Pope Francis starts a trip on Tuesday to two fragile African nations often forgotten by the world, where protracted conflicts have left millions of refugees and displaced people grappling with hunger.

The Jan. 31-Feb 5 visit to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, takes the 86-year-old pope to places where Catholics make up about half of the populations and where the Church is a key player in health and educational systems as well as in democracy-building efforts.

The trip was scheduled to take place last July but was postponed because Francis was suffering a flare-up of a chronic knee ailment. He still uses a wheelchair and cane but his knee has improved significantly.

Both countries are rich in natural resources — DRC in minerals and South Sudan in oil — but beset with poverty and strife.

DRC, which is the second-largest country in Africa and has a population of about 90 million, is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985, when it was known as Zaire.

Francis had planned to visit the eastern city of Goma but that stop was scrapped following the resurgence of fighting between the army and the M23 rebel group in the area where Italy’s ambassador, his bodyguard and driver were killed in an ambush in 2021.

Francis will stay in the capital, Kinshasa, but will meet there with victims of violence from the east.

“Congo is a moral emergency that cannot be ignored,” the Vatican’s ambassador to DRC, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, told Reuters.

According to the U.N. World Food Program, 26 million people in the DRC face severe hunger.

The country’s 45 million-strong Catholic Church has a long history of promoting democracy and, as the pope arrives, it is gearing up to monitor elections scheduled for December.

“Our hope for the Congo is that this visit will reinforce the Church’s engagement in support of the electoral process,” said Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican, Christ Trott, who spent many years as a diplomat in Africa.

DRC is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985, when it still was known as Zaire.

Unprecedented joint pilgrimage

The trip takes on an unprecedented nature on Friday when the pope leaves Kinshasa for South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

That leg is being made with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.

They represent the Christian make-up of the world’s youngest country, which gained independence in 2011 from predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of conflict and has a population of around 11 million.

“This will be a historic visit,” Welby said. “After centuries of division, leaders of three different parts of [Christianity] are coming together in an unprecedented way.”

Two years after independence, conflict erupted when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with those loyal to Vice President Riek Machar, who is from a different ethnic group. The bloodshed spiraled into a civil war that killed 400,000 people.

A 2018 deal stopped the worst of the fighting, but parts of the agreement, including the deployment of a re-unified national army, have not yet been implemented.

There are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan and another 2.3 million have fled the country as refugees, according to the United Nations, which has praised the Catholic Church as a “powerful and active force in building peace and reconciliation in conflict-torn regions.”

In one of the most remarkable gestures since his papacy began in 2013, Francis knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan’s previously warring leaders during a retreat at the Vatican in April 2019, urging them not to return to civil war.

Trott, a former ambassador in South Sudan, said he hoped the three Churchmen can convince political leaders to “fulfil the promise of the independence movement.”
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Hundreds of people, including foreign diplomats and activists, paid homage Saturday to a human rights lawyer who was shot dead in Eswatini, sparking alarm over political violence in Africa’s last absolute monarchy.

Thulani Maseko, a political activist and fierce critic of authorities in the tiny landlocked nation, was gunned down through the window of his home last Saturday by unknown attackers.

Hours before his murder, King Mswati III had warned activists who defy him not to “shed tears” about “mercenaries killing them.”

Mourners from all over the world

Diplomatic envoys from the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom and the United Nations attended a somber memorial service on the outskirts of the commercial capital, Manzini.

Lawyers and rights activists from several other African countries, as far afield as Kenya, also traveled to the country — sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique — to pay their tributes.

A portrait of Maseko was displayed in front of a cream-colored wooden podium with a spray of white, yellow and red flowers laid out at the bottom.

U.N. representative George Wachira said Maseko’s killing was a “loss not only to Eswatini but to the world and humanity. We cannot avoid bitterness because Thulani didn’t deserve to die in this manner.”

“His death shall not be in vain,” he told mourners. “Thulani was at the core of that theory that through dialogue this country can be fixed.”

