Category: Africa

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | ROME (IDN) – Shivering immigrants pulled from icy Mediterranean waters huddled under aid workers’ blankets hardly move the hearts of wealthy nationals in developed countries these days.

But the story of 26 young African women whose bodies were recovered near a smuggler’s boatload of migrants caused some heads to turn and tears to fall.

Their bodies were plucked from the sea on November 5 in one of four separate rescue operations that brought 400 people to the Italian port town of Salerno.

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Two well-known charities are responding to serious claims of misappropriation of money and sexual harassment during their work in Africa.

In one investigation by the Associated Press, the Red Cross was cited for faulty oversight of workers who may have stolen millions of dollars meant to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The deadly Ebola virus that spread throughout West Africa from 2014 to 2016 killed more than 11,000 people and drew numerous aid workers and medical professionals to the continent. Some of those responders, according to a Red Cross internal investigation covered by AP, fraudulently used funds earmarked for aid. Total losses due to fraud topped $6 million, AP claimed.

By Jeffrey Moyo

BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe (IDN) – Child trafficking is alive and thriving on Zimbabwe’s southern border. Despite Zimbabwe winning a few “Brownie points” with the U.S. government for rescuing more than 100 female Zimbabwean trafficking victims from Kuwait recently, police at Beitbridge – a border town between Zimbabwe and South Africa – say they arrest between16 and 20 people every day implicated in illegally “transporting” unaccompanied children through Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (or ZRP) Officer Commanding Beitbridge District, Chief Superintendent, Francis Phiri, said the children recovered from these arrests are handed over to the government’s social welfare department to have them returned to their homes in Zimbabwe.

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – With the deaths of four American servicemen in Niger, a window has opened onto U.S. operations in West Africa – an area barely known even to U.S. legislators who have sent U.S. soldiers there in harm’s way.

The latest soldier to die on a tour in the French-speaking region is Texas-born Staff Sergeant, Logan J. Melgar, a Latino. His death in Mali is attributed to strangulation and two elite members of the U.S. Navy Seal Team Six are being investigated for his murder.

Melgar’s Special Forces teammates were there at the request of Paul Folmsbee, U.S. ambassador to Mali for a previously undisclosed and highly unusual clandestine mission to support French and Malian counterterrorism forces battling Al Qaeda’s branch in North and West Africa, as well as smaller cells aligned with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, according to the New York Times.

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – A government-led plan to restore the home of the parents of Afro music legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and turn it into a museum has cheered and excited Fela’s many fans and followers.

The colonial era one-story building was built by the late Israel Ransome-Kuti, Fela’s father, and his wife, Funmilayo, over a century ago.

Mr. and Mrs. Ransome-Kuti made their names as educationists and unionists long before one of their sons, Fela, became known across the world as an iconoclastic musician and social crusader.

By Klara Smits

BRUSSELS (IDN) – More than 30 organizations gathered in Brussels at the conference on ‘Eritrea and the Ongoing Refugee Crisis’ have expressed “deep concern” about the remarks by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, that now there is “a real chance of closing the Central Mediterranean route” with a view to halting the flow of refugees from the Horn of Africa. Tusk was commenting the conclusions of the European Council meeting.

“Leaders agreed to offer Prime Minister Gentiloni stronger support for Italy’s work with the Libyan authorities. We have a real chance of closing the Central Mediterranean route,” Tusk said at the press briefing of European Council meeting of October 19.

By A.D. McKenzie

PARIS (IDN) – Africa is the world’s most entrepreneurial region, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but “manufacturing is receding”.

To discuss solutions as well as highlight some of the challenges facing the continent, the organisation’s 17th International Economic Forum on Africa brought together government leaders, businesspeople, civil society and others in Paris on October 4, with a focus on entrepreneurship and industrialisation.

“Of the 25 countries with the strongest economic growth between 2004 and 2014, 10 were African,” says the Paris-based OECD. Yet, “not enough jobs have been created for the rapidly expanding youth population” and “growth has not been inclusive enough,” the organisation adds.

By Fabíola Ortiz

GOMA (IDN) – Since February this year, 16-year old Melvin* lives in a shelter for former child soldiers in the suburbs of Goma, the capital city of North Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He belongs to a small community.

His story resembles that of many Congolese boys living in the faraway communities in eastern DRC. He was abducted from his home village to forcedly join the Nyatura rebels – a Mayi-Mayi ethnic community-led armed group founded in 2010 mainly by the Congolese Hutus. Among the human rights violations they have been accused of is the recruitment of child soldiers – one of the most heinous crimes they have committed.

It is two years now that the introverted Melvin, who has lost track of his family, has not been able to return to his community. He is likely to be one among thousands of orphans from the conflict.

By Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – Zannah Mustapha, a champion for the rights of displaced children growing up amid violence in north-eastern Nigeria to get a quality education, was honoured with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR‘s Nansen Refugee Award on October 2 for his dedication and commitment to ensuring children and orphans affected by the conflict in Borno State can attend school. A lawyer turned property developer in Borno state, Mustapha also took part in mediating between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government.

Mustapha took home prize money of $150,000, funded in partnership with the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Swiss Government, the Norwegian Government and the IKEA Foundation.

By Jeffrey Moyo

MWENEZI; Zimbabwe (IDN) – Raviro Chawuruka scoops out sand from a well on a stream bank closer to her rural home in Rutenga, 443 km west of Harare, in Mwenezi district in Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province.

At the age of 72, Chawuruka says she has known no rest while scavenging for water, this as she daily battles it out with the sand-filled water well in the vicinity of her home. She stands out among millions of Africans to whom piped water still remains a luxury, decades after several African nations gained independence from their former colonisers: Zimbabwe over 37 years ago.

According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, 65 percent of Zimbabwe’s 14 million people such as Chawuruka are domiciled in rural areas, where they have become the number one victims of lack of piped water.