African gold producers are pushing for greater resource sovereignty as governments seek to retain more of the economic value generated by their mineral wealth, Ghana Gold Board (GoldBod) representative has said.

Speaking to RT, Prince Kwame Minkah, the agency’s media relations officer, stated that African countries are increasingly moving away from a model in which minerals are extracted domestically and much of the processing, certification, trading, and financing takes place abroad. He noted that the shift is part of a broader African drive toward resource sovereignty and local value addition.

“If we produce the mineral, why should we capture only the value extraction while other countries continue to capture the value processing and, for that matter, trading?” Minkah said.

Ghana is among several major African gold producers tightening control over its gold sector. From September 1, gold doré purchased by self-financing aggregators under arrangements with approved offtakers must be refined in Ghana before it can be exported.

According to the Ghana Chamber of Mines, the country is now the world’s sixth-largest gold producer, behind China, Russia, Australia, Canada, and Peru, after producing about 185 tons in 2025, marking a 23.41% increase from its 2024 production of 4.82 million ounces. It is the only African state in the global top ten and remains the continent’s largest producer.

South African Minister of Employment and Labor Nomakhosazana Meth has revealed that more than 47,000 jobs were saved over the past year through interventions by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA).

The Minister revealed this in a written reply to Parliament after Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Tebogo Mokwele asked what concrete measures the department had taken to address South Africa’s persistent unemployment. Mokwele also asked what measures had been put in place to hold corporations accountable for exploiting workers and denying them fair wages and benefits, as well as what strategies were being implemented to boost job creation in key sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture.

”The Department has implemented a number of measures to help curb the unemployment challenge. The Department has provided in the last financial year, counselling to more than 357,000 work seekers, more than 116,000 work seekers were placed in employment opportunities,” Meth said.

On measures to ensure that companies comply with labour laws and protect workers’ rights, Meth said the department’s Inspection Services had conducted more than 309,000 inspections.

”The NPMN has created more than 96,418 employment opportunities during the last financial year. The Department has also introduced the National Labour Migration Policy and amendments to the Employment Services Act, that will create further employment opportunities for local South Africans”.

First published by IOL

The deep physical and structural wounds inflicted on the African continent by European colonialism will take generations to heal – if they ever heal at all. In today’s fast-moving geopolitical landscape, where crises like illegal migration, economic turbulence, and regional conflict dominate African headline news, the question of historical justice is often forced onto the back burner. Yet, through continental efforts, Africa refuses to let the issue recede into memory.

The landmark Algiers Declaration, adopted last December under the auspices of the African Union, marked a shift from moral grievance to a legal strategy, demanding the codification of colonial atrocities as crimes against humanity and establishing that justice requires binding legal reparations, not voluntary Western aid usually publicized as gifts.

The march through the ancestral burial grounds of the paramount chiefs stands as an active protest against modern colonial evasion – and a direct challenge to a European power attempting to settle a multi-century blood debt on its own convenient, unilateral terms.

To understand the full weight of this grievance, one must return to 1904, when Imperial German colonial forces unleashed a systematic campaign of destruction following an indigenous uprising against relentless land dispossession and colonial tyranny. In October 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha issued his notorious ‘Vernichtungsbefehl’ (extermination order), explicitly declaring: “Within the German borders, every Herero, with or without a gun... will be shot.”

Far from facing criminal prosecution, von Trotha was long celebrated as a hero at home – a street in Munich bore his name until public pressure finally forced the city council to rename it ‘Hererostrasse’ in 2006.

By the time the campaign ended in 1908, it had claimed an estimated 70,000 lives, systematically wiping out 80% of the Herero population and 50% of the Nama population in what historians and legal scholars recognize as the 20th century’s first genocide.

Yet, when confronting the modern reckoning for these atrocities, Imperial Germany’s successor state has constructed a masterclass in diplomatic and legal evasion. In May 2021, after six years of closed-door bilateral negotiations, Berlin and Windhoek initialed a joint declaration in which Germany acknowledged the atrocities as “genocide from today’s perspective” – a carefully calculated semantic formula designed specifically to avoid admitting legal liability under international law. Rather than offering legally binding reparations, Berlin committed €1.1 billion over 30 years earmarked for state-level development projects, framing the financial support strictly as a voluntary gesture of reconciliation.

The contrast with Germany’s handling of European historical crimes could not be more glaring. In the aftermath of World War II, Germany recognized direct legal liability for the Holocaust, paying tens of billions of euros in formal reparations directly to survivors and representative organizations – commitments that continue to this day. When dealing with African victims, however, Berlin invoked intertemporal legal loopholes, arguing that international law against genocide did not exist in 1904. By bypassing the Herero and Nama leaders to cut a state-to-state deal, Germany sought to buy immunity from future legal claims. This double standard is precisely why affected communities rejected the 2021 agreement.

The resulting political impasse has paralyzed parliamentary ratification in Windhoek, while opposition lawmakers in Berlin increasingly view the agreement as a diplomatic liability. By challenging a deal struck over their heads, the Herero and Nama are establishing a critical precedent: Sovereign states cannot settle the blood debt of indigenous genocide without the direct inclusion and consent of the victim communities themselves.

This domestic legal battle has become the focal point of a broader international legal push. In August 2026, Amnesty International officially filed court papers in the Namibian High Court seeking to join the Herero and Nama litigation as ‘amicus curiae’. Amnesty’s legal intervention targets a fundamental principle: State-to-state development packages cannot override the recognized rights of indigenous communities under international law to seek direct, full reparations for genocide. Former European powers have long shielded themselves behind the principle of non-retroactivity, claiming that atrocities committed prior to the 1948 Genocide Convention fall outside modern judicial frameworks. However, joint efforts between the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are systematically dismantling this defense.

As the African Union moves to codify colonial atrocities into international law, the ongoing High Court challenge in Windhoek serves as a test case for former colonial powers across the West. Until Berlin meets its obligations with the same legal and financial rigor applied to European historical crimes, the solemn gatherings in Okahandja will stand as an active front line in the global struggle against impunity.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has ordered an urgent operation to rescue people abducted by gunmen last week in the north-central Niger State region.

Tinubu said on X on Tuesday that the armed forces, police, Department of State Services, and other security and intelligence agencies have been instructed to coordinate efforts to locate and free the captives. He also ordered security chiefs to provide regular updates until all those abducted have been accounted for.

“We will not rest until your sons, daughters, mothers and fathers are brought back safely to you,” the president said, adding that those responsible for the attack “will not go scot-free.”

The order comes after an armed group released a video apparently showing hundreds of people being held captive in a forest.

An official in the Borgu district, where the attack took place, told Reuters that 30 people had been killed and were buried on Sunday. Niger State Governor Umaru Bago condemned the attack and ordered the authorities to work with security agencies to secure the release of those abducted, the Punch outlet reported.

Boko Haram and its splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), have previously targeted schools in the northeast. The region has been at the center of a longstanding Islamist insurgency, with mass abductions, including the 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 Chibok schoolgirls.

Two Russian soldiers who spent more than two years in terrorist captivity in Mali have described to RT the extreme heat, constant shackling, poor food, and barely drinkable water they endured at the hands of Islamist militants.

Aleksandr Efremov and Vasily Nagalev spoke exclusively to RT’s Daria Vaganova after being brought to Libya on their way home to Russia.

The servicemen were captured in 2024 during the battle of Tinzaouaten near the Algerian border, when militants from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and Al-Qaeda-linked JNIM ambushed a Malian military convoy supported by Russia’s Wagner Group. The Malian and Wagner forces were heavily outnumbered in the fighting.

Efremov and Nagalev spent a total of 755 days in captivity, isolated from civilization and keeping track of time by counting sunrises and sunsets. They said the reality of captivity was nothing like what is typically portrayed in films.

“In movies, you can usually escape, but here there’s nowhere to run because there’s nothing but Sahara everywhere,” Aleksandr said, describing their ordeal as essentially “Sahara and chains.”

“There was hope for about the first year, but by the second year, it didn’t matter anymore whether we’d be released or not,” Aleksandr recalled. “There were moments so tense that we practically begged to be shot.”

Their release was secured through negotiations involving the Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps and the Malian General Staff, mediated by forces of the Libyan National Army led by General Saddam Haftar.

A Russian medical specialist treating the men after their release said the food they had received was “extremely detrimental to their bodies,” while they had been “practically drinking from a puddle.”

“They have problems with their intestines, liver, and other organs,” he said, adding that doctors were “gradually restoring them” to health. Both men are currently in “stable and satisfactory” condition and could return to Russia within “a week or two” once their condition has fully stabilized.

The Sahel has been plagued by militant violence for more than a decade, with groups linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), Al-Qaeda, and Boko Haram carrying out attacks across Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and neighboring countries. Moscow has repeatedly accused foreign powers, including Ukraine, of seeking to destabilize the region and undermine local nations’ ties with Russia by assisting extremist groups.

The freed soldiers said their captors appeared to be receiving substantial outside support.

“They certainly receive money because they have everything,” Vasily said.

“They have money, equipment, weapons. They have it all. And in large quantities,” Aleksandr added.

The Wagner Group, with which the two men previously served, has since ended its operations in Mali, with Russia’s Africa Corps taking over its role in supporting Sahel governments in their fight against militants and extremists.

In mid-July, Malian and Russian forces recaptured the strategic northern town of Anefis from FLA and JNIM after more than a week of intense fighting. In mid-August, Russian troops also helped the Malian military repel a large-scale attack on an army base in the central city of San.

Eighteen-year-old Amber-Rose Berry has made history after becoming the youngest South African woman to swim the English Channel.

Berry completed the gruelling 33km open-water crossing from England to France in an unofficial time of 10 hours and 27 minutes on Sunday, August 23. Her time is still subject to ratification, but if confirmed, it would place her well ahead of the average 12 to 14 hours taken to complete the crossing.

She began her swim from Shakespeare Beach in Dover at 5.27am and reached the rocks at Pointe du Riden, near Cap Gris-Nez in France, at 3.54pm.

The achievement came despite a series of challenges during the crossing, including painful jellyfish stings, strong currents, cold water and the wake of a passing ship.

“That was bloody tough,” Berry said shortly after completing the swim. “But I was motivated by the opportunity I was given to complete this swim. And by the fact that, by finishing, so many opportunities would be afforded to student-athletes like myself.”

Berry’s mother, Karen, who supported her aboard the escort vessel Sea Leopard, said her daughter faced one of her toughest moments just beyond the halfway point. “She was tired and cold, and there was still so far to go,” Karen said.

Huge congratulations to Amber-Rose Berry on completing her solo swim at just 18 years old!
Well done to all on Sea Leopard Charterhttps://t.co/3YrZI4wGUu pic.twitter.com/zPPRRfcFcb

— Channel Swimming Association (@CSAswimmers) August 23, 2026

However, Berry’s training and determination helped her push through. She was also forced to battle the huge wake created by a ship, which her mother said appeared to give her renewed energy. “Funnily enough, that just seemed to energise her,” Karen said.

Berry trained for months under the guidance of open-water swimming coach Clinton le Seuer. During the crossing, she fed regularly, taking liquid nutrition every hour for the first two hours before moving to feeds every 30 minutes.

Her latest achievement carries additional significance as it comes exactly 100 years after Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. It also coincides with South Africa’s Women’s Month, which commemorates the historic 1956 Women’s March against the Pass Laws. Berry follows in the footsteps of another record-breaking South African swimmer, Otto Thaning, who became the oldest person to complete the English Channel crossing when he swam it at the age of 73 in 2014. His record remains intact.

First published by IOL

Two UN peacekeepers have been killed and seven people injured after unidentified gunmen ambushed a patrol in South Sudan’s eastern Jonglei State, the UN mission in the country (UNMISS) said on Monday.

The patrol was attacked while traveling to Pajut, a remote area in Jonglei, according to the mission. UNMISS deployed a quick reaction force to secure the area and assist with the emergency response. Three other peacekeepers were among those injured, along with two members of the South Sudan National Police Service and two civilian staff. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. 

UNMISS chief Anita Kiki Gbeho condemned the attack, describing violence targeting personnel working to support peace in the country as “unacceptable.”

Gbeho called on the authorities to launch a “thorough and prompt investigation” and ensure those responsible are brought to justice. UNMISS also warned that attacks targeting UN peacekeepers may constitute war crimes under international law.

The incident comes amid mounting security risks for humanitarian personnel in South Sudan. At least 36 aid workers have been killed in the country since the beginning of the year, according to the UN, already exceeding the 31 deaths recorded throughout 2025.

More than 450 incidents of violence against humanitarian workers and assets were reported between January and July, more than double the number recorded during the same period in 2025, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan Ramanathan Balakrishnan said last week.

Four people have been arrested in Kenya over the suspected poisoning of 18 elephants in the Amboseli ecosystem, the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife said on Saturday. 

A representative of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said on Monday that all four suspects were later released on bail.

Preliminary laboratory tests suggest that the animals may have died after ingesting tomatoes contaminated with cyanide from farms bordering wildlife habitats. Officials said further scientific testing was needed to confirm the cause of death.

The first 15 elephant deaths were recorded June 24 to July 24 in Amboseli National Park, Kimana Sanctuary, and the Kuku Ranch area, prompting the KWS and other agencies to launch an investigation. 

Ten of the elephants developed similar symptoms before dying, including partial paralysis which left them unable to stand. According to KWS, “the condition primarily affected adult females and their calves, with only one adult male” among the reported cases.

A search in Tikondo in Kimana, within Loitoktok Sub-County, also uncovered chemicals and other substances believed to have been sourced from a neighboring country. The potentially toxic and unlabeled materials have been sent for analysis.

The government stressed that the arrests and seized materials do not establish criminal responsibility. The authorities said the investigation is ongoing and pledged to prosecute anyone found to have unlawfully killed, poisoned, or harmed wildlife.

Earlier in August, the Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA) called for urgent testing of agricultural produce from areas around Amboseli after preliminary findings linked elephant deaths to cyanide. The group warned of potential risks to people after tomatoes were reportedly found in the animals’ stomachs and urged the authorities to determine whether contaminated produce could have entered local food supply chains.

Chad has accused parties in Sudan’s civil war of carrying out airstrikes deep inside its territory, warning that the conflict risks spilling across the border, the Chadian Armed Forces said on Saturday. 

According to the statement, aircraft and drones believed to belong to the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or forces supporting them pursued and bombed a convoy of vehicles on Thursday. The strikes began on Sudanese soil before continuing more than 100 kilometers inside Chad, reaching the Mourdi department in the eastern Ennedi-Est province.

The military said that the extent of the incursion was established following aerial and ground checks conducted on Friday. No Chadian casualties have been reported, but the army condemned what it described as a new violation of the country’s territorial integrity.

Chad warned Sudan’s warring parties against attempting to extend the conflict onto its territory, saying that its defense and security forces remain on the highest level of alert and are prepared to respond to any threat to the country’s security. There has been no response from Sudanese authorities to the Chadian military’s allegations.

In March, a drone strike from Sudan killed at least 17 people in the same town, including mourners attending a funeral. President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno condemned the attack and ordered the military to retaliate against any future strikes originating from Sudan, whether carried out by the Sudanese army or the RSF.

A month earlier, Chad shut its eastern border with Sudan after five soldiers and three civilians were killed in clashes allegedly involving the SAF and RSF. At least 12 others were wounded in the incident, which also occurred in Tine, officials said.

Police in South Africa’s Eastern Cape have arrested two men in connection with the murder of former world boxing champion Zolani Tete, who was fatally shot in Mdantsane on Friday.

The two persons of interest, aged 30 and 22, were arrested in Ku Gompo on Saturday following a swift, intelligence-driven operation involving multiple law enforcement units, police said.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Brigadier Nobuntu Gantana said the suspects were in custody and were being questioned in connection with Tete’s murder and the attempted murder of a 27-year-old woman who was wounded in the attack.

“Due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing investigation, the SAPS is unable to disclose further details regarding the motive or the circumstances surrounding the arrests at this time,” Gantana said. “Investigators are following up on several leads, and more arrests are imminent.”

“In an attempt to escape the hail of bullets, the deceased drove his vehicle into the yard. He unfortunately succumbed to his injuries and was declared deceased on the scene,” Gantana said.

The woman sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was taken to a nearby hospital, where she remains. On Saturday, police confirmed Tete’s identity after notifying his next of kin.

Tete was one of South Africa’s most successful boxers, winning world titles in two weight divisions. He also holds a Guinness World Record for the fastest knockout in a world title fight.

He had not fought since July 2022, when he tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol following his victory over Jason Cunningham at Wembley. The result was overturned to a no contest and Tete was handed a four-year ban, which ended on July 29 this year. Tete maintained that he had never knowingly taken the substance. In an interview with boxing magazine The Ring in January, he said he planned to return to the ring this year.

First published by IOL

Pope Leo has called for international action to confront the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), where transmission remains active across six provinces and thousands of people have died.

On Sunday, the pontiff said on X that he often remembers the African state in his prayers, especially in light of the spread of the Ebola epidemic.

“I encourage on the part of the international community a response that also involves local communities in efforts of prevention, so that many human lives may be saved,” Pope Leo said.

The appeal came as the latest figures from DR Congo’s Health Ministry showed 5,375 confirmed cases and 2,557 deaths, putting the case fatality rate at 47.6%. 

