Johannesburg     — Rotondwa Mbadaliga is a self-professed “shopping addict.” The 25-year-old South African fashion influencer says she is a huge fan of Chinese-linked e-commerce companies Shein and Temu because she can get the latest trends at the cheapest prices delivered straight to her door.

Mbadaliga has more than 200,000 followers on TikTok where she mostly talks about fashion, sometimes posting videos of herself excitedly opening her newly arrived purchases from China.

“The variety is the main thing I really like and enjoy with shopping on Temu or Shein,” she says, adding that South African brands and shops aren’t as trendy.

“I don’t think you can beat the prices,” she adds.

But the prices of clothing on these e-commerce sites are expected to soon get more expensive.

South Africa’s tax authority plans to start imposing a 45% tariff and a value-added tax, or VAT, an indirect tax on the consumption of goods and services on orders of imported clothing that cost under 500 rand, or $27. Some consumers are pushing back with an online petition protesting the higher import duties.

Chinese e-commerce in South Africa

Shein, which has been available in South Africa since 2020, and Temu, which entered the market in January, have had huge success in the country, which has a growing middle class, tech-savvy youth and widespread internet access.

For women’s clothing purchases online, Shein is the top retailer with a 35% market share, according to data from Marketing Research Foundation, a nonprofit South Africa-based marketing survey group.

For its part, Temu is the most-downloaded app among iOS and Android users in South Africa.

Mbadaliga acknowledges that quality can sometimes be an issue.

“With shopping from China, you need to be OK with making a loss in some way,” she says, adding that she has a box of clothes bought on the platforms that didn’t fit or work out.

Her aunts in their 30s, who earn more, prefer to buy from foreign brands with brick-and-mortar stores in South Africa such as Zara because they believe the quality of clothing is better, Mbadaliga notes.

But she says longevity and quality don’t matter so much to her because she will only wear a garment while it is in style.

Industry pushback

South African retailers and local e-commerce platforms have been left reeling by the success of Chinese e-commerce and fearing their inability to compete.

Some South African companies and industry groups have lobbied the government to close an import tax loophole, a so-called de minimis rule, for small parcels of clothing. The loophole was introduced decades ago for items such as gifts before the advent of online shopping.

Under that system, small parcels pay a low 20% import duty. However, local clothing retailers, who order in bulk, pay a 45% tariff plus a VAT rate.

“We don’t mind competition … but what we find unpalatable, quite frankly, is an opportunity which is being taken advantage of where we believe we actually have an unfair and non-level playing field,” Michael Lawrence, executive director the National Clothing Retail Federation of South Africa, told VOA.

“We’re seeing 100,000 parcels a day, I’m told by some players, coming in. So, we’re not talking about an occasional occurrence. We’re talking about a significant commercial activity,” he says.

When South Africa’s tax authorities implement the higher tax rate for imported clothing under 500 rand, those shippers will be paying the same rate of 45% plus a VAT as the bulk shipments incur.

Contacted for comment, a Temu spokesperson told VOA: “Temu operates a direct-from-factory online marketplace that connects consumers with cost-efficient manufacturers. By reducing the number of intermediaries between consumers and producers, we can eliminate extra costs and pass those savings on to consumers through lower prices.”

“We compete fairly and transparently, adhering to the rules and regulations of each market we serve. Our growth does not rely on the de minimis policy. We support policy changes that benefit consumers and believe that as long as rules are applied fairly, they will not affect the competitive landscape,” the spokesperson added.

Shein did not respond to a request for comment.

Local alternatives

South Africa is not without its own e-commerce sites.

E-commerce company Takealot has accused the Chinese online shopping giants of exploiting tax loopholes.

“These platforms contribute to a market imbalance by flooding the market with inexpensive imports,” the company said last month in a statement. “Such trends pose significant challenges to the development and sustainability of domestic industries.”

“This form of commerce extracts value from South African consumers without contributing to local communities, ultimately harming small businesses, local manufacturers and the limited job opportunities available,” it continued.

To boost local industry, Takealot recently signed a multimillion-dollar deal with the government in South Africa’s Gauteng province, which includes the capital, Pretoria, and economic powerhouse Johannesburg. Called the Takealot Township Economy Initiative, it is focused on creating jobs and supporting small, Black-owned businesses.

