Africa - Page 25

Uganda’s authoritarian president Yoweri Museveni on Saturday announced 21-day lockdowns on the Mubende and Kassanda districts in central Uganda to control an Ebola outbreak.

The New York Times (NYT) reported on Saturday that the Biden administration secretly sent a team of diplomats to the Tigray region of Ethiopia last month in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate a halt to a devastating civil war that threatens to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa.

Ukraine has urged African nations “not to stay neutral” in the ongoing Western-backed clash with the Russian Federation following “devastating” missile strikes across the country on Monday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Thursday implemented Ebola testing for travelers who have visited Uganda within the past 21 days.

Nigeria’s state oil company, NNPC Ltd, on Wednesday announced the discovery of a secret pipeline plugged into the Forcados export terminal.

Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, was promoted to the rank of general on Tuesday. Kainerugaba caused a stir on the previous day with a saucy Twitter rant in which he offered a 100-cow dowry for the hand of newly elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and threatened to invade Italy if his offer was refused.

Burkina Faso President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba resigned on Sunday, wiping out the government of the West African nation in the second coup of the year and bringing it closer to Russia’s dangerous orbit.

Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen, who also serves as foreign minister, devoted very little of his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday to discussing the brutal two-year civil war that heated up again over the past few weeks. He spent no time at all responding to the allegations of war crimes and human rights atrocities against both his government and its adversaries.

The Cabinet Ministry of Ukraine announced recently that it would reimburse the government of Ethiopia, and neighboring Somalia, for about $11.4 million worth of wheat, Mogadishu’s Shabelle Media reported on Tuesday.

Mohamed Yunus al-Menfi, head of the Presidency Council that administers the internationally-recognized LIbyan government, told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that his country remains fractured a decade after former U.S. President Barack Obama’s invasion, with constant threats of factional violence.

A spokesman for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – the Marxist political party and armed militia that has been fighting an insurgency against the Ethiopian central government since November 2020 – claimed on Tuesday that neighboring Eritrea launched a “full-scale offensive” across the Ethiopian border into the Tigray region.

The once electricity-rich nation of South Africa is suffering its worst year of power outages yet, as the country plunges into its deepest energy crisis ever, with state utility Eskom declaring “Stage 6” load-shedding this week.

Armed men suspected to be Ambazonia fighters abducted five priests, a nun, and two parishioners in western Cameroon this weekend and burned their church to the ground.

William Ruto was sworn in as the fifth president of independent Kenya on Tuesday. Among the guests was his friend Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda, whose immense convoy of vehicles included his own personal armored mobile toilet.

Ugandan pop star and former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, known popularly as Bobi Wine, revealed an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday in solidarity with the government there against Russia’s invasion of the country.

A CNN international correspondent claimed Friday that Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away Thursday, was “not universally loved in Africa.”

The United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, warned Monday that Somalia stands on the “brink of famine” due to the worst drought in four decades.

Ethiopia’s civil war between the federal government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is not the only deadly ethnic conflict raging in that turbulent country. On Friday, residents of the Oromiya region reported digging mass graves for at least 42 villagers slaughtered by a rival tribal militia.

The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an Ethiopian insurgent militant group, claimed on Thursday that Ethiopian federal forces and allied Eritrean troops launched a “massive four-pronged offensive” against the northwestern part of the Tigray region.

If you’re hungry you’ll eat anything to survive. This basic premise is being tested in hunger-stricken African nations where UK aid agencies are trialling insect diets for those suffering starvation in countries once able to feed themselves.

Kenya’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a recount of ballots cast across 15 voting stations on August 9 during Kenya’s presidential election, Voice of America (VOA) reported.

Police in Ikongo, Madagascar, fatally shot at least 19 people on Monday after a 500-person-strong lynch mob overpowered a local police station holding four people suspected of kidnapping an albino child and murdering the child’s mother, Deutsche Welle (DW) reported Tuesday.

The Kenyan national police service’s investigative unit, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), allegedly determined in recent days that three Venezuelan nationals had illegal access to Kenya’s electoral commission servers five months ahead of the country’s general election on August 9, during which a disputed presidential vote occurred, Kenya’s the Nation newspaper reported on Monday.

Nigerian Bishop Julius Yakubu Kundi declared this week that Kaduna State in northern Nigeria faces “near-anarchy” because of an ongoing assault against the Christian population by Muslim extremists.

Chinese Communist Party officials hosted a “China-Africa Media Cooperation” virtual forum on Thursday from Beijing, the Global Times reported, noting that delegates from both sides agreed to foment “an international public opinion atmosphere of cohesive development” between Beijing and 40-plus African nations and regions.

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Thursday that the government of his native Ethiopia is blocking him from sending money to or even communicating with family in the blockaded Tigray region, lamenting, “I don’t even know who is dead or who is alive.”

A United Nations (U.N.) diplomatic representative of South Sudan successfully fled to his home country this week after he was arrested on August 21 for allegedly raping a woman in New York City but released the next day after invoking diplomatic immunity, the New York Post reported on Thursday.

The government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the nation’s former ruling party now functioning as a rebel militia, confirmed that a truce that began in March had broken with major hostilities erupting on Tuesday.

Police officers in New York City arrested a United Nations (U.N.) diplomat from South Sudan on Sunday after he was accused of rape by a woman that day — but released him from custody Monday morning after he successfully claimed diplomatic immunity, the New York Post reported.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Sunday it received $41 million in funding from the U.S. government for emergency aid in Mozambique.

Police in southern Nigeria’s Edo State recently discovered “20 mummified corpses” inside of a building believed to have formed part of a “shrine for ritual killings,” Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported on Thursday.

The director-general of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused heads of state on Wednesday of racism for failing to address the ongoing “manmade” humanitarian disaster in his native Ethiopia, saying that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is getting more attention due to the skin color of Ethiopians.

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) – Mali’s foreign minister is accusing France of having colluded with the same Islamic extremists that it spent nearly a decade fighting until its troops departed earlier this week, an allegation sharply denied by the French government.

An American NGO has demanded that British universities are refused permission to return artefacts taken from African states that “profited from slavery”.

Peacekeepers and other personnel employed by the United Nations (U.N.) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 2018 have allegedly impregnated at least 60 different local girls and women during their times of service in the troubled country, with the youngest accuser alleging she was just ten years old when she was impregnated by a U.N. staff member, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported on Monday, citing an original study by the University of Birmingham published by the media outlet The Conversation last week.

Zimbabwe’s latest outbreak of measles — an infectious viral disease that typically occurs during childhood — has killed at least 157 children in the country in recent weeks and caused more than 2,000 cases of the disease nationwide, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Tuesday.