The outbreak has reached 56 health zones across six provinces – Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele, and Tshopo. Ituri remains the most widely affected, with cases recorded in 28 of its 36 health zones. The authorities said transmission remains active but that there has been no further geographical expansion in the latest reporting period.

The WHO and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) have also previously called for greater international support to contain the outbreak.

DR Congo declared the outbreak in May. It is the country’s 17th recorded Ebola outbreak and is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There is currently no licensed vaccine or approved specific treatment for this specific strain.

Two Mexicans were among five people arrested at a crystal meth lab worth more than half a billion rand (nearly $30 million) on a farm in Musina, Limpopo, the South African Police Service (SAPS) reported on Friday.

The lab was raided late on Thursday night. The blitz was carried out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security, alongside the Hawks, SAPS, the South African Narcotics Bureau, Crime Intelligence and the Special Task Force. Hawks spokesman Colonel Avele Fumba said drugs and laboratory equipment worth an estimated R600m were seized, along with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Limpopo Hawks head Major General Gopz Govender said the operation had gone after the machinery behind the drug trade. “This R600 million seizure is not merely a quantity of drugs taken off the streets. It represents the disruption of an entire criminal enterprise,” Govender said. “We will follow the money, the networks and every person connected to this operation.”

Limpopo police commissioner Lieutenant General Jan Scheepers said communities would not be left to become markets for syndicates. “Those who manufacture and distribute these dangerous substances must know that law enforcement is closing in on them,” he said.

Officers were still working the scene on Friday morning. Photographs released by police show officers in masks and surgical gloves moving through a low structure roofed with corrugated iron and walled with green shade netting. Industrial steel pots stand on the concrete floor beside a gas cylinder and a digital floor scale.

First published by IOL

Washington approved a $5 million payout to Liberia to take in up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the US as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, the New York Times has reported.

The first flight carrying 20 migrants, mainly from Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, landed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Thursday.

The NYT said in an article on Friday that the US State Department green-lighted the payment in December after Liberia said a few months earlier it would consider accepting migrants from other nations.

According to internal documents reviewed by the paper, Washington found assurances by Monrovia that the deportees would not be subject to racial or religious discrimination in the West African nation.

The US State Department said in the documents that the money could be allocated to boost Liberia’s immigration system and support vulnerable migrants. However, it also acknowledged the risk of the funds being misused.

When addressed for comment by the paper, a representative of the State Department said that as a general matter, the agency would not “comment on the authenticity or veracity of allegedly leaked documents.”

The report by the NYT goes against the statements by the Liberian government that its agreement with the US was “entirely humanitarian.”

“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo. Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program,” it said on Tuesday.

However, Monrovia noted it “will receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without disclosing the value or terms of the assistance.

Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, Washington has inked deals with at least 35 nations to accept third-country deportees, according to data from Human Rights First, an NGO. The agreement with Liberia became one of the largest among them.

Democrats in the Senate estimated in February that at least $40 million in taxpayer money had been spent on such deals, inducing payments of $1.1 million per person to Rwanda for seven deportees and $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea for 29 migrants.

Immigration lawyers have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations as a legal loophole to force migrants back to their countries of origin, which refuse to accept them directly from the US.

They have described the practice as excessively punitive, saying that people are left with no other choice but to try to return home after being delivered to places where they have never been to, don’t know the language and face security risks.

Parents of children abducted in northeastern Nigeria have staged a protest demanding government action nearly 100 days after the students were taken, multiple outlets said on Friday. Around 40 children remain missing following the attack in Borno State.

Families gathered in Uba on Thursday to call on the federal government to secure the children’s release, Daily Trust reported. The abduction occurred on May 15 in Mussa, a settlement near the Sambisa Forest, an area that has for years been used by Islamist militant groups.

The attack occurred while classes were underway at Mussa Primary and Junior Secondary School in the Askira-Uba area. Senator Ali Ndume said at the time that school officials had told him 32 pupils were abducted from the school and another ten were seized from homes nearby. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

A police spokesperson said that the military was “on top of the situation” and referred further questions to the armed forces.

Boko Haram and its splinter group, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), have previously targeted schools in the northeast. The region has been at the center of a longstanding Islamist insurgency, with mass abductions, including the 2014 kidnapping of more than 270 Chibok schoolgirls.

Nearly 100 days after children were abducted from Mussa community in Borno State, their families have taken to the streets of Uba, demanding urgent action. Carrying “Bring Back Our Children Mussa” placards, the parents say they will keep speaking out until the children are safely… pic.twitter.com/vbjXojCnQq

— News Central TV (@NewsCentralTV) August 20, 2026

In June, the Nigerian Army said it had rescued 360 hostages, including women and children, from a Boko Haram enclave in the state of Borno following what it described as “weeks of painstaking intelligence preparation.” According to the military, the captives were held in harsh conditions after being abducted from several communities in the region.

Former Zambian transport minister and opposition politician Mutotwe Kafwaya was shot dead by security forces during a raid on the residence of presidential candidate Brian Mundubile a day after last week’s election, police have said.

Zambian police chief Graphel Musamba said on Wednesday that a joint security task force encountered “gunfire and resistance from unknown individuals” during the operation in the capital Lusaka on August 14 and returned fire, fatally wounding “one unidentified male person” later identified by his family as Kafwaya.

Eleven people, including senior opposition figures, were arrested during the raid. The government said the operation targeted suspected militia activity and an alleged armed insurrection, adding that restricted military-grade weapons and ammunition were recovered.

The Information Ministry initially dismissed reports that the 49-year-old former lawmaker had been shot. Defense Ministry Permanent Secretary Maambo Haamaundu separately said checks at Maina Soko Medical Center found no patient under Kafwaya’s name. Police confirmed his death on Wednesday after his family identified him as the previously unidentified man killed during the raid.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa expressed the government’s condolences to Kafwaya’s family and said it regretted his death. He said “no further comments” would be made while the incident is under investigation and urged the public to “remain calm and avoid speculation.”

The operation followed an unusually tense election in a country that has held largely peaceful votes since returning to multiparty democracy in 1991. President Hakainde Hichilema secured a second term with 60.5% of valid ballots, compared with around 38% for Mundubile, according to official results. Mundubile has rejected the result and said he would challenge it in court over alleged irregularities.

Musamba said the two politicians have sought refuge “with a known international organization,” which he did not identify. He added that the government has assured the organization that “the suspects are entitled to the due process of the law and their fundamental human rights, and that there is no harm intended to be done to them in any way.”

UN human rights chief Volker Turk on Wednesday urged the Zambian authorities to stop arbitrary arrests and uphold the due process rights of detainees.

At least 52 people have died after an overloaded boat carrying farm workers capsized in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto State, according to officials and residents. Many of the victims were women and children.

The boat overturned on Thursday near Gorau town in the Goronyo local government area, Abdulkadir Yusuf, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) Sokoto State manager, told the Associated Press.

More than 80 passengers were on board and most were traveling to farms for work, according to officials cited by the news agency.

Many of those aboard were farm owners and laborers hired to harvest rice, according to residents cited by Reuters. Initial estimates of the number of passengers varied, with one resident putting the figure at more than 70 and another saying 57 people were aboard.

Resident Samaila Garba told AP that he had personally counted at least 42 bodies, most of them women and children. “You know, during the rainy season, most women and children go to the farm to work,” he said.

Another Gorau resident, Aminu Dan Hajiya, told the agency that he regularly uses the same waterway to reach his farm. “In fact, almost every household in the community has been affected,” he said. 

Boat accidents are frequent in Nigeria, often blamed on overloading and poor maintenance and safety practices. Eleven people were killed in June when a wooden passenger boat capsized on the Benue River near Makurdi during heavy rain and strong winds, according to local media reports.

A rebel coalition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has imposed travel restrictions after alleging that the government planned to send Ebola-infected people into territory under its control.

Shared taxis operating between the eastern city of Goma and the town of Kirumba will be suspended for one month from Saturday, while passenger canoes will be barred from specified routes across Lake Edward, the Congo River Alliance/March 23 Movement (AFC/M23) said in a statement on Wednesday. Minibuses will remain permitted on the Goma-Kirumba road under health and security controls, while trucks carrying goods will also be allowed to operate.

AFC/M23 political coordinator Corneille Nangaa linked the coalition’s response to what he described as a threat from Kinshasa.

“There are reports of a cynical health offensive that the Kinshasa regime intends to conduct against the liberated territory by deliberately infiltrating infected people there to sow death and devastation,” he said.

The new measures follow the detection of Ebola in two travelers from the government-held town of Lubero in a village under rebel control, a member of the response team established by the rebels told Reuters.

Nangaa accused the Congolese government of corruption and tribalism and said its response was “dramatically below what the emergency demands,” while claiming that the rebel administration has confronted the outbreak with “a strong sense of responsibility.”

AFC/M23 captured Goma and Bukavu, the respective capitals of North and South Kivu provinces, during a major offensive in early 2025 and now controls large parts of both provinces.

The World Health Organization has said ongoing insecurity, large-scale displacement, and population movements are complicating the Ebola response. Attacks on health facilities have reportedly restricted access for response teams, disrupted surveillance, and increased the risk of infections going undetected.

South African Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist Michael Lapsley has accused the US of inflicting “a genocide without bombs” on Cuba through sanctions that he says are causing severe shortages and worsening the island’s humanitarian crisis.

Lapsley made the allegation after returning from Havana, where he said he observed dire conditions and few vehicles on the roads because of severe fuel shortages. He said Cubans endure prolonged electricity outages that prevent water from being pumped, disrupt factories and hamper the production of medicines.

”The United States is actively strangling Cuba. This is a collective punishment of a whole country since the triumph of the revolution. However, things have become immeasurably worse in the last six months,” he told IOL.

Washington has maintained an embargo on Cuba since 1962.

In January, US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over Cuba and moved to restrict its fuel supplies, blocking oil tankers bound for the island and threatening tariffs against countries that continued supplying it. Cuban Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in May that the country had run out of diesel and fuel oil, leaving it dependent on gas from its own wells. Island-wide blackouts have been reported since March.

Delegates from 63 countries attended the event, including representatives of South Africa’s National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and former minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

During an address to the gathering, Lapsley called for an end to the US blockade of Cuba. Joel Ortega Dopico, president of the Cuban Council of Churches and the Cuban Bible Society, told Lapsley that Washington’s restrictions were making it difficult even for countries seeking to assist Cuba.

“They don’t allow diesel or oil to get into the country. It’s very difficult. Support from other countries, even from countries that want to support Cuba, is very hard. They are making it hard for everyone to help Cuba right now,” Dopico said, adding that the restrictions were hitting the most vulnerable hardest, with some Cuban families cutting their food intake from three meals a day to one.

Lapsley said Cubans had shown resilience and innovation but now needed international support. “From the beginning, Cuba has fought for other countries, such as South Africa, Angola and Namibia. Now, the world needs to come to their support. Governments, solidarity movements and faith organisations need to come together so Cuba can survive. But they also need to come together to oppose what the United States is doing,” he stressed.

Lapsley is honorary life president of the Friends of Cuba Society, which he helped establish ahead of South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994. He also brought medical supplies to Cuba during the visit.

First published by IOL

Former Liberian Vice President Jewel Howard-Taylor has been charged with drug trafficking, money laundering, and other offenses as part of an investigation into an alleged transnational narcotics network, the authorities have said.

The West African nation’s Ministry of Justice announced the move on Wednesday, saying Howard-Taylor was prevented from leaving Liberia through Roberts International Airport and taken to the national police headquarters.

Following a review of evidence gathered by a joint national security team, she was charged with illicit drug trafficking, unlicensed importation and distribution of controlled substances, criminal solicitation, facilitation and conspiracy, as well as money laundering, the ministry said.

“No office is too high, no political connection is too powerful, no nationality provides immunity,” Attorney General Oswald Tweh said.

The government also charged two Croatian citizens, Nikolai Ivancic and Mihovil Vrovac, and Ukrainian national Tara Zaderieko in absentia for allegedly helping organize the network. The authorities said they would seek their arrest through domestic and international channels.

Howard-Taylor’s lawyer, Kabineh Ja’neh, told Reuters he had met his client but had yet to see the formal indictment. “We would be able to proceed with the matter once we get the formal charge,” he said.

Howard-Taylor served as vice president under former leader George Weah from 2018 to 2024. She was previously married to former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is serving a 50-year sentence for aiding war crimes committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war.

The case comes less than a month after the authorities announced Liberia’s largest-ever drug seizure. Approximately 4.2 metric tons of cocaine valued at $336 million were destroyed in July, while several senior police officers were implicated in the operation.

The Liberian Ministry of Justice has said the country “will not be surrendered to drug traffickers or those who enable them.” It vowed to uproot trafficking networks, sever their financial and institutional support, and pursue their members “wherever they may be found.”

More than 100 people were killed in the Central African Republic (CAR) after a gold mine collapsed near the border with Cameroon, according to rescuers and local officials.   

The disaster occurred on Tuesday at a mining site in Zamboye, in the country’s western Nana-Mambere prefecture. Several underground galleries reportedly caved in while miners were working below ground.  

More than 100 bodies had been recovered from the site, the Associated Press reported, citing Gervais Ganagoroh, a local Red Cross volunteer involved in rescue efforts. AFP also put the death toll as being at least 100, citing local sources.   

Separately, Cameroonian journalist Jean Charles Biyo’o Ella reported a preliminary toll of 107 after speaking with the mayor of the nearby border town of Garoua-Boulai. CAR officials had earlier reported that 30 bodies had been recovered as search operations continued. 

The final official death toll has yet to be announced.

🇨🇫 DRAME | Plus de 100 personnes seraient mortes dans l’effondrement d’une mine d’or artisanale en République centrafricaine.

L’accident s’est produit dans le village de Zamboye, près de la frontière avec le Cameroun. (Reuters) pic.twitter.com/u4NFCjFi23

— Cerfia (@CerfiaFR) August 20, 2026

The disaster initially caused confusion over whether the mine was in CAR or Cameroon. Cameroon’s Ministry of Mines later said the collapse occurred on the CAR’s side of Zamboye. The settlement straddles the border area, with its Central African and Cameroonian sections separated by the Kadey River. 

Deadly mining accidents are common across Africa, particularly at artisanal sites where miners often work in hand-dug tunnels with limited safety protections. In January, more than 200 people were killed after a landslide struck the Rubaya coltan mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The disaster, which followed heavy rains, buried miners working at the sprawling site, which is one of the world’s major sources of coltan.

The Orthodox Church is very strict about the sin of schism. Saint Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Likewise, Saint John Chrysostom wrote, “The sin of schism is not washed away even by the blood of martyrdom.” In this context, a recent event in Africa is of particular significance. While it may not attract the attention of secular people, it holds particular significance for devout Christians.

At the end of July, a delegation from the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) made an official visit to the Metropolis of Nairobi of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. With the ‘blessing’ of so-called ‘Metropolitan’ Epiphanius Dumenko, ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria and ‘Archpriest’ Vitaly Danchak arrived in Kenya.

On July 25, they were received at the residence of Archbishop Makarios (Tillyrides) of Nairobi, to whom the guests presented a bishop’s panagia, among other gifts. On July 26, with the blessing of the archbishop, the schismatics from the OCU celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the Orthodox Patriarchal Cathedral of Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Eustratiy Zoria presided over the Liturgy, assisted by the local African clergy.

This confirms that the creation of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church was a timely decision. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was created after Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, contrary to his previous position and without any explanation, recognized the OCU in 2019. The Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa was initially established for those priests, religious, and laity of the Church of Alexandria who wished to avoid contact with the schismatics.

The fact that the Ukrainian groups from which the OCU was formed are schismatics is not the “private opinion of solely the Russian Orthodox Church”; it was the common position of absolutely all regional Orthodox Churches from the 1990s to 2018, and was confirmed by official church documents.

The defrocking and excommunication of the self-proclaimed ‘Patriarch of Ukraine’ Filaret Denisenko was also recognized by all the regional Orthodox Churches without exception, including the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria. Moreover, Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria once said in an interview that when he served as archimandrite at the Representation of the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in Odessa, Ukraine, and learned that Ukrainian schismatics wanted to come into the church, he stood at the door and barred them from entering. He also boasted of this when he became patriarch, citing it as an example of his principled stance on schism.

The particularly cynical nature of the situation lay in the fact that at the time, in 2018, the majority of Orthodox believers in Ukraine belonged to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which was not schismatic. And the UOC did not request Patriarch Bartholomew to sign the tomos.

After Constantinople recognized the OCU, its adherents did not cease behaving like schismatics; they even intensified their attacks, beatings, and seizure of churches from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew’s lawless act legitimized this evil, which continues to this day. This meant that this was not only a canonical crime, but also an immoral act that only intensified the suffering of Orthodox Ukrainians.

The overwhelming majority of the regional Orthodox Churches did not support Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision. Only the patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria fully recognized the schismatics as the true ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’. The Churches of Greece and Cyprus recognized the OCU partially (some bishops of these Churches did not recognize it). The remaining ten regional Orthodox Churches, including the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, have not officially recognized the OCU in the past nine years. So this is not a “Greek-Russian dispute,” as some falsely claim; and the question is not, “Do you side with the Russians or the Greeks?” but “Do you side with the schismatics or with the Church?”

