Category Archives: Africa

‘I saw many people suffer’: former Del Monte Kenya guards speak of violence on pineapple farm

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Exclusive: Former guards tell of clashes on farm that is facing civil claims over allegations of killing, rape and beatings

Former security guards at a vast Del Monte pineapple farm in Kenya have for the first time described violent clashes between guards and thieves at the plantation, which is facing civil claims over allegations of killing, rape and beatings by its guards.

This month Del Monte announced it would outsource its security operations at the farm to G4S, sacking its 214 in-house guards.

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Somalia has 99% of $2bn debt cancelled in major boost to fragile recovery

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Paris Club of creditor nations agree cancellation as Mogadishu moves towards financial normalisation amid ongoing conflict

The Paris Club, a collection of some of the world’s wealthiest creditor nations, has announced the cancellation of 99% of Somalia’s debt, in a major boost as the country continues its fragile economic recovery from an ongoing three-decade conflict.

In a statement released by the Paris Club, which is run by senior officials from the French Treasury, Somalia’s creditors, including the US, UK, Russia, Norway, and Japan, announced the cancellation of $2bn owed to club members as of January 2023.

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Darfur rape survivors gather together after ethnically targeted campaign

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Group on outskirts of Geneina share stories from November when RSF and allied militias unleashed wave of sexual violence

Twice a week, a group of women gather together in a nondescript house in Ardamata, on the outskirts of Geneina in Sudan’s West Darfur state, to tell their stories to each other, cry, and drink coffee.

The women, who work or used to work in education, are all survivors of an ethnically targeted campaign of rape and sexual abuse carried out by fighters from Arab militias backed by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on 5 November, after the fall of the army garrison in Ardamata.

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Zimbabwe police arrest apostolic ‘prophet’ and rescue 251 children from compound

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Man claiming to be a prophet arrested along with seven aides ‘for criminal activities which include abuse of minors’

Zimbabwe police have said they arrested a man claiming to be a prophet of an apostolic sect at a compound where more than 250 children were allegedly being used as cheap labour, and where authorities found 16 unregistered graves.

In a statement, police spokesperson Paul Nyathi alleged Ishmael Chokurongerwa, 56, a “self-styled” prophet, led a sect with more than 1,000 members at a farm about 34km (21 miles) north-west of the capital, Harare, where the children were staying alongside other believers.

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European Commission accused of ‘bankrolling dictators’ by MEPs after Tunisia deal

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Members of justice committee say €150m in EU funding went straight to country’s president, Kais Saied

The European Commission has been accused of “bankrolling dictators” by senior MEPs who have claimed that the €150m it gave to Tunisia last year in a migration and development deal has ended up directly in the president’s hands.

A group of MEPs on the human rights, justice and foreign affairs committees at the European parliament launched a scathing attack on the executive in Brussels, expressing anxiety over reports that the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, was about to seal a similar deal with Egypt.

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Rwanda opposition leader barred from election over past convictions

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Victoire Ingabire, who was pardoned for terrorism and genocide denial offences, denounces court’s ‘clearly politicised’ ruling

A Rwandan court has found the opposition leader and dissident Victoire Ingabire ineligible to run in the July presidential election because of previous convictions for terrorism and genocide denial.

A fierce critic of Rwanda’s long-ruling president, Paul Kagame, Ingabire spent eight years in prison before receiving a presidential pardon in 2018 that cut short her 15-year sentence.

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Seven times size of Manhattan: the African tree-planting project making a difference

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Thousands of farmers have been persuaded by TREES scheme to replace barren monocultures with biodiverse forest gardens

In a world of monoculture cash crops, an innovative African project is persuading farmers to plant biodiverse forest gardens that feed the family, protect the soil and expand tree cover.

Could Trees for the Future (TREES) be a rare example of a mass reforestation campaign that actually works? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) certainly thinks so and last month awarded it the status of World Restoration Flagship.

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Search continues for hundreds of kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren

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Two mass abductions were the latest in a series of group kidnappings by gunmen

Nigerian security forces continued to search forests and set up roadblocks in the north-west of the country on Sunday in an attempt to find hundreds of kidnapped schoolchildren, but observers said combing the woodland expanses could take weeks.

More than 280 children aged between seven and 18 were taken from a school in Kuriga on Thursday in one of the biggest mass-abductions in recent months in Nigeria’s turbulent north-west. A further 15 children were taken in another raid on a school in Sokoto on Saturday.

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Eight children and an adult die in Zanzibar after eating sea turtle meat

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Another 78 people taken to hospital after consuming delicacy, which is known to cause food poisoning

Eight children and an adult have died after eating sea turtle meat on Pemba Island in the Zanzibar archipelago, and 78 other people have been taken to hospital, authorities said on Saturday.

