In a televised speech Tuesday night, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud announced that his government will launch a “total war” against al-Qaida-affiliated militant group al-Shabab, after the group staged a deadly hotel siege in Mogadishu on Friday, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 100.

Mohamud said that it is time to come together to defeat the enemy and said the military’s recent operations in parts of the country gained significant ground, including in central Galmudug state and Southwest state.

His remarks were made after he met with the country’s security council to discuss the latest attack on Hotel Hayat in the capital.

He said that he knows that the Somali people are tired of the endless mourning and that people lose their loved ones in every attack carried out by the terrorists. He urged people to be prepared for an all-out war against the ruthless terrorists who are hostile to the country’s peace.

He added that al-Shabab’s only principle is killing, intimidation, humiliation and carrying out atrocities against the civilians.

He said when he assumed the office of the presidency, he promised that he would launch a fight against al-Shabab to end the scourge of terrorism. There have been tangible victories, especially in Galmudug, Southwest and Hirshabele, he said.

This is Mohamud’s second term as Somalia’s president. He also held the office from 2012 to 2017.

When he took office in June, al-Shabab’s leader Abu Ubaidah released an audio message calling the president the worst of Somalia’s politicians and said al-Shabab would fight the new government.

The group frequently targets hotels and restaurants in Mogadishu, where Somali officials and security officers are known to gather.

It attacked the Hayat Hotel with suicide bombers and several gunmen. Security forces cleared the hotel after an operation that took 30 hours.
…

Conservation groups say the rate of rhinoceros poaching in Africa has dropped significantly since a peak in 2015. 

The latest figures on the animal whose horns are coveted in traditional Chinese medicine are recorded in a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the NGO Traffic. 

The report covers 2018 through 2021. It notes an increase in the number of rare black rhinos by just over 12 percent from 5,495 to 6,195; however, it says the number of white rhinos fell from just over 18,000 to 15,942. That’s also a change of 12 percent.

The report says overall there was a decrease, with about 22,137 rhinos, black and white, left in Africa at the end of 2021.  

IUCN Rhino expert Sam Ferreira says the reason they aren’t seeing the results of a decreased poaching rate yet is that the drop needs to be sustained over a longer period. 

Ferreira says he believes it wasn’t, as some experts have suggested, the COVID-19 lockdowns that made the difference, but improved policing and community involvement. 

“I think that what is really important is that the arrests decreased from 493 in 2018 to 279 in 2021,” Ferreira said. “Now again, we don’t know what exactly is sitting behind these things. But it does suggest that there are interventions, critical interventions that range states and particularly managers on the ground are doing that are having some consequences on the decisions that people make to poach or not to poach rhinos.” 

The IUCN Traffic report says since 2018, several education campaigns have been delivered to more than one million people. 

The WWF’s global practice leader, Margaret Kinnaird, says conservationists use everything from social media to classic campaigns with posters to educate the public. 

“For WWF, we’ve worked a lot with Chinese travelers in particular that are going overseas where they are visiting markets that have, for example, elephant ivory and rhino horn potentially for sale,” Kinnaird said. “The point there is to change the hearts and minds of those people who are approaching markets and thinking about taking a gift home. Or thinking about buying something for a medical cure. And just giving them alternative ideas for the sort of gift or product they would take home.” 

Kinnaird says the smuggled horns go primarily to Asia and are sold through illegal markets in the Mekong region and in China, particularly in markets in Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam.  

She says the horns are marketed from all four of the major rhino range states, the most coming from South Africa but also Kenya, Namibia and Zimbabwe. South Africa accounts for 90% of all reported poaching on the continent, mostly of white rhinos. 

Kinnaird says that, while it is good news that poaching rates have dropped, more needs to be done to ensure the animal doesn’t become extinct.  

“We need to improve our crime-related intelligence and make sure we’re targeting the right people, not the little people on the ground, we need to get at the big bosses, the kingpins, the organized criminals,” Kinnaird said.

The IUCN Traffic report was prepared for a U.N. convention on endangered fauna and flora taking place in Panama in November. 

