Africa - Page 36

Looting broke out in several cities in South Africa this weekend after the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, began serving a 15-month sentence last Thursday for contempt in relation to an investigation of corruption during his tenure.

A late-night fire assailed the Lagos, Nigeria, Synagogue Church of All Nations on Monday shortly after a candlelight vigil for its late founder T.B. Joshua, one of Africa’s most celebrated, and controversial, clergymen.

A Chinese-owned company plans to push forward a coal mining project in western Zimbabwe despite protests by local residents that the activity threatens to contaminate their natural water supply, Voice of America (VOA) reported Monday.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped some 140 students from the Bethel Baptist High School in central Nigeria Monday in the latest of a series of mass abductions of children in the country.

Zimbabwe’s government on Sunday rejected an African Union donation of three million doses of the Chinese coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson “citing lack of storage facilities” for the shots, the online newspaper New Zimbabwe reported on Monday.

Unidentified gunmen abducted a one-year-old child along with an unknown number of children from the staff quarters of a hospital in northern Nigeria on Sunday, the BBC reported.

Former South African President Jacob Zuma marched with hundreds of his supporters Monday and claimed his 15-month jail sentence for contempt of court, handed down by the judges in his corruption trial, was a sign that “South Africa is sliding back to apartheid rule.”

Police in Uganda said Thursday they had arrested two nurses and were still searching for a man who posed as a “phony doctor” to help the nurses sell and administer fake Chinese coronavirus vaccines to at least 812 people in the country in recent days.

A spokesman for the pontifical charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reported this week that hundreds of children have been abducted by Islamic terrorists in Mozambique in recent months, with the boys being forced into becoming soldiers and the girls raped and taken as child brides.

King Mswati of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, has not fled the country, Eswatini Prime Minister Themba Masuku said on Tuesday following unconfirmed reports that Africa’s last remaining monarch had escaped Eswatini amid violent protests against his rule.

South Africa’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday sentenced ex-South African President Jacob Zuma to 15 months in prison on contempt charges after he defied a court order to appear before a corruption inquiry examining allegations of graft during his tenure as president from 2009 to 2018.

Libyan government officials, militia leaders, and officials in states involved in proxy battles there are increasingly concerned Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of late dictator Muammar Qaddafi, may run in a presidential election scheduled for December, Voice of America reported Monday.

Nigeria’s environmental agency said on Sunday it has the power to prosecute mosques and churches that “refuse to abide” by national guidelines limiting public noise pollution caused by unregulated loudspeakers, Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper reported Monday.

Child soldiers “between the ages of 12 and 14” perpetrated a massacre in Burkina Faso this month that killed over 130 people, Burkina Faso’s government said on Thursday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has denounced recent court decisions in Algeria violating the religious freedom of Christians.

An Islamist insurgency carried out by jihadist terror groups across northeastern Nigeria since 2009 killed nearly 350,000 people by the end of 2020, the United Nations (UN) estimated in a report published Wednesday.

Addis Ababa police confirmed on Tuesday that a U.S. citizen working as an election observer in Ethiopia was found dead in the capital city on Tuesday, Kenya’s EastAfrican newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Two Kenyan activists filed suit in Mombasa on Tuesday seeking the public disclosure of all contracts, agreements, and studies related to the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project — the massive Chinese-funded railroad project critics have denounced as a boondoggle and “debt trap.”

The “mass kidnapping” of students from public schools in Nigeria is “becoming a norm” in the country, the Nigerian online newspaper Premium Times reported on Tuesday.

A non-profit organization supporting victims of Zimbabwe’s 1983-1987 genocide accused unnamed members of Zimbabwe’s socialist government of “stealing Gukurahundi [genocide] memorial plaques in [Zimbabwe’s] Matabeleland South and Midlands provinces” last week, the online newspaper New Zimbabwe reported Monday.

Angelina Jolie made a fly in-fly out visit to a remote camp in Burkina Faso on Sunday to address refugees who have fled Islamic jihadist violence in the region, warning them the threat of climate change is real and could lead millions to a fate like theirs.

The Nigerian terror group Boko Haram allegedly confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that its former leader, Abubakar Shekau, died during infighting between Boko Haram and a rival Islamic State-affiliated faction, Africa News reported on Thursday.

Shamima Begum, 21, claims that she was just a “dumb kid” when she travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State and begged “pretty please” to return to the UK.

Elite donors have forced a “Green Revolution” upon Africa in recent years that has failed to improve local agriculture sectors as promised and instead “increased farm input costs, farmer indebtedness, and inequalities among farmers,” environmental experts writing for the non-profit media outlet The Conversation reported on Monday.

Kenya’s Daily Nation on Sunday reported President Joe Biden is deploying U.S. troops to Kenya to assist with counter-terrorism efforts, particularly against the Somalia-based al-Shabaab terrorist organization.

The leaders of some of the world’s wealthiest countries – with the notable exception of China – published a joint statement following the end of the G7 summit on Sunday vowing a “new deal” for the continent of Africa and heavy investment in a “green revolution” for the world.

Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a Catholic religious sister Sunday morning in Imo State, southern Nigeria.

The Catholic Bishops of Eritrea have denounced the state appropriation of Catholic schools and health facilities, the latest casualties of the country’s governmental overreach.

The Premium Times of Nigeria reported Friday that the Nigerian government has decided not to borrow any more money from China for railroad construction, apparently because the Nigerians are growing nervous about their $3.4 billion in debt to Chinese banks and were reluctant to add another $14.4 billion to complete several large railroad projects.

A member of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, Yunusa Ahmad Abubakar, alleged on Wednesday that Nigeria banned Twitter last week in part because the jihadist organization Boko Haram “have been allowed to be tweeting.”

Jihadist violence emptied an entire village of nearly 8,000 people in northern Burkina Faso over the weekend, Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported on Wednesday.

LGBT activist Father Daniel Horan has accused the nation of Ghana of “homophobia” for its anti-sodomy laws and failure to legalize same-sex marriage.

South African Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier has denounced the Huffington Post’s hypocritical anguish over the destruction of tern eggs alongside its support for the destruction of unborn humans in abortion.

Chinese nationals have infiltrated Zimbabwe’s gold industry and developed “questionable partnerships” with leaders of Zimbabwe’s left-wing ruling party, Zanu-PF, the online newspaper New Zimbabwe reported on Monday.

Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) ordered all TV and radio stations in the country to “suspend the patronage of Twitter immediately” on Monday, three days after the West African nation suspended Twitter operations in the country “indefinitely.”

A person purporting to be the leader of the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) terror group alleged in an audio recording heard by Reuters on Sunday that Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram, was dead.