Local online fashion retailer Zando launched its international e-commerce platform Zando Global earlier this year.

“With the rise of Shein and Temu, South African consumers have often found themselves hesitant to order internationally due to concerns about product quality, delivery reliability, and returns processes. Zando Global steps in as the local hero, offering a trustworthy alternative for those seeking international products without the uncertainties of ordering from abroad,” the company said in an April press statement.

When asked whether the market is already saturated by Shein and Temu, Zando Global’s CEO Morgane Imbert told VOA she believed the company could compete.

“We genuinely believe there is room for a player like Zando, because we think that we can offer a different experience, focusing on the quality of the product, the customer service and curated local and global fashion trends,” she says.

“We’re definitely supporting local brands and companies through the marketplace,” Imbert added.

US behemoth

Zando and Takealot must also compete with U.S. e-commerce company Amazon, which entered the South African market in May, its first foray into sub-Saharan Africa. Reports suggest Amazon had a slow start, but that could change.

On its website, Amazon says it is providing South African consumers with a “new online shopping experience.” It added, the site will include products from independent South African sellers and small and medium-size enterprises “to connect customers with businesses throughout the country.”

Still, like “shopping addict” Mbadaliga, many South Africans will not be easily weaned off Shein and Temu.

The on-line petition to the South African government aimed at stopping the import duty has garnered more than 21,000 signatures since June, hoping to change the minds of government authorities who have yet to implement the new tax rules originally set for July 1.
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Blantyre, Malawi     — Malawi has declared the end of the country’s worst cholera outbreak, which began in March 2022 and killed nearly 2,000 people.

In a statement Monday, the Ministry of Health said the country had registered no cases or deaths from cholera in 26 of Malawi’s 29 health districts in the past four weeks. Some health experts, however, said the outbreak could resurface if the country failed to address sanitation problems that caused it.

Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera launched a national campaign to end the cholera outbreak in February 2023. The “Tithetse Kolera” or “Let’s End Cholera” campaign came three months after he declared the disease to be a public health emergency in Malawi.

The campaign aimed to interrupt cholera transmission in all districts and reduce the fatality rate from 3.2% to below 1%, which the World Health Organization considers a controlled cholera outbreak.

Dr. Wilfred Chalamira Nkhoma,  co-chairperson for the presidential task force on COVID-19 and cholera in Malawi, told VOA the disease had now been defeated largely because of the campaign.

“By WHO definition, a country stands to end the transmission of cholera when they have gone at least four weeks without reporting a laboratory confirmed case of cholera,” he said. “So that is the case with Malawi right now. We haven’t had a confirmed case since 6th of June.”

Successful steps

Nkhoma attributed the development to several interventions Malawi conducted over the past two years. He said they involved educating people about transmission, prevention and control of cholera; increasing surveillance; and properly managing cholera cases.

“The key one — and that must remain the key one — is to increase access to safe water and also improve adequate sanitation,” he said. “The Ministry of Water and Sanitation was taking the lead in this, but they were supported very well by nongovernmental organizations that are working in the water and sanitation sector.”

Nkhoma said another measure was the oral cholera vaccination campaign, which began in December 2022.

“We were able as a country to access some doses from WHO,” he said. “We were able to administer not less than about  6 million doses of cholera vaccine focusing first and foremost in priority areas.”

The Ministry of Health said in its Monday statement that Malawi had registered 56,376 cases of cholera, with 1,772 deaths since March 2022.

Maziko Matemba, a national community health ambassador in Malawi, told VOA that Malawi seemed to have managed the cholera outbreak at the treatment and case-management levels, but added that sanitation problems remained a challenge.

“Because at the moment, if you go to villages, if you go to public places, people are not doing the sanitation issues properly,” Matemba said. “Even if you check in public toilets, even if you check how people are preparing food, you will find that we still have challenges as a country to contain disease like cholera.” 

Nkhoma said the government would continue its effort to educate people about how cholera is transmitted, prevented and controlled to try to avoid further outbreaks.
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LONDON — The world’s second vaccine against malaria was launched on Monday as Ivory Coast began a routine vaccine program using shots developed by the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India. 