 
…

Angola holds presidential and parliamentary elections Wednesday in what is expected to be the biggest challenge to the country’s longstanding one-party rule.

The ruling MPLA party, in power for nearly half a century, has been losing young supporters to the leading opposition party, UNITA.

The presidential candidates have focused mainly on economic issues, but observers are expressing concern about whether the election will be fair.

Angola’s national electoral commission has begun distributing voting material ahead of Wednesday’s polls.

The incumbent president, Joao Lorenco of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, MPLA, is facing a tough challenge from the opposition candidate Adalberto Costa Junior of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known as UNITA.

The two main political parties have promised to fight corruption, create jobs and improve the living standard of the people. Currently, half of Angola’s population lives on less than $2 per day.

Experts say economic challenges threaten the ruling party’s hope of winning the Wednesday vote.

Borges Nhamirre, a researcher for Institute for Security Studies, said the election campaign has been peaceful, with candidates focusing on solving the people’s and country’s problems.

“The electoral campaign was good, not much violence as in the past,” he said. “And also, the candidates discussed ideas about what they have to do for Angola; that is good as well. The performance of the electoral body was not that good because they failed to organize a transparent and fair election. The National Electoral Commission did not submit the voter roll to be audited, so they are going to vote, but the number of voters is not audited as mandatory by the law.”

Critics accuse the electoral commission of failing to build trust with the political class and the public ahead of the election.

Officially, there are at least 14 million people eligible to vote but some suspect the actual number to be less because the commission failed to clean the voter rolls of possible double registrations and the deceased.

UNITA fears the unverified voter register could be used to rig the vote in favor of the ruling party.

Opposition groups have also criticized the commission’s move to announce the results at the national election center in Luanda’s capital instead of at polling stations.

The head of Angola Institute of Electoral System and Democracy, Luis Jimbo, said the electoral agency must act properly on election day.

“Right now, it’s not about transparency. There have been a lot of transparent things that were supposed to be done from the beginning,” he said. “But we are demanding they must follow the law according to what the law says, to publish the results at the polling station, and the result at the national center must reflect those results. So, they are aware of this and there is pressure from all of society.”

Experts predict a tight presidential election. According to recent public opinion surveys, UNITA’s popularity among young voters has grown, something that worries the MPLA.

Nhamirre said the opposition can win the election but the ruling party may refuse to hand over power.

“In Angola, it’s very difficult to distinguish who is MPLA, the ruling party, and who is the state, so I foresee some groups within MPLA not accepting the result,” he said. “So, we might have a situation that mediation will be necessary to prevent conflict in Angola.”

Nhamirre says conflict can be avoided if the police remain peaceful and refrain from violence in the event of any post-election protests.

The MPLA has been in power since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.
…

Authorities in Cameroon have sealed at least 30 gold mines, including some owned by Chinese, after at least 33 young miners died in landslides this month and scores more were declared missing. Officials said Monday that they are also concerned about working conditions that have caused deaths within the seasonal gold mine community.

A heavy downpour on Monday kept businesses closed in Kambele, a village in Batouri district on Cameroon’s eastern border with the Central African Republic. But 70-year-old gold miner Vidal Dula says he braved the rains to meet with officials of local mining company Invest Batouri. He was asking for help in burying his 27-year-old son Vincent Dula, who died at a mining site on Saturday.

Vidal Dula says Vincent was trapped in a hole where he and 20 miners searched for gold. He says friends dug at the collapsed portion of the gold mine and recovered Vincent’s body. Vidal says the death was a huge loss for his family as Vincent was his only son.

The company has not responded.

Cameroon says Kambele is home to several thousand Cameroonians, Chadian and Central African Republic civilians either working or looking for jobs in gold mines.

On Monday, Djadai Yakouba, the highest-ranking government official in Batouri, said he deployed several hundred government troops to seal at least 30 gold mines in Kambele. Yakouba said the facilities defied a July 2022 government ban on mining activities. He said the troops and humanitarian workers searched for missing miners and recovered corpses buried at collapsed sites.

