Legal action follows war of words with Sentebale chair after Duke of Sussex’s resignation as patron
The Duke of Sussex is being sued by Sentebale in the latest twist in the bitter fallout over the African charity he co-founded.
The charity has lodged papers in London’s high court over defamation claims naming Prince Harry and the former Sentebale trustee Mark Dyer as defendants.
Continue reading...The men, sent to the southern African country in July, have been denied in-person counsel for nine months
Four men deported by the US to Eswatini and denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while detained in a maximum security prison have the right to see a local lawyer, Eswatini’s supreme court ruled.
The men, from Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam and Yemen, were sent to the small southern African country, formerly known as Swaziland, in July despite having no connection to the country, as part of Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations.
Continue reading...New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps, in Uganda, turning on itself
On a June day in 2015, primatologist Aaron Sandel was quietly observing a small cluster of the Ngogo chimpanzee group in Uganda’s Kibale national park when he noticed something strange. As other members of the chimpanzees’ wider group moved closer through the forest, the chimpanzees in front of him began to display nervous behaviour. They grimaced and touched each other for reassurance, acting more like they were about to meet strangers than close companions.
In hindsight, Sandel said, that moment was the first sign of what would become a years-long bloody conflict between a once close-knit group of chimps.
Continue reading...Olivia has been detained for months at the sprawling Dilley center in Texas. She has lost 20lb, and wakes up every day with a headache
Each day in detention feels like 48 hours for Olivia.
The 19-year-old asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been at the Dilley Immigration processing center in Texas for more than four months.
Continue reading...Man born in El Salvador has been fighting removal to series of ‘third’ countries after mistaken deportation last year
US government attorneys on Tuesday told a federal judge the Department of Homeland Security still intends to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Liberia, despite a new agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who cannot legally be returned to their home countries.
The Salvadorian national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by homeland security officials.
Continue reading...Ibrahim Traoré, who took power in 2022 coup, tells state broadcaster ‘we must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us’
People in Burkina Faso should forget about democracy as it is “not for us”, the military president, Ibrahim Traoré, told the country’s state broadcaster.
Traoré took power in a coup in September 2022, toppling another junta that had taken power just nine months earlier. He has since stifled opposition and in January banned political parties outright.
Continue reading...Dozen people arrive under new deal but legal challenges expected with scheme criticised as ‘dehumanising process’
A flight carrying people being deported from the US has landed in Uganda, as Donald Trump’s administration pushes on with its strategy of expelling migrants to countries they have no ties to.
The deported people would stay in the east African country as “a transition phase for potential onward transmission to other countries”, an unnamed senior Ugandan government official told Reuters.
Continue reading...Reports, based on X post from unofficial account, follow JD Vance’s accusations and threats of finding ‘legal remedies’
Several news outlets have falsely reported that Somaliland’s government called for the extradition of Ilhan Omar, basing their stories on a post from an X account that does not represent the state despite its claims to the contrary.
Fox News, the New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group’s the National News Desk and the Independent ran stories on the US representative. The reports centred on a post by @RepOfSomaliland in reaction to claims by JD Vance that Omar had committed immigration fraud, which echoed prior allegations against the Somali-born Minnesota Democrat that she has vehemently denied.
Continue reading...Football federation president on the run with wife and son
Conviction in absentia of wide-ranging corruption charges
Authorities in Congo-Brazzaville have applied to Interpol for an international arrest warrant against Jean-Guy Blaise Mayolas, the president of the country’s football federation, Fecofoot, after he was convicted of embezzling $1.1m in Fifa funds.
Mayolas is on the run with his wife and son after they were all sentenced to life imprisonment this month for embezzling funds provided by world football’s governing body as part of its Covid-19 relief plan in February 2021. As the Guardian revealed last year, that included almost $500,000 earmarked for the Congo women’s team.
Continue reading...A huge rise in internet users under the age of 30 has fuelled an increase in online violence against women and girls with devastating real-life effects, activists say
Activists and lawyers in Africa are calling for urgent action to protect women, girls and boys as digital violence surges across the continent.
A massive rise in internet users, coupled with huge numbers of people aged under 30, has fuelled an increase in gendered online violence across the continent, according to experts, by giving perpetrators new tools to control and silence women and girls, and influence boys.
