Postponement of AFCON Gives Cameroon Time to Prepare a Memorable Competition
Cameroon’s football (soccer) authorities say they are confident they can complete the infrastructure for hosting the postponed Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), the continent’s biggest football championship, in 2022. The contest was originally scheduled for next January but the Confederation of African Football on Tuesday postponed the event for a year because of the coronavirus. […]
Celebrating the Women who Lived and Died for DRC’s Independence
Days before the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared independence, a woman walked onto the tarmac of the Congolese airport with quick, assured steps. Her name was Andree Blouin, a known anti-colonial activist who was being deported by the Belgian government. All eyes were on her as she made her way to the plane bound […]
War and Displacement Take a Toll on South Sudanese Refugees
A wider trend of a mental health crisis across vast displacement sites, where people from South Sudan who fled the trauma and violence of civil war now live in a drawn-out exile of frustration and diminishing support. As poverty and protracted violence have prevented their return, data from the UN’s refugee agency indicates that the […]
Finding Ways to Curb the Flow of Zombie Appliances to Africa
In many African countries, demand for cooling devices has doubled or tripled over the past decade, particularly as climate change brings ever hotter days, their governments say. But once the cast-off appliances are carted home, there is no guarantee they will come back to life – and if they do, the cost to run them […]
Working from Home Gives Andela a Market Boost
Developer outsourcing company Andela is making yet another major shift in its operational model. After laying off 135 people in May as well as shutting down offices globally while adopting fully remote operations, Andela will now allow applications from interested developers across all of Africa, rather than just in the six countries—Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, […]
Honouring Africans Who Played a Big Role in the Liberation of France
France’s armed forces ministry has provided local authorities with a guide to 100 Africans who fought for France in World War Two, so that streets and squares may be named after them. France’s reappraisal of its colonial past is fuelled by the global anti-racism protests and Black Lives Matter. More than 400,000 Africans in the […]
Botswana’s Elephants are Dropping Like Flies
More than 360 elephants have died in mysterious circumstances in Botswana in the past three months, according to local conservationists. Some carcasses were found clustered around waterholes, while others appeared to have died “falling flat on their faces,” according to Niall McCann, director of conservation at United Kingdom charity National Park Rescue. Live elephants seen […]
Rwanda Uses Pooled Testing to Scale Up its Testing Capability
Pooled testing is when samples of several people are combined in a single tube and tested using molecular biology detection methods all at once: if the results from the pool test are negative, all patients in the pooled sample are declared not to have COVID-19; if the results of the pool are positive, each patient […]