Maseko, who died at age 52, had spent most of his life fighting state repression and representing opposition activists in court.

In 2014, he was jailed for contempt of court over articles critical of the government and judiciary, but he was acquitted on appeal and released a year later.

At the time of his death, Maseko led a broad coalition of political and civic rights and religious groups created in November 2021 to foster dialogue with the king and seek a way out of the political crisis in the country of 1.2 million people.

‘Blood on Mswati’s hands’

Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, has long cracked down on dissents, with political parties banned since 1973.

At least 37 people were killed during weeks of anti-monarchy protests in June 2021.

Maseko’s murder drew widespread international outrage and calls for an impartial probe and the prosecution of the culprits.

U.K. Ambassador Simon Boyden said, “human rights defenders, like Thulani, must be able to able to depend on institutions of the state to protect them from violence, from intimidation and from death.”

The vice president of the Law Society in Eswatini, Sdumo Dladla, bemoaned that Maseko “had to die such a violent death while he was preaching against violence.”

EU Ambassador Dessislava Choumelova called for the “safety of all citizens including political activists.”

Paying tribute to the “fallen, giant baobab,” Mlungisi Makhanya, president of PUDEMO, a political movement that was banned in 2008, said the killing was “one of the most brutal acts in the history of” Eswatini.

“There is a lot of innocent blood on Mswati’s hands,” said Makhanya speaking via video link from exile. “For his atrocities, Mswati and his henchmen must be indicted…It is time like this that we must intensify our struggle and exert pressure.” 

Maseko also was a senior member of PUDEMO, which pushed for the creation of a constitutional multi-party democracy. He will be buried Sunday.
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When Pope Francis arrives in Congo and South Sudan next week, thousands of people will take special note of a gesture more grounded than the sign of the cross. Watching from their wheelchairs, they will relate to the way he uses his.

The pope, who began using a wheelchair last year, is visiting two countries where years of conflict have disabled many, and yet they are among the world’s most difficult places to find accessibility and understanding. His visit is heartening Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

“We know that it’s a suffering, but it also comforts us to see a grand personality like the pope using a wheelchair,” said Paul Mitemberezi, a market vendor in Goma, at the heart of the eastern Congo region threatened by dozens of armed groups. “Sometimes it gives us the courage to hope that this isn’t the end of the world and one can survive.”

Mitemberezi, a Catholic and a father, has been disabled since he was 3 because of polio. He works to support his family because he can’t imagine a life of begging. On the way to market, his three-wheeled chair crunches the stones of unpaved roads. Without a ramp at home, he must leave the brightly painted vehicle outdoors, at risk of theft.

Every morning, before he leaves for basketball practice, he makes sure the chair’s still there before crawling out his front door. “It is my legs, which helps me to live,” he said. He applies a bicycle pump to the wheels and is off, weaving through traffic of motorcycles and trucks.

Pope Francis is still adjusting to a life that Mitemberezi has long accepted. The pope was first seen publicly in a wheelchair in May, with an aide pushing it. The pope, at age 86, never propels himself. Sometimes he walks with a cane, but he uses the chair for longer distances and has a wheelchair lift to get on and off planes.

Francis has insisted that his mobility limitations don’t affect his ability to be pope, saying “You lead with your head, not your knee.” He has lamented how today’s “throwaway culture” wrongly marginalizes disabled people. He makes it a point to visit places serving the disabled during his foreign trips, and routinely spends time greeting wheelchair users at the end of his general audiences.

“No disability — temporary, acquired or permanent — can change the fact that we are all children of the one Father and enjoy the same dignity,” Francis wrote in his annual message for the U.N. International Day of Persons with Disabilities in December. He said people with different abilities enrich the church and teach it to be more humane.

Such messages are warmly awaited by wheelchair users in South Sudan, where a five-year civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. As in Congo, data is lacking on just how many people are disabled by conflict or other means.

While the road leading to the Vatican’s embassy in the South Sudan capital, Juba, was paved by city authorities this month for ease of travel, residents who use wheelchairs said they have long gone without easy access to schools, health centers, toilets and other public facilities.