The central African state’s government officials say at least 33 miners, a majority of them school children on holiday, have died in Kambele within the past month. The government says about 10 children ages nine to 13 were among the dead.

The government did not say if the dead or missing miners were Cameroonians or included displaced persons fleeing conflict in neighboring C.A.R.

Lambert Essono is an environmentalist with Save Cameroon, a non-governmental organization on Cameroon’s eastern border with the C.A.R.

Essono says this year’s heavy rains have increased the number of miners trapped in sites on Cameroon’s eastern border with C.A.R. He says many more deaths may be recorded if miners continue to defy the ban. Therefore, he says, the government of Cameroon should make sure that all mining companies build trenches and retaining walls to protect miners from landslides. Essono says the government should punish mining firms that recruit and keep poor children out of school.

Under Cameroonian law, children under the age of 14 aren’t allowed to work. Essono said poverty pushes parents to send their children to work in mining sites where they are paid $3 after 24 hours of work.

Richard Lambo, spokesperson for Kambele’s mining firms, says the ban on mining activities should be lifted or else the companies, many of them owned by the Chinese, may leave.

Lambo says Korean mining firms left in 2014 when the Cameroon government temporarily sealed mining sites with claims that miners used child labor. He says people who died within the past one month were searching for remains of gold in places mining companies had left. He says it is the duty of the government to stop illegal mining.

The government has not said when the ban will be lifted.

Mining firms say that if they leave, roads that they are building, or renovating, will be abandoned. Miners say the construction of schools, markets and parks, which is part of the companies’ social responsibility, has been halted.

Cameroon says it will make sure the needs of the population are taken care of and that their children have education and health facilities. Cameroon says more 400 mining sites are operating on its eastern border, but that a majority of them are illegal.

The government says it will punish mining companies operating illegally or recruiting children.

Cameroon is a signatory to the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention adopted by the International Labor Organization on June 17, 1999. A 2011 Cameroonian law states that people involved in child labor could face 15 to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $20,000.
…

Kenya’s veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga filed a challenge to the results of this month’s presidential election in the Supreme Court on Monday, sharpening a political clash that has gripped East Africa’s powerhouse.

In the petition, Odinga asks the court to nullify the vote’s outcome on several grounds, including a mismatch between the turnout figures and the result, and failure by the commission to tally ballots from 27 constituencies as required by law.

“The final result… was therefore not complete, accurate, verifiable or accountable and cannot be the basis for a valid and legitimate declaration,” the petition said.

Last week the election commissioner declared Deputy President William Ruto had won the election by a slim margin, but four out of seven election commissioners dissented, saying the tallying of results had not been transparent.

The commission, its chairman and Ruto have four days to respond to Odinga’s claims through court filings.

Last week Odinga said the results were a “travesty” but said he would settle the dispute in court and urged supporters to remain peaceful.

This is Odinga’s fifth stab at the presidency; he blamed several previous losses on rigging. Those disputes triggered violence that claimed more than 100 lives in 2017 and more than 1,200 lives in 2007.

In 2017, the Supreme Court overturned the election result and ordered a re-run, which Odinga boycotted, saying he had no faith in the election commission.

This time, Odinga is backed by the political establishment. President Uhuru Kenyatta endorsed Odinga’s candidacy after falling out with Ruto after the last election.

At stake is control of East Africa’s wealthiest and most stable nation, home to regional headquarters for firms like General Electric, Google, and Uber. Kenya also provides peacekeepers for neighboring Somalia and frequently hosts peace talks for other nations in the turbulent East Africa region.

The case will be heard by the seven-member Supreme Court and presided over by Martha Koome, Kenya’s first female chief justice, who was appointed by Kenyatta last year.

The court will next conduct a status conference with all parties to define the hearing schedule and ground rules. The constitution requires judges to issue their decision within 14 days of the lawsuit being filed.

Due to the tight schedule, it normally issues a summary judgment within 14 days, followed by more thorough decisions from each of the seven judges at a later date.

