsa state, the Nembe Chiefs Council spokesman, Chief Nengi James-Eriworio, told the Associated Press.
Continue reading...Amadou Koufa appears in video three months after French armed forces minister declared him ‘neutralised’
A senior jihadist leader in Mali whom France said it had killed last November survived the attack and appears in a new propaganda video mocking French and Malian forces.
The French armed forces minister, Florence Parly, told parliament a few days after the 22 November raid that Amadou Koufa, a radical preacher and senior leader of a militant group linked to al-Qaida, was one of 35 fighters who had been “neutralised”.
Continue reading...You know a democracy is in trouble when two out of three voters don’t bother to turn up for a presidential election. In Nigeria’s just-concluded presidential poll, incumbent Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected with the backing of 15.2 million voters compared to the 11.3 million votes his main rival Atiku Abubakar, was able to amass.
Although this gave Buhari 56% of the total votes cast, in a country with a population of close to 200 million, including more than 84 million registered voters, 15.2 million votes hardly qualifies as a huge mandate. The 35% voter turnout was down from 44% in the 2015 presidential election and way down from the 54% turnout in 2011. In fact, turnout for Nigerian presidential elections has been dropping at an alarmingly consistent rate since 2003. So why are increasingly fewer Nigerians feeling the need to vote in elections that decide the most powerful political office?
Continue reading...Democracy movement Mouwatana opposes president Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term
The coordinator of protests sweeping across Algeria for the past week has called for wholesale regime change as tens of thousands are expected to take to the streets on Friday.
“What Algerians want is to get rid of not just the president, but the entire regime,” said Soufiane Djilali, who spearheads the Mouwatana (Democracy and Citizenship) movement, which organised some of the historic protests against the current ruler, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. “The president must go, the government must resign, and the fake national assembly – all these need to be dismantled,” he said.
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