The Vatican’s ambassador to Congo, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, said he believed the sight of a wheelchair-using pope could be a powerful teaching moment in a culture where disabilities are often viewed with suspicion and superstition.

Families often abandon their disabled children, he said.

Seeing someone like the pope suffer should make Francis more approachable for people during his visit, Balestrero said. “They identify, in a way, even more with him.”
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A red shipping container lies in a school playground in a small South African town. 

The imposing steel structure has an unexpected function: to help save youngsters in a country gripped by an epidemic of drownings. 

Within it is a swimming pool — the only one within 25 kilometers — where children will learn the basics of how to stay afloat. 

South Africa has thousands of kilometers of beaches, and in rich neighborhoods, swimming pools dot the gardens. 

Yet just one South African in seven knows how to swim, and each year about 1,500 people drown, according to a local rescue institute — an average of four individuals per day. 

In the Cape Town suburb of Riebeek-Kasteel, Meiring primary school, which hosts the container, has suffered its own drowning tragedy. 

A framed photo in the entrance hall pays tribute to a 12-year-old lad who perished in a dammed lake at a nearby farm in 2021. 

“If he just knew how to float in water, he could have saved his own life,” said school principal Brenton Cupido.  

“It gets very hot here, especially in summer, and our (pupils) flock every afternoon, unsupervised, to the nearby dams. But most of them can’t swim.”  

The toll is a “huge public health issue” rooted in historical inequalities, said Jill Fortuin, director of drowning prevention at the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI).  

Most fatalities are Black South Africans. 

“Apartheid is a big portion of the problem,” said Fortuin, herself a person of mixed heritage. 

Under segregation, swimming pools and holiday beaches were limited to the white minority, providing little incentive for the majority to learn how to swim. 

Three decades after the advent of democracy, stark inequalities remain, with limited infrastructure and opportunities. 

“Government schools, where most disadvantaged people go to, often do not have swimming pools,” said Fortuin. 

Faced with choosing between putting food on the table or paying for swimming lessons, most families opt for the former, she added.  

“Swimming is not seen as a priority.” 

‘Safe water’

To help tackle drowning, NSRI has deployed 1,350 volunteer lifeguards across the country’s beaches and installed 1,500 bright pink buoys on various water bodies to help rescuers aid people in distress. 

But prevention is paramount, said the group, whose awareness-raising campaign has reached more than 3 million people in recent years. 

With climate change fueling floods and heat waves, the need increases, said Fortuin. 

The “Survival Swimming Centre” pool installed at Meiring is the brainchild of Andrew Ingram, 58, a drowning prevention manager. 

In their homes, some of “the children … don’t even have toilets that flush. So how on earth are they going to have a swimming pool?” he asked.  

“We provide safe water and somebody to teach them.” 

The container pool is 6 meters long and 1 meter deep. 

Children are taught how to help friends in difficulty, control breathing, orient themselves under the water and use an empty bottle as an emergency buoy. 

Half of the school’s children now know how to float — and most of them are the first in their families to learn, said Cupido.  

Jonathan Van der Merwe used to be very “concerned” that his daughter, who was one of the first to take lessons at Meiring’s survival pool, might get into trouble in one of the many ponds around the wine farming area. 

“Now, I’m very calm and relaxed about it,” he said. 

A sister container will soon be installed at a school in KwaZulu-Natal, an eastern province ravaged by deadly floods last year. Another is already in place in Eastern Cape province.  

Petro Meyer, 62, NSRI’s water safety instructor, has introduced about 100 students between 6 to 12 years old to survival swimming.  

“You should see their smiles when they realize they’re floating by themselves for the first time,” she said. “We want to create a new culture in these kids.”  
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Cameroon journalists are calling for an investigation and say their profession is in danger after a popular radio host investigating government corruption was found dead.

On his radio program two weeks ago, Cameroonian journalist Martinez Zogo said he had information that people involved in corruption wanted him dead.