However, the events in Kenya at the end of July have once again confirmed that those who left the Patriarchate of Alexandria had valid reasons to do so. The threat is real – and now, it has gone a step further: the Greeks allowed the schismatics to celebrate the Divine Liturgy alongside Orthodox Africans. Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria, who once barred Ukrainian schismatics from entering his church in Ukraine, has now allowed them to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in Africa. Self-proclaimed ‘Metropolitan’ Eustratiy Zoria, who was ‘ordained’ by the excommunicated Philaret Denisenko (and therefore, for most of the Orthodox world is simply a layman) was allowed to celebrate the Liturgy as a bishop, and Kenyan clergy served him.

Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea states, “No one shall join in prayers with heretics or schismatics”; Canon 10 of the Apostolic Canon says, “If any one shall pray, even in a private house, with an excommunicated person, let him also be excommunicated”; And Canon 2 of the Council of Antioch states, “It is unlawful to commune with excommunicated persons, to assemble at private homes and pray with those who do not pray in the church, or to welcome those who do not assemble with another church. In addition, if any of the bishops, priests, deacons, or anyone in the canon are found communing with excommunicated persons, let them also be excommunicated because they bring confusion to the order of the Church.”

The OCU is not in communion with the majority of the Orthodox Churches. It appears that the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria has forced Orthodox Africans to commit a canonical violation of the aforementioned canons and defile themselves by concelebrating the Divine Liturgy with the schismatics.

This is precisely what those Orthodox Kenyans and other Africans who joined the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church shielded themselves from. By preserving their souls from communion with the schismatics, they preserved the purity of their Orthodox faith.

A helicopter carrying tourists has crashed in northern Kenya, killing all seven people on board, including five US citizens and Ecuador’s intelligence chief, the authorities have confirmed.

The Eurocopter EC130 B4 went down near Mount Ololokwe in Samburu County at approximately 9:13 AM local time on Wednesday, according to the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA). The aircraft was carrying six passengers and a pilot on a charter flight from Loisaba Conservancy, a 58,000-acre wildlife reserve and safari destination, toward the Ewaso Nyiro river area, KCAA said in a statement.

“The Ministry of Roads and Transport, Air Accident Investigation Department is leading investigations on circumstances surrounding the accident,” it said.

The victims included Michele Sensi-Contugi, director general of Ecuador’s National Intelligence Center, and his wife, Stephany Hollihan, who also held US citizenship. Jose Alberto Suarez, a senior executive at the US-based Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, was also killed.

Luxury safari operator &Beyond, which organized the excursion, confirmed that its guests were aboard the helicopter, according to Reuters. “Our deepest sympathies are with the guests, crew, their families and loved ones, and all those affected by this tragic accident,” Lady Lori Helicopters, the aircraft operator, said in a statement.

The Kenya Red Cross said search and recovery operations were “hampered by difficult terrain access and an active fire at the crash site.”

Search and recovery efforts are ongoing, hampered by difficult terrain access and an active fire at the crash site.

An additional team has been dispatched from Isiolo to reinforce the operation.

More updates to follow. https://t.co/XUjWArYul3 pic.twitter.com/qSApuA1b0y

— Kenya Red Cross (@KenyaRedCross) August 19, 2026

Sensi-Contugi was a close associate of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and headed the country’s intelligence service amid an ongoing campaign by the authorities against powerful criminal organizations. Ecuador’s presidential office confirmed the deaths of Sensi-Contugi and his wife, and declared three days of national mourning from August 20 to 22.

In neighboring Tanzania, five people – including two Czech tourists – died when a medical rescue helicopter crashed on Mount Kilimanjaro in December.

Protests broke out in western Libya, including in its capital Tripoli, on Tuesday after three widespread power outages in two days left residents without reliable electricity. 

Demonstrators took to streets and public squares, blocking roads and setting tires on fire. In Tripoli’s Tajoura district, protesters closed main roads with earthen barriers as they demonstrated against prolonged power outages and deteriorating basic services.  

The latest unrest follows weeks of protests linked to Libya’s electricity crisis. Triggered by a blistering heatwave with temperatures soaring to 50 degrees Celsius, residents faced daily blackouts lasting up to 14 hours, fueling widespread public anger.  

The situation escalated dramatically on July 28, when furious protesters stormed the strategic Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex, temporarily shutting down critical gas supplies to local power stations. 

Libya’s energy infrastructure has recently come under attack. Last week, Zawiya’s oil refining facilities which can process about 120,000 barrels a day were repeatedly targeted with drones. Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) warned that continued drone attacks could force it to stop operations at the country’s largest functioning refinery. 

One strike hit a gasoline tank holding about 4.5 million liters of fuel and started a major fire, the NOC said. Another damaged a tank containing untreated naphtha. The corporation declared the highest state of emergency in the area and called on the authorities to investigate the attacks. No group has claimed responsibility so far. 

🚨BREAKING: Protests Erupt In The Libyan Capital, Tripoli

The demonstrators are protesting against frequent blackouts & government mismanagement. pic.twitter.com/hmkbqgWJJ5

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) August 17, 2026

Liberia has agreed to accept up to 1,200 third-country migrants deported from the US under a controversial agreement pushed by the Trump administration as part of its sweeping immigration crackdown.

The transfers will take place over one year, with the first group of 20 due to arrive in the West African country on Thursday, Liberia’s Ministry of Information said in a statement on Tuesday.

The arrangement, concluded through an exchange of diplomatic notes in September 2025, covers medically cleared nationals of “African and Western Hemisphere countries.” Those transferred may apply for asylum in Liberia or leave the country voluntarily, the ministry stated.

It said the deportees “are not criminals” and will be treated as guests rather than prisoners. The government said it would provide protection and support during their stay.

The deal is among the largest reached under US President Donald Trump’s expanding third-country deportation policy. The mechanism allows Washington to remove migrants to states where they hold no citizenship or established ties, including when their home governments refuse to receive them.

A coalition of rights lawyers and advocates, including the Global Strategic Litigation Council, has accused Washington of using third-country transfers to bypass protection orders and expose migrants to persecution or torture. Thousands have reportedly been transferred to nearly two dozen states, including around ten in Africa.

Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, and the Central African Republic are among the African countries that have accepted third-country deportees.

Liberia has said its participation is “entirely humanitarian,” pointing to its founding as a refuge for freed slaves from the US and elsewhere, as well as its history of sheltering people fleeing persecution and war.

South African citrus exporters have received a boost in the Indian market after New Delhi amended its plant quarantine rules on Monday, approving additional cold-treatment options for fresh citrus imports from the African state.

The move, which follows almost a decade of negotiations, will give exporters more flexibility and could help improve the quality of fruit reaching the Indian market. Minister of Agriculture Willie Aucamp welcomed the development, saying it was good news for the industry and showed how technology was helping farmers overcome barriers and expand access to international markets.

India is home to about 1.47 billion people and is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, making it a potentially important market for South African citrus.

CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa (CGA), Boitshoko Ntshabele, argued the focus should now shift to improving the commercial conditions for South African citrus exports to India. He said tariffs of about 25% to 30% continue to put South African citrus at a disadvantage compared with competitors from the Southern Hemisphere that have preferential trade arrangements with India.

“Special recognition is given to the Department of Agriculture and Citrus Research International for their continued technical engagement with Indian authorities that have made the new treatment options possible. This demonstrates the importance of sustained public-private partnership in improving technical conditions for accessing markets,” Ntshabele said.

First published by IOL

The death toll from last week’s ferry disaster on Zimbabwe’s Lake Kariba has risen to 94, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) said on Tuesday.  

Search teams remain deployed in the area and recovery operations will continue as the authorities seek to locate any people still missing. “The death toll is now 94,” the ZRP reported, adding that search efforts would continue to locate “any missing persons or bodies.”  

The latest figure marks a further increase from the 93 deaths reported by police on Monday. In an earlier statement, the ZRP said 83 of the victims had been identified by their relatives. The victims include a number of young children. 

The ferry, operated by Zimbabwe’s Rural Infrastructure Development Agency (RIDA), capsized on Lake Kariba on August 11 while traveling from the town of Kariba to remote communities and fishing camps along the lake. The ferry, which reportedly encountered strong waves, was carrying around 180 passengers and cargo at the time of the accident, according to local broadcaster ZBC News.   

The African Union (AU) has expressed condolences over the disaster. AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said the bloc stood “in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe and the affected communities.” The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also conveyed its “sincere condolences and solidarity” to Zimbabwe. 

Fatal boat accidents occur regularly across Africa, where overcrowding and poor safety standards are often cited as contributing factors. In September, a wooden vessel carrying about 90 passengers capsized in Nigeria’s Niger State, killing at least 29 people. Authorities attributed the accident to overloading and the boat striking a submerged tree stump.

The US has lifted security restrictions on vessels arriving from Nigeria, ending a 12-year regime that burdened shipping companies with additional guards, inspections, and paperwork.

A US Coast Guard notice published on Wednesday said “recent assessments” had found that Africa’s most populous nation was maintaining effective antiterrorism measures at its ports, warranting the removal of restrictions known as Conditions of Entry (CoE).

The measures, imposed in June 2014, did not amount to an outright ban on Nigerian-flagged ships. They applied to vessels that had called at designated Nigerian ports during their previous five port calls, requiring operators to tighten onboard security, guard access points, and report their precautions. The safeguards were intended to prevent ships leaving poorly secured ports from being exploited to carry terrorists, weapons, or tampered cargo into US waters.

The conditions had long drawn complaints over higher insurance bills, added personnel costs, and delays. Abuja expects their removal to improve turnaround times and attract shipping lines, although congestion, corruption allegations, and Gulf of Guinea piracy remain obstacles.

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency said the US Coast Guard conducted four assessments of the West African nation’s maritime security systems and port facilities between March 2024 and April 2026.

Nigeria’s minister of marine and blue economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, hailed the decision as “a major milestone” affirming Abuja’s progress in maritime security and implementation of the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.

Nigeria was not the only African country subject to US conditions of entry. Similar vessel restrictions remain in force against Cameroon, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Seychelles, Sudan, and Sao Tome and Principe. In February, the Coast Guard expanded the restrictions within Cameroon and Madagascar by revoking exemptions previously granted to certain port facilities.

Ghana and Russia have signed their first visa-waiver agreement since establishing diplomatic relations nearly seven decades ago, the West African nation’s foreign minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, announced, describing the move as “historic.” 

The deal was formalized during Ablakwa’s three-day official visit to Moscow and allows visa-free travel for holders of diplomatic and service passports.

“We shall continue with negotiations for enhanced privileges for all categories of travelers as we bolster trade, investments and people-to-people exchanges,” Ablakwa wrote on X on Monday following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.

During their talks, Ablakwa thanked Moscow for supporting a Ghana-led UN resolution declaring transatlantic enslavement and racialized chattel slavery among the gravest crimes against humanity. The Ghanaian diplomat said his “visit will map out broader areas of strategic cooperation” between Moscow and Accra.

The two sides also agreed to pursue a cooperation memorandum between Russian and Ghanaian media organizations. The initiative is expected to initially involve RT and Sputnik Africa on the Russian side and the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

In a July 22 interview with the Ghana News Agency, Russian Ambassador to Ghana Andrei Ordash said Moscow had allocated 120 government scholarships to Ghanaian students for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Russia signed a similar waiver for diplomatic and service passport holders with Mauritania in December and is negotiating broader visa-free arrangements with Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Eswatini. Russian citizens already enjoy reciprocal visa-free travel with 11 African countries, including South Africa, Morocco, Namibia, and Angola.

Today I honoured an invitation from the distinguished Foreign Minister of Russia, H.E. Sergey Lavrov to undertake a 3-day official visit to Russia.

On my first day of this important official visit, we signed a historic Visa Waiver Agreement for holders of Diplomatic and Service… pic.twitter.com/Chm3mx9lQm

— Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa (@S_OkudzetoAblak) August 17, 2026

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has been reelected for a second five-year term after clearing the 50% threshold required to avoid a runoff, the country’s electoral commission announced on Tuesday.

Hichilema received 2,965,326 votes, or 60.5% of valid ballots, against 1,856,217 – around 38% – for his main challenger, Brian Mundubile. Turnout was 57.23%. 

The result followed a temporary suspension of counting and an election-night exchange of gunfire during a security operation at Mundubile’s residence. The authorities said the raid targeted a suspected militia, while the opposition leader called it an “attempt on his life.”

The president thanked voters for their trust and said his government would also work for “those citizens who preferred the ideas presented” by his opponents.

“This election showed the world who we are: a nation of peace, a nation of law and order, a democratic nation that settles our differences at the ballot box, and nowhere else,” he said.

Mundubile has yet to formally respond to the result. During the count, however, he demanded an investigation into allegations that presidential election forms had been removed or subjected to “interference or alteration.”

“We will pursue every legitimate and constitutional avenue available to seek justice,” he said, urging supporters to remain peaceful.

The authorities denied Kafwaya had been shot and said the operation targeted a suspected militia whose members opened fire first. They reported seizing military-grade weapons and arresting 11 people, including senior political figures. Mundubile rejected the account, insisting his party “has no militia” and does not support violence.

Counting was suspended for several hours on Friday after attacks on polling officials and the theft of marked ballots. Police said polling agent Lovemore Chishima was assaulted at a polling station in Matero, a district of Lusaka, and later died. Nine suspects were arrested.

Hichilema first took office in 2021 after defeating late President Edgar Lungu. His government restructured Zambia’s debt, stabilized the currency and reduced inflation, but high food prices, unemployment and electricity shortages continued to strain households.

The campaign was also overshadowed by a dispute over Lungu’s remains following his death in South Africa in 2025. Mundubile’s alliance accused Hichilema of disrespecting Lungu’s wishes and promised to return his body to Zambia for burial if elected.

Copper-rich Zambia has held largely peaceful transfers of power since restoring multiparty democracy in 1991.

South Africa is expected to face another fuel price hike in September as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to keep global oil prices elevated, according to the data provided by the Central Energy Fund (CEF), the country's state-owned energy company.

The latest snapshot from the CEF is pointing to steep diesel price increases in the region of R2.73 for 500ppm and R2.90 for 50ppm. The petrol price predictions are less severe but significant nonetheless, with CEF data indicating under-recoveries of 66 cents for 93 Unleaded and 77 cents for 95 Unleaded. However, if current trends persist, these are likely to grow into increases of around 80 to 90 cents by the time the final sums are done at month-end. Illuminating paraffin is looking set for an increase in the region of R2.14.

This follows a volatile few months, during which the price of 95 Unleaded has increased from R19.47 in March to R24.71 in August, peaking at R27.19 in June. The wholesale price of diesel has risen from R17.70 in March to R25.30 in August, peaking at R30.30 in May.

International oil markets have seen extreme volatility since the US-Israeli war with Iran began in late February, with the critical Strait of Hormuz oil passage mostly shut to shipping traffic.

While the markets appear to have settled, with Brent crude oil trading mostly around the $90-per-barrel mark in August, down from highs of around $126 earlier in the year, prices remain well above pre-war levels of around $70.

Ole Hvalbye, commodities analyst at SEB, recently told Reuters: “A return to normal flows out of the Strait of Hormuz is now suddenly without any near-term hopes.”

First published by IOL

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has become the deadliest in the country’s history, with the number of fatalities surpassing the toll recorded during the major 2018-2020 epidemic.

At least 2,325 people have died among 4,945 confirmed cases, according to the latest figures released by the Congolese health authorities. The overall case fatality rate now stands at 47%.

The previous record was set during the 2018-2020 Ebola epidemic in eastern DR Congo. The outbreak, declared on August 1, 2018 and brought to an end in June 2020, resulted in 3,323 confirmed cases and 2,299 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It was the world’s second-largest Ebola outbreak on record.

The current outbreak has reached that grim milestone far more quickly. The DR Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on May 15, marking the country’s 17th recorded outbreak since the virus was first identified there in 1976. 

A recent genetic study published in Nature Medicine also found that the Bundibugyo virus behind the illness is genetically distinct from variants detected during previous Bundibugyo outbreaks in the region, suggesting it likely emerged through a new animal-to-human transmission. The animal source has not yet been identified.

The latest government figures show the virus has now spread across 55 health zones in six provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Bas-Uele, and Tshopo. Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak, remains by far the hardest-hit province. According to the WHO chief, responders face major challenges, including insecurity and mass displacement, which are hampering efforts to reach affected communities.

The WHO warned earlier this month that Ebola was “spreading faster than” efforts to contain it, calling for response measures to be urgently scaled up.

Somali federal troops have driven armed groups out of the administrative capital of the country’s South West State following hours of fierce fighting that killed 30 attackers, the Defense Ministry has said.

The ministry said the assault began at around 5 AM local time on Monday, when Al-Shabaab militants and fighters aligned with former South West State President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen attacked military positions in Baidoa using two explosives-laden vehicles.

“Thirty members of the militias that carried out the attack were killed,” a ministry spokesman said in a video statement.

An unspecified number were captured, while weapons and vehicles were seized, he added. The spokesman accused Laftagareen’s fighters of coordinating with Al-Shabaab and said they would henceforth “be fought in the same manner as terrorist militias.”

The attack marked the latest escalation in a power struggle between Mogadishu and Laftagareen, whose disputed reelection in March prompted federal troops to seize Baidoa and force him to resign. Forces loyal to him have reportedly remained active outside the city.

