Africa

Harried doctors fighting the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) fear it may become the worst outbreak of the deadly disease in the region to date, as an ongoing insurgency slows treatment and accelerates contamination.

Soaring birth rates in developing nations are fuelling a global baby boom while women in dozens of richer countries aren’t producing enough children to maintain population levels there, according to figures released Friday.

Contents: Over 10,000 people displaced by new fighting in Central African Republic civil war; Suspicions grow about Russia’s Wagner PMC mercenary group in Central African Republic

President Paul Biya of Cameroon took office on Tuesday for the seventh time after a victory marred by controversy and violence in October, particularly in the English-speaking minority regions demanding independence (Cameroon is majority French-speaking).

MINYA, Egypt (AP) – Coptic Christians in the Egyptian city of Minya prepared to bury their dead on Saturday, a day after militants ambushed three buses carrying Christian pilgrims on their way to a remote desert monastery, killing seven and wounding 19.

The governor of the biggest city in Tanzania urged residents this week to help him round up people in the region whom they believe to be gay. He announced the creation of “surveillance squads” to hunt down same-sex couples, who will then be arrested.

The Nigerian government this week reportedly dismissed as “fake news” claims that deplorable conditions have driven soldiers deployed to the northeastern part of the African country to combat Boko Haram jihadists to beg for food.

The former second-in-command and “founding father” of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab terrorist organization in Somalia, considered the deadliest jihadist group in Africa, “has a good chance of winning” the election next month for president of the country’s South West regional state, the Associated Press (AP) reports Tuesday. 

The Nigerian army reportedly killed up to 21 people when it fired live bullets into a crowd of protesters on the third day of demonstrations by the African country’s leading Shiite Muslim movement in the capital of Abuja on Monday.

Libya, located a few hundred miles from the European coast, is facing a “significant risk” of becoming the “new” home of the Islamic State’s “caliphate,” a London-based expert from the Chatham House think-tank’s Royal Institute of International Affairs cautioned in an editorial published by the Dallas Morning News on Sunday.

“It needed to convey the message of a mass exodus,” Candace Owens said of the artwork that would mark black America’s exit, or Blexit, from the “liberal plantation.”

Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) revealed on Friday that 79 political parties had registered their respective presidential candidates ahead of the 2019 general elections.

All of the countries of the North African region have rejected a proposal from the European Union to build migrant reception facilities in their countries.

Nigeria’s top intelligence agency warned that Chinese drug makers might be smuggling medicine “containing human remains from fetuses, infants, and flesh” into the country, prompting lawmakers to launch an investigation on Wednesday, the local Guardian newspaper reported.

The World Health Organization on Thursday warned of a “very serious situation” in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where efforts to contain an ebola outbreak are being hindered by fighting between numerous armed groups.

One of the bishops representing the African continent at the Vatican synod on young people said the meeting risks being hijacked by Western concerns about LGBT issues, which is “not why the synod was called.”

An African bishop in Rome for the synod of bishops has decried the lethargy of European Christianity, saying that it opens the door to an “Islamic invasion.”

Boko Haram jihadis reportedly cut men “into pieces” with machetes and set some houses ablaze in weekend attacks that displaced an estimated 1,300 people in Nigeria’s Borno state, the terrorist group’s birthplace and stronghold.

(AFP) — A migrant died Sunday and 19 others were hurt after around 200 people scaled a fence to enter Spain’s Melilla enclave from northern Morocco, local Spanish authorities said.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday repeated his assertion that his administration will soon defeat Boko Haram. Buhari first declared victory against Boko Haram in 2015.

Populist Italian Interior minister Matteo Salvini has expressed joy following reports that there are currently no migrant transport NGOs operating off the Libyan coast.

Activists in Malawian capital of Blantyre are protesting a planned statue of Indian independence leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi because of “racist slurs” he made when he was a young man. 

Kenyan author and actress Kingwa Kamencu renewed presidential ambitions by launching a new political party known as the “Kenya Sex Party,” local media reported Tuesday.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) wing in West Africa, a faction of the Boko Haram jihadist group, killed a second International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) aid worker within a month after a deadline for negotiations of release expired, the Nigerian government revealed on Monday.

Contents: American CDC Ebola experts have been blocked from the outbreak zone in DR Congo; WHO considers declaring Ebola outbreak as an international emergency

The family of a 43-year-old African billionaire offered $330,000 in return for information on his whereabouts on Monday after gunmen kidnapped him from a luxury hotel in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Kanye West has met with Uganda’s president during a visit to the East African nation and given the 74-year-old leader a pair of white sneakers.

(AFP) — Four people were arrested in the Spanish overseas territory of Ceuta for charging migrants up to 2,000 euros to take them to the mainland in speedboats normally used for drug trafficking, police said Saturday.

First lady Melania Trump revealed during an ABC interview aired Friday night that the jacket she wore getting on and off a plane to visit the border was a jab at left-wing media and critics.

African news outlets reported on Friday that dissidents in Cameroon are petitioning the country’s elections management body to annul the October 7 presidential election, citing “massive fraud” in favor of President Paul Biya.

Chinese telecom company Transsion has not sold a single phone in China, but it beat out heavyweight competitors like Samsung and Apple to quietly dominate the African smartphone market, a CNN report revealed Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently signed a bill into law to revamp America’s investment efforts in Africa to counter what the United States considers to be “predatory” economic practices across the continent at the hands of China, a move that is expected to benefit countries in the region, the Daily Nation from Kenya reported Monday.