Then, on January 17, Zogo, the director of the urban radio station Amplitude FM, was abducted, prompting fears for his safety.

On Sunday, Zogo’s body was found. Government spokesperson Rene Emmanuel Sadi said that it showed signs of torture and that the killing was “barbaric, unacceptable and despicable.”

Zogo was known in the capital, Yaoundé, for his high-profile program, “Traffic Jam,” which broadcast in English.

Friends, colleagues and fans created a shrine in his honor outside his workplace.

“There is a feeling of shame. Why in Cameroon?” Haman Mana of the Federation of Press Editors of Cameroon said in French. “We are confused, but I would like us all to keep our sanity because those who did it are simply not human.”

Samuel Bondjock of the National Union of Journalists of Cameroon said his organization will always denounce this crime and its infringement on press freedom.

Journalists operating in Cameroon said Zogo’s killing is part of an effort by the authoritarian government of President Paul Biya to intimidate the press corps.

“Through the barbarity of the assassination of Martinez Zogo,” Naja TV General Manager Jean-Bruno Tagne said in French, “it is a message of fear that they want to instigate among journalists and in the circles of all those who have decided not to remain silent in the face of the crime that we observe in this country.”

Government spokesman Sadi said the investigation into the killing was ongoing, and he promised the killers would be brought to justice.

While Cameroon has a thriving media market, the group Reporters Without Borders says it is a “hostile and precarious environment” for journalists.
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The Somali airspace has regained its Class A classification after more than 30 years, the International Air Transport Association said.

IATA confirmed the reclassification of the Mogadishu Flight Information Region airspace in a statement on Wednesday.

Class A airspace is the sky above the base altitude of about 24,500 feet (7,467 meters) above mean sea level, according to IATA. In it, all flights must be cleared by air traffic control, which is responsible for maintaining the correct separation between aircraft, which required the Mogadishu FIR to install new equipment.

IATA said the move will significantly improve safety in the region and enhance efficiency.

The reclassification of Somali airspace to Class A took effect at 00:01 a.m. local time Thursday (16:01 EST), Somali officials said.

Uncontrolled airspace for decades

The collapse of the state in Somalia in 1991 ended the country’s control of its airspace. That control had been run from Nairobi in neighboring Kenya from 1992 until June 2018, when the Somali government transferred management of the airspace to Mogadishu. Somalia airspace had been classified as Class G, or uncontrolled airspace, for decades.

The Somali government has welcomed the reclassification.

“It [is] welcoming news. We will be celebrating,” said Ahmed Moallin Hassan, director general of Somali Civil Aviation Authority.

Asked what the reclassification of airspace means for Somalia, Hassan said the Civil Aviation Authority will be providing more services to pilots.

He said that under Class G airspace designation, the aviation authority was providing advisory services to the pilots.

“But now since the airspace class has changed from uncontrolled airspace to controlled space, the service we are providing changed to air traffic control services. Now we will be instructing the pilots, and we will be using words like climb, descend, clear to land, clear for takeoff,” he said.

Good for employment, safety, bottom line

Hassan also said the classification upgrade will increase revenue for Somalia. Most countries charge airlines for the use of the airspace and air traffic control, and each country calculates charges differently.

About 400 international flights use Somali airspace a day, and the change to Class A airspace has the potential to increase traffic to as many as 600 flights a day, Hassan said. He said current annual revenue is $22 million, and they expect that to increase to $34 million.

“It means that the airspace has gone into significant change, it will increase revenue, job opportunity and overall safety of airspace will be enhanced,” he said. “That will attract international airlines that are currently avoiding Somali airspace.”

IATA said reclassification of the airspace, and the operational resumption of air traffic control in the Mogadishu FIR, has been made possible with the installation and commissioning of modern radio navigation and other technological infrastructure, and follows a successful trial, which began last May.