BAIDOA, Somalia: Forces loyal to ousted regional President Abdiaziz Laftagareen entered the city of Baidoa on Monday, sparking clashes involving heavy weapons across several neighborhoods.

However, Somalia's federal government contested the nature of the fighting, with the… pic.twitter.com/Trx1nZvVYt

— The Daily Somalia (@TheDailySomalia) August 17, 2026

Laftagareen’s office rejected descriptions of his forces as an armed group as “false propaganda.” It said the operation was intended to restore order and remove what it called an unlawful federal military presence.

Four residents also confirmed to Reuters that federal troops have regained control of the city after several hours of fighting. Local elder Farah Ibrahim told the news agency that he saw ten bodies at one location, including four civilians and six soldiers from the opposing sides.

Tensions between Mogadishu and the South West regional authorities have persisted since March, when Laftagareen’s administration severed ties with the federal government over constitutional changes and elections. Days later, Mogadishu rejected his reelection as illegal and declared his administration “no longer valid.”

Baidoa is one of Somalia’s most sensitive political centers, serving as a base for federal forces, peacekeepers, and humanitarian operations. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) estimates that the city is home to 1.6 million people, nearly half of whom are displaced, with many having fled conflict and climate shocks elsewhere in Somalia.

Moscow is alarmed by reports that Ukrainian military personnel are involved in operations carried out by illegal armed groups against countries in Africa’s Sahel region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. 

Speaking after talks with Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa on Monday, Lavrov argued that the involvement of serving troops, rather than individual mercenaries, indicated activity conducted at the state level.

The Russian minister also accused former colonial powers of fueling terrorism in Africa. “It is no secret that this is done by France, which directly works with illegal armed groups, arms them, finances them and instructs them,” he said.

“First and foremost, [France] instructs them on creating problems for those countries, in this case in the Sahara-Sahel region, that have decided to finally, completely and irreversibly break with their former colonizers and are consistently pursuing this course,” Lavrov stressed.

Ablakwa, meanwhile, described the Sahel as the “global epicenter for terrorism, violent extremism.”  He said that Ghana and Russia had agreed to work together to support Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali in addressing the security challenges facing the region.

The Ghanaian foreign minister also thanked Moscow for supporting a UN resolution that declared transatlantic enslavement a grave crime against humanity. “We see in Russia a reliable partner,” Ablakwa noted.

Russia and Ghana are set to sign an agreement allowing visa-free travel for holders of diplomatic and service passports. Lavrov said the measure is expected to facilitate contacts between the two governments in areas ranging from foreign policy and trade to investment, humanitarian exchanges and education.  

Southern African countries should process their critical minerals domestically instead of exporting raw materials that create wealth and manufacturing jobs elsewhere, the region’s top official has said.

Southern Africa is regarded as the continent’s richest and most diverse critical-minerals region. Members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) hold major deposits of cobalt, copper, lithium, graphite, manganese and platinum-group metals, placing the bloc at the center of global competition for resources used in clean energy, electronics and military technology.

At the 16-member bloc’s summit in Durban, South Africa, on Monday, Executive Secretary Elias Magosi pressed leaders to turn that mineral wealth into industries and jobs.

“We do not need permission from anyone to start this process. Let’s start now,” he said.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), a SADC member since 1998, is the world’s leading cobalt producer and second-largest copper supplier. Zambia is another leading copper producer, while Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique hold significant deposits of lithium, platinum-group metals and graphite, respectively.

China already controls major copper and cobalt operations in the DR Congo and has invested heavily in Zimbabwe’s lithium industry. Beijing is also funding a $1.4 billion refurbishment of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, an export route linking Zambia’s mining belt to the Indian Ocean.

Washington and Brussels are backing the Lobito Corridor, a competing trade route linking mining areas in Zambia and the DR Congo to Angola’s Atlantic coast. The European Commission has said the project will help secure raw materials for Europe’s green and digital industries while creating jobs in Africa.

The bloc also announced steps to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia on the sidelines of the summit. SADC said Deputy Executive Secretary for Regional Integration Angele Makombo N’Tumba met Tatiana Dovgalenko, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Partnership with Africa, on Sunday to advance a draft action plan under a 2018 cooperation agreement.

SADC said the proposed plan covers industrial development, trade, digital infrastructure, agriculture and technology. The two sides also discussed military-technical cooperation and preparations for the third Russia-Africa Summit.

Botswana President Duma Boko has challenged the characterization of Africa as the world’s next major economic frontier, arguing that the continent has already reached that position and should deal with foreign partners accordingly.  

African nations should approach investors from a position of strength rather than as supplicants, Boko told RT in an exclusive interview. He said governments must set their own conditions for access to resources, including local processing, technology deployment and skills transfers. 

“Africa is actually the ‘now’ frontier,” Boko said. 

The president said Botswana is also seeking deeper ties with Russia and is planning to open an embassy in Moscow. He noted that Russia is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council in which Botswana does not have a mission, describing the absence as an “anomaly” that needed to be corrected.

“We need these collaborations to explore the rest of the country, about 70% which remains largely unexplored,” the leader said.  

Boko sees cooperation with Russia as important for Botswana’s diamond industry. He said the two countries need to work together to protect the market from oversupply.  

He also argued that African economies have historically been geared toward extraction and the export of unprocessed resources, with insufficient emphasis on developing local industrial capabilities and skills. 

“We now must focus on not being big on extraction, but take it all the way to actually producing finished goods, which the world needs,” he said. 

At least 355 people were detained by the Moroccan authorities near Ceuta on Saturday as security forces sought to prevent another mass crossing into the Spanish enclave called for on social media.

Moroccan state-owned broadcaster Medi 1 TV said 294 migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa and 61 Moroccans accused of facilitating the attempted crossings had been detained. Reuters had earlier reported at least 111 detentions in and around the border city of Fnideq, citing a Moroccan Interior Ministry source who identified 109 Sub-Saharan African migrants and two Moroccan citizens.

Police reportedly fired tear gas at groups gathering on hills near the border. Spain, meanwhile, deployed soldiers and hundreds of additional police officers to Ceuta.

The security operation followed online calls for a mass crossing on August 15 and came two weeks after more than 72,000 people crossed into Ceuta on July 30, overwhelming the enclave. At least 100 people reportedly died while attempting to reach Spanish territory.

The crisis has revived a sovereignty dispute between Madrid and Rabat. Morocco has claimed Ceuta and Melilla since gaining independence in 1956. Spain regards the enclaves, which it has controlled for centuries, as integral parts of its territory.

Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles rejected the claim, declaring that Ceuta and Melilla were Spanish and “cannot be touched.” Spain’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s territorial integrity was not open to discussion.

More than 8,000 people entered Ceuta in 2021 amid allegations that Morocco had eased border enforcement during a diplomatic dispute with Spain. The incident was widely viewed as retaliation for Madrid’s decision to provide medical treatment to Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali, an advocate of Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco. Morocco denied using migration to pressure Spain.

Spain sent more than 500 additional police officers to Ceuta and installed a maritime barrier after the July 30 surge. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said about 5,000 migrants remained in the enclave. Those without the right to stay would be returned to Morocco and barred from travelling to mainland Spain, except in cases of extreme vulnerability, he added.

When European officials talk about migration, their lexicon is rich with high-minded platitudes – “humanitarian values,” “human rights,” “rules-based order,” and “shared responsibility.” Yet behind this rhetoric lies a transactional reality: The European Union’s single overarching policy on migration and asylum is keeping people out, regardless of the human cost and despite all the EU common values.

For decades, Brussels has refused to address the root causes of global displacement. To do so would require confronting a persistent colonial mindset – one that views the Global South, and Africa in particular, as a warehouse of raw resources to be extracted, while abandoning its populations to economic destruction and conflict.

As the late Muammar Gaddafi once bluntly observed, the Africans heading toward Europe are simply chasing the wealth that was stolen from them, leaving their own countries impoverished – a simple logic that is hard to argue with. Instead of fostering genuine development or equitable partnerships, Europe’s approach relies on outsourcing its border enforcement to North African buffer states, effectively turning neighboring regimes into outsourced jailers for Fortress Europe.

Rabat understands precisely how vulnerable Brussels is; whenever diplomatic frictions arise, border controls suddenly soften, demonstrating that North Africa holds the ultimate asymmetric leverage over European security. In the end, we should not lose sight of the fact that both Ceuta and Melilla are historically Moroccan territories occupied by Spain – an unresolved colonial footprint that Rabat can exploit whenever it seeks to pressure Madrid.

However, the Ceuta shock loses its “spontaneous” appearance when viewed alongside shifting diplomatic signals from Washington. Despite the Trump administration’s signature anti-immigration rhetoric, official Washington quietly signaled an unprecedented openness to Rabat’s territorial ambitions weeks before the surge.

This signal was further compounded by Washington’s growing frustration with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez over his refusal to allow US military bases to be used for operations against Iran, his vocal opposition to Israeli policy in Gaza, and Madrid’s lagging defense spending.

The crisis exposed the hypocrisy of the EU foreign policy establishment and laid bare ideological fractures across Europe. When similar migration spikes occur along Europe’s eastern borders, Brussels officials such as Kaja Kallas immediately decry them as “hybrid warfare” and an existential threat to democracy. Yet when a key Western partner in North Africa utilizes the exact same border pressure mechanisms against a dissenting member state like Spain, the EU’s reaction is a fractured double standard. Madrid’s isolation was engineered not only from Washington and Rabat, but from within Europe itself, led by conservative governments hostile to Sánchez’s unyielding pro-Palestinian stance and defiance of the mainstream Atlanticist consensus.

Capitalizing on the chaos, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government swiftly suspended the Schengen free-movement agreement with Spain, reinstating border checks to punish Madrid politically. Countries as far away as Denmark even called for Spain to be suspended or expelled from Schengen – a reactionary escalation never directed at Germany when it welcomed over a million asylum seekers in 2015. Rather than standing in solidarity with a member state, Europe weaponized the shock, demonstrating that Rabat succeeded in triggering a secondary systemic crisis inside Fortress Europe itself.

The possibility of high-level geopolitical manipulation behind the Ceuta surge was not entirely dismissible. As many observers point out, the sudden border breach served a dual purpose: providing European far-right “vultures” with an immediate anti-immigrant weapon while simultaneously delivering geopolitical punishment to Sanchez’s government for its principled foreign policy. The reaction of Israeli officials – such as UN Ambassador Danny Danon cynically mocking Spain’s state of emergency and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanding Madrid “open its doors” to Gazans – exposed an unmistakable appetite for retaliation against Spain’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and accusations of genocide.

Whether through explicit collusion or strategic alignment, the convergence of Moroccan territorial ambitions, American pressure over military bases and trade, and Israeli anger created an asymmetric pincer movement. In this framework, Morocco acted as the operational hammer on the ground, while Washington and Tel Aviv provided the diplomatic cover, turning human desperation in Ceuta into a deliberate, multi-national strike aimed at crippling an unyielding European administration.

This geopolitical pincer movement exposes the fundamental structural flaw at the heart of Europe’s externalized border regime. By converting displaced people into diplomatic currency and neighboring states into indispensable jailers, Fortress Europe has not secured its frontiers; it has rendered them volatile flashpoints for foreign leverage.

As long as Europe relies on externalized repression rather than addressing the structural roots of global inequality, its southern perimeter will remain an open fault line – ready to be activated whenever its autocratic partners decide to demand a higher price.

British energy giant Shell’s plan to search for oil and gas off South Africa’s Wild Coast has come to an end after the African country’s Constitutional Court set aside its exploration rights on Friday.

The ruling overturns a 2024 Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) decision that had upheld the exploration right. That decision gave the mineral resources department a chance to keep the project alive by going back to the Wild Coast communities for the proper public consultation that never happened in the first place.

Impact Africa was granted the right in 2014 and brought Shell in on a half share seven years later, with the two companies spending about R1.1bn on it. It was first scrapped by the Makhanda High Court in 2022, which found the communities had never been properly told what a seismic survey off their coast would involve.

The court found that consulting the communities now, more than a decade late, and then taking the decision again would not repair the violation. “Consultation is not merely about the opportunity to express a view or influence an outcome,” the court said.

“To tell communities, more than a decade after the fact, that they may now be consulted, would not be curative to their right to dignity.

“Instead, it would say to them that the violation of their rights was not a matter of substance but rather a matter of process.”

Any other outcome, it held, “would allow financial investment to outweigh grave constitutional violations and would signal that the rights of affected parties are subordinate to commercial interests”.

The Wild Coast is a 250km strip of Eastern Cape shoreline carrying customary fishing rights and spiritual practices for the communities living along it. Impact Africa applied for the right in 2013 and was granted it on April 29 2014, then had it renewed in 2017 and 2021 without doing any meaningful exploration in its first three-year term.

The director-general signed off in June 2021 on the transfer of a 50% participating interest in the right to Shell. In October that year Shell gave notice that it would start a 3D seismic survey along the coast, and Sustaining the Wild Coast, All Rise Attorneys for Climate and Environmental Justice, members of the Umgungundlovu and Dwesa-Cwebe communities, Wild Coast fishers and Kei Mouth Fisheries obtained an interdict stopping it that December. Natural Justice and Greenpeace later joined the case.

The SCA agreed the right had been granted unlawfully but suspended the setting aside so that the minister could still decide a third renewal application, with a further round of public participation to cure the defects. The communities took that order to the Constitutional Court, which heard argument in September last year and found the renewal process does not allow for the kind of consultation the SCA had in mind.

In a dissent, justice Owen Rogers, with justice Savage agreeing, said there were no grounds to interfere with the SCA’s remedy and would have preserved the possibility of a final three-year exploration period after proper consultation.

Rogers accepted that the communities’ right to be consulted had been neglected and their cultural, religious and environmental concerns not properly considered, but held that a fair remedy had to accommodate all sides. The majority’s order, he said, had consigned the application to “an impermissible twilight zone: supposedly neither granted nor refused, but practically incapable of ever being granted”.

First published by IOL

Mali’s transitional leader, General Assimi Goita, has granted a presidential pardon to French national Yann Christian Bernard Vezilier, who was serving a 20-year prison sentence for undermining the West African country’s security.

The Malian government announced the move in a decree issued on Thursday, saying it requires Vezilier’s “immediate removal” from the West African country.

The authorities stressed that the clemency “does not call into question the facts established” by the court during a trial in which “all the rights of the defense were respected.”

Vezilier was arrested in Bamako in August 2025 alongside several Malian military officers, including two generals. Bamako accused him of working for French intelligence and recruiting political figures, civil-society representatives, and military personnel for activities intended to destabilize the transitional government.

France confirmed after his arrest that Vezilier worked at its embassy in Bamako but rejected the accusations as “baseless.” The French Foreign Ministry argued that he held diplomatic accreditation and was protected from arrest under the Vienna Convention.

The case further strained already fraught relations between Mali and its former colonial ruler. Ties between Bamako and Paris deteriorated after the military seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021. Mali and its allies Niger and Burkina Faso have since expelled French forces, accusing Paris of supporting terrorism to undermine their military-led governments. The three Sahel states have turned to new partners, including Russia, to combat a protracted jihadist insurgency they say French troops failed to quell during a decade-long counterterrorism mission.

An American missionary abducted in Niger last year has been released after spending more than nine months in captivity, the Christian organization Serving In Mission (SIM) said on Friday.

“Kevin is in good health and is currently in the care of US officials,” the group said, adding that he is expected to reunite with his wife Krista, their children, and other relatives shortly.

Rideout, a missionary pilot, was kidnapped in the capital, Niamey, on October 21, 2025. According to reports at the time, three unidentified men seized him before apparently taking him out of the city. 

No group publicly claimed responsibility for the abduction, and the circumstances surrounding his release, including who held him and whether any deal was reached to secure his freedom, remain unclear.

The kidnapping came amid persistent security problems across Niger and the wider Sahel, where armed groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have operated for years. Foreign nationals have increasingly become targets: an Austrian woman was abducted in Agadez in January 2025, two Chinese nationals were kidnapped the following month, and a Swiss woman was seized from her home in Agadez in April.

In another high-profile case, two employees of a Russian geological exploration company were freed in neighboring Mali in April after spending nearly two years in captivity. They were abducted in Niger’s Tillaberi region in July 2024 by JNIM, an Al-Qaeda-linked militant group, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Victims of alleged abuses involving British soldiers in Kenya have called on the African nation’s parliament to block the renewal of a defense agreement with the UK until outstanding cases are resolved.

Survivors, bereaved families, workers, and residents marched in Nairobi on Wednesday before submitting a petition to the National Assembly. They are demanding that lawmakers implement the recommendations of a November 2025 parliamentary inquiry before approving the pact, including holding British troops accountable for crimes, providing victims with legal aid, and enforcing child-support obligations.

Renewing the agreement, which is currently before parliament, without providing redress would be a “grave disservice” to victims, local daily The Standard reported, citing the petition.

The inquiry documented allegations of rape and sexual assault, deaths, and injuries involving unexploded ordnance, environmental destruction, and mistreatment of Kenyan employees by personnel from the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK).

BATUK, the British Army’s largest contingent in Africa, is based mainly near Nanyuki in Laikipia County. According to the British Army, it comprises about 100 permanent British personnel, 280 rotating troops, and more than 500 Kenyan employees.

