Nigeria’s Supreme Court has declared the government’s rollout of newly-designed currency to be unconstitutional and ordered that old notes remain in circulation until the end of the year.

The Supreme Court ruling Friday followed a lawsuit filed in February by 16 Nigerian state governors asking that the old 200-, 500- and 1,000-naira notes be allowed to circulate for a longer period.

The Central Bank of Nigeria redesigned the bills last year and initially gave Nigerians only six weeks to exchange old bills for new ones. The deadline was later extended by 10 days but the bank retired the old 500- and 1,000-naira notes last month.

Authorities said the redesign was to rein in excess cash, fight crime and kidnapping, and address inflation and counterfeiting.

However, Justice Emmanuel Agim ruled the policy backed by President Muhammadu Buhari was an unconstitutional use of executive power and breached the fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens.

The court said the policy caused hardships for millions of people, noting that some cash-strapped citizens had to engage in barter to survive.

Three people were killed in protests against the policy that turned violent. 

Nextier economist Ndu Nwokolo said he’s not hopeful the Central Bank of Nigeria and Buhari will comply with the court’s ruling soon. 

“The executive can say, ‘OK, we’ve heard the Supreme Court, we’re going to do that.’ But however long it takes them to do that [obey], who’s going take them to court to say, ‘You’ve been asked to implement this and you’ve not started implementing it?'” Nwokolo said.

Buhari refused to obey a February 8 order by the Supreme Court to suspend the planned February 10 deadline for turning in the old bills. 

The Supreme Court said that was a sign of dictatorship.

But Nwokolo said Buhari’s move could have been a deliberate act by the president to discourage vote buying during the election season. Nigeria went to the polls last weekend to elect a new president and lawmakers.

Next week, various states will hold gubernatorial elections.

Nigeria is also facing intensifying fuel shortages due to a disruption in the product distribution chain caused by activities of cross-border smugglers.

Many are hoping the new president will address these problems once and for all. 
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A report this week said Ethiopia wants to terminate a U.N.-backed investigation into abuses committed during the two-year Tigray war.

Reuters news agency said Ethiopia is lobbying governments to back a resolution that would end the mandate of the commission conducting the investigation. Rights groups say stopping the probe on alleged war crimes would deny justice and undermine the credibility of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Human Rights Watch this week published a letter signed by 63 rights groups to the U.N. Human Rights Council, expressing concern about Ethiopia’s plans to introduce a motion to end the commission probing the war in Tigray region.

Amnesty International, one of the groups to sign the letter, says terminating the mandate of the commission would have serious consequences.

Amnesty’s Horn of Africa Campaigner Suad Nur says it would only serve what she calls Ethiopia’s deeply embedded culture of impunity.

“It will also deny justice for victims and survivors of gross human rights violations,” Nur said. “This is including sexual violence from a highly atrocious conflict.”

The U.N. commission was established a year after war broke out between Ethiopia’s government and forces in the country’s Tigray region, in November 2020.

Rights groups say both sides are guilty of atrocities, including torture, mass executions, detentions, and rapes.

Ethiopia’s government has from the beginning opposed the commission’s investigation and tried a year ago to block funding for it, calling it politically motivated, but failed to get enough votes.

But diplomats this week told Reuters that Ethiopia is seeking support for a motion it plans to introduce at the U.N. Human Rights Council to end the commission’s mandate six months early.

Ethiopia’s government has not commented directly on the Reuters report.

But in prepared remarks at the opening of the African Union Summit on February 15, Ethiopia’s Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen confirmed the plan.

“This commission could undermine the AU-led peace process and the implementation of the peace agreement with inflammatory rhetoric. It could also undermine the efforts of national institutions,” Mekonnen said.

The printed speech, given to some media, went on to say that Ethiopia prepared a resolution for “terminating the commission’s mandate” that “will be presented at the council’s upcoming session.”

It then called on the African Union “to endorse our resolution and assist us to terminate this unwarranted mandate.”

But Demeke did not read that part of the written speech during his remarks.

Reuters quoted Western diplomats saying they were urging Ethiopia to back off its plan to submit the motion, saying it would set a “terrible precedent.”

At an AU summit press briefing, VOA asked U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to comment on the deputy prime minister’s attack on the U.N. commission.

“The only thing I can testify is that the U.N. rights work of the U.N. system is a work that is always positive in relations to the peace process,” said Guterres.

