Kenya’s Health Ministry has rolled out a digital health information system to help workers diagnose patients and store their health records. Mohammed Yusuf reports from a village in western Kenya, where hospitals have recorded an increase in people seeking medical assistance since the deployment of the system
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Category: Africa
Africa news. Africa is highly biodiverse, it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa also is heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution
Libya Flood: Thousands Still Missing Amid Mental Health Crisis
In some places the water came on like a pack of cars, speeding more than 120 kilometers an hour over the tops of 30-meter-high palm trees.
As Hani Elbah, a 47-year-old government worker, saw the flood approach, he mentally prepared for death. It was September 11, the day Storm Daniel swept into his city, Derna, in eastern Libya.
A nearby building, seven stories high with 21 families inside, collapsed. “The families were all upstairs,” recalls Elbah. “The flood crushed it like a milk carton.”
Lights from mobile phones could be seen careening into the chaos as people were swallowed by the water. Elbah, his wife, and three children survived on the roof of a neighbor’s six-story building.
They were spared, but more than two months after the flood, authorities have counted nearly 4,400 dead and more than 8,000 people missing, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
And residents of Derna say the region is still reeling from trauma and lack of humanitarian aid to replace what they lost—which for many people was everything. More than 43,000 people are still displaced amid increasingly dire reports of suicides and other mental health crises.
“The city was worn out even before,” says Elbah. “Now we need everything from A to Z. We need infrastructure, housing projects and water supply projects. Mostly we need psychological support.”
Immediate needs
Some schools in Derna are operating a little, with damaged buildings and teachers missing or among the dead, adds Elbah, but others are destroyed or still occupied by homeless flood victims. Shallow mass graves appear in danger of being unearthed as workers continue to search for bodies.
On the streets of Derna, one only needs to look to the children to see the lingering trauma from the floods and what has become a widespread mental health crisis, says Sanad Alowami, a Red Crescent volunteer who works in Derna.
“Whenever they see rain, they will run to the rooftops and shout at people to come up, saying ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’” Alowami says.
This mental health crisis is among Derna’s most urgent needs, says Talal Burnaz the Libya Country Director at International Medical Corps, but it is also a difficult issue to address. Libya lacks trained psychologists and a culture of mental health care, he says. But the trauma has become deadly, he says, with rising suicide rates and not nearly enough psycho-social support.
“We started seeing lots of reports about cases who committed suicide or tried to commit suicide in that region,” he says. “And those people of course were… mentally affected by the loss of their family members. And that number is not… small.”
People in areas destroyed by the floods also have immediate physical needs, adds Burnaz.
Roughly 2,000 families are still crowded into temporary shelters in Derna, like schools, relatives’ homes or abandoned dwellings previously considered unfit for habitation.
And in areas washed away by the floods, recovery has been slow, and sometimes haphazard, with aid suspended from time to time and other critical recovery projects still in the planning phase, says Alowami, from the Red Crescent.
As winter rapidly approaches, many families still need basic things, like warm blankets and sheets, he adds.
“At the beginning we received a lot of aid,” he explains. “It was not all distributed correctly, but the demands were met. But for two weeks now most aid isn’t coming in.”
Why the lack of aid?
In the days after the floods, people from all over Libya flocked to the ravaged region, working with aid groups, or just bringing what help they could from their homes and neighborhoods, according to Mary Fitzgerald, a Libya expert from the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank. Libya’s two governments pledged their commitments to help the region recover.
But in the weeks that followed, many volunteers had to return to their families and jobs and the two governments’ moment of agreement did not blossom into a new era of joint efforts. Derna and the surrounding region remain isolated by political divisions, ravaged by years of war, easily ignored by the global community, and ripe for abuses and corruption, says Fitzgerald.
“The needs remain enormous,” she explains, “but there is increasingly a sense that the authorities have essentially moved on.”
In Derna, families are quick to say that help is needed, but they need it “direct to the people without any middle parties,” without explaining the problem exactly.
Immediately after the floods, locals held protests, expressing anger over the corruption and mismanagement they believed lead to the collapse of the dams in the first place. But since then, international journalists and researchers have mostly not been allowed into the region and protests have stopped.
But the mental health crisis continues to deepen, according to Alowami, and many among the thousands of missing people are no closer to being identified. Bodies found now are as far away as 80 kilometers offshore.
“The people are still shocked from the catastrophe,” he says. “People who lost their families and relatives didn’t cry for them. There wasn’t time to grieve.”
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Boakai Declared Winner of Liberia Presidential Election
Political veteran Joseph Boakai was on Monday declared the winner of Liberia’s presidential election, beating incumbent George Weah, electoral authorities said after completing the ballot count.
Boakai won with 50.64 percent of the vote, against 49.36 percent of the vote for former international football star Weah, National Electoral Commission president Davidetta Browne Lansanah told reporters.
Boakai won by a margin of just 20,567 votes.
Weah had already conceded the election on Friday evening, based on the results of more than 99.98 percent of polling stations.
The outgoing president won praise from abroad on Monday for conceding and promoting a non-violent transition in a region marred by coups.
“Liberians have once again demonstrated that democracy is alive in the ECOWAS region and that change is possible through peaceful means,” the Economic Community of West African States said in a statement.
But hours after Boakai’s victory was announced, a car plowed into a crowd of supporters outside his party’s headquarters, injuring at least 16 people, police said. His party said at least 10 people were killed in the incident.