Its presence has long faced opposition over alleged abuses and disputes over whether British personnel accused of crimes in Kenya should be prosecuted by Kenyan or UK authorities.

The activists cited the 2012 killing of 21-year-old Agnes Wanjiru, whose body was found in a septic tank at a Nanyuki hotel after she had reportedly spent the evening with British soldiers.

“Those who witnessed the so-called commandos, the white British soldiers, murdering Agnes Wanjiru will not forget that instance, even if the law says that they did not kill her,” activist Booker Omole told The Standard.

BATUK was also blamed for a 2021 wildfire that destroyed more than 12,000 acres at the Lolldaiga Conservancy. London later agreed to pay £2.9 million ($3.9 million) in compensation to thousands of claimants.

The British Ministry of Defense has said it “deeply regrets” problems linked to the unit’s presence and is prepared to investigate new allegations once evidence is provided.

France’s ambassador to the Central African Republic has been disciplined for sexual misconduct with around 30 local women at his official residence in Bangui, according to French media. 

Ambassador Bruno Foucher brought around 30 women between the ages of 20 and 30 into his residence between January 2024 and March 2026, French magazine Le Canard Enchaine reported on Wednesday. These late-night visits, some of which involved the women sleeping over, reportedly alarmed Foucher’s security detail, who alerted his higher-ups in Paris.

The French Foreign Ministry told the Guardian that an investigation was carried out, resulting in “disciplinary proceedings against the ambassador.” These proceedings, the ministry said, are “ongoing.” 

France losing influence in Africa

France’s influence in the CAR has waned dramatically over the past decade. Although the CAR gained independence from France in 1960, Paris continues to control its currency, and France intervened militarily during multiple civil wars in the 2000s and 2010s. However, French troops had been widely seen as incapable of ensuring stability, so President Faustin-Archange Touadera turned to Russia for security assistance following his election in 2016. 

The trajectory of the CAR follows those of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, all of which are former French colonies. All three countries have expelled French troops, with Russia’s Africa Corps stepping in to fight jihadists in Mali, and Russia providing military aid and training to Burkina Faso and Niger. 

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot visited Bangui in March, ending a period of disengagement that he termed “cooling off,” and reassuring Touadera that “the Central African Republic matters to France.” Amid this outreach campaign, Ambassador Foucher’s conduct is an embarrassment to Paris and a potential impediment to diplomacy.

Spain will not discuss the sovereignty of Ceuta and Melilla with Morocco, Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles has said after Rabat publicly renewed its claim to the North African enclaves.

The exchange comes nearly two weeks after tens of thousands of people crossed the border of Ceuta in an unprecedented influx that overwhelmed the city. At least 100 people reportedly died, many while attempting the crossing by sea, while Madrid deployed troops and accelerated returns. Most of those who entered have since been sent back, but between 3,000 and 5,000 remain on Spanish territory, according to local officials.

Moroccan Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi told Asharq TV on Tuesday that Rabat regularly raises the status of Ceuta and Melilla in negotiations with Madrid and seeks a long-term resolution through dialogue.

Spain’s Foreign Ministry issued a separate statement saying the country’s territorial integrity “has not been, and will never be, discussed with anyone.”

Ceuta and Melilla are Spain’s only land territories in Africa and form the European Union’s only land borders with the continent. Morocco has regarded the enclaves as occupied territories since gaining independence in 1956 and argues that sovereignty should ultimately be transferred to Rabat. Spain considers them integral parts of its territory, having controlled Melilla since the 15th century and Ceuta since the 17th.

Relations improved after Madrid endorsed Morocco’s autonomy proposal for the disputed territory in 2022. Rabat, however, has not renounced its claims to Ceuta and Melilla.

Madrid has largely praised the Moroccan authorities for helping repatriate migrants following the July influx, blaming people-smuggling networks for the crisis. The surge came shortly after Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla could not be immediately deported.

Two adolescent lions who were rescued from the illegal wildlife trade in Israel have been relocated to the Animal Defenders International (ADI) Wildlife Sanctuary in South Africa’s Free State province.

The lions, BenTzur and Ori, had been stranded for months due to the conflict in the Middle East, with most flights grounded. Finally, they hitched a ride with the ADI team on a cargo flight from Tel Aviv, which took them on a 50-hour journey via Cairo and Frankfurt before landing in Johannesburg.

According to ADI, over a year ago the 16-month-old lions were seized as tiny cubs by Israel’s Nature & Parks Authority (NPA) during a crackdown on illegally trafficked animals.

“The youngsters had been torn from their mothers, when they should have been suckling, in order to be passed around as ‘trophy pets’ for photos, likes, and shares – the craze being fuelled by social media,” the organisation said.

ADI President Jan Creamer said trophy pets are animals like lions and tigers, and they are taken from their mothers and kept in cruel and unnatural conditions as status symbols. 

“They are treated as fashion accessories for social media likes and then get dumped when the owners get bored, or the animals grow too big, dangerous, and expensive to feed. These young animals suffer miserable lives, caged and in tiny spaces, deprived of their mother’s love, social contact with their own kind, living in basements and on chains when they should be running free,” Creamer said. 

“Social media is providing free advertising for a cruel and abusive trade, with accounts identified by ADI of ‘influencers’ with over six million followers, handling exotic animals, normalising and monetising animal abuse,” it said.

BenTzur and Ori had a lucky escape, and this week made the journey of a lifetime. With very few flights available due to the conflict, they flew from Tel Aviv to Cairo for a two-and-a-half-hour stopover, then on to Frankfurt, Germany, for a 12-hour wait before leaving on their flight to Johannesburg. ADI founders Jan Creamer and Tim Phillips flew with the lions to monitor them, topping up their water and using tongs to give them small pieces of meat prepared in advance through a small hole in the crate.

“The lions travelled well, but it was a long journey, and they were very happy when we finally released them into their house at the ADI Wildlife Sanctuary. They rubbed heads, vocalised, and then curled up together on a nice hay bed to sleep. The other lions at the Sanctuary immediately knew there were new arrivals and announced their presence with roars, which made BenTzur and Ori sit up and listen. They were so young when they were taken; they will not have heard the communications of a lion pride,” Creamer said.

Preparations had been made to account for the young lions arriving from the sweltering heat in Israel to mid-winter in South Africa. They were kept overnight in their heated house and given a light meal.

The lions have adapted very quickly to their new routine, responding to the voices of their carers, coming into their house to be fed. They have been enjoying toys like giant robust-a-balls and catnip sacks.

“All the stress of trying to get them here and the exhaustion of the journey were forgotten as they stepped out onto African soil. They had never walked on grass before and were cautious, then started to stride together through our dry, golden, winter grass, growing in confidence and looking around, hearing the voices of other lions; you could see they were where they were meant to be,” Creamer said. 

“Their instincts took over, and they methodically walked the whole 2.5-acre habitat, mapping it out, noting where everything was, sitting on top of the platforms, investigating the dens underneath and playing with the toys. By the end of their third circuit, they knew where everything was in their territory, and lay on top of the platforms, looking and listening to the roars of their neighbours,” Creamer said. 

ADI said the rescue proved to be very expensive due to months of waiting, the scarcity of flights and the escalating cost of aviation fuel, in addition to building a large secure habitat and a brick-heated house. The charity is now looking to cover the costs of BenTzur and Ori’s food, veterinary care, and care team for hopefully the next 20 years, and is appealing for support for these young lions. Due to inbreeding, early-age malnutrition, and associated genetic problems, as well as their close contact with humans, BenTzur and Ori can never return to the wild.

First published by IOL

Zambians are voting in presidential, parliamentary, and local elections on Thursday, with incumbent President Hakainde Hichilema seeking a second five-year term as a bitter dispute over the burial of his predecessor and longtime rival, Edgar Lungu, continues to overshadow the campaign.

Although 14 presidential candidates are in the race, the contest is widely seen as primarily pitting Hichilema against opposition figure Brian Mundubile, a former senior member of the government of late President Lungu.

Nearly 8.8 million people are registered to vote, according to the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ). Under the Constitution, a presidential candidate must receive more than 50% of valid ballots to win outright; otherwise, the two leading candidates proceed to a runoff.

What has happened since Zambia's 2020 default?

Following the country’s 2020 debt default, Zambia signed a $1.3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt restructuring program though it is reported to owe China, Lusaka’s largest creditor, some $6 billion. However, the standard of living for ordinary citizens remains heavily strained due to painful fiscal austerity measures, high inflation, and severe climate shocks like regional droughts.

Speaking after casting his ballot in central Lusaka, Kantumoya Derrick Mpaka, a Zambian national who studied at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), told RT that voting there had been peaceful and orderly.

Who is Hakainde Hichilema?

Hichilema, 64, is a businessman and leader of the United Party for National Development (UPND). He won the presidency on his sixth attempt in 2021, defeating Lungu by nearly one million votes.

Who is Hichilema’s main challenger, Brian Mundubile?

Hichilema’s main rival Mundubile, 55, is an accountant, lawyer, and former lawmaker. Under Lungu, he served as Northern Province minister and government chief whip. He later became leader of the opposition in parliament.

Mundubile has criticized Hichilema’s economic and human rights record and promised Zambians a larger share of the country’s copper wealth. His political background suggests greater continuity with the China-friendly policies of the Lungu era, during which Beijing financed major infrastructure projects.

He is running for the presidency under the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity banner while leading the Tonse Alliance. The coalition was originally formed around Lungu and brought together several parties seeking to remove the UPND from power.

Mundubile’s most notable political achievement has been reaching an agreement with part of the divided Patriotic Front movement. Makebi Zulu, an ally and former lawyer of Lungu, is his running mate. However, several other opposition figures, including Socialist Party leader Fred M’membe, are running separately, meaning the anti-government vote remains fragmented.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry said investment in critical sectors has increased gross domestic product (GDP) from $19 billion to $40 billion since 2021, generated 7.8% growth, and produced a positive trade balance. The Zambia Statistics Agency, however, put annual growth at 3.8% in 2025, followed by a 7.7% year-on-year expansion in the first quarter of 2026.

Mpaka told RT that the figures do not reflect many voters’ circumstances. “On paper, our economy is doing okay, but in reality people are suffering, especially in rural Zambia, where people are living in poor conditions,” he said, citing a wide gap between rich and poor. High food costs, unemployment, and electricity shortages remain major concerns.

How important is Zambia to the global copper industry?

Hichilema has also introduced free primary and secondary education, recruited tens of thousands of teachers, and attracted billions of dollars in mining investment. A February 2026 World Bank Group report ranks Zambia as Africa’s second-largest and the world’s ninth-largest copper producer. Rising demand for minerals used in electric vehicles and clean-energy technology has intensified international interest.

In May, Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe accused Washington of linking a proposed five-year health package worth up to $2 billion to a critical-minerals agreement favoring US companies.

In foreign policy, Hichilema has strengthened relations with the US and Europe while maintaining extensive economic ties with China. Beijing remains a major creditor and investor in Zambia’s mines and infrastructure, including a planned $1.4 billion renovation of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway.

Relations with Moscow have also continued. In a December interview with RT, Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe described Russia as an “all-weather” friend and characterized bilateral ties as a “strategic partnership,” highlighting cooperation in education, energy, and trade.

Does Zambia favor the East or the West? 

Andrey Maslov, head of the Center for African Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, told RT on Thursday that regardless of the election results, any leader of Zambia will follow a multilateral policy.

“Larger than any country in Europe, Zambia anchors two rival transport, logistics, and resource strategies: The US seeks to draw Zambia’s resources toward the Atlantic Ocean via Angola, while China finds it more advantageous to develop the Tanzania-Zambia corridor,” he said. “The country itself is attempting to balance these interests and benefit from these contradictions.”

Maslov noted that Washington might view Hichilema as capable of containing China’s expansion and preventing Zambia from aligning with alternative centers of power. However, the expert predicted that any Zambian leader would pursue a multilateral foreign policy while remaining mindful of public opinion, including opposition voters.

"Zambia is traditionally perceived as a source of copper and cobalt for global markets. Its role is, however, gradually evolving – for instance, the country has already become an exporter of electricity," Maslov adds.

Why is the burial of EdgarLungu controversial?

Former President Edgar Lungu died while receiving medical treatment in South Africa in June 2025, but his remains have not been buried following a dispute between his family and the Zambian authorities.

The dispute has nevertheless entered the election campaign. Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, who previously acted as the Lungu family’s spokesperson, have promised to give the former president a dignified burial if elected.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have renewed their assault on the strategically important city of El Obeid, while drone strikes have been reported in several parts of the country, including the capital region, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing witnesses and local sources.

Eight drones targeted El Obeid, prompting the Sudanese military to activate its air defenses, according to the news agency. Medical sources cited by Reuters said two people were killed and several others wounded.

Drone attacks were also reported in Khartoum, Bahri, Atbara, and other locations, with witnesses saying one UAV crashed into the courtyard of a mosque in Bahri. The report said neither the RSF nor the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had immediately claimed responsibility for the strikes.

El Obeid has become a key flashpoint in the battle for Sudan’s Kordofan region. The city is home to roughly half a million people, including around 100,000 displaced by the conflict, according to Reuters.

Fighting has also intensified hundreds of kilometers to the southeast in Sudan’s Blue Nile region. RSF forces and their allies from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) launched an assault on the border town of Geisan this week, triggering clashes with the Sudanese army. 

The latest fighting follows a series of battlefield gains by the SAF. The Sudanese army recently recaptured Kurmuk in Blue Nile state and, in late July, regained several areas in North Kordofan from the RSF, including Bara, Jabra al-Sheikh, and Um Sayala. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan subsequently visited frontline positions in the region.

Scientists have identified a new variant of the Ebola-causing Bundibugyo virus behind the 2026 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and Uganda, according to a study published in Nature Medicine on Monday.

Bundibugyo strain is not new: variants of the pathogen caused outbreaks in Uganda in 2007-2008 and the DR Congo in 2012. However, researchers found that the strain circulating in 2026 began with a new transmission of the virus from an animal to humans, rather than the re-emergence of strains responsible for previous epidemics in the region. The animal source remains unknown.

The conclusion is based on an analysis of 22 viral genomes obtained from infected people in the DR Congo and Uganda, which formed a distinct genetic cluster separate from variants linked to the previous outbreaks.

The researchers called for broader local diagnostic capacity and expanded genomic surveillance to detect future outbreaks earlier.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has described the current virus as the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded in the DR Congo, surpassing the 2018-2020 outbreak. The agency’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last week that the disease was spreading faster than efforts to contain it. 

The outbreak had spread across 53 health zones in five provinces of the DR Congo as of August 10, with Ituri remaining the main epicenter, according to the country’s Health Ministry. The authorities have recorded 4,449 confirmed cases and 2,061 deaths, putting the fatality rate at 46.3%. 

A severe El Nino could deepen the humanitarian crisis across Southern Africa by worsening drought, hunger, water shortages, and disease outbreaks, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has warned.

SADC Executive Secretary Elias Magosi said seasonal forecasts pointed to a high likelihood of an El Nino event that could surpass the intensity and impact of the 2023/24 phenomenon.

Addressing the opening of the SADC Council of Ministers meeting in Durban on Wednesday, Magosi said the region needed to strengthen its preparedness as climate-related disasters continued to threaten communities and infrastructure.

”Earlier this year, devastating floods claimed lives, damaged critical infrastructure, displaced communities, and disrupted trade across parts of our region.” 

Magosi said the expected El Nino could further worsen food and nutrition insecurity while increasing fertilizer and energy costs, putting pressure on government finances and increasing humanitarian needs.

“These interconnected shocks threaten to undermine hard-won development gains and hinder our aspirations for regional integration, industrialization, and inclusive economic growth.” 

”We must therefore move from reacting to disasters to investing in resilience through strengthened early warning systems, anticipatory planning and action, climate-resilient infrastructure, disaster risk financing and resilient recovery efforts,” he said.

Stronger early warning systems and anticipatory planning would allow governments and regional structures to prepare for potential emergencies before they escalated.

Magosi also highlighted the need for infrastructure capable of withstanding climate-related shocks, as well as financing mechanisms that could support countries during disasters and the recovery period that followed.

”Adequate financial and human resources must be provided to enable the Centre to co-ordinate contingency planning, emergency response and recovery efforts effectively and swiftly,” Magosi stressed.

More than 200 armed bandits launched an attack on a security base in northwestern Nigeria on Monday, killing at least 30 people, including police personnel, civilians, and a local vigilante, the authorities have said.

The “large group” of assailants, riding motorcycles, raided the Makuku camp in Kebbi State’s Sakaba Local Government Area at about 6 AM local time, the Nigeria Police Force said in a statement on Tuesday. The facility houses personnel from the Special Intervention Squad and Police Mobile Force.

Police reinforcements, backed by the Nigerian Army and Nigerian Air Force, engaged the assailants in a “fierce” gun battle lasting more than two hours, according to the statement. “The force sadly lost ten personnel in the line of duty, while one vigilante member and two civilians also lost their lives in the attack,” the police said.

Police ⁠spokesperson Ani Iniedu said at least 17 bandits were also killed and several motorcycles destroyed. Inspector-General of Police Olatunji Rilwan Disu praised the “gallantry and sacrifice” of the officers and ordered additional forces into Sakaba and neighboring communities.

Africa’s most populous nation has battled overlapping security crises for more than a decade, with militants, including those linked to Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province, carrying out attacks and mass abductions.