Sea turtle meat is considered a delicacy in Zanzibar but it periodically results in deaths from chelonitoxism, a type of food poisoning.

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Nigeria: gunmen kidnap 15 children in dawn raid on school

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Attackers force their way into school days after 300 children abducted in different Nigerian state

Gunmen kidnapped at least 15 pupils from a school in Nigeria in a dawn raid on Saturday, days after about 300 children were abducted in another armed raid.

The gunmen forced their way into the school premises in the Sokoto village of Gidan Bakuso, in the country’s north-west, and started firing shots sporadically, waking and causing panic among the pupils, said the school’s owner, Liman Abubakar Bakuso.

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Nigeria sends troops to rescue more than 250 kidnapped schoolchildren

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President sends in military after mass abduction from school in north-western state of Kaduna

Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has sent troops to rescue more than 250 children kidnapped by gunmen from a school in the north-west of the country in one of the largest mass abductions in recent years.

The mass kidnapping in Kaduna state was the second in a week in Nigeria, where heavily armed criminal gangs on motorbikes target victims in villages and schools and along highways in search of ransom payments.

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Dramatic rise in women and girls being cut, new FGM data reveals

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Progress to prevent female genital mutilation needs to be ‘27 times faster’, says UN

The number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) has increased by 15% in the past eight years according to new data.

Figures released by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, show that more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, compared with 200 million in 2016. The trend is towards girls being cut at a younger age, said Unicef executive director Catherine Russell.

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At least 287 Nigerian students abducted from school by gunmen, say authorities

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Assailants reportedly surrounded Kuriga school as pupils were starting the day in second abduction in country in less than a week

Gunmen have attacked a school in Nigeria’s north-west region seizing at least 287 students, in the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week.

Authorities had said earlier that more than 100 students were taken hostage in the attack. But Sani Abdullahi, the headteacher, told Kaduna governor Uba Sani when he visited the town on Thursday that the total number of those missing after a headcount was 287.

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US denies visa to Ugandan MP who called for homosexual castration

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Activists welcome sanction on Sarah Achieng Opendi and other legislators against a backdrop of anti-LGBTQ+ oppression in Africa

The Ugandan MP Sarah Achieng Opendi, who called for homosexuals to be castrated during a parliamentary debate on the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws has been denied a visa to attend a UN meeting in New York next week.

Opendi expressed “shock” after the US embassy in Kampala rejected her application to travel to the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women , pending “administrative” review.

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Gaza ceasefire talks appear to stall days before Ramadan

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Two days of negotiations in Cairo break up with Hamas accusing Israeli PM of not wanting to a deal

Negotiations aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war appear to have stalled, days before an unofficial deadline of the beginning of Ramadan.

Two days of talks between Hamas and international mediators in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, have not yielded any significant breakthroughs, Palestinian officials said, after Israel declined to send a delegation to the latest round of negotiations.

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Lords pass five amendments to Rwanda bill in heavy defeat for Rishi Sunak

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Peers, including senior Tories, vote by margins of about 100 votes for changes to legislation, which will have to go back to Commons

Rishi Sunak has suffered his heaviest defeat in the House of Lords after the archbishop of Canterbury and former Conservative ministers joined forces with the opposition to force through five amendments to the Rwandan deportation bill.

The string of government setbacks, most passed by unusually large margins of about 100 votes, means the legislation, which aims to clear the way to send asylum seekers on a one-way flight to Kigali, will have to go back to the Commons.

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Scientists unearth mysteries of giant, moving Moroccan star dune

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Parts of the structure are younger than expected while an east wind blows the whole thing across the desert, researchers find

They are impressive, mysterious structures that loom out of deserts on the Earth and are also found on Mars and on Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan.

Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert.

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About 170 people ‘executed’ in Burkina Faso village attacks, official says

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Regional prosecutor says he received reports of deaths in three northern settlements as jihadist violence flares

About 170 people were “executed” in attacks on three villages in northern Burkina Faso a week ago, a regional prosecutor has said, as jihadist violence flares in the junta-ruled country.

On that same day, 25 February, separate attacks on a mosque in eastern Burkina and a Catholic church in the north left dozens more dead.

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Single orca seen killing great white shark off South African coast

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Attack on juvenile is thought to be first known time a lone orca has hunted down a great white

It is a smash and grab that has stunned scientists: in less than two minutes, a killer whale attacked and consumed a great white shark before swimming off with the victim’s liver in its mouth.

Experts say the event off the coast of Mossel Bay in South Africa offers new insights into the predatory behaviour of orcas.

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