Since 2020, ECOWAS states have seen abrupt regime changes with military forces seizing power in four of the 15 member countries: Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The election six years ago of Weah — the first African footballer to win both FIFA’s World Player of the Year trophy and the Ballon d’Or — had sparked high hopes of change in Liberia, which is still reeling from back-to-back civil wars and the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic.
But critics have accused his government of corruption and him of failing to keep a promise to improve the lives of the poorest.
While his party lost, “Liberia has won,” Weah had said on the radio.
Weah said he had spoken to the man he called the “president-elect” to congratulate him and urged his supporters to accept the election result.
“This is a time for graciousness in defeat,” he said, adding, “Our time will come again.”
The African Union sent its congratulations to Boakai on Monday.
AU chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat also called on “all parties to continue to display maturity and embrace dialogue to consolidate democracy.”
U.S. President Joe Biden also sent congratulations to Boakai, while praising Weah for “respecting the will of the people and putting patriotism above politics.”
‘Defied the stereotype’
The ECOWAS bloc said that the post-election phase was “crucial” and called on “the people of Liberia to maintain and safeguard peace and security.”
However, the NEC head said that on Friday, the commission had received two appeals from Weah’s party concerning the conduct of the election in Nimba County.
The commission has 30 days to investigate and reach a decision, she said.
Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who led a mediation mission for the election, said he was “deeply pleased with the successful outcome of the democratic process,” in comments posted on X, formerly Twitter.
He went on to congratulate Boakai, urging him “to be magnanimous in victory and seek to continue the efforts to unite” Liberia.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is a heavyweight in the West African bloc, commended Weah’s concession, saying it had averted any form of socio-political crisis.
“He has defied the stereotype that peaceful transitions of power are untenable in West Africa,” Tinubu said.
Several presidential elections in the region are upcoming in 2024, including polls in Senegal, Ghana and Mauritania, as well as military-ruled Mali and Burkina Faso.
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Namibia’s Small-Scale Miners Say They’re Displaced by Large Corporations
As industrial mining is expanding in Namibia to meet international demand, small-scale miners whose families have worked the land for generations say they are being displaced. Vitalio Angula has the story from Uis, Namibia.
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Oscar Pistorius Will Have a Second Chance at Parole Friday
Oscar Pistorius will have a second chance at parole at a hearing Friday after he was wrongly ruled ineligible for early release from prison in March.
South Africa’s department of corrections said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that a parole board will consider the former Olympic runner’s case again this week and decide “whether the inmate is suitable or not for social integration.”
Pistorius, a world-famous double-amputee athlete who broke barriers by competing on carbon-fiber running blades at the 2012 London Olympics, has been in prison since late 2014 for the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, an offense comparable to manslaughter, for shooting Steenkamp multiple times through a closed toilet cubicle door in his home in the South African capital, Pretoria, in the predawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013.
His conviction was upgraded to murder, and he was ultimately sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison after a series of appeals by prosecutors. Serious offenders in South Africa must serve at least half their sentence before they are eligible for parole.
Pistorius’ case and his parole eligibility have been complicated by those appeals by prosecutors, who first challenged his culpable homicide conviction and then a sentence of six years for murder, which they called shockingly lenient.
The Supreme Court of Appeal eventually ruled in 2017 that Pistorius should serve South Africa’s minimum sentence of 15 years for murder but considered the year and seven months he had already served for culpable homicide when it delivered the 13 years and five months sentence.
However, the court made an error by not counting another period Pistorius had served while his murder sentence was being appealed, meaning he was in fact eligible for parole in March when he was told at his first hearing that he would only be eligible in August 2024.
Pistorius’ lawyers took his case to the country’s apex Constitutional Court. The decision to give Pistorius another parole hearing Friday is effectively an admission of the appeal court’s error.
Pistorius is not guaranteed to be granted early release. A parole board takes a number of factors into account, including his conduct and disciplinary record in prison, his mental health and the likelihood of him committing another crime.
He could be released on full parole or placed on day parole, where he would be allowed to live and work in the community but have to return to prison at night.
Pistorius was once one of the world’s most admired athletes and one of sports’ most heartwarming stories. He was born with a congenital condition that led to his legs being amputated below the knee when he was a baby, but he took up track and won multiple Paralympic titles on his running blades. He is the only double amputee to run at the Olympics.
Known as the “Blade Runner,” he was at the height of his fame when he killed Steenkamp months after the London Olympics. At his murder trial, he claimed he shot Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, by mistake with his licensed 9 mm pistol because he believed she was a dangerous intruder hiding in his bathroom in the middle of the night.
Pistorius will turn 37 Wednesday and hasn’t been seen for nearly a decade, although there have been occasional glimpses of his time in prison.
He sustained an injury in an altercation with another inmate over a prison telephone in 2017. A year earlier, he received treatment for injuries to his wrists, which his family denied were a result of him harming himself and said were caused by him falling in his cell.
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Experts Fear Nigeria’s Food Inflation Could Worsen Hunger Crisis
Millions of people in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, are struggling with economic problems analysts say were caused in part by government reform policies introduced earlier this year.
Nigeria scrapped fuel subsidies in May leading to price hikes in food, transportation and energy costs. Data released last week by the National Bureau of Statistics showed Nigeria’s inflation hit an 18-year high of 27.3%. Analysts say the trend could exacerbate suffering in a country with an estimated 25 million food-insecure people.
