Africa

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday condemned acts of “mob justice” perpetrated by South Africans against illegal miners this week in response to the brutal gang rape of eight women by suspected illegal miners last week at an abandoned mine near Krugersdorp, South Africa, eNews Channel Africa (eNCA) reported.

The City of Cape Town in South Africa is telling some residents to boil water if it appeared discolored, after repeated power failures affected a local water plant’s ability to process sludge, and scarce energy was devoted to primary water treatment.

Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre appointed Mukhtar Robow — a former deputy chief of al-Shabaab, which is a Somali branch of the international jihadist terror organization al-Qaeda — as Somalia’s new religion minister on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday expelled Mathias Gillmann, spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping mission. The move followed a week of intense protests against the U.N. that resulted in 36 deaths, including four peacekeepers.

A group of men and “young boys” gang raped eight women aged 19 to 37 years old at an abandoned mine near Krugersdorp, South Africa, last week, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported.

A Kenyan government agency threatened Facebook with a suspension last week if it did not promptly remove advertisements that allegedly breached Kenyan hate speech laws ahead of a Kenyan general election on August 9, though Kenyan government ministers said on Monday that such a suspension would not occur, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

An undisclosed number of United Nations (U.N.) peacekeepers opened fire “for unexplained reasons” on a group of people at a border checkpoint between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda on Sunday killing at least two Congolese people and injuring 15 others, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Tunisians voted in favor of a new constitution this week that will grant the North African nation’s president, Kais Saied, “unchecked powers,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Tuesday, noting that voter turnout in the referendum was “poor,” as 30.5 percent of eligible voters participated.

Violent protests against the presence of the United Nations (U.N.) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s North Kivu province continued on Tuesday for the second straight day, resulting in the deaths of at least three U.N. peacekeepers and 12 rioters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Zambia’s state-owned electricity company ZESCO said this week it had produced a surplus of energy for Zambia of about 1,156 MW, the online newspaper New Zimbabwe reported Friday.

The Media Alliance of Zimbabwe (MAZ) on Wednesday accused the Chinese Embassy in Zimbabwe of “threatening” a local newspaper called The Standard after it published articles about alleged “violations by Chinese mining companies,” Voice of America (VOA) reported.

Kenyan presidential hopeful William Ruto promised on Wednesday that if elected, he will make all Kenyan government contracts with China public, and move aggressively to deport Chinese nationals working illegally in Kenya.

Billionaire Nawab Shaji Ul Mulk, who is based in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, broke ground this week on a project that aims to build Africa’s tallest building and an accompanying tech hub north of the Zimbabwean capital city of Harare.

One of two Catholic priests kidnapped in northern Nigeria last Friday has been found “brutally killed” by his abductors, local media reported Tuesday.

Cameroon’s military recently killed and paraded the corpse of a Cameroonian separatist leader accused of perpetrating beheadings and other terror activities, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Monday, noting that the display of the terrorist’s lifeless body across villages bordering Nigeria served to deter potential recruits from joining separatist organizations.

Several Afghan refugees living in Madagascar staged a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in Antananarivo, the African island nation’s capital, on Monday to protest what they described as stalled efforts by the embassy to process their refugee visa applications, Al Jazeera reported.

The government of Malawi charged Lu Ke, a 26-year-old Chinese national, with human trafficking on Monday. Lu became globally infamous last month for producing and selling videos of African children unwittingly singing racist songs in Chinese.

Three people have died in Tanzania’s Lindi region in recent days after contracting an unidentified illness characterized by symptoms including “nosebleeds, fever, headaches and fatigue,” Africanews reported on Thursday.

Extreme poverty has recently forced girls in rural Zimbabwe to use dried cow dung as an alternative to sanitary pads during menstrual cycles, Africanews reported on Monday.

All-day blackouts, skyrocketing gasoline and diesel prices, and an unreliable, nearly absent government are fueling demand for solar power in Nigeria, the local This Day newspaper reported on Wednesday, as businesses seek ways to continue to function without relying on the state-run power grid.

A Chinese company recently secured a contract with a Zimbabwean lithium mine to export the metal, which is vital to the manufacture of batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs), to China starting in 2023, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported Monday.

Police in South Africa confirmed 19 people were killed early Sunday morning in two separate mass shootings denounced by the president as “unacceptable and worrying.”

A group of unidentified bandits attacked the advance team for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari near his hometown of Daura on Tuesday, injuring two people. 

France repatriated 51 women and children from former Islamic State areas in Syria, according to the counterterrorism prosecutor´s office.

Leprosy is an ancient disease that many may associate with a bygone era. In some of the most populous areas of the world, however – such as Nigeria and India – the disease continues to proliferate, forcing victims to live on the margins of society in leprosy colonies.

African workers for Chinese-owned mines and factories across southern Africa told the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in a report published Thursday that they regularly experienced various labor rights violations including a lack of compensation for all hours worked and poor safety conditions.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari claimed his country was ready to fill a natural gas supply gap in Europe.

China’s ruling Communist Party gifted the parliament of Zimbabwe — a severely impoverished nation that regularly struggles to feed its own citizens — a new luxury building on Wednesday, with Xinhua, China’s official state press agency, describing the opulent space as a “six-story building [that] is a fine piece of magnificent architecture.”

Houses of worship across Nigeria, including Christian churches, have hired security services in recent weeks after a Catholic church in southwestern Nigeria suffered a deadly terror attack by suspected members of the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) in early June, Voice of America (VOA) reported Tuesday.

Two teenage survivors of a mysterious mass death incident at a South African nightclub on Sunday told Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse (AFP) separately on Monday that they each suspect that staff at the venue sprayed an unidentified gas-like substance onto patrons of the overflowing bar, which may have contributed to the deaths of 21 minors.

Government officials in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province said at least 21 teenagers were “found dead” at a bar on Sunday morning under unclear circumstances, South Africa’s DispatchLive reported, noting that while the cause of the deaths remains unknown, some have speculated that the youths may have been “exposed to some form of poison.”

The 54-nation group of mostly former UK colonies accepted Togo and Gabon’s membership application on the last day of its summit in Rwanda.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The heavily armed men appeared around the small farming village in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, frightening residents already on edge after recent clashes between government troops and rebels.

Nigerian Senator Ike Ekweremadu and his wife Beatrice Nwanneka Ekweremadu were arrested in London on Tuesday and charged with planning to bring a 15-year-old boy into the United Kingdom so they could harvest his organs.

Leaders of Commonwealth nations are meeting in Rwanda in a summit that promises to tackle climate change, tropical diseases.

Load-shedding is artificial scarcity. It is difficult to stop once it starts. We in the U.S. must change course while we still can.

Al Jazeera reported on Tuesday that 14 of Nigeria’s 18 Supreme Court judges recently signed a formal complaint sent to the nation’s chief justice in which they allege to have suffered from a lack of employee welfare traditionally provided by Nigeria’s federal government, such as housing accommodations, motor vehicles, and electricity.

A Chinese government-funded school touting the precepts of China’s ruling Communist Party recently opened near Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Tuesday, noting that the facility teaches “leadership” skills to local African politicians.

Africa is suffering a severe shortage of gasoline and petroleum-based fuels generally despite being home to some of the world’s largest oil reserves — a product of being unable to consistently refine all of its crude.

Blackburn is calling on the Department of Defense to make more public the activities of Russian proxy militia, known as the Wagner Group.