The introduction of the World Health Organization (WHO)-approved R21 vaccine comes six months after the first malaria vaccine, called RTS,S and developed by British drugmaker GSK, began being administered in a routine program in Cameroon. 

Some 15 African countries plan to introduce one of the two malaria vaccines this year with support from the Gavi global vaccine alliance. 

Ivory Coast has received a total of 656,600 doses of the Oxford and Serum shot, which will initially vaccinate 250,000 children aged between 0 and 23 months across the West African country. The vaccine has also been approved by Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. 

The rollout of a second vaccine is the latest milestone in the global fight against malaria and should help address a problem that emerged well before either of the two shots was launched: demand for them is likely to far outstrip supply for several years. 

Experts say having safe and effective malaria vaccines is important to meet demand. The shot is meant to work alongside existing tools — such as bed nets — to combat malaria, which in Africa kills nearly half a million children under the age of five each year. 

The Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the vaccine, has produced 25 million doses for the initial rollout of the shot and “is committed to scaling up to 100 million doses annually,” the company said on Monday about the launch in Ivory Coast. 

Serum said it is offering the vaccine for less than $4 per dose, in keeping with its aim to deliver low-cost vaccines at scale. 

Results from a large trial in February showed the vaccine prevented around three-quarters of symptomatic malaria cases in young children the first year after they got the shots. 

Experts told Reuters at that time that comparing the two malaria vaccines head-to-head was difficult because of the many variables involved in the trials, but overall their performance was similar — a conclusion endorsed by WHO.
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Yaoundé, Cameroon — Officials in Chad say urgent international help is needed to save the lives of more than 2 million people caught in a severe humanitarian crisis caused by conflicts and climate shocks.

Officials say the country is among the poorest nations in the world, and food is particularly scarce now, as hunger peaks in the June-to-August lean season between harvests. 

Abdelmadjid Abderahim, Chad’s minister of public health, said he is pleading with all international partners to help Chad during a severe humanitarian crisis affecting over 2 million civilians in the country of about 18 million people. Abderahim said flooding, an influx of refugees, increasing numbers of displaced persons, and armed conflicts between communities are inflicting suffering on civilians that Chad’s government alone cannot meet. 

Abderahim, speaking Monday on Chad state TV, described the food insecurity and humanitarian crisis as unprecedented. He said the crises are exacerbated by insufficient agricultural production due to climate change, droughts and an influx of destructive migratory birds and crickets. 

Chad hosts over 600,000 refugees displaced from conflict-ridden Sudan, and their numbers and humanitarian needs are growing. 

Chad is also home to tens of thousands of civilians fleeing violence between rebels and government troops in the Central African Republic.  

Several hundred thousand civilians displaced in Chad by Boko Haram terrorism are also in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. 

Added to that are the millions of people affected by floods and drought that hit Chad over the past year. 

Rasit Pertev, representative of the World Bank in Chad, said the World Bank is contributing $60 million to help Chad’s government cope, and will mobilize an additional $100 million to assist a government response plan. 

Last week the World Food Program, the World Bank, the European Commission, Japan, and the United States said they are also contributing to help Chad by distributing food, seeds and sharing cash transfers to families most exposed to hunger. 

They said the program will target the most affected provinces including Ennedi East, Wadi Fira, Ouaddaï, Sila, Logone Oriental, Lac, Kanem, and Bahr El Ghazal on the border with Sudan. Foreign donors did not say how much they will be giving to assist Chad in the emergency response plan. 

The plan also envisages the provision of nutritional supplements for children under 2 years old, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers. 

The World Food Program said to reduce the increasingly severe and recurrent crises, substantial investments in agriculture and support to reduce climate shocks should be intensified. Reinforcing the purchasing power of the most vulnerable populations is also a key to improving living conditions, the WFP added. 

The World Bank reported that poverty and vulnerability are pervasive in Chad, with over 42% of the population living below the national poverty line. 
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MOMBASA, Kenya — Dressed in protective clothing and armed with a smoker, Peter Nyongesa walked through the mangroves to monitor his beehives along the Indian Ocean coastline.

The 69-year-old Nyongesa recalled how he would plead unsuccessfully with loggers to spare the mangroves or cut only the mature ones while leaving the younger ones intact.