Nigerian roadside food vendor Vivian Nwankwo started her business four years ago to support her family after her husband died.
But as the cost of food items continues to rise, she said her profit margin has dropped by more than half and forced her to withdraw two of her children from school to free up cash for food.
“Before we were managing, but now things are too expensive,” Nwankwo said. “It’s difficult to cope or make profits. People are complaining and sometimes at the end of the day, I’m at a loss. Even my two children who are in school do not go every day because I cannot provide for them always.”
There are millions of people like Nwankwo in Nigeria struggling to meet basic needs.
The United Nations estimates 25 million people in Nigeria — or about 15% of the total population — are food insecure.
Analysts say regional instability, climate change and inflation are the major triggers of food insecurity in Nigeria. The situation worsened after the government stopped paying subsidies on fuel in May, sharply increasing costs for food, transportation and energy.
Nigeria’s currency devaluation is also impacting commodity prices and contributing to overall inflation.
Nigerian Humanitarian Affairs Minister Betta Edu said authorities are responding to the challenges, in part by declaring a state of emergency on food security.
“We have lots of interventions that we’re putting on the table and the payments of this conditional cash transfer is ongoing,” Edu said. “The conditions attached to it is that they invest in their businesses, ensure that their children go to school. These are all targeted at improving the lives of people and alleviating poverty. The third part is providing fertilizers for poor local farmers to be able to produce food that we’ll buy off from them and sell as food rations.”
According to the World in Data analysis, Nigeria is among countries with the highest food expenditure with an estimated 60% of total personal income spent on food.
Experts say the situation will worsen if food inflation continues to rise, and that vulnerable people will be most adversely affected.
The Nigerian Central Bank on Monday indefinitely postponed a crucial meeting on interest rates even as inflation worsens.
Analysts say unless something changes, many Nigerians like Nwankwo will struggle to get by from day to day.
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Malians Suffer Under Unprecedented Power Cuts
Mali is experiencing a severe electricity crisis that analysts say will have dire economic consequences. For the first time, citizens are openly criticizing Mali’s military government, which has until now enjoyed widespread support in the capital. Annie Risemberg has more from the capital, Bamako
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UN Plastic Treaty Talks Grapple With Re-Use, Recycle, Reduce Debate
A third round of United Nations negotiations to try to deliver the world’s first treaty to control plastic pollution has drawn more than 500 proposals from those involved, participants said on the last day of the talks on Sunday.
Negotiators, who have spent a week meeting in the Kenyan capital at talks known as INC3, have until the end of next year to strike a deal for the control of plastics, which produce an estimated 400 million tons of waste every year.
The plastics industry, oil and petrochemical exporters, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, have said a global deal should promote recycling and re-use of plastic, but environmental campaigners and some governments say much less needs to be produced in the first place.
Environmental group Greenpeace said a successful deal would require the United States and the European Union to show greater leadership than they have so far.
“The hard truth is that INC3 has failed to deliver on its core objective: delivering a mandate to prepare a first draft of a treaty text,” Graham Forbes, head of delegation for Greenpeace, said.
“This is not progress. This is chaos,” he said referring to the number of submissions.
Two more rounds of talks will take place next year to try to finalize the deal.
Bethanie Carney Almroth, an eco-toxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was involved in the talks, said delegates were also considering an extra session to analyze the scale of the problem.
“Plastics are connected to climate change, to biodiversity loss and other major threats and crises that we as the human population are facing on the planet,” she said.
The United Nations said a statement would be issued later after the talks close on Sunday.
Stewart Harris, a spokesman for the International Council of Chemicals Association, an industry body that favors measures like re-using plastic containers as opposed to production curbs, said the Nairobi talks had delivered ideas that would be whittled down in Canada where the next round of negotiations will be held.
One of the most popular proposals was from Switzerland and Uruguay to hold more discussions on curbing harmful polymers and chemicals of concern.
It had the backing of more than 100 states, said the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network of non-governmental organizations.
Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled, the U.N. Environment Program says, while at least 14 million tons end up in oceans every year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says.
Canada, Kenya, and the European Union are among those who said plastic production needs to be limited, while a coalition of Russia, Saudi Arabia and others has sought to emphasize recycling.
Members of the Saudi delegation at the talks declined to talk to Reuters, while Russian delegates could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Heavy Rain in Kenya Affects Tens of Thousands, Disrupts Cargo
Kenya on Sunday said tens of thousands of people across the country had been impacted by heavy rainfall, flooding and landslides that had also interrupted cargo services at Mombasa port.
The Horn of Africa has experienced intense rainfall linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon in recent weeks that has claimed dozens of lives, including at least 46 in various parts of Kenya.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said at least 80,000 households in Kenya had been affected “with numbers rising every day.”
He said the government was responding to “save our people” including with helicopters and other emergency services to deliver aid and rescue marooned families.
“This situation has continued to threaten lives,” he said in a statement issued Sunday, urging the public to avoid floodwaters and evacuate homes in low-lying areas.
The prolonged rainfall was expected to extend into the first quarter of next year, he added.
Officials said nine people have died in the coastal region since last week including two passengers in a car belonging to the Kenya Revenue Authority that was swept off a flooded bridge in Kwale County on Friday morning.
“A multi-agency team led by the Kenya Coast Guard Service is on scene trying to retrieve the bodies,” the interior ministry said Sunday.