The dispute

One week ago, electoral commission chairman Wafula Chebukati declared Ruto the winner with 50.49% of the vote against Odinga’s 48.5%.

But minutes earlier, his deputy Juliana Cherera had told media at a separate location that she and three other commissioners disowned the results.

She said the elections had been conducted in a proper manner – and most international observers agreed – but that results were erroneously aggregated.

Public confusion reigned over the tallying after the Kenyan media suspended a count of 46,229 polling-station level results with around 80% of the vote counted.

The election commission’s website still does not display the correct forms for all 291 constituencies. In some cases, the form is incomplete or only partially loaded, making it impossible for the public to confirm the commission’s count.
…

Somali federal police said Sunday that security forces had ended the Mogadishu hotel siege by the al-Qaida-affiliated militant group al-Shabab after nearly 30 hours of operations. Officials say more than 20 people were killed in the attack.

At a press conference in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, Sunday, Somali police chief General Abdi Hassan Hijar said that casualties include civilians and security personnel who were killed in the al-Shabab complex attack on the Hayat hotel in the center of the city, near Somalia’s criminal investigation department headquarters.

He said the main focus of the security forces was rescuing trapped civilians after al-Shabab fighters targeted the hotel with explosions and stormed the building, followed by a firefight that lasted nearly 30 hours.

He added that the security agencies involved in the operations who ended the siege at midnight rescued more than 106 people, including women and children.

He says he wants to share with Somali people in the country and abroad that the operations at Hayat hotel ended at midnight. During the operations, he said, the security forces focused on rescuing and securing the civilians trapped in the hotel, and more than 106 people, including children and women were rescued. It is shocking that innocent civilians have died there.

Dr. Abdulkadir Abdirahman Adan, the founder of Aamin Ambulance, part of the emergency team involved in taking civilians to hospitals, told VOA by phone Sunday that despite difficulties, their team was able to transport wounded people to hospitals for treatment.

He says Aamin picked up 11 wounded people and seven bodies, including men and women.

The al-Qaida-linked Islamist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Hayat hotel in Mogadishu and claimed it had killed 63 people and wounded 107 others.

The attack was met with international condemnation.

The United States said it strongly condemned the attack.

A statement issued by the U.S. State Department expresses “heartfelt” condolences to the families who lost loved ones, wishes a full recovery to those injured, and commends Somalia’s security forces.

The statement added that the United States remains steadfast in its support of Somali and African Union-led efforts to counter terrorism and build a secure and prosperous future for the people of Somalia.

The Intergovernmental Authority for Development in Eastern Africa, or IGAD, also condemned the attack.

Nuur Mohamud Sheekh, spokesperson for the executive secretary of IGAD, told VOA that the attack was a “terrible disaster” for the entire region.

“Look, this is a terrible disaster, not just for Somalia, but the entire IGAD region is in mourning. Our executive secretary did condemn this heinous criminal act in the strongest terms possible. Acts of terror are a threat to both the national, regional and global stability, and must be defeated collectively and we will be working closely with all the regional actors, international partners and of course with the government and the people of Somalia to defeat terrorism collectively,” said Sheekh.

This was the first deadly attack by al-Shabab on an upscale target in Mogadishu since Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took office in May.

The attack also was the longest hotel siege in Somalia since al-Shabab started its insurgency more than 15 years ago.

 
…

The siege at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, has ended, according to a government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before an official announcement.

“No gunfire, but still we are making sure that the entire place is safe from mines and explosives as it is late here,” he said. “We will provide details as the day wears on and we finish the assessment.”

The government is expected to hold a news conference Sunday morning, according to Agence France-Presse.

Somali security forces had been battling al-Shabab militants for more than 24 hours, since the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group attacked the popular hotel Friday night with several explosions and gunfire, security officials said.

The death toll from Friday’s assault on the Hayat Hotel, an upscale hotel frequented by government officials, elders and people from the diaspora community, has risen to at least 20, with more than 40 others injured, according to hospital sources.