“But they would retort that the trees do not belong to anyone but God,” he said.

So he has turned to deterring the loggers with bees, hidden in the mangroves and ready to sting.

Their hives now dot a section of coastline in Kenya’s main port city of Mombasa in an effort to deter people who chop mangroves for firewood or home construction. It’s part of a local conservation initiative.

“When people realize that something is beneficial to them, they do not consider the harm that comes with it,” Nyongesa said of the loggers.

Mangroves, which thrive in salty water, help in preventing erosion and absorbing the impact of severe weather events such as cyclones.

But more than half of the world’s mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse, according to the first global mangrove assessment for the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Ecosystems released in May.

Mangroves are threatened by illegal logging, climate change and rising seas, pollution and urban development. According to a Kenya environment ministry report in 2018, about 40% of mangroves along the Indian Ocean coast are degraded.

In Mombasa county, it’s estimated that almost 50% of the total mangrove area there — 1,850 hectares (4,570 acres) — is degraded.

Such overall degradation has slowed in Kenya, which in 2017 developed a 10-year plan to have community conservation efforts manage mangroves. But the efforts have been incomplete because of inadequate resources.

Communities are doing what they can. James Kairo, a research scientist at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, said initiatives such as beekeeping are helping. Their honey also brings in community income.

“Mangrove honey is also classified as top quality and medicinal,” he added. “This could be due to the environment that mangroves thrives in” and what they absorb from their surroundings.

Nyongesa now has 11 beehives and harvests about 8 liters (2 gallons) of honey per hive every three months. Each liter earns him $6, a valuable source of income.

When Nyongesa started beekeeping 25 years ago, he didn’t know anything about the threat to mangroves or how his bees could help.

He became involved in 2019, when he joined a local conservation group called Tulinde Mikoko, Swahili for Let’s Protect Mangroves. The group adopted his beekeeping as a community initiative along with mangrove planting. Members also serve as custodians of the mangroves and try to stop loggers.

The group has concealed beehives in the top branches of mangroves as silent guardians. The bees are meant to attack unsuspecting loggers.

“We positioned them at the peak where they can’t be spotted with ease,” said Bibiana Nanjilula, the Tulinde Mikoko founder. “As such, when the loggers start cutting down whichever tree, the bees will attack due to the noise.”

The group hopes the tactic is working but has found it hard to measure its effects in the relatively difficult to access areas.

The bees also play a crucial role as pollinators. As they forage among the mangrove flowers, they transfer pollen from one flower to another, facilitating plants’ reproduction.

“The healthier the mangroves are, probably the more productive the honey production will be,” said Jared Bosire, project manager for the UNEP-Nairobi Convention, who said they encourage the integration of livelihoods with conservation. The office is a project of the United Nations Environment Program, based in Nairobi.

Kenya has 54,430 hectares of mangroves remaining, and they contribute $85 million per year to the national economy, according to a report by the Global Mangrove Alliance in 2022.
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Kigali — Rwandan President Paul Kagame wrapped up his reelection campaign Saturday, two days before voting takes place on Monday. The incumbent faces two opponents who say he has overstayed. Kagame tells reporters that his supporters want him to run for another term.

At a news conference following his last campaign rally, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told reporters that his priorities for the country he’s been leading since 2000 will not change.

“Priority No. 1 after we’ve gone through all of this is to continue to make as much progress as we can in the area of security and stability for our country, socio-economic development progress … we are building our country, growing it toward prosperity,” he said.

This will be his fourth term if he wins reelection next week. Kagame faces two other candidates including the Democratic Green Party’s Frank Habineza, who ran against him in 2017 and says the president has stayed around for way too long. Habineza told VOA he’s successfully campaigned in most of the 30 districts across the country recently, and voters have been more enthusiastic this time around.

“I am giving them hope that after 30 years, we really need to see a different way of living, different political programs, different thinking, and a different vision. We are not going to destroy the good things that have been done before, but we want to give them better hope and a better future,” he said.

Kagame joked at the news conference that he never wanted to be president, saying that it was his party that insisted he get into the race in 2000. Decades later, his supporters tell him they want him to run for another term.

