Morning runs by Edgar Lungu and party supporters amount to ‘activism’ that requires clearance, police say
A former president of Zambia has been warned that his morning jog is turning into “political activism” for which he must seek police approval.
The police said the runs by Edgar Lungu and some of his party supporters requires their clearance to ensure the safety of the man who lost power in 2021.
Continue reading...Logs shaped with sharp tools on border of river predate rise of modern humans and may have formed walkway or platform
Researchers have discovered remnants of what is thought to be the world’s oldest known wooden structure, an arrangement of logs on the bank of a river bordering Zambia and Tanzania that predates the rise of modern humans.
The simple structure, made by shaping two logs with sharp stone tools, may have formed part of a walkway or platform for human ancestors who lived along the Kalambo River nearly 500,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Zambia study finds egg variability and random nest selection by cuckoos helps fork-tailed drongos rumble impostors
Cuckoos might be the ultimate avian con artists, laying lookalike eggs in the nests of other birds to avoid raising their own young, but researchers say at least one potential victim is remarkably good at rumbling the fraud.
Scientists studying the African cuckoo have revealed that while the birds are able to produce almost identical-looking eggs to those of the fork-tailed drongo, the latter is likely to reject an impostor egg about 94% of the time.
Continue reading...Exclusive: CT Group, co-owned by Lynton Crosby, planned secretive African campaign on behalf of Canadian mining giant
A lobbying firm with deep ties to the Conservative party planned a secretive campaign to influence elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in exchange for millions of pounds from a mining company.
Leaked documents suggest the influential firm co-owned by the veteran Tory strategist Sir Lynton Crosby agreed to help the mining company swing a presidential election in the central African country.
Continue reading...Economists accuse bondholders of standing to make huge profits at the expense of the crisis-hit country
More than 100 economists and academics have urged international lenders to crisis-stricken Zambia to write off a significant slice of their loans during financial restructuring talks this month.
Zambia is seeking up to $8.4bn (£7.3bn) in debt relief from major lenders, including private funds run by the world’s largest investment manager, BlackRock, to help put its public finances back in order.
Continue reading...Years of mismanagement have led to soaring debt levels, but critics say that without meaningful relief, austerity will continue
The International Monetary Fund has approved a $1.3bn (£1.1bn) loan to Zambia, as the country scrambles to rebuild its crisis-hit economy after defaulting on its foreign debts in 2020.
The Covid pandemic compounded Zambia’s economic woes, blamed on years of mismanagement and corruption, which left the country with unsustainable levels of debt.
Continue reading...Anti-poverty campaigners say world’s largest fund manager refuses to reduce or delay payments on Zambia’s debt
BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, has come under pressure to delay demands for debt interest payments from Zambia to prevent the crisis-hit African country’s finances from spiralling out of control.
Anti-poverty campaigners said BlackRock, which manages $10tn (£7.68tn) of assets, was among the private sector lenders that had refused to reduce the interest rate or delay payments on Zambian bonds, unlike governments and international agencies that hold the country’s debts.
Continue reading...Conservationists welcome interim injunction to stop farm development they say threatens migration of 10 million fruit bats
Conservationists in Zambia have hailed a high court injunction preventing deforestation and commercial agriculture on the edge of Kasanka national park, which they say threatens the world’s biggest mammal migration.
Every October, about 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats descend on the swamps of Kasanka from across Africa and beyond. They feast on fruit in and around the park, one of Zambia’s smallest but under the highest level of protection, dispersing seeds across the continent on their epic journey.
Continue reading...Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress
From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.
Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.
Continue reading...Amelie Osborn-Smith said she felt 'very lucky' to be alive and was not going to be held back, after a crocodile mauled her during a white water rafting trip along the Zambezi in Zambia.
Osborne-Smith, 18, thought she would lose her foot after the attack and said she was very 'relieved' when doctors told her they had managed to save it
Continue reading...Amelie Osborn-Smith says she feels ‘very lucky’ in first interview after incident while rafting in Zambia
A British teenager who was mauled by a crocodile in southern Africa feared she would need to have her foot amputated, and said she felt “very lucky” during an interview from her hospital bed.
Amelie Osborn-Smith, 18, was left with her right foot “hanging loose” and a dislocated hip after the attack in the Zambezi River in Zambia while she was taking a break during a white water rafting expedition.
Continue reading...Frederik Willem – FW – de Klerk, who has died aged 85, was the last president of South Africa under apartheid. He was often compared with Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, for his work in consigning a bankrupt and reviled regime to oblivion.
