Africa

Jihadists killed 71 soldiers in a terrorist attack on a remote military camp in Niger close to the border with Mali, an army spokesman confirmed on Wednesday, in what was the deadliest attack on the military in the country’s history.

The Chief of the South African Army, Lieutenant General Thabiso Mokhosi, passed away on Tuesday just over one month after he was promoted to the position. 

Islamic extremists from the Al Qaeda-linked terror group Al-Shabaab launched an offensive against the presidential palace in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu on Tuesday, leading to a shootout where five jihadists were killed.

Christians are experiencing “genocidal, religious-based violence” in many parts of Africa as Islamic terror groups gain greater traction on the continent, according to Save the Persecuted Christians, a U.S.-based charity.

Senegalese Archbishop Benjamin Ndiaye has summoned journalists to help wake people up to the gravity of the jihad threat posed by Islamists.

A Nigerian bishop said this week that Christians need to be aware that witchcraft is real and represents “the state of unredeemed man.”

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) – The new European Commission president says she chose Africa as her first visit outside Europe as it has some of the world´s fastest-growing economies and some of its biggest challenges, including climate change.

The United States and Sudan will exchange ambassadors for the first time in 23 years, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday. 

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) – Scores of migrants who swam through rough Atlantic Ocean waters to safety from a capsized boat while 58 others drowned were receiving care Thursday in Mauritania after one of the deadliest disasters this year among people making the perilous journey to Europe.

PARIS (AP) – West African leaders need to make it clear they want and need France´s military presence, French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday, just days after a helicopter collision killed 13 French soldiers fighting Islamic extremists in Mali last week.

Late Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe left behind $10 million and eight properties in his estate following his death this year – and no will explaining how to divide the spoils among his wife and many children.

The City Council of Harare, Zimbabwe, blew tens of thousands of dollars on iPads for councilors and selected managers, local media noted Tuesday, days after a United Nations report found the nation on the brink of “man-made starvation.”

Jihadists from the Boko Haram terror group hacked to death a 12-year-old Christian boy with machetes for his refusal to become a “child soldier” of the group.

Despite the ousting of late dictator Robert Mugabe in 2017, Zimbabwe is currently on the brink of “man-made starvation” under his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa, according to a report published on Tuesday by a United Nations envoy. 

The government of Mozambique launched a new conference and training session initiative in partnership with an albino rights NGO Wednesday urging citizens to cease killing, raping, and using the body parts of people with albinism in witchcraft ceremonies.

Emmerson Mnangagwa’s leftist regime in Zimbabwe introduced legislation this week to ban the ownership of machetes in areas rich in gold following a spate of violent robberies by knife-wielding artisan miners.

Hundreds of enraged locals in Beni, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), burned down the city’s town hall on Monday and stormed a United Nations peacekeeping compound, destroying vehicles and key equipment.

Police in Zimbabwe arrested a ten-month-old girl and her mother for “disorderly conduct” on Wednesday amid a brutal crackdown on opposition party members in the capital of Harare.

A family from the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa dragged their loved one’s corpse to an insurer’s office after the insurance company refused to pay out their death benefit, the AllAfrica outlet reported on Wednesday.

A court in Zimbabwe awarded Ricky Eugene Nathanson, who identifies as a transgender woman, $400,000 after Nathanson sued police over an arrest for using the women’s bathroom.

Media reports say a van carrying 52 migrants has smashed through border barriers between Morocco and Spain to enter the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is under fire for allegedly faking black support in a campaign email in late October that claimed 400 African-Americans in South Carolina had endorsed his “Douglass Plan” for equality.

Voice of America News (VOA) on Thursday published a fascinating article about how Ugandan dissidents are learning to evade surveillance technology sold to their repressive government by China’s Huawei telecom giant

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week that the danger and instability posed by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are stifling efforts to eradicate the Ebola virus across the country.

Pope Francis launched an appeal Wednesday on behalf of Burkina Faso, which recently witnessed the death of scores of citizens in a lethal attack presumably perpetrated by Islamic extremists.

A report published by the Nigerian branch of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on Monday found that 68 percent of the minerals exported by Nigeria in 2017 were sent to China.

The redoubtable South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier has compared the current “abortion pandemic” to the Nazi Holocaust, noting ties between the creation of the lethal gas used in concentration camps and the production of the abortion pill.

Around 1.2 million Nigerians currently live in areas controlled by the Boko Haram jihadist organization, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria warned this week.

At least 105 people have been murdered over the past three months in “machete wars” fought between criminal gangs in Zimbabwe, according to a report from a non-governmental organization called the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP).

Police in Ibadan state, Nigeria, announced on Monday the rescue of over 259 captives held at a mosque in the town of Ojoo, the latest in a series of raids against supposed Islamic “rehabilitation” centers.