Kenya Railways said floods and landslides had caused an “unexpected delay” in deliveries to Mombasa port and along the cargo rail line to Nairobi.
“Consequently, this has affected normal train operations, including cargo transfers, loading as well as offloading activities at the Port of Mombasa,” the state-owned railway said in a statement on Saturday posted on X, formerly Twitter.
A landslide in one section of the line between Mombasa and Nairobi had resulted in “the closure of that section for all freight trains” but limited passenger services were still moving, it added.
Mombasa, the country’s second-largest city, and its port and railway cargo line serve not just Kenya but also landlocked neighbors including Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda.
British charity Save the Children on Thursday said more than 100 people, including 16 children, had died and over 700,000 been forced out of their homes in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia due to flash flooding.
The number of people displaced by heavy rains and floods in Somalia “has nearly doubled in one week” to 649,000, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in its latest figures issued on Saturday.
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G20-Led Summit for Africa Highlights Renewed Interest in Fast-Growing Continent
Leaders from more than a dozen African countries are heading to Germany for the G20 Compact with Africa conference, which aims to help bolster private investment in the world’s poorest, but fast-growing, continent.
Underscoring renewed interest in Africa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be among those attending the summit in Berlin, hosted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to German government officials.
Scholz, who has visited Africa several times since taking office in late 2021, will hold bilateral talks with several African countries on Sunday, before hosting a German-African investment summit at Berlin’s Marriott Hotel on Monday morning.
Europe and the United States are jostling with Russia and China for geopolitical influence, critical minerals and new economic opportunities in the world’s second most populous continent.
Those include Africa’s potential for renewable energy production, in particular green hydrogen, that could help its northern neighbor’s transition to a carbon neutral economy. The stability and prosperity of the continent is also seen as key to reducing illegal migration.
The Compact with Africa, which was created in 2017 under the German G20 presidency, aims to bring together reform-minded African countries, international organizations and bilateral partners to coordinate development agendas and discuss investment opportunities.
The event officially takes place on Monday afternoon in the German chancellery, preceded by a news conference with leaders of the African Union, which in September was made a permanent member of the group of the G20 group of the world’s most powerful countries.
“We will not make a common declaration, we do not want to force our African partners into a tight corset,” a German government official said Friday. “Instead, we want concrete results.”
German government officials say Africa can play a key role in helping Germany better diversify its supply chains, secure skilled labor, reduce illegal migration and achieve its green transition.
African countries have long complained that while Europe talks about investment, China actually provides financing without any moral lecturing. Still, Chinese lending in Africa is in decline, while European interest is rising as it seeks to diversify supply chains.
German trade with Africa was 60 billion euros ($65.4 billion) last year, which is a fraction of its trade with Asia but up 21.7% on 2021.
Nearly two thirds of German companies want to expand their business in Africa, according to a study by KPMG and the German-African Business Association.
The member countries of the G20 Compact are Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia.
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UN Mission Leaves 9 of 12 Mali Bases in Forced Withdrawal
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali on Saturday said it had left a ninth of its 12 bases as part of its forced withdrawal from the junta-led country battling separatist and jihadi rebellions.
In June, the junta demanded that MINUSMA leave “without delay,” leading the U.N. Security Council to begin an unprecedented hasty pullout to be completed by the end of the year.
The Ansongo camp in northern Mali was handed over by MINUSMA’s bureau chief in the city of Gao, Hawa Ahmed Youssouf, to the authorities represented by local official Ahmed Ag Aklinine.
“This closure is the ninth among the 12 MINUSMA bases,” the force said in a statement on social media.
The Ansongo base, 80 kilometers from Gao, was held by a contingent from neighboring Niger.
MINUSMA has been deployed in Mali since 2013 to prop up the West African nation as it faces jihadi rebels linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group as well as a Tuareg-led separatist revolt.
But relations have deteriorated with the military rulers who seized power in 2020, with the accelerated withdrawal of more than 11,000 soldiers and 1,500 police officers exacerbating the rivalry between the army, jihadis and separatists for control of northern Mali.
The separatists oppose MINUSMA handing the bases to the Malian authorities, saying it would contravene previous peace deals.
The predominantly Tuareg groups have since resumed hostilities against the state.
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Chinese Man Extradited From Morocco Faces Embezzlement Charges in Shanghai
A Chinese man wanted for allegedly embezzling millions of yuan (hundreds of thousands of dollars) from his company and then fleeing to Morocco was extradited back to China on Saturday, the Ministry of Public Security said.
The man, a financial executive at the company, used passwords for its bank accounts to transfer money to his personal account, the ministry said in a statement. It didn’t name the company but said that Shanghai police filed a case against the man in February 2020.
Moroccan police arrested him in April of this year, and a court approved his extradition in late October. Chinese officials brought him back to Shanghai on Saturday.
State broadcaster CCTV showed the man, identified only by his surname Luo, signing an arrest warrant after getting off the plane and then being handcuffed. Police officers led him from the jetway to the tarmac and to a waiting police car.
The Public Security Ministry said it was the first extradition from Morocco to China since an extradition treaty between the two countries took effect in 2021.
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Sudan Announces ‘Immediate’ End to UN Mission in War-Torn Country
Sudan has informed the U.N. chief of the “immediate” end of the United Nations political mission in the war-torn country, according to a letter circulated in the Security Council.
