Some 11 million children in eastern and southern Africa face hunger, disease, and water shortages as a result of the strongest El Nino weather phenomenon in decades, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said. Severe drought and floods are causing malnutrition and increasing children’s vulnerability to killer diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, and dengue fever, UNICEF said on Tuesday. “The consequences could ripple through generations unless affected communities receive support,” it said in a statement. El Nino, caused by Pacific Ocean warming, has caused debilitating drought in several parts of Africa, including Malawi and Zimbabwe. The worst affected country…
Author: AMA
Ethiopia has barred Eritrean footballers from playing in East Africa’s premiere football tournament this month because of political tensions between the neighbouring nations that fought a bloody war from 1998-2000. Nicholas Musonye – secretary-general of the Council for East and Central African Football Associations – said the regional football body “must respect” Ethiopia’s position not to allow the Eritrea team into the country to play at the CECAFA Cup from November 21-December 6. RELATED: Eritrean cyclists make history at Tour de France Eritrean players have frequently used football trips to try to escape their restrictive homeland. A group of 15…
France proposed a draft resolution to the UN Security Council aimed at toughening the international response to an outbreak of violence in Burundi, but the foreign minister rejected the move and announced “the country was calm”. The measure threatens targeted sanctions against Burundian leaders who incite attacks or hamper efforts to end the crisis that followed protests over President Pierre Nkurunziza’s election for a third term. “The escalating violence in Burundi has reached a very worrying stage, maybe a tipping point,” French Deputy Ambassador Alexis Lamek told reporters on Monday. “We must face the reality: If we let the tensions…
Twenty-nine-year-old Song strolls through the streets of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, as loud music blares out from the stalls of street vendors. “The war is over,” he says. “We’ve been liberated.” After 42 days with no new cases, the World Health Organization on Saturday officially declared Sierra Leone free from Ebola. “This time last year we were putting thousands of people in body bags, people were scared, unable to go out. Today we are free,” he explains. I’m in Freetown this week with WaterAid, which has been working in hygiene promotion and assisting on crucial water and sanitation projects in…
Residents of Freetown in Sierra Leone have celebrated the end of an Ebola epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people since it began last year. Following 42 days with no new cases, the West African nation’s epidemic was declared over on Saturday at a ceremony attended by President Ernest Bai Koroma and United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) representative Anders Nordstrom. In a party-like atmosphere, thousands of people danced in the streets of Freetown to mark the occasion. Earlier, thousands of people gathered overnight around the Cotton Tree, a massive tree in the centre of the capital for a candlelit…
For the past year and a half, rival militias loyal to rival goverments in Libya, have been fighting what has been described as a low-level civil war. And the UN’s envoy to Libya, Bernardino Leon, has been trying without success, to push the two sides to form a unity government. But now Leon’s work has been thrown into doubt, after it was revelaed he had been negotiating a high-paying job in the United Arab Emirates. The Gulf country is a backer of the UN-recognised government in Tobruk. And its rival in Tripoli says the revelations undermine the UN envoy’s impartiality.…
Freetown, Sierra Leone – A year and a half after the Ebola outbreak began there is at last good news for Sierra Leone. On Saturday it is expected the country will reach 42 days since the last recorded case, meaning it will be officially declared Ebola free. Many of the almost 4,000 Sierra Leoneans killed by Ebola were medical personnel, says the World Health Organization. The small West African nation suffered the most cases and healthcare has “been extremely compromised with a disproportionate number of workers dying”, according to a report on the United Nations’ ReliefWeb site. RELATED: Sierra Leone…
Four South African police officers have surrendered themselves after a surveillance video of them shooting a suspected robber was broadcast. The footage released by the country’s Sunday Times newspaper late last week showed the uniformed member of the South African Police Service fatally shooting a suspect at close range after he had dropped his pistol and kicking him as he lay on the pavement. “They [the police officers] have handed themselves in and we arrested them,” Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) spokeswoman, Grace Langa, said on Monday. “Three males and a female. They are facing charges of murder, but we…
South Sudan Rebel fighters have finally released 13 United Nations (UN) workers who were held hostage for a week, the UN has said. Around 100 rebel fighters, who have been battling the government for almost two years, seized 31 members of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) last week. While 18 Bangladeshi peacekeepers were freed soon after their capture, the 13 remaining UN workers – all South Sudanese nationals – were released by the rebels on Sunday, UNMISS said on Monday. The UN had last week said that only 12 were still being held. However, it said 13 were…
Al-Shabab fighters in Somalia have struck again – managing to evade security measures to stage an attack in downtown Mogadishu. Their target, yet again, a hotel popular with government leaders and members of parliament. Al-Shabab have waged a relentless war against the government since being forced from the capital. The fighters have also attacked neighbouring countries who have sent peacekeeping troops to Somalia. Somalis have not seen a stable government since 1991. So, how big a threat is al-Shabab in Africa? And could a strong Somali government defeat them? Presenter: Martine Dennis Guests: Abdirisak Omar – Minister of National Security…