On Sunday, the Nigerian Army announced that troops have rescued 33 people abducted by gunmen in Zamfara. It also followed the August 5 rescue of 308 abductees in northern Nigeria – the country’s largest single-day rescue operation.

Last October, gunmen ambushed a security patrol in neighboring Zamfara State, killing five police officers and three members of a local paramilitary force, the authorities said.

A boat carrying dozens of people has capsized on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe, prompting a major rescue operation, police said on Tuesday.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) initially said the vessel had 90 passengers and five crew members on board. The authorities did not immediately provide official figures for those rescued, injured, or killed, saying the information would be released once operations at the scene are completed.

However, local outlet ZBC News later reported additional details, citing officials involved in the emergency response. The outlet said at least 15 bodies had been recovered and more than 70 people rescued, while nearly 30 remained unaccounted for.

ZBC cited Mashonaland West Permanent Secretary for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Josphat Jaji, as saying that 114 tickets had been issued for the journey. The cause of the accident has yet to be officially established.

Lake Kariba, one of the world’s largest man-made reservoirs, lies along the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia and is widely used for fishing, tourism and passenger transport.

The lake has seen several serious boating accidents recently. In March 2025, another boat capsized during a storm, leaving one fisherman missing while another survived by clinging to floating cooler boxes.

Watch 😢

Breaking news Zimbabwe

Boat capsizes in Lake Kariba. Over 90 people on board. Reports say over a dozen bodies retrieved, almost 40 still missing, others have been rescued

Guys we need to ban these types of boats in Zimbabwe. Zero life jackets eish pic.twitter.com/HLz6DElvdU

— Hulu (@Pachisolife) August 12, 2026

Fatal boat accidents are not uncommon elsewhere in Africa, with overloading and inadequate safety measures frequently cited among the contributing factors.

At least 14 suspected illegal miners have been killed and eight others injured after the walls of an excavation collapsed at a dumping site in South Africa’s North West province, the authorities have said.

The suspected ‘zama zamas’ – a local term for illegal miners – were digging for platinum-group metals at Nkaneng, near the mining city of Rustenburg, when walls of heaped earth gave way on Monday night, the South African Police Service (SAPS) said in a statement. Police said a company had been granted a permit to extract the metals at the site.

“[The] authorities are continuing to assess the situation amid concerns that an unknown number of illegal miners may still be trapped underground,” North West provincial police commissioner Lieutenant General Arthur Adams said.
According to the commissioner, most of the dead are believed to be Basotho nationals from neighboring Lesotho.

SAPS said three of the injured were arrested on suspicion of illegal mining after being discharged from hospital, while five remained under police guard as they received treatment.

Mikateko Mahlaule, chairman of the parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Mineral and Petroleum Resources, called the deaths a “painful reminder” of the hazards surrounding illegal mining and demanded stronger action against the industry. He also urged the authorities to expand lawful opportunities for small-scale and artisanal miners while enforcing health, safety, and environmental rules.

#sapsNW [NORTH WEST SAPS CONFIRMS 14 DEATHS OF ILLEGAL MINERS]

The Provincial Commissioner of the South African Police Service (#SAPS) in the North West, Lieutenant General Arthur Adams, has confirmed the deaths of 14 illegal miners at the Nkaneng dumping site in Bojanala… pic.twitter.com/jvAvzgxDiZ

— SA Police Service 🇿🇦 (@SAPoliceService) August 11, 2026

Illegal miners in South Africa are commonly called zama zamas, a Zulu expression loosely translated as ‘chance takers’. Tens of thousands are believed to work in abandoned commercial mines or makeshift excavations, often without safety equipment and sometimes underground for weeks. The authorities have linked parts of the illicit industry to criminal syndicates, gang violence, undocumented migration and illegal firearms.

South Africa launched operation Vala Umgodi (Close the Hole) in December 2023 to target illegal mining networks. The campaign is led by SAPS, with 2,200 South African National Defense Force personnel deployed in March 2026 to support operations across five provinces, including North West. As of June 2025, police said the operation had led to more than 27,000 arrests.

Police restricted supplies to force the miners to surface, prompting fierce criticism of the authorities. A court-ordered operation eventually recovered 78 bodies and brought 246 survivors above ground.

Malian forces have killed more than 50 terrorists and wounded several others while repelling a large-scale attack on an army base in the central city of San, the Sahel state’s military has said.

The assault began early Sunday morning, when fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate, and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) attacked the base of the Malian Army’s 23rd Infantry Regiment, according to an official statement on Tuesday.

The Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) said the militants used heavy machine guns, kamikaze drones, payload-dropping drones, and two armored vehicles, one of which breached the base’s perimeter wall.

“The vigorous and coordinated response of the defending units made it possible to repel the assaults, neutralize several terrorists who had infiltrated the base, and restore control of the facility,” FAMa stated.

The military acknowledged that Malian soldiers were killed and others injured in the clashes but did not provide figures.

In an earlier statement on Sunday, FAMa said its troops, backed by partners, had struck militant positions near Abeibara in the Kidal Region, Razelma in the Timbuktu Region, and northwest of Mahou in the Koutiala Region over the weekend.

The army said armed vehicles, drones, and motorcycles belonging to the militants were destroyed. A group accused of participating in the San attack was later located 17 km from the city, pursued and killed, according to the statement. Some of its equipment was reportedly destroyed and the rest recovered.

Last month, Malian troops backed by Russia’s Africa Corps retook the strategic northern town of Anefis after nearly a week of fighting with JNIM and FLA forces.

The US has tightened travel restrictions on people arriving from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) as the country struggles with a rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak.

US citizens and nationals who have been in the DR Congo within the previous 21 days are currently barred from returning to the US on commercial flights. The restrictions come as the outbreak has surpassed 4,000 confirmed cases and the death toll continues to rise.

Despite the increasingly stringent measures, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to assess the overall risk to the American public as low, with no cases linked to the outbreak confirmed in the US. 

How do the US Ebola travel restrictions work?

The US has progressively tightened travel restrictions since the Ebola outbreak was declared in May, citing the risk that infected travelers could enter the country before developing symptoms.

The CDC initially suspended entry for foreign nationals who had been in the DR Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan during the previous 21 days, later extending the restrictions to US lawful permanent residents.

Washington has since gone further, barring anyone who has been in the DR Congo within the previous 21 days from boarding commercial flights bound for the US, including American citizens and nationals. Affected travelers have been advised to remain outside the country until the 21-day period has elapsed.

How serious is the Ebola outbreak?

The latest figures from the DR Congo show a sharp increase in infections and deaths in just one week. On August 1, health authorities reported 3,748 confirmed cases and 1,657 deaths. By August 8, the figures had risen to 4,294 cases and 1,960 deaths.

The case fatality rate also increased from 44.2% to 45.6%, while the number of affected health zones rose from 49 to 53. The WHO has described the epidemic as the largest Ebola outbreak the country has ever faced, surpassing the 2018-2020 outbreak.

However, some response indicators have improved. The number of recoveries rose from 708 to 849 between August 1 and August 8, while the share of identified contacts being monitored increased from 80.1% to 84.6%. 

Treatment capacity is also being strengthened. The UN says a new 100-bed Ebola treatment center in Bunia is set to become the largest in the country, while Doctors Without Borders says it is operating seven treatment centers with more than 480 beds.

Are other countries imposing Ebola travel restrictions?

Other countries have introduced varying restrictions and screening measures. Bahrain has restricted entry for travelers with recent stays in affected countries, while Uganda has suspended flights to and from the DR Congo. Russia has stopped short of imposing an entry ban but has stepped up sanitary and quarantine controls at border checkpoints, while several countries in Africa and Asia have introduced additional screening and health monitoring for travelers arriving from affected areas.

Does the WHO recommend Ebola travel bans?

Despite the measures introduced by the US, Canada, and other countries, the WHO has advised against restricting travel to countries affected by the outbreak.

Under temporary recommendations issued in May, the agency urged neighboring countries to keep their borders open and advised all countries against suspending flights or denying entry to travelers arriving from areas where the Bundibugyo virus is circulating. Instead, it recommended strengthened surveillance, health information for travelers, and measures to rapidly identify and manage suspected cases.

The WHO has maintained that position as the outbreak has expanded. In its latest assessment, the agency said the risk remains very high within the DR Congo and high at the regional level, but low globally.

Why did the US set up an Ebola quarantine center in Kenya?

The decision has proved controversial in Kenya, which had recorded no cases linked to the current outbreak when the facility was established. The project triggered protests and a legal challenge, with a Kenyan court temporarily blocking the facility.

Nigerian professor of virology Oyewale Tomori has questioned why the facility should be reserved for Americans. “If that center is open, it should be open to everybody, not just Americans,” Tomori told RT. “If any Kenyan gets any infection, it should be treated in that place.”

UK officials announced last month that they had cancelled a planned British army exercise in Kenya after the latter’s government did not grant the required permissions. The UK had said that the exercise, which normally happens in Laikipia, would instead be moved to another location. The announcement sparked speculation about the future of the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) between Kenya and the UK.

Nelson Koech, chairperson of Kenya’s National Assembly’s departmental committee on defense, intelligence and foreign relations, told RT that the delay in issuing the approvals was not primarily about the military training itself but about scrutiny related to the new agreement that is intended to replace the existing framework governing British military activities in Kenya.

On July 28, Kenya and the UK announced that they had reached an understanding allowing military training to resume.

The new agreement is still not signed, however, because the parliament is blocking it.

The question of crime and punishment

When Kenya gained independence in 1963, the UK maintained its military presence in the African country. The security relationship has, over the decades, evolved around British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), the UK’s permanent training support unit in Kenya.

In 2015, the two countries signed a five-year agreement on defense cooperation in Nairobi to replace older arrangements (it was ratified in 2016). It established the legal framework governing the presence of UK military personnel in Kenya, including training, logistics, and also criminal jurisdiction over British troops.

In the agreement, Britain retained powers to investigate and prosecute officers accused of committing serious crimes such as murder and rape. This remains one of the major issues that has stalled the signing of a new agreement.

The new agreement (from 2021) outlined a broader framework for defense cooperation. However, unlike the previous agreement, which was ratified by Kenya’s parliament, the new one has never entered into force. Kenya’s legislature withheld ratification after raising reservations over key points, particularly those relating to criminal jurisdiction over British soldiers, accountability for alleged abuses, and the protection of Kenyan communities affected by BATUK activities.

Kenya wants to have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute British soldiers accused of committing serious crimes. The 2016 agreement continues to operate through mutual extensions, while negotiations on a revised text go on.

The murder of Agnes Wanjiru

The issue became increasingly controversial more than a decade ago following allegations of misconduct by British troops, including the 2012 murder of Agnes Wanjiru, claims of sexual abuse, environmental damage, and injuries linked to military training.

In March 2012, Wanjiru, a Kenyan woman who was 21 at the time, was found murdered moments after she had been spotted in the company of British soldiers in the town of Nanyuki, where BATUK is housed, about 200km north of Nairobi.

Wanjiru’s body was discovered in a hotel septic tank. Soldiers from BATUK, which hosts up to six British infantry battalions for training each year, were blamed for her death.

In a 2024 report, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said investigations into reported rights violations are often frustrated by both the Kenyan and UK authorities. In the report, KNCHR documented cases of reported killings, alleged sexual violence and exploitation, arbitrary arrests, environmental degradation, and infringement on community land.

In August 2023, Kenya’s parliamentary defense, intelligence and foreign relations committee officially launched an inquiry into BATUK activities. The probe was to look into human rights violations by British soldiers, including the murder of Wanjiru and the Lolldaiga community conservancy fire incident in 2015, which happened amid BATUK activities in the area.

The committee collected views from residents, victims, the government and community leaders. Two years of investigation saw the committee receive submissions from the Inspector General of Police, the Ministry of Defense, the Human Rights Commission, and the Anti-Corruption Commission. Members of the public from Isiolo, Samburu, and Laikipia, regions where BATUK soldiers operate, also shared their views.

In November of last year, the parliamentary committee tabled a report on the inquiry into BATUK’s conduct. The committee concluded that stronger accountability measures were needed before a new agreement could be approved.

“It makes no sense to deny Kenya the right to prosecute crimes committed within its boundaries”

Nelson Koech, the chairperson of the parliamentary committee that launched the inquiry, told RT that the postponement of the signing of a new agreement was partly due to disagreements over the legal jurisdiction for British troops stationed in Kenya.

“The question of who should investigate and prosecute British soldiers accused of crimes like murder and rape remains contentious and is likely to drag the ongoing negotiations and eventual drafting of the final agreement,” stressed Koech.

According to Koech, while Britain wants to retain primary jurisdiction over offenses committed by its personnel while on official duty, Kenya wants to have absolute authority to investigate and prosecute British soldiers on its territory.

“It makes no legal or sovereignty sense to deny Kenya the right to investigate and prosecute crimes committed within its boundaries,” he told RT.

Speaking on the delay in signing the new agreement, Georgina Woodhouse-Hills, head of communications at the British High Commission in Nairobi, told RT that the UK “deeply values the defense relationship with Kenya, which delivers a broad and mutually beneficial program of cooperation in training, education and capability development, geared towards countering shared threats.”

“The Defense Cooperation Agreement underpins this relationship,” she said, adding that British authorities are working closely with the government of Kenya.

“The new agreement will set the scale of ambition for our partnership with Kenya for the next five years,” she told RT.

There has been growing public scrutiny of BATUK following years of allegations of human rights violations, including murder, sexual assault, environmental damage and military training fires, unexploded ordnance injuring civilians, and compensation disputes involving affected communities and victims.

BATUK requested that the Kenyan High Court dismiss the lawsuit filed by Wanjiru’s family in November 2023, arguing that Kenyan courts lacked jurisdiction over any case involving a UK Army unit in the country.

Wanjiru’s family felt closer to justice in April 2025, when UK Defence Secretary John Healey visited them and pledged full support for the investigation. Last June, a British soldier was finally arrested for allegedly raping a woman inside a bar in Nanyuki. He was later taken back to the UK.

On September 16, 2025, Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) said that a British court had issued a warrant of arrest for Robert James Purkiss, the soldier accused of killing Wanjiru. Later ODPP confirmed the arrest of Purkiss in the UK.

Mbiyu Kamau, a lawyer representing Wanjiru’s family, had been contesting the British Army’s argument that its soldiers cannot be prosecuted in Kenya for the murder.

Additionally, in 2024, Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai, in collaboration with a British law firm, filed a case in a UK court on behalf of ten biracial children, seeking to compel the British Army to reveal the identities of the soldiers who fathered them. Last August, a court in the UK delivered a landmark ruling when it ordered the release of the names, contacts, and last known addresses of 11 British soldiers alleged to have fathered and abandoned children in Kenya.

What does Kenya want?

In a report tabled before the National Assembly in 2023, the Koech-led committee recommended approval of the agreement. Still, only after amendments were made to key provisions did it say they conflict with the constitution.

The committee specifically proposed changes to Articles 6(5) and 23 of the agreement. Under this article, lawmakers want murder expressly included among offences that fall under the jurisdiction of Kenyan courts. Under the current agreement, any British soldier accused of murder while on duty in Kenya can only be investigated and prosecuted by the UK under UK law.

The committee also wants Article 23 amended to require BATUK to undertake mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs in communities where it operates.

Although the article requires visiting British troops to respect local customs, compensate for damage and address sexual exploitation, it, as of now, contains no obligation for structured community investment.

The committee is also pushing for stronger accountability measures, including jurisdiction over serious offenses, enhanced protection of local communities and implementation of recommendations arising from the BATUK inquiry.

Civil society organizations have petitioned Kenya’s parliament, arguing that ratifying the new defense agreement with the UK without stronger accountability provisions would entrench legal immunity for foreign troops.

The petitioners are pushing for Kenya to have the power to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed on its soil and for communities affected by BATUK activities to be given stronger legal protections.

Human rights activist Bob Njagi, leader of the Free Kenya Movement and one of the petitioners, says the agreement must uphold Kenya’s sovereignty.

“Any agreement must recognize that Kenya is a sovereign state and must be allowed to independently handle any crimes committed by foreign troops against its people,” Njagi told RT.

The petitioners are also pushing for independent investigations into unresolved cases linked to BATUK operations, compensation for victims and their families, and greater public participation in negotiating any future defense agreement.

“We want the government to carry out an audit of foreign military training activities in the country before a new DCA is signed,” stresses Njagi.

Meanwhile, a 2025 investigation by the British Army found that some UK soldiers stationed at the BATUK base continue to engage the services of sex workers despite being banned from doing so.

The report said that the BATUK soldiers used sex workers “at a low or moderate” rate and called for more work to stamp out the practice. The investigation, which was commissioned in October 2024, covered a period of more than two years, dating back to 2022.

Former speaker of Kenyan parliament Justin Muturi says the UK cannot continue using the argument that BATUK brings economic benefits to local communities while turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed by its soldiers.

“Kenya must not give in, and the parliamentary committee must stand its ground and ensure that the recommendations they made are fully agreed upon and captured before any new agreement can be signed,” he concluded.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) has warned that it could shut down the country’s largest operating refinery following repeated drone attacks on oil facilities in the western city of Zawiya.