Continue reading...• UN votes to describe slave trade as ‘gravest crime against humanity’
Despite resistance from states who had role in chattel slavery, many feel this is an idea whose time has come
John Mahama knows a thing or two about beating the establishment. On Wednesday, less than two years after completing a remarkable comeback as Ghana’s president with a landslide defeat of the ruling party candidate, he rallied the world to ratify a landmark vote against transatlantic chattel slavery, despite major opposition from the same western entities that drove it for centuries.
The resolution to declare the practice as “the gravest crime against humanity” passed with a decisive majority at the UN general assembly and has been largely welcomed across Africa. Yet the details of the tally reveal a world still deeply divided on the gravity of the sin of enslaving more than 15 million people as chattel over the course of 400 years.
Continue reading...Piece by late South African artist Dumile Feni is part of new series History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme
On the second floor of the Reina Sofía, in the very spot where Picasso’s Guernica was first exhibited when it arrived in the Madrid museum 34 years ago, there now hangs a smaller, near-namesake of the Spanish artist’s most famous work.
While African Guernica, which was drawn by the late South African artist Dumile Feni in 1967, may lack the scale of Picasso’s masterpiece, its depth, anger and unnerving juxtaposition of man and beast, light and dark, and innocence and cruelty, are every bit as disturbing.
Continue reading...Market in North Darfur and truck carrying civilians in North Kordofan hit as civil war approaches fourth year
At least 28 civilians have been killed in two separate drone strikes in Sudan, according to health workers, as the country’s brutal civil war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) approaches its fourth year.
A strike hit a market in the town of Saraf Omra, in North Darfur state, on Wednesday, killing “22 people, including an infant, and injuring 17 more”, a health worker at the local clinic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Continue reading...Ukrainian president says peace deal proposed by US includes handing over land to Russia. What we know on day 1,492
Continue reading...Members call for reparatory justice as landmark resolution aims for ‘political recognition at the highest level’
The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs”.
The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). It had been proposed by Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, who said: “Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”
Continue reading...Grammy winner seeks more than $20m in damages over mistranslation of The Lion King chant
A Grammy-winning South African composer who wrote and performed the opening chant in Circle of Life for Disney’s The Lion King is suing a comedian for allegedly damaging his reputation by intentionally misrepresenting the song’s meaning on a podcast and in his standup routine.
Lebohang Morake’s lawsuit accuses the Zimbabwean comedian Learnmore Mwanyenyeka, known as Learnmore Jonasi, of intentionally mistranslating the chant, which launches the 1994 movie and is central to staged versions as well as Disney’s 2019 remake.
Continue reading...Conservationists celebrate second twin birth just two months after another found in Virunga national park
A second set of mountain gorilla twins has been born in Virunga national park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in what conservationists are celebrating as an “extraordinary” event for the endangered primates.
Just two months after tiny twin mountain gorillas were discovered by rangers in the Virunga massif, in eastern DRC, another rare twin birth has been found by park wardens. This time, an infant male and female have been spotted in the Baraka family, a troop of 19 mountain gorillas that roam the region’s high-altitude rainforests.
Continue reading...Victims of army drone attack on East Darfur health facility included children and medical personnel
A strike on a healthcare facility in Sudan has killed 64 people and wounded 89 more, the World Health Organization reported on Saturday.
The UN’s humanitarian office in Sudan had earlier said it was “appalled by the attack on a hospital in East Darfur yesterday, reportedly killing dozens, including children, and injuring more”.
Continue reading...UK’s bilateral aid to African countries, which funds areas such as schools and clinics, to be cut by almost £900m by 2028-29
Some of the world’s poorest countries will lose out on UK aid that funds programmes such as schools and clinics, due to budget cuts set out by the foreign secretary.
The UK’s bilateral aid to African countries will be reduced by almost £900m by 2028-29 – a 56% cut – as part of more than £6bn in cuts which are funding an increase in defence spending.
Continue reading...Lemi Limbu, who has severe intellectual disabilities, remains in prison and will now face retrial for the murder of her daughter
A woman with severe intellectual disabilities in Tanzania has had her conviction and death sentence quashed after spending more than a decade in prison awaiting execution.
Lemi Limbu, now in her early 30s, was convicted of the murder of her daughter in 2015. On 4 March, a court in Shinyanga, northern Tanzania, declared she can appeal. She will face a retrial, but a date has yet to be set.
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