A senior police official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media told VOA that a number of heavily armed militants were still fighting with government soldiers inside the hotel premises late Saturday.

According to Mogadishu Ambulance services, at least 13 dead bodies were pulled from the rubble in the collapsed part of the hotel buildings.

Dr. Abdulkadir Abdirahman Adan, the founder of Aamin Ambulance service in Mogadishu, told VOA that its medical team transported wounded people to hospitals for treatment.

Businessmen and local traditional elders were among those killed and injured in the attack. According to relatives, the hotel’s co-owner, Abdirahman Iman is among those killed.

The special security operations unit known as the “Alpha Group trained by the U.S.” entered the ground floor as insurgent snipers held positions upstairs, according to witnesses.

The attack began Friday evening just after sunset prayers, when a car bomb exploded at the gate to the hotel. At least two other explosions followed, and then gunmen posing as police officers stormed the hotel, witnesses said.

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

There is no official statement from the government regarding the attack.

In a separate attack in Mogadishu overnight involving mortar shells, five civilians from the same family were killed and 10 others were injured when mortars landed on their residences near Mogadishu airport.

No one has claimed responsibility for the mortar attacks, but Somali security officials said al-Shabab had carried out similar mortar attacks many times in the city.

Survivors’ accounts

During the siege Somali troops succeeded in rescuing many civilians who were stranded inside hotel rooms.

Survivors who spoke to VOA Somali recounted harrowing stories of hiding under tables, jumping from windows as armed attackers continued firing indiscriminately against those in the hotel and its surroundings.

“It was a beautiful Friday, which is like the weekend for Somalis … the beautiful conversations and happy faces of the hotel guests immediately turned into explosions, gunfire, blood and a shocking sense. I ran into a room next to the hotel reception area, along with dozens of people. We spent at least 40 minutes of desperation there before we got a chance to break windows and run,” said one survivor, Abdinasir Mohamed Gedi.

Gedi added that he could see people jumping from high windows at the hotel amid huge explosions that sent plumes of smoke into the air.

“The hotel area was covered with black smoke and flying flames. I could see people jumping from windows onto the buildings next to the hotel, among them old and overweight people,” said Gedi. “Some who already were injured from the explosions must have broken their legs or even perished after they jumped.”

Another survivor, Abdirahman Ahmed, was among nine other survivors. He said he and the others spent about six hours inside a barber shop next to the hotel before they were rescued by government soldiers in the early morning hours.

“It was like being holed up into a dangerous corner waiting for death to come. We never thought we could survive because we could hear the militants shouting, “God is great. Kill whoever you see,” Ahmed said. “When we were rescued, I could see a headless body apparently killed by an explosion and two other dead bodies lying in the street.”

Saturday’s attack is the first deadly attack by al-Shabab on an upscale target in Mogadishu since Somalia’s new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took office in May.

The U.S. embassy in Mogadishu condemned the attack in a brief statement it released on Twitter, saying that the U.S. will continue working with the Somali government in the battle against terrorism.

Abdulkadir Abdulle contributed to this story from Mogadishu. 
…

More than 10% of a UNESCO-listed biosphere reserve has been destroyed by fires that tore through northeastern Algeria, killing at least 38 people, an expert told AFP on Saturday.
The figure cited by Rafik Baba Ahmed, former director of the El Kala Biosphere Reserve, means that the burned area of the park alone is almost double what the civil defense service said has been destroyed throughout Africa’s largest country since June.

Algeria’s northeast was particularly hard-hit since Wednesday by blazes exacerbated by climate change. Fierce fires have become an annual fixture in Algeria’s parched forests where climate change is exacerbating a long-running drought.

But the fire service on Saturday said most of the fires there had been put out.

“The Wednesday fires damaged around 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres)” of the park, Baba Ahmed said.

According to the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO, El Kala Biosphere Reserve covers more than 76,000 hectares.

It is the last refuge of the Barbary Red Deer and “home to a very remarkable bird life, more than 60,000 migratory birds every winter,” UNESCO’s website says.