“Every day I am being asked when are you leaving, when are you going? These people who made me president are telling me they still want me to be president. Somebody else somewhere says no you are here too long. I really get confused. I think this is not fair,” he said.

The 66-year-old leader is expected to cruise to an easy victory. One reason, according to critics, is that he has stifled dissent. But another, analysts say, is the way he’s been able to guide the East African country toward internal peace since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu extremists.

Eric Ndushabandi is a political science and international relations professor at the University of Rwanda, and an associate researcher at the Louvain University in Brussels. He said Kagame’s support has been there because of his efforts to address Rwandans’ need for stability after the genocide.

“The language, practice and success around stabilization and security, mainly in internal politics, is joining the expectations and aspirations of many Rwandans after this tragic and historical background,” he said.

Ndushabandi also said there is a big gap between the presidential candidates in terms of popularity, ideology, means, and capacity.

Other candidates were barred from the race by the National Electoral Commission for various reasons. One was a fierce Kagame critic, Diane Rwigara, who the commission said did not provide a criminal record statement and did not collect the minimum number of supporters’ signatures.
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Jos, Nigeria — After her early morning class ended, 16-year-old Nigerian student Chidera Denis was waiting to join classmates for end-of-term exams.

Moments later, she was trapped under rubble as her school building suddenly collapsed, with pupils barely protected by the desks where they were sitting. 

Denis was one of the lucky ones. The collapse of the Saint Academy school in Jos North district in Plateau State killed 22 students Friday, with dozens more hospitalized for treatment, including Denis’ friend.  

“She said she was going to die … that if they rescued me, I should tell her mother,” Denis told AFP a day after the disaster.  

“I said she should stop saying that, that we’ll be alive, that God is our strength.”  

Her brother also attended the school. 

“I am yet to see her brother,” she told AFP. “I am still searching. I am in pain.”  

 

Rescue efforts end

A spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency, Yohanna Audu, told AFP on Saturday that rescue efforts had ended after the disaster, the latest fatal building collapse in Nigeria.  

Audu said there were 22 fatalities, “all of whom are students.”   

The Red Cross posted on X, formerly Twitter, Saturday that a teacher and a student were still missing. 

“I was beside someone who died,” 14-year-old Chidinma Emmanuel told AFP. “He fell down on my arm and it broke. The falling debris landed on his head and killed him.” 

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described the incident as a “huge loss to the nation.” 

The day after, 58 people were still hospitalized while 74 were discharged, the state commissioner for information Musa Ibrahim Ashoms said in a statement Saturday. 

 

Collapses common

Building collapses are common in Africa’s most populous country.  

The accident Friday was the deadliest since November 2021, when a high-rise building under construction in the country’s commercial hub of Lagos collapsed and killed at least 45 people, most of them construction workers. 

Poor quality of work, lack of oversight, and official corruption to bypass safety checks are often blamed for the incidents.   

Ashoms said it was not immediately clear what caused the collapse in Plateau, but residents said it came after three days of heavy rain. 

Although formal investigations have yet to commence, state authorities have said there was a need to reinforce building standard codes. 

Plateau Governor Caleb Mutfwang “emphasizes the need for all developers and property owners to submit their building plans to the Jos Metropolitan Development Board for verification and revalidation,” Ashoms said.  

The school building disaster was the latest tragedy to hit Plateau State, which has seen a series of deadly intercommunal clashes.  

Gunmen killed 40 people in Zurak, a mining village 260 kilometers (160 miles) east of Jos, in May. And nearly 200 people were killed in the state last December in raids on mostly Christian villages. 
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GENEVA — The World Health Organization warns that millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing a health and humanitarian crisis because of escalating conflict and violence, mainly in the eastern part of the country in recent months.

The agency said the surge in violence by armed groups, principally Rwandan-backed M23 Tutsi-led rebels, an accusation denied by the Rwandan government, is leading to “mass displacement, widespread disease, gender-based violence and severe mental trauma.”

Dr. Adelheid Marschang, a WHO senior emergency officer, told journalists in Geneva Friday, “The DRC now has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the entire world, with 25.4 million affected.”

She said the DRC “remains one of the most underfunded crises,” which hampers the ability of people to receive the relief supplies and care needed to protect them from infectious diseases, hunger, and sexual and gender-based violence.