“The upgrade of air traffic management and improved navigation and communication infrastructure will enhance situational awareness along an increasingly busy air corridor and its intersections with routes linking many of the world’s regions,” said Kamil Al-Awadhi, who is the IATA’s regional vice president for the Middle East and Africa.

In 1991, the national flag carrier, Somali Airlines, ceased operations. Despite promises from successive governments to revive the airline, that has not been realized to date. But just as private companies filled the void in telecommunication, water and electricity services, private airline companies have stepped in to provide domestic services and flights to regional destinations in East Africa and Gulf countries.
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The Carter Center said Tuesday that only 13 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported worldwide last year.

After decades of progress, the eradication program’s director cautioned the end phase of the global effort to eradicate the parasitic disease will be “the most difficult.”

The Atlanta-based center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Eleanor Rosalynn Carter, said the remaining infections occurred in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Six human cases were reported in Chad, five in South Sudan, one in Ethiopia and one in the Central African Republic, which remains under investigation.

That’s a significant drop from when former President Carter began leading the global eradication effort in 1986, when the disease infected 3.5 million people.

The figures, which are provisional, are expected to be confirmed in the coming months.

“We are truly in the midst of that last mile and experiencing firsthand that it is going to be a very long and arduous last mile,” Adam Weiss, director of The Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program, told The Associated Press. “Not so much as it taking more than the next seven years – five to seven years – but just knowing that it’s going to be a slow roll to get to zero.”

Guinea worm affects some of the world’s more vulnerable people and can be prevented by training people to filter and drink clean water.

People who drink unclean water can ingest parasites that can grow as long as 1 meter (3 feet). The worm incubates in people for up to a year before painfully emerging, often through the feet or other sensitive parts of the body.

Weiss said the populations where Guinea worm still exists are prone to local insecurity, including conflict, which can prevent staff and volunteers from going house to house to implement interventions or offer support.

“If we take our foot off of the gas in terms of trying to accelerate getting to zero and providing support to those communities, there’s no question that you’re going to see a surge in Guinea worm,” Weiss said. “We’re continuing to make progress, even if it is not as fast as we all want it to be, but that progress continues.”

Guinea worm is poised to be the second human disease to be eradicated after smallpox, according to The Carter Center.
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On the final day of her visit to Zambia, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen discussed climate-resilient food production and the global fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

On her second day in Zambia, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said hunger and food insecurity are exerting a heavy toll on communities around the world.

Secretary Yellen said it is for this reason the United States is taking strong and immediate actions to alleviate hunger.

Yellen spoke Tuesday in Chongwe, east of the Zambian capital, Lusaka, where she met with several female farmers through the green climate fund, which the U.S. is supporting through the United Nations.

The project – Climate Resilience of Agricultural Livelihoods in Agro–Ecological Regions in Zambia – is aimed at helping small-scale farmers better manage the impacts of climate change and alleviate hunger.

“The number of people facing acute food insecurity has risen to 345 million across 80 countries. In Zambia, about 2 million people face acute food insecurity and nearly half the population is unable to meet the daily caloric intake,” she said.

Secretary Yellen also mentioned that Russia’s war on Ukraine has caused major food supply disruptions across the world.

She said the U.S. will work closely with African countries like Zambia to develop its infrastructure and logistics capabilities.

She underscored the African continent needs a robust capacity not only to grow food, but to ensure it can be cultivated, stored and efficiently transported.

“And this difficult situation has been exacerbated by Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine, which has further stressed fuel and fertilizer prices across the world,” she said.

Secretary Yellen was accompanied to Chongwe by Zambia‘s acting agricultural minister, Gary Nkombo, who expressed gratitude for the U.S. support to Zambia. Nkombo said about 150 families have benefited from the U.N.-led program in Chongwe, which focuses on conservation farming.

Last month, more than 40 African leaders met with members of the U.S. administration in Washington, which pledged to strengthen investments between Africa and the U.S.
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Cameroon has denied an announcement that Canada will mediate the African country’s separatist conflict, saying such a role was never mandated. Canada’s foreign ministry last week announced that Cameroon and some separatist factions had agreed to a peace process, with Ottawa assigned to help.