The African Union brokered a November peace deal between Tigrayan forces and the Ethiopian government after fighting that killed tens of thousands, with some estimates in the hundreds of thousands.

Suad Nur of Amnesty International says for peace to be sustainable there must be justice and accountability.

The Ethiopian government rejected the U.N. commission’s September report, which found widespread violations by both sides, including the government’s using starvation as a method of warfare.
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Nigeria’s electoral commission has declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu the winner of last Saturday’s presidential election. However, the two major opposition parties say the results were rigged and have vowed to challenge the results in court. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
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As a school kid in Mogadishu, Farhia Mohamed Kheyre spoke in an unusual way. When her teachers asked questions in class, Kheyre would answer in a newsreader’s voice, she told VOA, bursting into laughter at the recollection.

She was copying the news presenters she heard daily when her family listened to the radio.

But when it came to pursuing a career in journalism — a male-dominated profession in Somalia — her father was against it.

He was worried for her safety due to the insurgency by the militant group al-Shabab. Some of her other family members were concerned that a job in media went against cultural and religious norms in the Muslim country.

That’s a problem common among Somalia’s female journalists, many of whom defy family and societal expectations to do work that they believe is integral to their nation’s future.

“Freedom is important,” said Kheyre, 29, who now heads the Somali Women Journalists Organization, an advocacy group fighting for the rights of women in an industry that she and others say is rife with sexual harassment and discrimination.

As part of those efforts, members of the organization have been traveling to newsrooms around Somalia to promote a handbook about how to recognize sexual harassment in the workplace and what to do about it.

“For us, our focus is giving female journalists more training and skills,” Kheyre said of the 200 plus-member organization. “We are also doing advocacy. Some female journalists when they’re getting pregnant, they’re not getting the salary. When there are sexual harassment cases, we try to solve that issue.”

Changing the game

Robert Few, head of communications for the United Nations Development Program in Somalia, echoes Kheyre’s assessment of the media landscape. For that reason, he said, the U.N.-funded newsroom Bilan is a game-changer.

Launched last year, the all-woman operation has a team of six female journalists.

“[Bilan] has gained a huge local audience and broken new ground on subjects like HIV, autism and women’s health, spurring public debate and calls for policy change,” Few told VOA.

The outlet produces text, radio and TV stories, which are distributed locally by one of the country’s leading media houses, Dalsan.

“They have also been commissioned by international media like The Guardian, BBC and El Pais, demonstrating that Somali women journalists can compete at the highest level and [blaze] a trail for other Somali women in the media,” Few said.

Untold stories

Fathi Mohamed Ahmed, is chief editor at Bilan. Like Kheyre, her interest in the media came at a young age when her grandmother played BBC news constantly on the radio.

But the 28-year-old journalist said she hid the fact she was studying media. For months she told her family she was doing IT, because they didn’t think journalism was a job for a woman.

After eight years as a reporter, her family are proud of her accomplishments, she said, and she even shares links to her stories with them.

She said the main difference working for Bilan is that the reporters speak to female sources all the time and it’s much easier to report on sensitive topics such as domestic violence.

The mother of three said previously she and her male colleagues mainly told stories about men.

“Bilan is different from the others because we focus on what’s going on in society: women, children, health…traditional media don’t cover this, they just focus on politics all the time,” she told VOA.

“I like this job environment because we are free from harassment and we understand each other,” she said of the all-female newsroom.

When Bilan started, it attracted criticism and threats, with some in Somalia saying that women shouldn’t be working alone or with foreigners, Mohamed Ahmed said.

While all Somali journalists work in incredibly difficult circumstances due to al-Shabab attacks, “when you’re female it’s harder,” she said.

Mohamed Ahmed survived a massive truck bombing in Mogadishu in 2017 that left her colleague from another news organization dead.

Kheyre told VOA that it’s hard for women to go out onto the street for reporting and many will wear a full niqab, which covers the face, in order to do so.

She said her organization gives safety advice, such as not rushing to report at the scene of an explosion because journalists and emergency workers are often targeted a few minutes later by a second bomber.

Al-Shabab particularly dislikes female journalists, she said. “They said we are haram (forbidden), they say Muslim females must stay at home.”

Inspiring change

For Bilan reporter Kiin Hasan Fakat, her inspiration to work in media came from growing up in the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, after her family fled Somalia when she was a child.

Her uncle had a radio and when she returned to the camp from school each day they’d listen to Voice of America.