When De Klerk succeeded PW Botha in 1989, he oversaw an event no less unexpected than the collapse of Soviet communism was when Gorbachev came to power in 1985. His stunning act of realpolitik in announcing sweeping political reform, including the release of his eventual successor, Nelson Mandela, was the grand gesture that saved his country, and in 1993 they shared the Nobel peace prize. The following year Mandela became the country’s first democratically elected leader.
Continue reading...My friend the pioneering British-Nigerian lawyer and activist Tunji Fahm, who has died aged 88, was the first black minority-ethnic lawyer to be appointed as a chief officer of a local authority legal department in the UK, in 1974 at Islwyn (borough) district council, south Wales. He became the council’s chief monitoring officer in 1978 and, later, founder of the first legal practice led by black lawyers in Wales.
When Tunji arrived in the UK in 1954 to study law in Cardiff, he was one of the few African students in the university’s law school.
Continue reading...Fears grow that military presence and alleged restrictions on opposition campaign could tarnish reputation for fair elections
As Zambia goes to the polls today, fears are growing that political meddling in the process could push its long-treasured democracy towards a “tipping point”.
Zambia has long been considered a model of democracy for its neighbours. But today’s vote has been accompanied by a military deployment, while the run-up to the election has been marred by political violence and restrictions on opposition campaigning, analysts and human rights monitors have said.
Continue reading...James Duddridge made the slip-up in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.
Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991.
'Today the United Kingdom mourns Dr Kaunda’s passing alongside his family, the people of Zimbabwe and indeed the wider world,' said Duddridge. The slip prompted anger on social media, with some seeing evidence of enduring colonial-era attitudes among British officials towards African countries
Continue reading...Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudes
James Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.
Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule.
Continue reading...Film-maker Gio Arlotta and two young musicians are on a quest to track down the legendary leader of a 1970s Zambian band
Who knew 1970s Zambia had its own thriving musical genre? This modest documentary revisits the brief, almost-forgotten history of “Zamrock” – or at least what remains of it, which appears to be very little beyond the back catalogue of its leading band, Witch. Witch’s rhythmic blend of British blues, funk, psychedelic and garage rock has aged very well, and reissues of their albums in the 2010s found a new audience, including Italian film-maker Gio Arlotta, who consequently undertook an expedition to Zambia to try to find the band, accompanied by two young Dutch musicians, Jacco Gardner and Nic Mauskovic.
There’s now a well-trodden route for such musical travelogues, laid down by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club and Searching for Sugar Man, and while this lacks the polish or drama of either of those, it’s an engaging and uplifting journey. One of the problems it runs into is a lack of surviving footage of Witch in action. Arlotta and co scour Zambia’s pre-digital archives, but the best they come up with is some unseen footage of James Brown. Nor does it help that most of Witch’s original lineup are dead.
Continue reading...The president of Zambia from 1964 to 1991, Kenneth Kaunda, who has died aged 97, stood out as one of the most humane and idealistic African leaders in the post-independence age. A man of great presence and charm, he played a notable role as a leader of the “frontline states” in the long confrontation between independent black Africa and the white-dominated south of the continent, which came to an end only in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa.
He was a consummate politician and spent much of his time shuffling his top party figures around in a chess game to balance ethnic groups and their claims to power-sharing; he also possessed a ruthless streak which he deployed towards opponents, although his abhorrence of violence was a rarity in that era.
Continue reading...Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’
As Africa emerges from its second wave of Covid-19, one thing is clear: having officially clocked up more than 3.8m cases and more than 100,000 deaths, it hasn’t been spared. But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago. The relative youth of African populations compared with those in the global north – while a major contributing factor – may not entirely explain the discrepancy. So what is really going on in Africa, and what does that continent’s experience of Covid-19 teach us about the disease and ourselves?
“If anyone had told me one year ago that we would have 100,000 deaths from a new infection by now, I would not have believed them,” says John Nkengasong, the Cameroonian virologist who directs the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Incidentally, he deplores the shocking normalisation of death that this pandemic has driven: “One hundred thousand deaths is a lot of deaths,” he says.
Continue reading...Experts say continent may not be seen as priority because true extent of pandemic is unknown
African countries may suffer in the global rush for vaccines because they are unable to gather statistics that reveal the true extent of the spread of Covid among their populations, epidemiologists and other experts fear.
According to data from Johns Hopkins university, there have been 3.7m confirmed cases in Africa, and the landmark figure of 100,000 confirmed deaths is likely to be reached within days.
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