The United Nations’ $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan, which aims to assist 8.7 million people in the DRC in 2024, is only 16% funded. Marschang said the WHO has received just $6.3 million of the $30 million it requires, at a minimum, until the end of the year “as the situation is expected to get worse.”

“Mass movements of people overwhelm water and sanitation systems and bring an additional burden on the population’s scarce resources,” she said. “As a result, people are facing outbreaks of cholera, measles, meningitis, mpox and plague, all exacerbated by severe flooding and landslides affecting some parts of the country.”

In the first half of this year, the WHO has reported more than 20,000 cases of cholera, including 274 deaths, most in North Kivu province, and 65,415 cases of measles, including 1,523 deaths.

“The actual numbers are likely to be higher due to limited disease surveillance and data reporting,” Marschang said.

She said armed conflict and mass displacement, compounded by widespread floods, were driving hunger and malnutrition to new heights, “by forcing families to leave their farms, leave their crops, leave everything they have to move wherever it is safe.”

The latest IPC Chronic Food Insecurity report finds that about 40% of the DRC’s population — 40.8 million people — “face serious food shortages, with 15.7 million facing severe food insecurity and higher risk of malnutrition and infectious diseases.”

Marschang said 1 million children out of 6.9 million are malnourished and at risk of becoming severely acutely malnourished if they do not receive specialized therapeutic treatment.

She explained that children with this condition have a weakened immune system, which makes them susceptible to deadly infectious diseases. Severe acute malnutrition also has serious cognitive consequences for children “harming their prospects in life.”

During a media briefing earlier this week, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, warned of the global health threat posed by mpox, with 26 countries reporting nearly 98,000 cases to the WHO.

Noting that the DRC was in the crosshairs of a growing epidemic, he said, “The outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows no sign of slowing, with more than 11,000 cases reported this year, and 445 deaths, with children the most affected.”

Mpox, a viral disease, spreads through close contact with an infected person through contaminated materials, or with infected animals. Last month, scientists warned of a dangerous new strain of mpox in South Kivu, which could spread widely in overcrowded camps in and around Goma.

“It is a reason for concern,” Marschang said, adding that two camps in North Kivu province are infected with the virus.

“If we consider that we have military activities around those camps and some camps were actually targeted this year, I think it illustrates the increasing risk for this disease to spread and also the difficulties of containing it if security is not addressed,” she said.

The U.N. peacekeeping force MONUSCO began winding down its operations in South Kivu in January. Marschang warned that “could create a security vacuum.”

“This could throw us further into a situation of increasing numbers of displaced, of victims, of violence,” she said, “with the whole vicious cycle just continuing.”
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Blantyre, Malawi  — A political party led by Vice President Saulos Chilima, who died in a plane crash last month, is withdrawing from the governing Tonse Alliance led by President Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party. Leaders of the United Transformation Movement made the announcement Friday at a news conference at the party’s headquarters in the capital, Lilongwe.

United Transformation Movement spokesperson Felix Njawala said the party believes leaving Malawi’s governing Tonse Alliance is what the party’s president, the late Vice President Saulos Chilima, would have done if he were alive. 

Njawala said although Chilima partnered with the Malawi Congress Party, he faced a lot of problems with the alliance, including being arrested, rebuked and sometimes ignored. 

Njawala said they have agreed today that they should pull out from the alliance.   

Njawala said the party would now shift its focus to the 2025 elections.

He asked everyone who is wishing for the good of the country, including young people, to help the party fulfill the agenda of Chilima, who he said was making Malawi a better and prosperous nation.  

“Our friends in Kenya are calling themselves Gen Z,” said Njawala. “These are people who were born from 1995 and you also should not fear and get tired, but you should take part to support the UTM party, which has carried the vision of Saulos Chilima.” 

Chilima and President Lazarus Chakwera signed the Tonse Alliance in 2020 to unseat then-President Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party after the Malawi court nullified the 2019 elections that Mutharika had won.  

The UTM party has become the third partner to pull out from the governing alliance, which at one time included nine political parties. 

Political analyst George Phiri is a former lecturer of political science at the University of Livingstonia in northern Malawi.  