Fakat, 26, was encouraged by a female reporter who broadcast for the Somali language service. She started to think that maybe she too could be a journalist.

“I like talking to people, talking about issues,” Fakat said, adding that the stories she’s most proud of for Bilan were ones that shed light on underreported or taboo issues, such as a story about a mother living with HIV.

After that story published, members of the Somali diaspora sent money to help the woman she had interviewed, Fakat said.

The journalists at Bilan receive regular mentorship and training from seasoned foreign correspondents, including the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, who tweeted after meeting the women in November: “What a privilege to meet this brave team of journalists telling new stories & telling them so well.”

Kheyre, who recently became a new mother, says she would never block her daughter from being whatever she wants when she grows up, whether that’s a pilot, or yes, even a journalist.
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The United States has donated more than 60 tons of weapons and ammunition to the Somali National Army, or SNA, to boost ongoing operations against the militant group al-Shabab and for future training of an elite infantry unit, according to the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu.

A statement from the embassy Wednesday said the weapons arrived in Mogadishu’s international airport aboard two U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes that were greeted by Somalia’s minister of defense and chief of defense forces, as well as Embassy Mogadishu Chargé d’Affaires Tim Trinkle.

According to the U.S. statement, the weapons included “Sixty-one tons of AK-47s, heavy machine guns, and ammunition.”

“This military assistance will support the current SNA operations against al-Shabab in Galmadug and Jubaland States and the next intake of the SNA Danab Advanced Infantry Brigade, for which the recruitment process has already started,” said the statement.

The State Department has also offered a new $5 million reward for information leading to the “identification or location” of al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamed Rage. 

Rage, also known as Ali Dheere, has been the group’s chief spokesperson since 2009. The State Department said he has been involved in the planning of militant attacks in Kenya and Somalia. 

The Somali National Army, working with various local clan militias, launched an offensive in central Somalia last year that has succeeded in wrestling back control of numerous towns and villages that had been controlled by al-Shabab, which ran them with its customary harsh brand of Islamic law.

Analysts have warned that Somalia’s national and state governments must maintain security and provide economic aid in the recaptured areas to keep them from sliding back into militant control.

That issue came up this week as representatives of Qatar, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. met in Washington to discuss Somalia’s security, state-building, development, and humanitarian priorities.

The U.S. State Department said Tuesday that the participants expressed support for the Somali government’s focus on counterterrorism and capacity building.

“The partners agreed to strengthen coordination of international security assistance, and the importance of ensuring timely delivery of stabilization assistance to newly liberated areas,” the statement said.

The statement added that the participants are committed to support Somalia’s efforts to meet the benchmarks on weapons and ammunition management to enable the U.N. Security Council to fully lift the arms controls on the Federal Government of Somalia.

The Council has so far declined to lift a longstanding arms embargo on Somalia for fear that weapons could fall into the hands of militants or other non-governmental actors.

The U.S. Embassy said the weapons that arrived Tuesday in Mogadishu “are marked and registered pursuant to the Federal Government of Somalia’s Weapons and Ammunition Management policy, designed to account for and control weapons within the Somali security forces and weapons captured on the battlefield.”

In an interview with VOA Somali Service, Somalia’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Ali Mohamed Omar said this week’s meeting in Washington was “fruitful.” 

“Our goal was to submit our requests to our partners such as training, logistics, stabilization resources, humanitarian, and development, and our partners’ goal was to discuss how to better support Somalia, including the fight against al-Shabab,” said Omar. 

“We are waiting for their response to our needs and the assistance we have asked as well as decisions regarding increasing the coordination of their support to Somalia,” he added.

“A very productive meeting,” Somalia’s national security adviser, Hussein Sheikh-Ali, tweeted after the Washington gathering.

VOA Somali Service’s Falastine Iman contributed to the report. 
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Nigeria’s electoral commission has declared ruling party candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu the winner of Saturday’s presidential election. The announcement comes a day after opposition candidates called the election a “sham” and demanded a revote.

In the early morning announcement broadcast on state-run National Television Authority, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu the next president of Nigeria.

INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu said Tinubu, the ruling All Progressives Congress party candidate, received almost 8.8 million votes to win the most hotly contested race since Nigeria became a democracy.

His main challengers were People’s Democratic Party candidate Atiku Abubakar and Labor Party candidate Peter Obi.

