Team captain Bornor is an amputee who plays football in Sierra Leone to cope with the horrors of war he suffered a decade ago. As he dreams of playing internationally, he wrestles with nightmares that haunt his daily life and threaten the very family he is trying to feed. Can Bornor overcome his postwar trauma and score a victory for his children off the soccer pitch? FILMMAKER’S VIEW By Ngardy Conteh George and Allan Tong The civil war of Sierra Leone lasted from 1991-2002 and in that time rebel soldiers waged a campaign of terror by amputating innocent children, while…
Author: AMA
It is one of the greatest fossil discoveries of our time, a trove of bones hidden deep inside a cave, outside Johannesburg in South Africa. The team of scientists – from the Rising Star expedition – who made the discovery say the remains are that of ‘Homo Naledi’. A new species of our human ancestor. Homo Naledi is small-brained and primitive – yet revolutionary and complex in behaviour. Its place in time is uncertain. It may have lived as far back as three-million-years ago … or could have roamed the earth as recently as 100,000 years ago. So, is human…
The head of Burundi’s armed forces has survived an assassination attempt in the capital Bujumbura, police said, adding that at least seven other people were killed in the attack. “There was an attack against the armed forces chief, General Prime Niyongabo, but happily he was unharmed,” Burundi’s deputy police chief, General Godefroid Bizimana, told AFP news agency. He said two attackers were killed in the clash, and a third arrested. Another senior police source said four bodyguards were also killed, as well as a female police officer. “Reinforcements have arrived. We are pursuing the remainder of the commandos,” Bizimana. Another…
Guinea Bissau’s President Jose Mario Vaz has dismissed his two-day-old cabinet after the Supreme Court ruled that his appointment of a new prime minister was unconstitutional, a presidential decree has said. Vaz removed popular prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira in August and replaced him with Baciro Dja, plunging the coup-prone nation into a political crisis. Members of the ruling PAIGC party, to which all three men belong, objected to the appointment and appealed to the Supreme Court which found in their favour on Wednesday. “The head of state can take no other approach than conforming with the decision of the…
Archaeologists in South Africa have announced the discovery of a new human species, a find they say could change our understanding of our ancestors. Researchers at Witwatersrand (Wits) University said on Thursday that the species, which they named Homo naledi, appeared to have intentionally interred its dead – a feature that was once thought to be limited to modern humans. The scientists at Wits say they have recovered parts belonging to at least 15 individuals of the same species. “With almost every bone in the body represented multiple times, H. naledi is already practically the best-known fossil member of our…
Rwanda’s Supreme Court has said it will hear a case on whether the country’s President Paul Kagame should be allowed to run for a third term as leader. The move on Wednesday came after parliament voted to change the constitution and lifted a two-term limit amid widespread calls for Kagame not to stand down after his current term. The proposals were voted on after the presentation of a petition to legislators that had garnered more than 3.8 million signatures in support of the move. Kagame still has two years remaining before his current mandate expires. Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi, reporting…
“[Sport] is a powerful tool for progress and for development,” according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In post-genocide Rwanda, Felicite Rwemalika’s work is an embodiment of this idea. She has forged opportunities which have brought increased wealth and skills to women and their families – all by getting women to play football. Rwemalika used to run a beauty salon, where she encountered many women who were traumatised by the genocide. “Women are the most vulnerable after the genocide. They were raped several times, their husbands left them, they were killed, children were killed, and they didn’t have hope for the…
Across the world, almost 1.2bn people live in areas where water is physically scarce and this has an enormous impact on the quality of life. Without clean water, communities suffer from recurrent diarrhoea and other debilitating or fatal diseases which, together with the time spent going to collect it, means a significant amount of time for education and employment is lost. Collectively, women in 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa spend at least 16 million hours each day collecting drinking water. So, how could things be different? In this film we head to the western Kenyan town of Kakamega and to…
Cape Town, South Africa – For almost two years now, the chattering classes have been deliberating the killing of Reeva Steenkamp. The case recently became a popular topic again after Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius – the man accused of killing his blonde-model girlfriend – had his parole put on hold by South Africa’s Department of Justice, just two days before he was to be released. Questions over Pistorius’ guilt or innocence have given way to a more profound conversation about the relationship between the criminal justice system and many South Africans, according to residents of some impoverished Cape Town townships.…
With more than 500 million books sold worldwide last year, passion for Japanese comics known as ‘manga’ continues to grow. Despite the increasing appetite from readers for these stories, however, finding mangas in West Africa, let alone Senegal, has been near impossible. But that is changing. Tired of telling the stories of other people’s cultures, an animation artist has moved back to Senegal, after working in India’s animation industry. Now with a small team, he is starting to tell African stories using manga animations. http://bc05.ajnm.me/665003303001/201509/3702/665003303001_4466671563001_20150906-senegal-library-nha-nostraps.mp4 Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque reports from Dakar. Source:: Al Jazeera The post African stories told…