In an official letter in Arabic dated Thursday, accompanied by an English version from the Sudanese ambassador to the U.N., Foreign Minister Ali Elsadig Ali informed Antonio Guterres of “the decision of the government of Sudan to terminate the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) with immediate effect.”
According to the English version, UNITAMS had aimed to “assist the transitional government of Sudan after the December 2018 revolution,” but the government said the mission had proven “disappointing.”
However, Khartoum said it would continue to work “constructively” with the United Nations.
Guterres spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday the mission’s mandate was scheduled to end on Dec. 3.
“The Secretary-General has appointed Ian Martin to lead a strategic review of the U.N. Mission in Sudan to provide the Security Council with options on how to adapt the mission’s mandate,” he said.
Guterres was also appointing Algeria’s Ramtane Lamamra as his personal envoy for Sudan.
“We will continue to engage closely with all actors, including the Sudanese authorities and members of the Security Council, to clarify next steps,” Dujarric said.
UNITAMS employs 245 people, including 88 in Port Sudan, as well as others outside Sudan in Nairobi and Addis Ababa, Dujarric confirmed.
In an address to the Security Council on Thursday, the U.N. assistant secretary general for Africa, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, denounced the spread of the conflict to other parts of Sudan, which already has the largest number of displaced people in the world.
“Sudan is facing a convergence of a worsening humanitarian calamity and a catastrophic human rights crisis,” she said.
After almost seven months of fighting between the Sudanese army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, almost 25 million people need humanitarian aid in Sudan, U.N. humanitarian operations chief Martin Griffiths said Monday.
The civil war, which started on April 15, has left more than 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), a figure that is widely considered an underestimate.
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Dozens Killed in Recent Clashes in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region, UN Says
The United Nations said Friday that nearly 50 civilians have been killed in clashes and attacks in Ethiopia’s Amhara region over the past month.
Ethiopia’s second most populous region has been wracked by unrest for months, with a number of clashes between the Ethiopian military and ethnic Amhara militia known as Fano in recent weeks.
“It is imperative that all parties refrain from unlawful attacks and take all necessary measures to protect civilians,” Seif Magango, a spokesperson for the U.N. human rights office, said in a statement.
He voiced particular concern at “the devastating impact of drone strikes and other violence on the population in the Amhara region” amid the ongoing clashes.
At least 47 people had been killed in five different attacks since early October, he said.
“They were all civilians,” he told AFP.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced alarm about the violence in a telephone call Friday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Blinken “stressed the importance of dialogue and negotiation to resolve conflict,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
He separately praised Abiy for allowing reforms to monitoring that persuaded the United States to resume food assistance across Ethiopia, which is also recovering from a bloody two-year war in the Tigray region.
The U.S. Agency for International Development had halted the aid in June, alleging a systematic campaign to divert food.
Regaining Lalibela
Last week, the Ethiopian army regained control of Lalibela — a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its centuries-old rock churches – after the regional Fano militia had overrun the historic town a day earlier.
There has been no official casualty toll from fighting on Nov. 8, but a church deacon said he had attended the funerals the next day of 16 police officers killed in the clashes. The deacon added that he knew of one civilian who had died and a woman who had been injured.
Magango could not provide a toll from those clashes but said a drone attack that hit a bus station in Waber on Nov. 9 killed 13 people waiting to board a bus.
“Fano militias were reportedly active in the area and attacking (military) camps … when the drone struck,” he said.
“Such attacks amount to arbitrary deprivation of life under international human rights law.”
Three days earlier, a drone allegedly launched by government forces struck a primary school in Wadera district, killing seven people, including three teachers, he said.
On Nov. 4, six people were killed and 14 injured when government forces shelled residential areas in the Central Gondar Zone, he said.
“Many of the victims were killed in their homes.”
Magango said 21 others, including government and ruling party officials, were killed by Fano militia in separate attacks in the region on Oct. 9 and Oct. 28.
Although Fano fought alongside federal troops in the two-year war in neighboring Tigray region, tensions boiled over after Addis Ababa announced in April that it was dismantling regional forces across Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian government imposed a state of emergency in August after fighting broke out in Amhara, raising new concerns about the stability of Africa’s second most populous country.
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Liberian President Concedes Defeat After Provisional Results Show Boakai Won
Liberian President George Weah conceded defeat late Friday after provisional results from this week’s runoff vote showed challenger Joseph Boakai beating him by just over 1 percentage point.
Elections officials said that with 99.58% of ballots counted from Tuesday’s election, Boakai was in the lead, with 50.89% to Weah’s 49.11%. The results were a dramatic reversal from the election six years ago when Weah easily beat Boakai in the second round.
“The Liberian people have spoken, and we have heard their voice,” Weah said in an address to the nation, adding that Boakai “is in a lead that we cannot surpass.”
“I urge you to follow my example and accept the result of the elections,” he said, adding that “our time will come again” in 2029.
The concession speech given even before official results were announced in Liberia comes at a time when there have been growing concerns about the decline of democracy in West Africa. The region has seen a spate of military coups over the last several years, including one earlier this year in Gabon in the aftermath of a presidential election.
Weah said he had “the utmost respect for the democracy process that has defined our nation.”
The 57-year-old former international soccer star won the 2017 election after his promise to fight poverty and generate infrastructure development. It was the first democratic transfer of power in the West African nation since the end of the country’s back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003 that killed some 250,000 people.
