Africa - Page 27

Kenya’s fertility rate declined over the past decade, particularly in urban areas of the country, Kenya’s the Star newspaper reported on Friday citing newly released data from the Kenyan government.

Mozambique’s energy ministry recently said it will not comply with a United Nations (U.N.) campaign seeking to pressure countries worldwide to abandon their coal industries for supposedly “cleaner” energy options, the state-run Mozambique News Agency (AIM) reported on Wednesday.

The latest Ethiopian civil war has caused unexpected casualties since it started in November 2020, including the destruction or damage of several ancient Christian churches built into rock walls in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the Conversation, a non-profit media outlet, reported on Tuesday.

Nigeria’s government recently purchased potash, a raw ingredient used to blend agricultural fertilizer, from Canada after its traditional supply of Russian potash was disrupted due to Western sanctions against Moscow in response to its latest war with Ukraine, Reuters reported Tuesday.

The parliament of the Central African Republic (CAR) passed a bill last week legalizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as official forms of currency, CAR’s presidency announced Wednesday.

Algeria has threatened to suspend its gas exports to Spain, the latest twist in a complex triangle of diplomatic tensions.

An explosion at an illegal oil refinery in southern Nigeria last week killed 110 people, Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the U.S. State Department to redesignate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for its egregious violations of religious liberty.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared a new epidemic of the Ebola virus in the nation’s northwestern city of Mbandaka, located in DRC’s Equateur Province, on Saturday, Sky News reported on Sunday.

The upcoming “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” — Marvel’s sequel to the hit 2016 superhero film “Doctor Strange” — has been banned in Saudi Arabia over a key LGBTQ superhero in the movie.

A court in western Rwanda sentenced a Chinese national named Sun Shujun to 20 years in prison in recent days after finding him guilty of torturing at least two Rwandan miners in August 2021, Rwanda’s the New Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Former South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chair Barney Pityana, a theologian by training, is exploiting the recent death of anti-apartheid feminist pioneer Rhoda Kadalie in an attempt to settle old scores about the organization.

The Russian Embassy in Ethiopia’s official Twitter page issued a statement on Tuesday thanking Ethiopia’s government and its citizens for their “solidarity and support” of Russia’s latest war with Ukraine.

Militants of the outlawed Nigerian separatist group known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) perpetrated a deadly armed attack on both Nigerian soldiers and civilians on Easter Sunday in southern Nigeria’s Imo state, Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Rhoda Kadalie, a pioneering feminist, anti-apartheid activist, and Trump supporter, passed away on April 16 after a quiet battle with lung cancer. She left many memorable quotes: these are just a few that summarize her incredible life.

Bishop Sikuli Paluku of the Catholic diocese of Butembo-Beni in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has condemned the rebel raid of a Mass on Easter morning as a profanation and a sacrilege.

Armed members of the Mai-Mai rebel movement stormed a Catholic church during Easter Sunday Mass in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after which one of the rebels was shot dead by soldiers.

Archbishop Justin Welby, the de facto head of the Church of England, has used his Easter message to attack British government plans to transfer some male boat migrants to Rwanda while their asylum claims are processed, claiming the policy “is the opposite of the nature of God”.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday announced plans for a potential arms sale to Nigeria’s government worth $997 million that would include the transfer of 12 AH-1Z attack helicopters, the U.S. Defense Security Operation Agency (DSCA) reported on its official website.

International Christian aid group Open Doors spotlighted the generous and forgiving prayers of Nigerian pastors on this Easter holiday. They prayed for peace in a land that rarely knows it and asked for the salvation of enemies in a region that has no shortage of them.

Amnesty International reported Wednesday that 109 women remain unaccounted eight years after the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 mostly Christian schoolgirls from a state-run secondary school in northeastern Nigeria’s Chibok village.

International Christian Concern (ICC) has denounced the ongoing “genocide” being carried out on Nigerian Christians by Fulani militants and other Islamic extremists.

Islamic extremists raided the village of Masambo in the northeastern province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on April 3, the Barnabas Fund reported Thursday.

A group of unidentified Nigerian terrorists released a video on Monday appearing to show hostages abducted from a passenger train attacked by the terror group on March 28, Africnews reported.

Rhoda Kadalie’s remarkable journey teaches that a true love of liberty transcends the categories that often confine our political thinking.

A court in northern Nigeria’s Kano state, which enforces Islamic law (sharia) alongside common law, sentenced an atheist man to 24 years in prison on Tuesday on the charge of “blasphemy” for a Facebook statement he posted in April 2020 deemed offensive to Islam, Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a joint report on Wednesday in which they alleged Ethiopia’s federal government has perpetrated “ethnic cleansing … crimes against humanity and war crimes” in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region as part of a civil war between Addis Ababa and the separatist militia known as the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Officials in charge of a mosque in Nigeria’s national capital, Abuja, fired the site’s chief imam, or prayer leader, on Monday after he recently delivered a sermon critical of Nigerian government officials, including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, for failing to protect the West African nation from terror attacks, Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported.

A South African municipal by-election has pitted opposition party titans – one led by Herman Mashaba, a new entrant on the political landscape who styles himself as a black Donald Trump; and the other the Leader of the Official Opposition, John Steenhuisen – in a battle for the right to lead the fight against the national ruling African National Congress (ANC).

At least 168 passengers of a Nigerian train targeted in a terror attack last week as it traveled from Nigeria’s national capital region, Abuja, to Kaduna state, “have yet to be accounted for,” Nigeria’s Premium Times online newspaper reported on Monday.

Nigeria will consider conducting trade with Russia in national currencies, i.e., in Russian rubles, “if necessary,” Nigerian Ambassador to Moscow Abdullahi Shehu told Russia’s state-owned Sputnik news agency on Thursday.

No food from international aid groups has entered northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region since Addis Ababa and Tigrayan separatists announced a truce — specifically to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Tigray — in their civil war on March 25, World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.

Senegalese soccer fans used laser pointers to blind Egypt’s Mo Salah as he attempted a critical penalty kick during a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday.

Nigerian soccer fans reacted to their team’s failure to reach the World Cup on Tuesday by storming the field and wrecking property before being tear-gassed by police.

North-central Nigeria has suffered from a spate of attacks by unidentified militants across the neighboring states of Kaduna and Niger and the national capital region of Abuja in recent days, with gunmen separately attacking an airport, major rail line, and Christian villages, local media reported on Tuesday.

Unidentified armed bandits kidnapped Father Felix Zakari Fidson in northern Nigeria on Friday, the Catholic feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary.