Congregants Welcome the Reopening of Churches in Juba
Hundreds of Catholic faithful in the South Sudan capital Juba returned to Mass on Sunday, nearly five months after the government suspended religious, social and political gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “It is like Christmas today. Or it is like the resurrection of Christ because … from childhood, we used to come to […]
Africa’s Heritage Sites Destroyed due to a Changing Climate
From rock art in southern Africa to pyramids along the River Nile, humans have been leaving their mark across the continent for millennia. But extreme weather events, the rise in sea levels and other challenges associated with the changing climate are threatening to destroy invaluable cultural landmarks, a recent study warns. Writing in the Azania […]
Chinese Firm to Make Coronavirus Test Kits in Ethiopia
BGI Group’s new facility is the first coronavirus test production facility in Ethiopia that opened earlier this month. It is designed to be able to make 6-8 million tests in a year and can expand the annual capacity to up to 10 million in accordance with local demand. BGI, which makes genome sequencing and medical […]
Zambia becomes First African Country to Ask Bondholders for Pandemic Relief
The southern African nation asked for meetings on October 20 with the holders of three Eurobonds totalling $3bn to seek consent for a standstill until April 2021, to create “breathing space” as it plans a debt restructuring. Zambia’s $1bn notes due 2024 fell more than 5% in London to 52.12c on the dollar, after the […]
Cash Transfers Give African Refugees Independence
Humanitarian organisations – such as the World Food Programme (WFP) – are increasingly using cash transfers as a way of assisting vulnerable people. They are widely praised for enhancing autonomy, reducing costs, and boosting local markets. And this has encouraged their use. For instance, in 2019, the WFP distributed US$2.1 billion transfers to 27.9 million […]
Millions of Africans Forced from their Homes Face Dual Hardship of COVID-19
Around 14.6 million new internal displacements were recorded across 127 countries and territories between January and June 2020, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). Conflict and violence triggered 4.8 million, primarily in Africa and the Middle East, a million more than in the first half of 2019. The greatest […]
Becoming Somalia’s First World Champion
Ramla Ali, a boxer who became British champion without her family’s knowledge after fleeing civil war in Somalia, has signed a professional deal with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing. Ali is aiming to become the first Somali boxer to go to an Olympics and is due to make her professional debut in October. The 31-year-old started […]
Getting Sudan Off the Terror List
With weeks to go before the United States presidential elections, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is racing to make a breakthrough with Sudan that he hopes could also benefit Israel. Sudan’s new civilian-led government is urgently seeking to be removed from the US blacklist of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and is seen by Washington […]
‘At Last, an African Book of Unarguable Universality’
Namwali Serpell has won the UK’s top prize for science fiction, the Arthur C Clarke award, for her first novel The Old Drift, which judges described as “stealth sci-fi”. The Zambian author’s debut tells the stories of three families over three generations, moving from a colonial settlement by Victoria Falls at the turn of the […]
Joint Continental Effort Helps Africa Weather the COVID-19 Storm
The head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control (CDC) has praised African states for managing to curb the spread of coronavirus. Africa has seen about 1.4 million cases, and 34,000 deaths since March. These figures are far lower than those in Europe, Asia or the Americas, with reported cases continuing to decline. Early interventions […]