But Weah has been accused of not living up to key campaign promises that he would fight corruption and ensure justice for victims of conflict.
Tuesday’s second round lived up to expectations of an extremely tight contest following the first round last month in which Weah got 43.83% of the votes and Boakai 43.44% to move on to the runoff. Boakai later managed to win endorsements from the candidates who finished third, fourth and fifth.
Boakai, 78, served as vice president under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first democratically elected female leader. He appeared to have an upper hand in the vote because of the many Liberians aggrieved over the unfulfilled promises of Weah to fix the country’s ailing economy and stamp out corruption, said Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused Signal Risk consulting.
The outcome of the second round so far shows “public disaffection with his (Weah’s) administration with Boakai considered a viable alternative for a lot of Liberians,” Cummings said.
Weah is the only African to have won international soccer’s Ballon d’Or. He played as a forward for Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Chelsea and Manchester City during an 18-year club career.
His 23-year-old son, Tim, now plays for Serie A club Juventus and the U.S. national team.
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Jailing of Two Togo Journalists Sparks Criticism
Togolese opposition parties and civil society organizations Friday denounced the incarceration for “defamation” of two journalists who had claimed on social media that a minister had around the equivalent of 600,000 euros ($650,000) stolen from his home.
The DMP, a collective of opposition political parties and civil society organizations, demanded the two journalists, Loic Lawson and Anani Sossou, be freed after their postings about Minister of State Kodjo Adedze.
The opposition Democratic Forces for the Republic, or FDR, party also said it “condemns with the utmost vigor this continued relentlessness of the same Minister Adedze against journalists who only do their job of providing information.”
Lawson, publishing director of the newspaper Flambeau des Démocrates, and Sossou, an independent journalist, were sent this week to prison in Lome for “defamation and attack on the honor of the minister and incitement to revolt.”
The pair had said on social networks that Adedze, the minister of Urban Planning, Housing and Land Reform, had 400 million West African CFA francs stolen from his home.
The minister, who had declared a burglary to the police without the amount stolen being made public, filed a complaint against them.
The two journalists then retracted their statement by publishing on Facebook that “extensive investigations and sources close to the matter attest that the amount communicated was overestimated and would not reach the sum of 400 million.”
In Togo, social media networks are excluded from the scope of application of the law relating to the press and communication code, which came into force this year. In offenses related to social media, prosecution is based on the penal code.
Joining the criticism with a statement over the arrest, the Togolese Press Authority, or PTT, one of the organizations of press owners in the West African country, “expresses its indignation and concern at the direction this affair is taking” and stressed that “deprivation of liberty should not be the rule.”
The journalists’ rights organization Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, also called for the immediate release of the two men.
“We are concerned by the summons and detention of journalists in Togo,” Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa desk, told AFP. “The signs that we see emerging show a desire by the authorities to circumvent the press law to arrest and detain journalists.”
Last March, two Togolese journalists were sentenced in absentia to three years in prison by the Lome high court, for contempt and “propagation of falsehoods on social networks,” following complaints from two ministers, including Adedze.
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War Crimes Court Drops Case of ‘Dead’ Ex-LRA Commander
The International Criminal Court said Friday it had ended proceedings against Vincent Otti, the former deputy head of the notorious Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), as it believed he had died.
Otti was facing 32 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, rape, forced enlistment of children, cruel treatment and pillaging.
But deserters from the LRA said as early as 2007 that LRA leader Joseph Kony had executed Otti, who had been instrumental in peace talks.
The court said it agreed with prosecutors that all available evidence indicated “that Mr. Otti was killed in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of Congo in October 2007.”
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said last year he wanted to revive a case against Kony, a fugitive who is also accused of more than 30 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Kony led the LRA as it terrorized Ugandans for nearly 20 years and battled the government of President Yoweri Museveni from bases in northern Uganda and neighboring countries. In recent years it has largely been wiped out.
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Zimbabwe’s Capital Declares State of Emergency Over Cholera
Zimbabwe has recorded more than 7,000 suspected cholera cases and almost 150 deaths
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South Africa Refers Israel to The Hague Over Gaza ‘War Crimes’
South Africa has requested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in its war with Hamas. President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement while on a state visit to Qatar, where he said he had spoken to the country’s ruler about the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“We both abhorred what is happening right now in Gaza, which has now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place,” he said.
Ramaphosa said South Africa did not condone the actions taken by Hamas when the group launched a deadly attack on Israel last month killing more than 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. However, he criticized the Israeli response, saying people were “dying like flies” in Gaza’s besieged hospitals.
“As South Africa, we have accordingly, together with many other countries in the world, saw fit to refer this whole Israeli government action to the International Criminal Court,” he said.
Contacted by VOA, Israeli Ambassador Eliav Belotsercovsky would not comment.
Mia Swart, a visiting professor at Witwatersrand University’s Law School specializing in international law, explained what’s likely to happen now.
“The ICC would most probably have to investigate what is being claimed here. It would be a drawn-out process,” she said.
Israel has always maintained it is acting in self-defense. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was taking “extraordinary efforts” to minimize civilian casualties.
South Africa is one of the most vocal international supporters of Palestinians. The governing African National Congress party has often drawn what it says are parallels between Black South Africans’ struggle against the racist white apartheid regime and the situation in the Middle East.
Party spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said Thursday they would support an opposition motion in parliament calling for the closure of the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria.