“It is (a) mosaic of marine, dune, lake and forest ecosystems, with its marine strip rich in corals, Posidonia meadows and fish,” UNESCO says.

According to Baba Ahmed, forest covers 54,000 hectares of the park and most of the trees are cork oak.

“It is considered one of the main biodiversity reserves in the Mediterranean basin,” he said, extolling its “exceptional biological richness.”

Baba Ahmed said he was “very pessimistic” about the future of the area regularly damaged by forest fires.

“Over time the fires weaken the forest, making it vulnerable to other attacks: harmful insects but especially to human activities.”

As a consequence, the area loses its flora and fauna, the forestry expert added.

Civil Defense Colonel Boualem Boughlef said on television Friday night that since June 1, 1,242 fires had destroyed 5,345 hectares of woodlands in Algeria.

Baba Ahmed said that figure is not realistic.

While Algeria’s northeastern fires have been largely extinguished, firefighters fought two blazes on the other side of the country in Tlemcen, in the far west, the civil defense said Saturday on its Facebook page. And the fire service tweeted late Friday that fires were burning in the far northeastern regions of El Tarf and Skikda.  

State television showed images of an army firefighting aircraft over El Tarf, and police said several highways in the area had been closed.

The fires led Algerians both at home and in the diaspora to collect clothing, medicines and food to help those affected. Since Wednesday, more than 1,000 families have been evacuated.

The justice ministry launched an inquiry after Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud suggested some of this year’s blazes were started deliberately, and authorities on Thursday announced four arrests of suspected arsonists.

If found guilty, they could face between 10 years and life in prison

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has also offered support, and French President Emmanuel Macron called his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune to express his condolences “for the victims of the fires”, state news agency APS reported on Saturday.

Spain and Portugal too fought massive wildfires over the past week, including in another UNESCO-listed park where more than 25,000 hectares were estimated to have been scorched.
…

Yeyerisa Abimbola has dedicated most of her 58 years on Earth to the Osun, a waterway in deeply religious Nigeria named for the river goddess of fertility. As the deity’s chief priestess, she leads other women known as servants of Osun in daily worship and sacrificial offerings along the riverbank.

But with each passing day, she worries more and more about the river. Once sparkling and clear and home to a variety of fish, today it runs mucky and brown.

“The problem we face now are those that mine by the river,” Abimbola said. “As you can see, the water has changed color.”

The river, which flows through the dense forest of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove — designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 — is revered for its cultural and religious significance among the Yoruba-speaking people predominant in southwestern Nigeria, where Osun is widely worshipped.

But it’s under constant threat from pollution from waste disposal and other human activity — especially the dozens of illegal gold miners across Osun state whose runoff is filling the sacred river with toxic metals. Amid lax enforcement of environmental laws in the region, there are also some who use the river as a dumping ground, further contributing to its contamination.

The servants of Osun, made up of women mostly between the ages of 30 and 60, live in a line of one-room apartments along the side of the Osogbo palace, the royal house of the the Osogbo monarch about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) north of the grove and river.

They leave behind everything from their secular lives, including marriages, to serve both the goddess and the king. They have little interaction with outsiders, allowing them to devote themselves fully to the goddess, whom they worship daily at a shrine tucked deep inside the grove.

Often seen in flowing white gowns symbolizing the purity the river represents, the women carry out various tasks for the goddess from dawn to dusk, from overseeing sacrificial offerings, mostly live animals and drinks, to carrying out cultural activities in the Osun’s waters. Some say the goddess heals them of afflictions when they drink or bathe in the river, and others say she can provide wealth or fertility.

One servant of Osun, who goes by the name Oluwatosin, said the river brought her a child when she was having difficulties with childbirth. Now the mother of two children, she intends to remain forever devoted to the river and the goddess.

“It is my belief, and Osun answers my prayers,” Oluwatosin said.

The river also serves as an important “pilgrimage point” for Yoruba people in Nigeria, said Ayo Adams, a Yoruba scholar — especially during the Osun-Osogbo festival, a colorful annual celebration that draws thousands of Osun worshippers and tourists “to celebrate the essence of the Yoruba race.” Some attendees say it offers the chance for a personal encounter with the goddess.