Cameroonian government spokesman René Emmanuel Sadi said Yaoundé has never entrusted any country with the role of facilitator or mediator with separatists in its western regions.

In a statement Monday, Sadi said it was up to Cameroon’s people, institutions, and leaders to seek appropriate ways of solving problems facing their state.

It was a response to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly on Friday announcing that Cameroon and some separatist factions had agreed to a peace process.

Her statement said Ottawa had accepted a mandate to act as facilitator and called the agreement a critical first step toward peace.

The Cameroonian government’s denial of Canada’s mediation deflated hopes for talks to end seven years of fighting that has left thousands of people dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Esther Njomo Omam is the executive director of the aid group Reach Out Cameroon.

“People have been suffering, people have been in pain, and they believed that this Canada-led process for dialogue was a glimmer of hope that could lead to a lasting solution for peace,” she said. “The general opinion was that of relief and a sign of hope. When the communique from the minister of communication came out, we sampled opinion, and it was that of frustration.”

Canada responded to Cameroon’s denial Monday saying it was in touch with both sides in the conflict and that Ottawa’s statement still stands.

Canada had said the parties to the agreement last week included at least six separatist groups: the Ambazonia Governing Council, the Ambazonia Defense Forces, the African People’s Liberation Movement, the Southern Cameroon’s Defense Force, the Ambazonia Interim Government, and the Ambazonia Coalition.

A spokesman for the Ambazonia Defense Forces, Capo Daniel, says Yaoundé’s backing out of the agreement shows it does not want peace.

He says separatist groups will meet in the coming days to decide how to proceed.

“The Ambazonia Governing Council and all the other Ambazonia movements who formed the leading block that represents Ambazonia in the Ambazonia, Cameroon, Canada negotiation process have taken note of this document from Sadi. That is our only response. We have taken note,” he said.

Some rebel groups like the Ambazonia Interim Government and the self-declared Republic of Ambazonia have rejected Canada-led talks.

The groups have on social media said only armed conflict would free the people of Ambazonia, an English-speaking state they are fighting to carve out from French-speaking majority Cameroon.

Cameroon’s government says it is already implementing efforts for peace agreed to during a 2019 national dialogue on the separatist conflict.

Several rebel groups, including those with leaders based in Europe and the United States, did not take part in that dialogue for fear of arrest.

They asked Yaoundé to organize talks outside Cameroon with foreign mediators.

Switzerland has also made attempts to mediate the conflict, but with little progress.

Canada says the conflict has killed more than 6,000 people since 2017, displaced 800,000, and deprived 600,000 children of access to education.
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The old maxim that “the pen is mightier than the sword” couldn’t be more appropriate when it comes to Somali journalist Abdalle Ahmed Mumin.

As a child, Abdalle lost his arm in a militia attack. Determined to still write, he had to teach himself to do so with his left hand.

The clan fighting that maimed Abdalle killed his 11-year-old brother as the siblings walked home together from school.

At that time, the family were living in a refugee camp in Mogadishu, and the daily human rights violations and unfairness that Abdalle witnessed there set him on his career path as a journalist.

“Whenever there was food distribution the militia would come and loot that food and my mind was always asking me, when I grow up what can I do?” Abdalle told VOA. “Every day I used to buy a newspaper. I said, the best way to fight injustices is to become a journalist.”

But now the 37-year-old, whose work has appeared in international outlets including the The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, is in his own fight for justice.

He is accused of publicly disobeying a government directive and holding a press conference that criticized the directive.

The Ministry of Information in a statement in October denied the charges are related to Abdalle’s work as journalist. But press freedom groups say the charges are spurious

Country in conflict

The case against Abdalle is linked with Somalia’s long battle with militancy.

Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group al-Shabab has been waging a brutal insurgency for about 15 years. The militant group sees journalists who work for Western media as spies and often targets them.

In 2015, Abdalle survived an assassination attempt when militants shot at his car. He took his family and fled to neighboring Kenya, where they lived for several years.