Yakubu said Abubakar, a former vice president, won nearly seven million votes, while Obi, a former governor of southeast Anambra State, took more than six million.

Supporters celebrated the victory of 70-year-old Tinubu, a former governor of Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, who is often called a political “godfather.”

But opposition supporters are not celebrating.

Abuja resident Augustine Ameh woke up to the news and said that, “I’m really not excited about the outcome of the presidential elections because I feel that a lot of Nigerians were not given the opportunity to speak out with their votes.”

“I feel this is not a victory for Nigeria,” Ameh added. “This is a victory for a select few.”

Tinubu gave an acceptance speech in the capital, Abuja, calling for all Nigerians, including the opposition, to unite for the country.

But opposition leaders Tuesday called the election a “sham” and demanded a revote after technical and staff delays that saw voting continue into Sunday and a slow tally of votes.

They allege voter suppression and vote manipulation and are expected to officially challenge the results in court.

The INEC says about 25 million Nigerians out of 87 million eligible voters cast their ballots in the election — the lowest number in decades.
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There was none of the U.S. presidency’s muscular, national security-focused approach on display as Jill Biden, in flowery dresses and pin-thin heels, hugged and smiled her way through Namibia and Kenya on her debut trip to the continent as first lady, which concluded Sunday.

Biden used hopeful words to address tough social issues.

“We face many of the same challenges, from climate change to economic inequality to strengthening democracy, which is why the U.S. African Leaders Summit was held in Washington, D.C., in December because it was so important to him,” she said, referring to her husband, President Joe Biden, in a speech to a room full of dignitaries and diplomats who gathered to hear her at Namibia’s State House on Thursday.

“And it’s why I’m proud to be standing here, standing with a strong democracy. … As Joe said at the summit, African voices, African leadership and African innovation are all critical to addressing the most pressing global challenges and realizing the vision. We all share a world that is free.”

She brought along one of her seven grandchildren to spotlight how girls and women can be powerful engines of change.

Jill Biden is up against major hurdles, say analysts who focus on gender and development issues.

“Every country has a woman problem, I would say,” said Caren Grown, a senior fellow in the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. “There’s no country around the world in which women are absolutely equal to men across all domains.

“We’ve made a lot of progress globally, and many countries have made progress over the last many years, especially in terms of education. But we still have really big gaps between men and women in employment, labor force participation, earnings. There’s no country around the world where women make more or earn more than men, although the gaps have closed. We’re still not at parity.”

And as young people, women and activists showed Biden on her five-day trip, Africa, too, has a woman problem.

In an informal settlement outside of Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, Biden met a teen who told her how her pregnancy forced her out of 11th grade.

In Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, she met with youths at a screening of a South African MTV series that shows that for South Africa’s young women, transactional sex is the norm, not the exception. South Africa’s president has described gender-based violence as “a second pandemic.”

And in Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera slum, she and Kenya’s first lady met with women who, because of their lack of access to conventional finance, set up an informal lending network. Systems like these lack the protections or guarantees of banks, and often traffic in much smaller sums.

President Joe Biden — who often refers to himself as “Jill Biden’s husband” — said after her return on Monday that her effort showed his administration’s strong commitment to Africa.

“She met with the presidents and first ladies of both countries,” he said. “She spoke to more than a thousand young people — the first generation born out of apartheid in Namibia. … In Kenya, she met families affected by devastating drought and food insecurity … made worse by Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine. And made it clear that America’s commitment to Africa is real.”

And by choosing to hold all of her high-profile substantive events with female leaders, America’s first lady conveyed a clear message of her own and made a not-so-subtle nod to Namibia’s first lady Monica Geingos, whose husband’s second and final term ends next year.

“It’s always time to have a female president, no matter what country you’re in,” Jill Biden said as she toured a local charitable organization with Geingos on Thursday. “So I’m very supportive of women running for office.”

Analysts say it’s unclear whether the trip will result in new initiatives or policy changes for the continent.

But, Grown says, Biden’s efforts challenge a belief that pervades to this day, and not just on the mother continent: that being born a girl means you lose in life.