“Given the current atrocities in occupied Palestine, the ANC will agree to a parliamentary motion which calls upon the government to close the Israeli Embassy in South Africa and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel,” she said.
There have been large pro-Palestinian protests in South African cities, as well as a smaller pro-Israel march that was disrupted by counterprotesters.
The Jewish Board of Deputies, a group representing the Jewish community in South Africa, says there has been a massive rise in antisemitism in the country since the outbreak of the conflict.
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Gunmen Kill One Journalist, Kidnap Two in Mali
Unidentified gunmen killed one journalist and abducted two other journalists earlier this month in Mali, the International Press Institute said Wednesday, underscoring the threats facing the media in the region.
Abdoul Aziz Djibrilla, a journalist with community radio Naata, was driving in northern Mali on November 7 along with Radio Coton FM director Saleck Ag Jiddou and Radio Coton FM host Moustapha Kone when they saw gunmen ahead on the road, according to the International Press Institute, or IPI.
When they tried to turn around, the unidentified gunmen fired on the car, killing Djibrilla, said Reporters Without Borders, or RSF. The gunmen then abducted Jiddou and Kone.
It is unclear whether the journalists were targeted over their work.
The gunmen asked their families to pay nearly $5,000 in ransom for each journalist, according to RSF.
“The latest events in Mali are extremely alarming,” Sadibou Marong, director of RSF’s sub-Saharan Africa bureau, said in a statement. “We call on the Malian authorities to do everything possible to find them and to arrest those responsible for Abdoul Aziz Djibrilla’s murder.”
Harouna Attino, a journalist with community radio Alafia, was also in the car and was wounded in the assault but is now safe, press freedom groups said without providing further details.
“The deteriorating press freedom situation in Mali is deeply alarming, and we call on the authorities to guarantee the safety of journalists and uphold media freedom, which remains critical even in times of insurgency,” Nompilo Simanje, who works on Africa at the IPI, said in a statement.
Mali’s Washington Embassy did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.
Bandiougou Dante, president of the Mali Press House, called on authorities to act “so that the authors, co-authors, accomplices and instigators answer for their actions and are brought to justice,” according to RSF.
French journalist Olivier Dubois was released in March 2023 after spending nearly two years held captive by an armed group affiliated with al-Qaida in the Sahel. The freelance reporter was abducted in April 2021 in northeastern Mali after going there to interview the leader of an armed group.
Despite Dubois’ release, local and foreign journalists say press freedoms continue to deteriorate in the region, as VOA reported in April.
Political instability — including two military coups between 2020 and 2021 — and terrorism only make it harder for journalists to do their jobs safely, according to reports.
“Local journalists are now the last ramparts against the total abandonment of the right to information in this northern part of the Sahel, which is prey to the terror of various armed groups and the responses from regular armies,” Marong said.
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Malawi President Suspends Foreign Trips by Officials Over Currency Devaluation
Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera has suspended his foreign trips and those of government officials as part of austerity measures to cushion the impact of the recent 44% devaluation of local currency on the country’s economy.
In his televised address to the nation Wednesday night, Chakwera ordered a cut by half on fuel allowances allocated to top government officials, including cabinet ministers.
The Reserve Bank of Malawi this month announced the devaluation of local currency to align it with the U.S. dollar on the black market. The move resulted in instant price increases for almost all commodities, including fuel and electricity, which increased by over 40%.
“I know that this decision has caused a lot of pain,” Chakwera said, “and I know that all of us now have to make big adjustments in spending so that we can prioritize those areas that are most productive.”
Chakwera said that he would be the first to make those adjustments, and that all of his international trips through the end of the fiscal year were canceled.
Chakwera also said he was freezing all public-funded international trips for public officers at all levels, including those in parastatals, or state-owned enterprises, until the end of the financial year in March.
“In fact, all Cabinet members currently abroad on public-funded trips must return to Malawi with immediate effect,” he said.
Analyst Victor Chipofya told local radio that Chakwera could have announced measures that would help generate more foreign exchange for the country rather than those that failed in the past.
“The country needs to build industries that would be able to export commodities to be able to have foreign currency,” he said. “Nothing like that came out from the president.”
Another political analyst, George Phiri, said Chakwera’s address failed to outline how the government will address challenges facing people in rural areas, where over 80% of Malawians live.
“The impact of devaluation has affected everyone across the board, whether he is the president or he is an ordinary Malawian in the rural and is not considered for the beneficiary of the [farm input] subsidy,” Phiri said. “What happened with those?”
However, the Malawi Human Rights Defenders Coalition said in a statement that if well implemented, the measures that Chakwera introduced would likely address the impact of devaluation on the country’s economy.
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Malawi Rights Activists March Against Conflict in Gaza
In Malawi, rights activists and leaders from various religious groups organized a march Wednesday to call for an immediate cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Some of the hundreds of people who participated in the street march carried placards and banners condemning the conflict in Gaza and appealed for peace to return to the enclave.
This is the first time religious leaders in Malawi have marched against a conflict so far — nearly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) — from home.
Shaibu Abdurrahman Ajasi, chairperson of the Forum for Democracy and Rights Defenders, which organized the march, said Malawi had a duty to join the people in countries around the world who are speaking out against the conflict.
“Enough is enough, and we, too, should stand up and speak against what is happening in Gaza,” Ajasi said.