Ultimately though, Abdalle couldn’t keep away from what he felt was his calling. He returned and helped form the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS).

Set up to defend the rights of working journalists, the independent trade union provides support and training, and is vocal in its defense of media rights.

Which is why it went into action in October last year when Somalia’s Ministry of Information published a directive that “prohibited dissemination of extremism ideology messages, both from official media broadcasts and social media.”

The ministry ban covered messages sent “intentionally or unintentionally, directly or indirectly and consciously or unconsciously.” Officials later told journalists to refer to al-Shabab as “khawarij,” which means “a deviation from Islam.”

The government said the directive was intended to stop the spread of al-Shabab propaganda, as U.S.-backed Somali forces battle the group, which regularly launches deadly attacks that kill hundreds of civilians every year.

While it is in the government’s remit to try to curb terrorist messaging, for the SJS and other media advocates, the vague wording raised concerns that the directive could be used to stifle independent reporting.

Somali Minister of Information Daud Aweis however believes journalists misunderstood the order.

“The journalists are free to do their job according to the law. What we only asked them is not to fall into the trap of al-Shabab, of spreading the hate and incitement propaganda of the terrorist group,” he told VOA via a messaging app.

When asked what role the government believes media could play in the fight, Daud — a former journalist who worked for outlets including VOA and the BBC — said,  “Very simple, report objectively on these matters. That’s all what we need. Don’t be used as a tool of propaganda by the terrorists who are shedding the blood of Somali people, including the journalists themselves.”

Despite claims by the government that Somalia supports a free press, Abdalle says that in reality authorities want only military successes reported and nothing negative, like extra-judicial killings.

So, as secretary-general of the SJS, he called a press conference on October 10 and read a statement outlining concerns about the rules. After that, Abdalle says, his office was raided and he received a call from government asking that he retract the statement.

He refused.

The following day, Abdalle was arrested and taken to the National Intelligence Agency’s underground jail.

There, he says, he was interrogated without access to a lawyer. From his one-meter long cell he said he “could hear other inmates screaming.” He was later transferred to police custody and on October 16, a court released Abdalle on condition that he didn’t leave the country and didn’t speak to the media.

“But a journalist always speaks,” he said, adding that he refused a request by officials in the Ministry of Information to quit journalism and issue an apology in exchange for the case going away. Officials at the time denied to VOA such an offer was made.

Pressure from all sides

Somalia has long been a challenging place for journalists to work. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) considers the country one of the most dangerous in Africa for journalists, Muthoki Mumo, the group’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, told VOA.

“At least 73 journalists have been killed in connection to their work since 1992 and justice remains elusive in the majority of these cases,” she said.

Al-Shabab is responsible for many of these deaths, but Mumo said, “Government officials and security personnel whose responsibility it is to guarantee the safety of journalists, including by investigating attacks, also pose a threat.”

Journalists are frequently detained arbitrarily and intimidated by officials, she said. “Eight months into the presidency of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, his government seems intent on using the fight against the al-Shabab as pretext to muzzle independent reporting and critical commentary.”

Mumo said the CPJ has heard that some journalists are avoiding reporting on certain stories because of the directive.

Somalia’s media for years have faced harassment, attack and persecution. Mohamed Odowa, a freelance journalist working for international press outlets in Mogadishu, says the environment has deteriorated over the past eight months.

Some journalists have “opted to leave the country for exile while others decided to remain home and keep in silent for fear of being harmed by the warring sides,” he told VOA. He said those who refuse bribes to write positive stories, face threats and harassment.

“The current government is trying to use independent media houses and journalists to cover the news related to the military operations in its favor,” he said.

Information Minister Daud rejects with such assessments on Somalia’s media environment, telling VOA, “We don’t want to see freedom of speech being violated at any cost.”

When asked about Abdalle’s case, he told VOA, “I would like to remind you that it’s not wise to comment on a case that’s before the court. Let’s allow the judiciary to do their job.”