“Dr. Biden has been a role model, not only in the education field but with everything that she’s done in her capacity as first lady,” she said. “That gives hope to girls who can grow up knowing that there’s many roles that they can take on as adults, and they can move into fields that might have been denied to them; they might be able to get education.”
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In Senegal, slam poetry is making its mark on urban culture and offering young people a way to voice their opinions about their lives and society. Seydina Aba Gueye has this report from Senegal, narrated by Salem Solomon.
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A South African group is bringing films to African youth in impoverished areas with poor services through solar-powered, portable cinemas.  The group, Sunshine Cinema, works in four countries aiming to inspire more youth on the continent through African films. Zaheer Cassim reports from Pankop, South Africa.
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Provisional results from Nigeria’s disputed presidential election over the weekend showed Bola Tinubu from the ruling party in the lead, a Reuters tally of votes in 25 of the country’s 36 states showed on Tuesday. 

Electoral commission results from the states showed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress party (APC) was ahead with about 36% or 7 million of valid votes counted, with Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) trailing close behind with 30% or nearly 6 million valid votes. 

Peter Obi of the smaller Labour Party got 20% or about 3.8 million votes. More results were expected to show the winner later on Tuesday. 

The preliminary results were announced in the states by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officers and will still have to be presented at the commission’s national collation center in the federal capital Abuja. 

But opposition parties have rejected the results as the product of a flawed process, which suffered multiple technical difficulties owing to the introduction of new technology by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). 

INEC had promised to upload results directly from each polling unit to its website in the election to replace outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, but most were unable to do so immediately. 

That meant results had to be collated manually inside ward and local government counting centers as in previous polls, problems observer missions also criticized as the result of poor planning. 

There are fears frustrations over the process could boil over into violence. 

In a normally bustling market on Lagos island, one of the most densely populated places in Africa, shops were shut and streets deserted on Tuesday morning.  
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Pressure is growing on Kenya’s President William Ruto to declare a national disaster over a record drought in the country’s north that has affected five million people. The failure of a sixth consecutive rainy season is making hunger worse across the region. Ahmed Hussein reports from Wajir county, Kenya where more than half of the population is facing food insecurity. Camera: Ahmed Hussein
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The Ghana Health Service says a shortage of routine vaccines for children blamed for a measles outbreak that infected 120 will be resolved within weeks. Health officials said the shortage of vaccines against polio, hepatitis B, and measles was caused by the depreciation of Ghana’s currency, the cedi. The Pediatric Society of Ghana warned childhood diseases could quickly spread if the vaccines were not soon made available. 

For months, nursing mothers have been complaining of shortage of vaccines meant for babies from birth to at least 18 months.

The situation became worse in February after major health facilities in 10 out of the 16 administrative regions of Ghana kept turning nursing mothers away due to erratic supply.

Vivian Helemi said her baby girl missed one of the key vaccinations last month and the situation has not changed after combing three health centers on Monday. Like other mothers, Helemi is worried the shortage of the essential vaccines for infants will pose a threat to her child.

“It has been frustrating moving from one hospital to another,” she told VOA. “I don’t know what could happen to my baby because she is yet to receive her second vaccination. I am confused because no one is telling me when the vaccines will be ready.”

Timely vaccination of children, according to UNICEF, is a proven method for saving lives from vaccine-preventable diseases. It can also help attain some targets like the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all.

UNICEF’s Ghana office says on its website that the country has seen a significant fall in deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases. For example, since 2003, there has been no death caused by measles, while in 2011, Ghana was certified as having attained elimination status for maternal and neonatal tetanus.

Dr. Agyeiwaa Bonuedie, a member of the Pediatric Society of Ghana, said the government must act now in order not to erode the gains made so far.

“It’s the first time I am hearing of such widespread shortages. We do have shortages from time to time, however, those are in very limited circumstances. The problem this time is that it has gone over for several months. This should actually be a thing of the past. The government should be encouraged to do what we call ring-fenced funding such that budgetary allocations for vaccines are actually protected, no matter what other dire or pressing needs the country has, the children should be secured in that light,” said Bonuedie.

The director-general of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said the situation will change by the end of March.

“We have had some delays in procuring some of those vaccines for which polio, MR [Measles-Rubella], and BCG [bacille Calmette-Guerin] are in short supply. It was also because the ministry’s budget to procure them are in cedis, and at the time it was due for procurement, because of exchange differences it was very difficult to procure, so now we have done it… we hope that within the next three weeks we will address it,” he said.

Parliament has summoned the West African country’s health minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu to discuss the vaccine shortage. The next few weeks are crucial for many children, especially those who live in inner cities and dense parts of urban areas and are exposed to vaccine-preventable diseases at an early age.
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