The latest attack on Monday targeted an oil-blending and packaging plant operated by the Zawiya Oil Refining Company, according to the NOC. The drone fell near its main oil tank and a pipeline network used to manufacture products for the domestic market, but caused no casualties or material damage, according to the NOC.

“If these attacks continue, [the board] will be compelled to declare force majeure and completely halt operations at the refinery,” the state oil company said on Tuesday, urging firefighting and safety crews to remain on high alert.

The NOC said a previous strike hit a gasoline tank belonging to its subsidiary Brega Oil Marketing Company, igniting a major fire. The tank, which contained around 4.5 million liters of gasoline, later “collapsed completely,” it added.

On Saturday, a strike damaged a tank holding untreated naphtha, creating two holes and causing part of its contents to leak, the company reported.

The corporation declared the highest state of emergency in the area on Monday and called on the authorities to investigate the attacks and bring those responsible to justice. No group has claimed responsibility.

#Zawiya | Two fuel storage tanks at Brega Oil Marketing Company’s Zawiya Oil Depot .. one containing gasoline and the other kerosene .. were struck by an FPV drone, causing fires at the facility.

A damage assessment is ongoing.#zawia pic.twitter.com/vHx5aabr3Z

— Mohamed Elganga (@Elganga90) August 10, 2026

Located around 40 km west of the capital Tripoli, the Zawiya refinery can process about 120,000 barrels per day and is connected to the 300,000-barrel-per-day Sharara oil field. It is currently Libya’s largest functioning refinery.

The facility has previously been caught up in the country’s chronic insecurity. In December 2024, clashes between armed groups damaged several storage tanks and started major fires, prompting the NOC to declare force majeure – a provision allowing it to suspend contractual obligations in extraordinary circumstances.

In August 2024, the eastern-based authorities closed oil fields and terminals during a dispute over control of Libya’s central bank. The NOC lifted force majeure that October after an agreement on the bank’s leadership.

The renewed violence comes as Libya seeks to revive foreign energy investment. In 2025, the NOC launched the country’s first oil-and-gas exploration bidding round in 17 years, offering 20 onshore and offshore blocks.

President Donald Trump must end the US blockade of Cuba as fuel shortages cause severe power cuts and deepen the island’s humanitarian crisis, South African anti-apartheid cleric Michael Lapsley has said.

Lapsley is traveling to Havana to address a colloquium marking the centenary of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro’s birth. Castro died in 2016.

His call to end the blockade is contained in the text of the address, titled “I Am a Fidelist”, which he sent to IOL before leaving.

Lapsley is canon for healing and reconciliation at St George’s Cathedral and honorary life president of the Friends of Cuba Society, which he helped set up ahead of SA’s first democratic election in 1994.

Washington has run an embargo on Cuba since 1962. In January, US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over Cuba and moved to choke off its fuel, blocking oil tankers bound for the island and threatening tariffs against any country that kept supplying it.

In May, Cuba’s energy and mines minister, Vicente de la O Levy, said the country had run out of diesel and fuel oil, leaving only gas from its own wells. Blackouts have hit the whole island since March. UN human rights experts called the fuel blockade a serious violation of international law and said it amounted to energy starvation. The General Assembly voted 165 to seven, with 12 abstentions, to end the embargo.

Havana puts the damage to its economy over the year to February at $8bn. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both raised the prospect of military action in May, with Rubio calling Cuba a national security threat and Trump saying he was likely to be the president to act.

Cuba trained SA doctors under an agreement between Castro and the late former president Nelson Mandela, and sent its Henry Reeve Brigade of medics to SA during the Covid-19 pandemic.

”Never in human history has there been a country who has trained doctors as a principal export,” Lapsley said.

”I have no doubt that what the revolution achieved in the area of healthcare makes God smile.”

”We do not forget that, unlike our colonisers who plundered our resources, Cuba only took back to Cuba their dead comrades,” he said.

The names of the Cuban dead are recorded at Freedom Park in Pretoria.

Lapsley said the apartheid state told him Cuba was a godless society. ”At the time the apartheid army fought Cuban internationalist forces in Angola, Sunday Times had a headline, ‘I killed Cubans for Christ’,” he stressed.

”SA soldiers were shocked to find that some dead Cuban soldiers were carrying bibles.”

Lapsley titled his address “I Am a Fidelist”, after a line Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used when he was asked whether Castro was a true communist. Khrushchev replied that he did not know, but did know that he himself was a Fidelist.

Lapsley said Christians in the West had been arguing about the wrong thing for decades. ”Sometimes in the West the question is asked whether it is possible for a Christian to be a socialist,” he said. ”I think it is the wrong question. We should rather be asking if it is possible for a Christian to be a capitalist.”

”Among my first visitors was the Palestinian Ambassador offering to pay my medical treatment and the Ambassador of Cuba inviting me to come to Cuba for medical treatment,” he said.

First published by IOL

Mass graves containing the bodies of 25 civilians have been found in Kurmuk in Sudan’s Blue Nile region after the army retook the town, Kurmuk commissioner Abdel Aty Mohamed al Faki has said.

Al Faki accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of executing the victims, local news outlets reported on Sunday. The dead include women, children, and hospital workers, according to the commissioner.

Army units discovered the graves during clearing operations in northeastern Kurmuk, more than a month after government forces regained control of the town. The victims were killed near Jebel Fankat, a hill that the RSF used to launch suicide drones, the Sudan Tribune reported.

The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF began in April 2023. Fighting has since spread across the country and forced millions of people from their homes.

The recapture of Kurmuk came as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) made gains in other parts of Sudan. In late July, the army regained several areas in North Kordofan from the RSF, including Bara, Jabra al-Sheikh, and Um Sayala. Later, Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan visited frontline positions in the region.

The SAF has regained other key areas during the war. In 2025, the army retook Khartoum and later declared the entire capital region free of RSF forces. 

However, Sudan’s wider humanitarian crisis has continued to worsen. Earlier this month, International Federation of Red Cross special envoy Derk Segaar called for more international support. “Sudan is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, yet it is also one of its most overlooked,” he said. 

Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region is on the brink of renewed war as violence continues across several other parts of the country, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said.

Tigray was devastated by a war between federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) from 2020 until a peace agreement was signed in 2022. The conflict killed about 600,000 people and displaced millions, according to Olusegun Obasanjo, the African Union’s lead mediator in the peace negotiations.

In a statement on Sunday, Tedros said three years of armed conflict in the northern Amhara region has cost “countless lives,” while the sprawling Oromia region surrounding the capital Addis Ababa continues to “bleed.” He added that the northern Afar region has been drawn into the unrest and Benishangul-Gumuz remains gripped by violence.

“War only brings death, destruction, displacement, and deprivation. Ethiopians deserve better,” Tedros wrote on X. He urged the federal government and all regional leaders “to choose dialogue over guns, and to pursue real political solutions.” 

#Ethiopia needs peace, not more war.

For three years, armed conflict in Amhara has cost countless lives. Oromia continues to bleed. Tigray teeters back into open fighting, Afar has been drawn in, and Benishangul-Gumuz remains gripped by violence too.

Enough. I urge the federal… pic.twitter.com/NHqGsOygEe

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) August 9, 2026

The WHO chief’s warning follows reports of fighting between the Ethiopian National Defense Force and Tigrayan forces near Shererina in western Tigray on August 1. The Tigray regional authorities accused federal troops of launching a ground and air offensive.

Ethiopian Irrigation and Lowlands Minister Abraham Belay accused the TPLF of “opening the war” near Shererina and “driving Tigray’s young people and children into a purposeless war they do not understand, causing them to fall like leaves.” He warned of worse consequences if the fighting doesn’t stop.

Tedros, a former Ethiopian health and foreign minister from Tigray, said in December 2022 that his uncle had been “murdered” along with more than 50 other villagers amid continuing violence following the peace agreement.

The US has tightened travel rules for people returning from Ebola-affected parts of Africa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday.  

US citizens and nationals who have been in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) over a period of 21 days before departing for the US will not be allowed to board commercial flights bound for the US. The restriction also applies to passengers whose flights stopped in DR Congo, even if they never left the aircraft. Those affected are being told to remain outside the US until more than 21 days have elapsed since leaving DR Congo.  

Americans returning from Uganda and South Sudan can still travel home, but their flights must be routed through one of four designated airports: Washington Dulles, Atlanta, Houston, or New York’s JFK.   

There, travelers will face CDC screening that includes questions about their travel and symptoms, temperature checks and observation for signs of illness. 

Russia has stopped short of imposing an entry ban but has stepped up sanitary and quarantine controls at border checkpoints as part of its response to the outbreak. 

The measures come as an Ebola outbreak, which was declared on May 15, continues to roil DR Congo. It involves the Bundibugyo strain of the virus for which there are currently no approved vaccines or targeted treatments available. 

At least 13 civilians have been killed and 14 others abducted in an attack on a village in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo blamed on the Islamic State-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), multiple outlets reported on Saturday.

The assailants entered Banana Ecole, about 20 km from Mambasa territory in Ituri province, on the evening of August 7, looting and burning homes, local outlet Actualite reported, citing rights group Protection Plus.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. However, local witnesses attributed the raid to the ADF based on the tactics used by the attackers.

“This death toll of 13 civilians is only provisional because most residents aren’t responding to calls, and searches are continuing in other surrounding villages,” Marie-Noelle Anotane, the head of the New Civil Society of Congo/Mambasa, told AP.

The attack has left residents facing a choice between remaining amid the violence or fleeing elsewhere in Ituri – the province worst affected by an Ebola outbreak that has killed 1,916 people, according to the authorities.

In late July, suspected ADF raids on several communities in Mambasa reportedly killed at least 27 civilians and left 11 missing. Weeks earlier, militants killed more than 20 people in Mbau, North Kivu province. In April, the Congolese Army confirmed another 43 deaths in Mambasa despite joint Congolese-Ugandan operations against the group.

The latest violence comes amid an escalating security crisis across eastern DR Congo, where the authorities are confronting the ADF and numerous other armed groups, including M23. Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels, who have intensified their fighting with government forces since January 2025. The violence has killed or injured thousands and triggered a record 9.7 million internal displacement movements in 2025, according to UN and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre data.

Violent clashes between M23 and the Wazalendo, an alliance of pro-government militias, were reported in Shango, North Kivu, earlier this month. In July, M23-allied fighters claimed to have captured the strategic Point Zero base in South Kivu’s Mwenga territory. M23 had previously seized Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu the following month.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has unanimously reaffirmed its support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino despite mounting calls for his resignation over a failed proposal to sell a stake in the World Cup’s commercial operations to private investors.

CAF’s Executive Committee announced its position following a meeting on Thursday, thanking Infantino for his support for African football.

The endorsement provides important backing for Infantino after football bodies in Europe, Asia, and North and Central America opposed his now-withdrawn investment plan. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is now seeking a challenger to his presidency.

CAF President Patrice Motsepe defended the decision, saying that when people have been “loyal to you,” one should “never stab them in the back.”

All 54 CAF member associations had already agreed in April to support Infantino’s reelection for the 2027–2031 term, giving him the backing of one of FIFA’s largest voting blocs.

Under the disputed proposal, FIFA would have created a commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise to control major revenue-generating operations, including those linked to the World Cup. FIFA had sought to raise around $4.2 billion by selling a minority stake in the business, which it valued at $20 billion.

FIFA said that the proposal would provide each of its 211 member associations with $20 million and increase funding for football development. Critics argued that it was developed without adequate consultation and could place part of the World Cup’s commercial future under private control.

The organization, however, withdrew the plan on Saturday after concluding that it had “created divisions” that were “no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.” UEFA has since threatened legal action over the process through which the proposal was developed.

On Friday, the Norwegian Football Federation became the first national association to call directly for the FIFA chief’s resignation.

“There is no trust in Infantino now,” federation president Lise Klaveness told the Guardian, adding that there was “no way back” for him.

Norway has said its planned complaint to FIFA’s Ethics Committee will cover both the award to Trump and the failed investment proposal.

FIFA has apologized for mistakes in handling the proposal and promised to review its decision-making processes. CAF welcomed the apology and endorsed the planned review.

Infantino, who has led FIFA since 2016, is seeking another term in an election scheduled to take place in Morocco in March 2027.

Kenya’s main veterinary professional body has called for urgent testing of agricultural produce from areas surrounding Amboseli National Park after preliminary findings linked the deaths of 15 elephants to cyanide poisoning.

The Kenya Veterinary Association (KVA) wrote on X on Thursday that the incident could have implications beyond wildlife conservation, particularly after tomatoes were reportedly found in the animals’ stomachs.

The elephants are suspected of having consumed contaminated produce from farms in the Kimana Sanctuary and Kuku Group Ranch areas after preliminary tests detected cyanide, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). The exact source of the chemical, however, has yet to be established.

“If cyanide-laced tomatoes are potent enough to drop a herd of elephants, what happens when this same crop reaches local markets and Kenyan dinner tables?” the KVA warned.

Kimana, near Amboseli, is an agricultural area producing tomatoes, onions, and French beans for markets including the capital, Nairobi. Local farmers have disputed suggestions that cyanide is used in routine farming activities, according to AP.

The KVA also linked the incident to increasing human-wildlife conflict around Amboseli, where expanding agriculture has brought farms into areas used by elephants in search of food and water. It called for improved land-use planning, protected wildlife corridors, and non-lethal methods of keeping animals away from crops.

Crop-raiding by elephants has been a persistent source of conflict with farming communities in Kenya. In July, the KWS began relocating five animals from the Mwea National Reserve after repeated incursions into surrounding farms, where the animals had been destroying crops. In April 2025, more than 20 elephants strayed from the Rimoi Game Reserve and devastated a nearby fruit farm, destroying more than 600 mango and 160 papaya trees.

The KWS initially identified a suspected toxic substance as the possible cause. Subsequent preliminary laboratory analysis detected cyanide, though investigators have yet to establish its source.

Dozens of health workers fighting an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) abandoned several medical facilities on Thursday to protest months of unpaid wages.

The Central African country has struggled to contain the Bundibugyo strain, which has infected around 4,000 people and killed more than 1,800 since the outbreak was declared in May. The World Health Organization (WHO) has described it as the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record.

The workers rallied outside the governor’s office in Bunia, the capital of eastern Ituri province, news agencies reported. Ituri accounts for nearly 90% of confirmed cases, according to the WHO and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

The protesters, including nurses treating Ebola patients, said they had not received wages or bonuses since mid-May. AP reported that they left several health facilities to join Thursday’s demonstration, further disrupting the response.

“With this way of managing things, Ebola will not end in this province,” protester Edouige Makosi told the news agency, urging the authorities to resolve the dispute quickly.

The action followed earlier protests in July, when Ebola response workers demonstrated outside three treatment centers in Bunia and accused the authorities of failing to pay them fully.

“We will not hear again about strike of health workers. Salaries will be paid, and the government... told me that they have money to pay health workers,” he said.

Kaseya said funding released for the Ebola response had exceeded $700 million following an additional $242 million pledge from the US.

“Money is not an issue today,” he said, arguing that the challenge was ensuring resources reached communities and frontline operations.

The outbreak has spread beyond Ituri to four other eastern provinces. No vaccine or specific treatment has been approved for the Bundibugyo strain, although clinical trials are underway.

Also on Thursday, the authorities quarantined nearly 200 passengers from a riverboat near Kinshasa after a traveler who had disembarked in Mongala province nearly three weeks earlier died with Ebola-like symptoms. All passengers were tested, although no cases have been confirmed in the capital.

Security forces in Nigeria have carried out the largest-ever single-day hostage rescue, freeing 308 people abducted in separate incidents in Kwara and Niger states, according to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu.

At least 1,100 people were abducted across northern Nigeria in the first four months of 2026 alone, Amnesty International has reported.

Tinubu announced the successful operation on Thursday in a post on X, praising the security agencies for their “intelligence, courage and coordination” making the mission possible.

Following the raid, the president directed the country's security services to strengthen early-warning systems, expand community awareness and improve rapid-response capabilities nationwide.

”We will continue to pursue those who threaten our people and do everything necessary to keep every Nigerian community safe.” Tinubu said, adding that there would be no hiding place for terrorists in the country.

The rescued hostages are receiving medical treatment at Wawa Cantonment and will be transferred to their respective states for further care and reunification with their families, the authorities said.

According to the UN, 114 violent incidents and 1,932 fatalities were recorded in northeastern Nigeria between April and June alone.

In response, Tinubu declared a nationwide security emergency last November, ordered the recruitment of thousands of additional police officers and military personnel, and allocated a record 5.41 trillion naira ($3.5 billion) to defense in the 2026 budget.

However, gunmen reportedly killed at least 12 people and abducted several women and children in Sokoto State last weekend. In June, armed men kidnapped at least 36 students and a staff member from a secondary school in Borno State while examinations were underway.

Russia has repeatedly condemned terrorist attacks in the African state. In November 2025, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow was ready to assist Abuja in combating terrorism. The issue was revisited in May, when Russian Ambassador Andrey Podelyshev and Nigerian Foreign Minister Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu discussed expanding bilateral cooperation in security, as well as defense.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrates as part of efforts to increase domestic processing and retain more revenue from its vast mineral wealth, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing an official order. The move comes as Washington is seeking greater access to the country’s critical minerals, a sector dominated by Chinese companies.

The prohibition took effect immediately under an order signed on June 29. The mines minister may grant one-year exemptions in “strategic” circumstances, it said. The authorities also introduced a new tax regime for economically significant mining by-products, with a three-month transition period.