Abdalle is due back in court Thursday. The case has shaken him.

Despite years of living in a war zone he said, this is the first time that he’s truly afraid: “I’m fearing for my life and I’m fearing for the lives of my colleagues, other journalists.”
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South Africa has defended its warm relations and joint military drills with Russia as it hosts Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on his first visit since the invasion of Ukraine.

Lavrov said he appreciated South Africa’s neutral stance since the war started one year ago and placed the blame for the continuing conflict squarely on the Ukraine and the West.

“It is well known that we supported the proposal of the Ukrainian side to negotiate early in the special military operation… it is well known that our American and British and some of our European colleagues told Ukraine that it is too early to deal,” he said.

Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian and Western demands that it withdraw completely from Ukraine as a condition for any negotiations.

Lavrov also denied Moscow is targeting civilians, despite numerous attacks on residential buildings in Ukraine that experts say likely add up to war crimes.

South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, reiterated Pretoria would like to see a diplomatic solution through dialogue.

“As South Africa, our sincere wish that the conflict in Ukraine will soon be brought to a peaceful end through diplomacy and negotiation,” she said.

However, she defended South Africa’s right to maintain bilateral relations with whichever countries it wants and not be dictated to by the West.

South Africa is hosting the Russian and Chinese navies for February exercises off Durban.

Pandor noted all countries conduct military exercises “with friends.”

Defense Ministry spokesman Cornelius Monama said Monday that the drills would “strengthen the strong bonds between the countries.”

“Contrary to the assertions by our critics, South Africa is not abandoning its neutral position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he said.

The main opposition Democratic Alliance has called for the drills to be called off and Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Liubov Abravitova, told VOA recently that she didn’t understand why South Africa was conducting exercises with, quote, “the army of rapists and murders.”

Steven Gruzd, a Russia expert at the South African Institute for International Affairs, said Lavrov had “clearly found some sympathy” from Pandor and he expects to see greater cooperation between the two BRICS allies going forward.

“I think it’s interesting to read the body language between minsters Lavrov and Pandor, the Russian and South Africa foreign ministers, I think it was quite warm from the press conference and there is a genuine meeting of minds between the countries,” he said.

But Gruzd said South Africa’s hosting naval exercises with Russia could affect its standing on the international stage.

He added that it will be interesting to see the chemistry between Pandor and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who arrives in South Africa late Tuesday for a visit.

Despite pressure from the U.S., Pretoria has refused join Washington in condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

South Africa also invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit later this year for the summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies, though it’s not yet clear if he will attend.

The BRICS group is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
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Nigerian authorities say search teams are going after armed men holding four students out of six kidnapped from their school Friday, one of many violent incidents reported in Nigeria in the past week as the country gears up for elections next month.

Nassarawa state’s police commissioner, Maiyaki Mohammed Baba, told VOA Sunday that the teams, including the military, police and civil defense and locals, searched a nearby forest in the state for a second day for the remaining students.

Armed men on Friday attacked the Local Education Authority Primary School, Alwaza, in the Doma district while the children were reporting to school and kidnapped six pupils. Schools are often targets for ransom-driven armed gangs with a reputation for notoriety in central and northwest Nigeria.

Baba said state authorities have also fortified schools to prevent a repeat of the incident.

Security forces on Saturday rescued two girls who were abducted and reunited them with their families after a medical examination. 

“So far, we’re putting on intensive efforts to ensure that we rescue the remaining ones. They’re all in the bush now in trail of the suspects. We provided guards in all our schools to ensure that such thing does not repeat itself again,” said Baba, speaking to VOA by phone. 

The United Nations estimates more than 1,500 school students have been kidnapped, mostly in northern Nigeria, since late 2020. Most of them have been freed through negotiations but some are still being held.

Farmers and herders also frequently clash over land and scarce resources in Nassarawa state.

Nigerian authorities have been struggling to stem a wave of violence just weeks ahead of elections scheduled for February 25. Security has been a major topic among campaigners.
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