But this year, as the two-week August festival neared, palace authorities announced they had been forced to take the unusual step of telling people to stop drinking the water.

“We have written to the state government, the museum on the activities of the illegal miners and for them to take actions to stop them,” said Osunyemi Ifarinu Ifabode, the Osun chief priest.

Osun state is home to some of Nigeria’s largest gold deposits, and miners in search of gold and other minerals — many of them operating illegally — are scattered across swampy areas in remote villages where there is scant law enforcement presence. While community leaders in Osogbo have been able to keep miners out of the immediate area, they’re essentially free to operate with impunity upstream and to the north.

The miners take water from the river to use in exploration and exploitation, and the runoff flows back into it and other waterways, polluting the drinking water sources of thousands of people.

“It is more or less like 50% of the water bodies in Osun state, so the major water bodies here have been polluted,” said Anthony Adejuwon, head Urban Alert, a nonprofit leading advocacy efforts to protect the Osun River.

Urban Alert conducted a series of tests on the Osun in 2021 and found it to be “heavily contaminated.” The report, which was shared with The Associated Press, found lead and mercury levels in the water at the grove that were, respectively, 1,000% and 2,000% above what’s permissible under the Nigerian Industrial Standard. Urban Alert attributes it to many years of mining activity, some of it within 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the river.

Despite the drinking ban issued by the palace, during a recent visit AP witnessed residents trooping to the river daily to fill up gallon containers for domestic use.

Dr. Emmanuel Folami, a physician based in Osogbo, the state capital, said drinking the toxic water or otherwise using it for purposes that risk human exposure is a “big health concern” that could cause lead poisoning.

In March, the Osun state government announced the arrest of “several individuals for illicit mining, seizures and site closures,” and promised it was studying the level of pollution of the river and ways to address it.

But activists question the sincerity and commitment behind such efforts: “If we cannot see the state government taking action within its own jurisdiction as a (mining) license holder, what are we going to say about the other people?” said Adejuwon of Urban Alert, which is running a social media campaign with the hashtag #SaveOsunRiver.

Abimbola, a servant of Osun since she was just 17 years old, said the goddess is tolerant and giving. She thanks Osun for her blessings — a home, children, good health.

“Every good thing that God does for people, Osun does the same,” she said.

Yet she and others warn that even Osun has her limits.

There may be problems if the river remains contaminated and Osun “gets angry or is not properly appeased,” said Abiodun Fasoyin, a village chief in Esa-Odo, where much of the mining takes place, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Osogbo.

“The riverbank will overflow and sweep people away when it is angry,” Abimbola said. “Don’t do whatever she doesn’t want.”
…

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has formally opened resettlement houses for people internally displaced by the 13-year conflict with Islamist militants in the country’s northeast.

Buhari’s visit Thursday to Borno state, the epicenter of Nigeria’s Islamist insurgency, was part of activities to commemorate the U.N.-declared World Humanitarian Day.

Buhari commissioned 500 units of newly built resettlement homes in a local Molai village. The president also donated food items, including rice, beans and cooking oil, to thousands of internally displaced people.

Nigerian authorities also announced a cash transfer for over 5,000 beneficiaries, most of them women and people living with disabilities.

Since last year, authorities have intensified efforts to close IDP camps in the state and settle residents in their home villages and towns.

Local media report more than 6,000 housing units have so far been completed and allocated to beneficiaries.

However, aid groups have been raising concerns about the safety of the IDPs. Abba Ali Yarima, co-founder of the nonprofit Green Panthers foundation that focuses on ameliorating the impact of climate change, spoke to VOA via phone from Maiduguri.

“People that were relocated are still complaining about access to basic services such as water and health care,” Yarima said. “Then we’re still having a lot of security issues, but because the northwest is also having a bit of security concern now, it has overshadowed the one in the northeast. There are shocking stories coming from the fields that we don’t seem to talk about.”

