Category archives for: African News

African Refugees Look North to Canada as U.S. Deportations Rise

Refugees including some from Africa have been trekking through subzero weather at the northern U.S. border with Canada in a bid to escape a new wave of deportations from the U.S. Last week, a family of eight reportedly from the Sudan managed to cross the border just as a U.S. immigration official attempted to block […]

Tanzania fights illicit drugs, but at what expense?

by General Ulimwengu Tanzania continues to fight against illicit drugs. A recently-released list of “drug pushers,” including the names of politicians and artistes, has raised questions about the role of the government in such a crackdown. There should be nothing new in any effort made by government officials to curb the use of and the trading […]

Nigeria: Journalists’ Arrest Tests Powerful Army

by Tami Hultman Washington, DC — The January 19 raid on the offices of an online investigative news organization in Nigeria’s capital Abuja is part of a continuing government attempt to quash bad publicity. Dapo Olorunyomi, the widely respected publisher of Premium Times, was arrested, along with judicial reporter Evelyn Okakwu, after the site published […]

Zimbabwe: Revealed – Mugabe ‘Paying Half a Million Dollars in Yearly Rentals for a Villa in Dubai’

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s lavish spending has been exposed in his wife’s court battle with a Lebanese tycoon over a botched $1.35m diamond ring deal. New court documents filed by businessman Jamal Ahmed opposing First Lady Grace Mugabe’s move to seek to overturn a provisional order against her, showed that the Mugabe family was paying […]

Gambia: Barrow Names Woman Vice-President

President Adama Barrow has appointed as deputy leader a woman who had vowed to prosecute exiled leader Yahya Jammeh. Barrow, still in Senegal, said the appointment was designed to address gender imbalance. Gambian President Adama Barrow’s newly appointed vice president, Fatoumata Tambajang, is a former United Nations Development Program staffer who was instrumental in uniting […]

Africa: Tazara Railway Shows Benefit of Chinese Aid

The 1,860.5 kilometer-long Tazara railway spanning from Tanzania’s commercial center Dar es Salaam to Zambia’s Central Province represents one of China’s largest foreign aid projects. A tripartite agreement was signed in September 1967 to build the railroad and construction began in 1970. The railway opened in 1975 and in July 1976 was officially transferred to […]

Zimbabwe: Why Mugabe Stays But Jammeh Goes

Harare — “We need an Ecowas in southern Africa!” That was the tweeted wail from prominent Zimbabwe lawyer Fadzayi Mahere this week as she and many Zim- babweans watched events up in the Gambia with envy. Much as President Robert Mugabe is widely thought to have done in March 2008, Gambia’s ex-president Yahya Jammeh lost […]

Akwamuhene Storms Manhyia With 400-Year-Old Cloth

By Daniel Bampo The paramount chief of the Akwamu Traditional Area in the Eastern Region, Odeneho Kwafo Akoto III, made history last Thursday when he donned a 400-year-old regalia to the burial rites of the late Asantehe- maa, Nana Afia Serwaa Kobi Ampem II. The paramount chief attended the ceremony at the Manhyia Palace with his […]

Optimism in DR Congo as deal reached to end political crisis

The new year in one of Africa’s most troubled countries began in a burst of optimism Sunday after rival groups agreed a deal for hauling DR Congo out of a perilous political crisis. Under a landmark accord, the country’s contested president, Joseph Kabila — who under the constitution should have left office on December 20 […]

Heat, Hunger and War Force Africans Onto a ‘Road on Fire’

AGADEZ, Niger — The world dismisses them as economic migrants. The law treats them as criminals who show up at a nation’s borders uninvited. Prayers alone protect them on the journey across the merciless Sahara. But peel back the layers of their stories and you find a complex bundle of trouble and want that prompts the […]

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