Nairobi, Kenya – Abdalle Mumin is still looking over his shoulder, even after months spent in what he calls “exile”. The Somali journalist rarely leaves his safe house. He checks his phone constantly. Sometimes he turns it off or switches sim cards, just to make sure. Sitting stone-faced in a darkened office – blinds drawn on a sunny Nairobi afternoon – he reflects on the past year of his life. “If you ever asked me when I was in Mogadishu in 2013 or 2014 ‘would you like to go outside Somalia or would you like to quit journalism?’ I would…
Environmental activists in Kenya are trying to make their community more energy efficient. Naivasha is known for its flower farms which earn the government millions of dollars from export. But it is also a sanitation hazard. There are not enough toilets and no proper waste disposal system. So, most of the waste here is dumped in the town’s scenic lake. A non-profit organisation called sanitation is trying to change that. They want to convince people that human waste can be a source of fuel. Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi reports from Naivasha, Kenya. http://bc05.ajnm.me/665003303001/201511/3971/665003303001_4589860581001_20151101-KenyaWaste-CSO-nostraps.mp4 By Catherine Soi via [Al Jazeera]
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania – In a small room in a dusty back street, Hamisi and 12 other male sex workers are preparing for a long night of work. Just after dark, they stuff their pockets full of condoms and divvy up the nearby communities using markers and a hand-drawn map. From there, they head to the bars and alleyways across the city where men discreetly sell sex to other men. But tonight, they are not selling sex. They are trying to get their peers to go to a government-run hospital for an HIV test – a hard sell in…
At least five people have been killed and dozens more wounded in an attack on a hotel in the centre of Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, witnesses tell Al Jazeera. A car bomb exploded at the main gate of the Sahafi Hotel early on Sunday morning, with attackers then storming the hotel as they exchanged gunfire with security guards. The al-Shabab armed group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. A second explosion occurred not long after when a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside the hotel, police said. “Fighters with machines guns are firing at us from the rooftop of the hotel,” Major…
At least two people have been killed and several wounded in communal riot in the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), a military source said. The incident is the latest outbreak of violence in the lead-up to elections expected to be held in December. The military source said on Saturday that several hundred people had fled the attacks in Bangui. “Several houses were torched and heavy gunfire was heard in the Christian districts besieged by armed Muslims,” he told the AFP news agency. “Men, women and children were running in all directions.” Christian militiamen and army soldiers “took positions…
Filmmaker: Brian Tilley “Study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls and the empowerment of women,” Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General said at a keynote address in 2004. Thanks to a huge global push, there are now more girls enrolled in primary school than ever before – almost at parity with boys. When it comes to secondary education, however, girls still lag behind. Poverty is a major cause, with many families unable to afford school fees and encouraging girls to marry early. This film follows Zeinab…
When it comes to influence in Africa, one country towers above all others: China. The leadership there has spent billions of dollars investing in the continent, developing ties that have given Beijing access to the resources it needs to fuel its economic growth. But now there’s a new player in town: India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting leaders from all 54 African states at a summit in New Delhi. The meeting is an ambitious attempt to strike up a new partnership with Africa, one that the Indian government says will be based on ‘mutual benefit’. But India has a…
Tanzania’s elections have been thrown into doubt after the semi-autonomous Zanzibar archipelago annulled polls, sparking tension on the islands and raising questions about national presidential results. Zanzibar’s electoral commission on Wednesday said elections on the Indian Ocean islands – where the 500,000 registered electorate had also voted on Sunday for Tanzania’s national president – must be carried out again, citing “violations of electoral law”. “The process was not fair and had breaches of the law … I declare all the results to be null and void,” Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairman Jecha Salim Jecha said, reporting alleged violations including double-voting…
South African President Jacob Zuma has said he will meet student leaders and university authorities to discuss planned hikes in tuition fees that have provoked more than a week of sometimes violent protests nationwide. Critics say the increases would further disadvantage black students, who are already under-represented in universities. Zuma has not spoken publicly about the protests before and on Wednesday students stormed the parliament precinct in Cape Town to try to disrupt the reading of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene’s interim budget. Referring to plans for fees to rise as much as 11.5 percent, Zuma said in a statement on…
Zambia leader Edgar Lungu has turned to God in a bid to stop the freefall of his country’s ailing currency, with bars shut and football matches cancelled on a national day of prayer to end a record slump. Lungu ordered the prayer session last month after the kwacha fell 45 percent against the dollar since the start of the year due to a sharp drop in the price of copper, the country’s main export. Food prices have soared and crippling power shortages have also been triggered by low water-levels in Lake Kariba, where hydropower plants supply much of the country’s…