Buhari praised Nigerian troops and said their efforts have made significant progress toward dislodging the terrorists.

Security analyst Senator Iroegbu agreed but said authorities must remain vigilant and must also introduce community policing in areas where the IDPs are being resettled.

“There’s a relative progress and stability in the northeast in the counterinsurgency operation, [but the] military can’t effectively do a policing job,” Iroegbu said. “If there’s a territory that has been liberated, you cannot completely say that it is safe for civilians to relocate. That’s where you have other security agencies come into play, so I don’t know if the federal government is factoring it.”

The United Nations estimates more than 37,000 people have been killed and about 2.8 million people displaced by the insurgency, which began 13 years ago.

The war has spread to other parts of the country and neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Yarima said that although attacks persist in the northeast, focus on the humanitarian impact there has been declining and shifting to the northwest, where armed gangs have been active.

“There are attacks in the northeast as much as there are attacks in the northwest, [but] the attention of the media is in the northwest,” Yarima said. “This has also exposed a lot of interventions that are supposed to be in the northeast going to the northwest, which is not a bad thing but … .”

In April, a joint military force from Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon killed more than 100 members of Islamic State West Africa Province, including 10 commanders.

But critics say until ISWAP and Boko Haram can no longer carry out attacks, returning home for many displaced people will remain a big risk.
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Ghana has raised its benchmark interest rate to a record-high 22% as the country struggles to check soaring prices caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ghana is also trying to boost its currency, the cedi, which saw the second-worst drop in value globally after Sri Lanka’s rupee. The high cost of living sparked street protests in July and talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bail out.

The cost of food and services has more than doubled in Ghana as inflation hit 31.7% annually in July, its highest since late 2003. Consumers and businesspeople say they are being pushed out of business as the local currency continues to lose its value against the U.S. dollar.

Naa Koshie, a 45-year-old mother of five who runs a cold store business in the capital, Accra, told VOA she is losing money as prices of goods keep soaring.

The people had a lot of hopes in this government, she said, but it’s embarrassing how things keep getting worse daily.

Addressing the Methodist Church of Ghana on Thursday, President Nana Akufo-Addo said his government is not sleeping on the job.

“The ravages of the pandemic, worsened by the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have led to spiraling freight charges, rising fuel costs, high food prices, steep inflationary spikes and widespread business failures. I am fully aware that these are very difficult times for us in Ghana, just as they are for most people in the world. However, the Akufo-Addo government has not thrown its hands up in despair at this pernicious development.”

The president says he is optimistic the economy will bounce back and will bring relief to Ghanaians.

“We are determined to bring relief to the Ghanaian people. Other steps will be taken, in particular, to deal with the unacceptable depreciation of the cedi. Reining in inflation, by bringing down food prices, is a major preoccupation of the government, and this season’s emerging, successful harvest will assist us achieve this objective, together with other policies.”

Courage Kingsley Martey, the senior economist with Databank Research, told VOA the measures taken by the central bank at its emergency meeting Wednesday to address the free fall of the cedi are appropriate.

“The central bank’s target is to bring inflation down and what we all want as citizens is to have low and stable inflation,” Martey said. “In doing so, there are going to be short-term consequences or tradeoffs. This means individuals who would love to have access to cheaper funds or capital may not be able to do that, but that would have to be the cost we have to bear in the short term.”

Godfred Bokpin, a professor of finance at the University of Ghana, urged Akufo-Addo to reduce the size of his government as a further cut on spending.

“Time is not on our side. The government needs to reduce the size of government drastically and also as a signal and be able to have greater control over expenditure from that side,” Bokpin said.

Time is running out for the government as Ghanaians continue to wait with bated breath, hoping for a major economic turnaround ahead of a hike in utility prices taking effect on September 1.
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The disputed Ethiopian area of Western Tigray is expected to be a sticking point in talks aimed at ending a nearly two-year civil war. Amhara regional leaders say it must be returned to them for talks to move forward. Henry Wilkins reports from Adi Ramets.
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