Their concern, he said, is the killing of innocent people.
The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza has reported that 11,000 people — about 40% of them children — have been killed since Israel launched a major air and ground offensive in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people.
About 240 people were kidnapped and are currently being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that its troops raided Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, a complex of buildings where thousands of people have sheltered.
Israel has accused Hamas, which controls Gaza, of using the hospital and its patients as human shields for command centers and safe houses. Hamas and hospital officials deny the accusations.
Bishop Joshua Jere, president of the Pastors Peacemakers Fraternal group of Christian religious leaders in Malawi, said, “We see a lot of children are suffering, a lot of women are suffering. I would be happy if soldiers could shoot soldiers rather than kill children or women or innocent people. So, it’s my prayer. I believe in peace.”
Sheikh Muslim Abbas Vinjenje, secretary-general for the Ulama Council of Malawi, a group of Muslim scholars, said that what is happening in Gaza is tantamount to war crimes.
“Our main expectation is a cease-fire in Gaza and that Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the prime minister of Israel, should be taken to International Criminal Court to be investigated for war crimes and genocide, which he and his army commanders have conducted to the people of Gaza,” Vinjenje said.
The top U.N. human rights official said last week the atrocities that Hamas fighters committed in Israel October 7 also amounted to war crimes.
Ajasi said the Forum for Democracy and Rights Defenders will organize another march in the capital, Lilongwe, in two weeks’ time should the conflict continue.
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Vote Counting Underway in Liberian Presidential Runoff
Vote counting from Liberia’s presidential runoff is underway, with opposition leader Joseph Boakai holding a slight lead over incumbent George Weah.
Early results from about one-fifth of Liberia’s polling stations showed Boakai winning just under 51% of the vote, with Weah close behind at slightly over 49%.
The two candidates entered a runoff after both failed to secure more than half of the vote in the first round of voting.
Over 2.4 million people cast their ballots last month in the first round of voting, which gave 57-year-old Weah a slight lead over his political rival Boakai, 78.
Weah, a football legend, has appealed to younger voters but has had to defend his record from his time as president. He defeated the former vice president, Boakai, in the 2017 election, winning more than 61% of the vote.
The electoral commission has to publish the results of the election within the next 15 days.
National and foreign observers have said that the election has been held fairly and peacefully, citing only a few minor incidents, despite fears over the safety and openness of the election.
The Economic Community of West African States sent observers who said that there has been “generally peaceful conduct of the elections so far,” although they voiced a “deep concern over provocative statements and alleged planned conferences by political actors to prematurely declare victory.”
They did not specify which candidate was planning to do this.
There have been fears of post-election violence, following clashes that left several people dead while the candidates were on the campaign trail.
This is the first election to have been held since the United Nations ended its peacekeeping mission in Liberia in 2018.
Two civil wars in Liberia, running from 1989 to 2003, left more than 250,000 people dead.
Some information in this report was taken from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Nigerian Workers Strike Over Attack on Union Leader, Unpopular Economic Reforms
Nigeria’s labor unions have begun an indefinite strike to protest the beating of Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) president Joe Ajaero on November 1. The labor leader was to lead workers in protest over unpaid salaries in Imo state when he was picked up by security agents, who allegedly beat him.
For a second day Wednesday, the nationwide strike called by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) held firm.
Compliance is stricter in the capital, Abuja, the operational nerve center of the workers’ unions.
Police have denied beating the NLC president, saying agents only took Ajaero into protective custody to save him from an angry mob.
Benson Upah, spokesperson of the Nigerian Labour Congress, said the NLC president is still recovering from the incident.
“He was in a bad shape, he lost his bearing, his right eye was popped and recognition was poor,” Upah said. “Up till this moment, there has been no condemnation for what happened. No one has been arrested let alone prosecuted for this heinous act. It is about the right of every citizen to freedom and justice. The issues that led to the movement of NLC and TUC people to Imo, those issues have not been addressed.”
But Ajaero’s beating is not the only reason for the strike. The unions also blame authorities for failing to honor agreements made to cushion the cost-of-living crisis triggered by the government’s economic reforms, introduced in May.
Earlier this year, President Bola Tinubu scrapped expensive fuel subsidies and floated the Nigerian currency in a bid to unify a multiple exchange rate system. However, the decision has hurt the economy and millions of citizens.
In August, workers staged nationwide street protests against the reforms and in September embarked on a two-day warning strike.
Authorities promised to respond.
Last Friday, the National Industrial Court of Nigeria ordered the workers’ unions to not go on another strike.
Eze Onyekpere, executive director of the Center for Social Justice, a pro-union NGO, said, “The regime came on board and removed fuel subsidy and floated the naira, which has led to a situation where the minimum wage virtually less than $30. Things the government was supposed to do to reduce the hardship in the land, they didn’t do, so for people like me, this strike is long overdue.”
On Monday, the presidency criticized the strike, calling it unwarranted, and said authorities have launched a probe into the attack of the union leader.
Onyekpere said the government must not make empty promises or there will be consequences.
“We’re going to degenerate to a state where any riffraff simply because he’s in power will simply be beating up everybody,” he said. “The day Nigeria descends to that level and workers don’t speak out or workers don’t show their strength, then Nigeria is gone to the dogs.”
The unions say authorities must prosecute those who beat Ajaero, offer an apology, and take steps to improve the welfare of workers and citizens. Without those measures, they say, the strike will continue.
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