“Looking at how this alliance has been managed or governed, one would likely think that the move that UTM has made now has been made late,” said Phiri. “They would have moved out from the alliance already while the late Dr. Saulos Chilima was still the vice president of his country.”  

Phiri said members of the alliance have long cried foul over the failure of the leadership to call meetings involving partners. 

“Because they were expecting to be meeting regularly in order to monitor how the alliance government was moving,” said Phiri. “But seemingly it shows that the Malawi Congress Party stole the show for the alliance and didn’t want these other parties to participate in decision making for the alliance government.” 

Phiri said the withdrawal of UTM technically means the end of the Tonse Alliance because the agreement for the alliance was signed by leaders of two parties; UTM and MCP. 

VOA sought a comment from the MCP but has yet to receive a response.  

UTM’s Secretary General Patricia Kaliati said the members of the party’s executive committee are expected to endorse the decision at a meeting on July 19. 
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NIAMEY, niger — Niger’s interior ministry said it had ordered search units to be on alert after inmates escaped Thursday from the high-security Koutoukale prison, whose inmates include Islamist militants. 

The ministry statement did not say how many prisoners had escaped Koutoukale, which lies 50 kilometers northwest of the capital, Niamey, or how they had done so. In 2016 and 2019, attempted jail breaks at the facility were repelled. 

The prison’s inmates include detainees from the West African country’s conflict with armed groups linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State and suspected Boko Haram insurgents. 

Local authorities imposed an overnight curfew in the urban commune of Tillaberi, which is in the same region as the prison, but did not give further details.  

 

Niger and its neighbors in the central Sahel region are on the front lines of the battle to contain a jihadist threat that has steadily grown since 2012, when al-Qaida-linked fighters first seized parts of Mali. 

Thousands have been killed in the insurgencies and more than 3 million displaced, fueling a deep humanitarian crisis in some of the world’s poorest countries.
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyan President William Ruto dismissed most of his cabinet Thursday, firing everyone except his foreign affairs ministers. The dismissal follows weeks of protests that were triggered by proposed tax hikes, and transformed into calls for Ruto to remove allegedly corrupt and non-performing ministers. 

Speaking at the State House on Thursday, Ruto said the country’s recent political and economic situation led him to fire his ministers. 

“Upon reflection and listening keenly to what the people of Kenya have said and after a holistic appraisal of the performance of my cabinet and its achievements and challenges, I have today in line with the powers given to me … decided to dismiss with immediate effect all the cabinet secretaries and the attorney general from the cabinet of the Republic of Kenya except the prime cabinet secretary and cabinet secretary for foreign and diaspora affairs,” he said.   

Ruto said he will consult across different sectors and establish a broad-based government that will assist him in running the country’s affairs. 

At the president’s urging, parliament last month passed a finance bill that included several tax increases, but Ruto declined to sign the bill after protesters stormed parliament. Clashes between police and protesters in Nairobi and elsewhere left at least 41 people dead.  

Kenyan political activist Boniface Mwangi, one of the protest organizers, told VOA Ruto needs to change the way he operates. 

“We are very happy because it is the beginning of the end for him as well. We cannot have an incompetent government in power, we cannot have a government that kills its young people in power,” Mwangi said. “He has been holding the parliament hostage because nothing happens in this country without his approval. So he needs to understand that you cannot run a country by yourself.” 

The government says the absence of additional tax revenue will negatively impact government programs and foreign loan payments. 

However, many Kenyans argue the government collects sufficient revenue, but loses it through corruption that goes unpunished. 

Political commentator Martin Andati said time is not on Ruto’s side, adding that the president cannot expect to make parliament and other institutions do his bidding without pushback from the people.  

“He thought he would buy time, he would tell Kenyans he would do a task force and all this kind of nonsense, but Kenyans have seen through it all. So, politically, he is living in 1994. The Kenyan youth are in 2034, miles and miles ahead of him, so if you try all these shenanigans, they are able to see it,” Andati said. “But the cure to all this is strictly following the constitution. … There are checks and balances on institutions. So he must give institutions its power and let institutions work.” 

Kenyan protesters, who call themselves tribeless and leaderless, have planned a new series of demonstrations next week to protest the longstanding problem of police killings, disappearances and abductions.  
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