DR Congo is the world’s largest cobalt producer and second-largest copper supplier. Major operators include Chinese companies CMOC, Huayou Cobalt and Zijin Mining, the Anglo-Swiss group Glencore, Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines and Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group.

The sector has long been dogged by allegations that proceeds from illegally mined and smuggled minerals have financed armed groups and fueled the escalating conflict in the country’s east. M23 controls large areas of mineral-rich territory, including the Rubaya mining area in North Kivu, a major source of coltan.

In December, Washington and Kinshasa signed a strategic minerals partnership alongside a US-brokered peace agreement between DR Congo and Rwanda aimed at ending hostilities in eastern DR Congo. The minerals deal is intended to give American and allied companies long-term access to Congolese resources.
Washington has presented the agreement as a way to support Congolese industrialization while reducing US dependence on China-dominated supply chains.

In January, Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) coalition that includes M23, warned that concessions offered under the US agreement could face disputes because some sites may already have been allocated to other partners. The Congolese presidency dismissed the claim as “speculative,” saying existing contracts would be respected.

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) is getting out of control, with new cases doubling in some hotspots over the past week, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Response efforts must be “urgently and massively” expanded across all fronts as the disease is “spreading faster than” efforts to contain it, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after meeting health and humanitarian partners in Kinshasa on Thursday.

Only a week ago the UN health agency described it as the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded in the African country, surpassing the one in 2018-2020. The outbreak is being caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is currently no approved vaccine or targeted treatment.

Official data from the DR Congo’s Ministry of Health also points to a rapidly worsening situation. Between July 31 and August 4, the number of confirmed Ebola cases rose from 3,674 to 3,973, while the death toll increased from 1,621 to 1,801. The case fatality rate also climbed from 44.1% to 45.3%.

According to the WHO chief, responders face major challenges, including insecurity and mass displacement, which are hampering efforts to reach affected communities. He called for stronger coordination under the Congolese government’s leadership, better protection and support for healthcare workers, and faster access to treatment, disease surveillance, and safe burials.

DR Congo continues to grapple with instability as the M23 rebel group maintains control over parts of the country, fueling clashes and humanitarian emergencies.

The US announced an additional $242 million this week for Ebola response and preparedness efforts in DR Congo and neighboring countries. According to the State Department, the package brings Washington’s total outbreak-related assistance to more than $512 million. 

Russia has also contributed to the regional response. Earlier this year, the country’s public health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, deployed specialists to Uganda and supplied domestically developed diagnostic tests, while PCR kits were also delivered to neighboring DR Congo. In July, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow was ready to begin mass production of a vaccine against the Bundibugyo strain if requested by African partners.

Uganda, which also recorded Ebola cases linked to the virus earlier this year, declared its outbreak over last week after completing the required monitoring period.

South African energy and chemicals giant Sasol expects annual earnings per share to rise by as much as 84%, following a surge in oil and fuel prices driven by the US-Iran war and a disruption to supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Johannesburg-registered company joins multiple Western energy firms which have been thriving on high prices since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran in February.

In a trading statement released on Wednesday, Sasol projected earnings per share of between 17.50 rand and 19.50 rand ($1.04-$1.16) for the financial year that ended on June 30. The figure would represent an increase of between 65% and 84% from the 10.60 rand reported a year earlier.

Sasol said its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are expected to rise by between 12% and 20%, from 51.8 billion rand to between 58 billion and 62 billion rand.

Global oil prices surged after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in late February and Tehran restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for more than a fifth of global oil trade.

While the company cited a supportive “macroeconomic environment during the last quarter of the financial year,” JustOneLap founder Simon Brown linked the company’s outlook directly to the Middle East conflict, warning that its shares could fall alongside oil prices if tensions ease.

“At some point, Trump has to find a way to find some peace with the Middle East. Then oil will head down and take the Sasol share price with it,” he told BusinessDayTV.

In a July performance update, Sasol said the Middle East conflict had disrupted supplies and contributed to higher prices, while its chemicals businesses in Africa, the US and Eurasia benefited from “favorable market conditions.”

However, the disruption also forced a shutdown at its gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar and constrained feedstock supply in Europe. The company warned that conditions remain volatile due to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

According to South African financial publication Daily Investor, Sasol’s stock gained more than 55% in the first month of the war and peaked at 238.94 rand in May before retreating on ceasefire hopes.

Rwanda has ordered a nationwide recall of alcoholic beverages and shut down 101 manufacturing facilities following a wave of deaths and illnesses linked to contaminated liquor.

The Rwanda Food and Drugs Authority (Rwanda FDA) announced the measures on Monday after inspections uncovered widespread safety and licensing violations at different distilleries. The recall affects dozens of locally produced alcoholic beverages.

At least 50 people have died this year after consuming contaminated liquor, while more than 500 required hospital treatment and around 100 reportedly suffered blindness, according to Rwanda’s health ministry.

“We consider it an epidemic,” Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana said, as quoted by local media, warning that the country would “pay the price tomorrow” without urgent action.

Rwanda’s campaign mirrors a broader regional push to curb alcohol abuse. In neighboring Kenya, authorities launched a nationwide crackdown in 2024, shutting down thousands of illegal bars and distilleries, tightening licensing rules and introducing tougher penalties for venues that violated operating hours.

Uganda has also stepped up efforts to tackle alcohol abuse, with support from the World Health Organization (WHO), which has backed new national guidelines for treating alcohol use disorders.

The WHO has also said European colonial expansion transformed alcohol in Africa from a largely local product into a commercial commodity through taxation and mass distribution.

The unprecedented strengthening of the El Nino in the Pacific Ocean could force at least 49 million people into acute food insecurity worldwide in 18 months, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.

This year’s “extremely anomalous” El Nino is set to surpass the existing record level by almost 25%, severely disrupting rainfall and harvests.

More than 18 million people in eastern and southern Africa will be at risk of food insecurity. Countries in the south of the continent are particularly exposed because many households there depend on rain-fed subsistence agriculture, the agency warned on Wednesday.

The projection would raise the number of people facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse across 45 vulnerable countries from approximately 225 million to 274 million – an increase of 22%. Central America and southern Africa are expected to suffer the greatest effects, while eastern Africa and South and Southeast Asia could also experience significant disruption.

El Nino, the warming phase of a naturally occurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific, can cause severe drought in some regions and destructive flooding in others. The current event is expected to peak between September and December 2026, although its effects on harvests could continue throughout 2027.

“The sooner we help families to prepare for these climate shocks, the greater our ability to save lives and protect livelihoods,” WFP Acting Executive Director Carl Skau said.

The warning comes as southern Africa continues to recover from the 2023-2024 El Nino, which produced the region’s worst mid-season dry spell in more than a century and its lowest mid-season rainfall in 40 years, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe declared drought-related emergencies or disasters, while more than 30 million people across southern Africa required humanitarian assistance, according to OCHA.

Russia has delivered 770 metric tons of food aid to Mali, Moscow’s embassy in Bamako announced on Tuesday. 

The shipment will provide life-saving food assistance to more than 57,000 vulnerable people, including internally displaced, refugees, and communities, for the next three months, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

The aid, consisting of yellow split peas, was officially handed over in Bamako on July 30 as part of Russia’s additional contribution to the WFP. Following the ceremony, participants visited a warehouse operated by the UN agency to review plans for distributing the humanitarian cargo.

The handover ceremony was attended by Malian government officials, WFP representatives, and members of the Russian diplomatic mission.

Russia’s сharge d’affaires in Mali, Bagrat Shinkuba, said Moscow continues to provide humanitarian assistance to friendly African nations both directly and through UN agencies. He added that the assistance is provided “without political conditions” and with respect for the sovereignty and national priorities of recipient states.

The West African nation has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2012. The conflict, displacement, and climate shocks have fueled a humanitarian crisis. According to the WFP, around 1.6 million people face acute food insecurity, while more than 414,000 people are internally displaced.

Russia has previously provided humanitarian aid to Mali. In January 2024, Moscow supplied 25,000 metric tons of grain to the country, followed in December 2024 by a shipment of more than 65 metric tons of wheat delivered via the Guinean port of Conakry.

The delivery is part of Russia’s broader humanitarian outreach across Africa. Earlier this year, Moscow sent around 60 metric tons of emergency aid to cyclone-hit Madagascar and 29 metric tons of humanitarian supplies to Mozambique. In 2025, it also donated more than 1,600 metric tons of grain to Ethiopia under its ongoing food assistance program.

Relations between Bamako and Paris have continued to deteriorate, with Malian officials accusing France of backing armed groups operating in the Sahel. 

In May, broadcaster RTL, citing an unnamed French security source, reported that Paris was indirectly supporting Ukrainian personnel operating in Mali, who were allegedly cooperating with rebels in an attempt to overthrow the country’s military-led government.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has approved salary increases of up to 80% for the country’s armed forces as Africa’s most populous nation confronts persistent insurgency, banditry, and mass kidnappings – despite record security spending and direct US military support.

The raises will benefit around 250,000 personnel across the army, navy and air force when they take effect on September 1, presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga announced on Tuesday.

Junior personnel will receive an 80% increase, middle-ranking officers 50% and senior officers 30%. According to the presidency, the measure will raise the armed forces’ annual salary from 660 billion naira to 924 billion naira ($600 million).

Tinubu said the increase demonstrates the government’s “deep appreciation” for the sacrifices of service members in protecting the West African nation. The president said his “administration will continue to prioritize troop welfare and modernize the armed forces by providing the weapons and technological tools needed to discharge their duties.”

The decision comes as Abuja struggles to contain Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) militants in the northeast, as well as armed gangs responsible for deadly attacks and kidnappings for ransom across the northwest and north-central regions.

Tinubu declared a national security emergency last November and his government allocated a record 5.41 trillion naira to defense and security in the 2026 budget.

Last weekend, gunmen reportedly killed at least 12 people, including six members of one family and abducted an unspecified number of women and children in Lajinge village, Sokoto state. A series of mass abductions of schoolchildren has been reported in recent months, including the kidnapping of at least 36 children and a staff member when gunmen raided a secondary school in Borno State while students were taking examinations in June. Militants have also targeted military facilities. Five soldiers were killed in an attack on a base in Mandaragirau earlier that month, according to the Nigerian Army. In March, at least 65 troops were reportedly killed when ISWAP fighters overran several bases across the state.

Artificial intelligence played a role in more than half of the cybercrime cases examined across Africa in 2025, as criminal groups increasingly turned to the technology to automate attacks, produce convincing deepfakes, and expand large-scale fraud operations, Interpol said on Monday.

The African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026, which draws on intelligence from law enforcement agencies in 36 African countries, found that AI featured in 55% of cybercrime cases examined in 2025.

At the same time, reported financial losses linked to cybercrime more than doubled from $192 million in 2024 to $484 million in 2025. The report said the increase reflected the growing role of AI-facilitated scams, credential harvesting, and automated social engineering campaigns.

Interpol said AI has lowered the barrier to entry for cybercriminals, enabling even relatively inexperienced offenders to launch sophisticated attacks. According to the report, criminals are increasingly using AI to generate convincing deepfake videos and voice recordings, create synthetic identities for financial fraud, and craft highly personalized phishing campaigns.

Governments across Africa are moving to strengthen their defenses. Earlier this year, Kenya announced plans to amend its cybercrime legislation to address AI-driven threats. South Africa has also warned that AI-powered attacks and deepfakes are creating new security challenges, while Senegal launched an online reporting platform to improve the response to online offenses affecting children.

“Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region,” Interpol Cybercrime Director Neal Jetton said. “AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion.” 

The US has pressured several African states to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), including by threatening consequences for governments that refuse, Le Monde reported on Tuesday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio formally launched the campaign last month, declaring that Washington would dismantle the ICC “brick by brick, if necessary.” He said countries benefiting from cooperation with US law enforcement, the military, or Washington’s “security umbrella” should reject the court’s authority over American officials and service members.

The US is not an ICC member and intensified its campaign after the court issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Washington has imposed sanctions on several ICC officials.

Uganda received a letter from Washington on July 24 containing “an ultimatum telling us to leave [the court] or face consequences,” an unnamed Ugandan source told the French newspaper. Kampala has so far resisted the demand, the source added.

The pressure on Chad was publicly documented before its withdrawal. At Washington’s request, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank W. Garcia Jr. called Chadian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul on July 23, according to Chad’s Foreign Ministry.

During the call, Garcia raised US concerns about the ICC and asked the Central African state to reconsider its membership in the Rome Statute. Chad said the request would be examined by the relevant authorities.

Four days after the call, Chad formally notified the UN of its withdrawal. The US Bureau of African Affairs welcomed the decision, praising N’Djamena for joining countries “reclaiming their sovereignty from this flawed institution.”

Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawals in July, following Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which jointly denounced the court as an “instrument of neocolonial repression.” Their departure takes effect one year after formal notification and does not remove the ICC’s jurisdiction over crimes committed while they were members.

Established under the Rome Statute in 1998 and operational since 2002, the ICC says it serves as a court of last resort for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It has 125 member states, while other major non-members include Russia, China, Israel, and India.

Spain and Morocco have traded blame over last week’s deadly mass crossings into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, with Madrid accusing Rabat of allowing the migrant influx and a Moroccan government source arguing that a Spanish court ruling helped trigger the crisis.

On Monday, Ceuta regional president Juan Jesus Vivas accused Morocco of having “encouraged and permitted” the influx. Spanish media have also reported that the country’s intelligence services believe Rabat allowed and subsequently exploited the crossings, although they do not believe it planned them.

At a briefing in Rabat later the same day, the Moroccan government source said a July 8 Spanish court ruling restricting the immediate return of migrants reaching Ceuta and Melilla by sea had weakened a key deterrent against irregular migration. The official said trafficking networks exploited the ruling and amplified it through social media, arguing that Spain could not expect Morocco to compensate for legal decisions that weakened its own migration controls by preventing migrants from reaching Spanish territory.

“We are neither Europe’s policeman nor its caretaker; we are a sovereign partner, not a subcontractor,” the source said, calling for the rules governing migration cooperation to be revised, according to the state news agency MAP.

Spain estimates that around 69,500 migrants have returned to Morocco since the crossings began, while Rabat says approximately 40,000 entered Ceuta. The two governments also dispute the death toll: Spanish authorities have reported at least 72 deaths from drowning and crushing, while Morocco says ten people drowned and another died after falling from a rocky area.

Rabat denied relaxing border controls or reducing security deployments, saying its forces deliberately avoided confronting the crowds to prevent further casualties. Morocco says it deploys around 24,000 security personnel along its northern coast and prevented 74,000 attempted crossings last year.

The allegations followed comments by Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, describing Ceuta and Melilla as Spanish “colonial enclaves.” A recent US congressional committee report referred to the cities as being in Moroccan territory “under Spanish administration” and urged diplomatic engagement over their future status.

Washington recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara during President Donald Trump’s first term, while Rabat normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Reports have also linked the crisis to Spain’s renewed engagement with Algeria, Morocco’s regional rival, although Rabat denies using migration to exert political pressure.

Morocco has named one of its largest road projects after US President Donald Trump, describing the gesture as an expression of “deep appreciation” for his role in strengthening relations between Washington and Rabat.

King Mohammed VI informed Trump in a letter reported by the state-run Moroccan News Agency (MAP) on Sunday that the 1,055km Tiznit-Dakhla Expressway would be renamed the “Donald J. Trump Highway.”

The monarch said that bilateral relations, traditionally rooted in friendship and loyalty, have become particularly “vibrant and fruitful” during Trump’s two presidential terms.

”Your historic recognition, in 2020, of Morocco’s sovereignty over its Sahara will forever be etched in the memory of Moroccans, from one generation to the next,” the king wrote in a previously undisclosed letter dated July 2.

Trump thanked the monarch in a July 26 post on his Truth Social platform, describing the decision as a “great honor” and expressing hope that he would travel the highway’s entire length.

Rabat considers Western Sahara part of its territory and took control of most of the former Spanish colony after Spain withdrew in 1975. The Algeria-backed Polisario Front seeks to establish an independent Sahrawi state. A UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in 1991, but efforts to hold a referendum on the territory’s status have stalled.

Morocco submitted an autonomy proposal for Western Sahara to the UN Security Council in April 2007. Under the plan, local authorities would exercise executive, legislative, and judicial powers, while the territory would retain the Moroccan flag and currency. Rabat would remain responsible for foreign policy, national security, and defense.

The US became the first country to formally recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara during Trump’s first term in 2020. Washington has maintained that position, with Trump recently reiterating support for Morocco’s autonomy proposal as the only basis for resolving the dispute.

The US designated Morocco a major non-NATO ally in 2004. A bilateral free-trade agreement took effect two years later, making Morocco the only African country with such an accord with Washington. US exports to Morocco reached $5.5 billion in 2025, according to the Office of the US Trade Representative.

Morocco also hosts African Lion, the US Africa Command’s largest annual military exercise on the continent.

At least 12 people have been killed and an unspecified number of women and children abducted in an attack by gunmen in northwestern Nigeria, Reuters has reported, citing local residents.

Armed men, as yet unidentified by the authorities, entered the village of Lajinge in Sokoto State at around 11 PM local time on Saturday and attacked residents until approximately 3 AM on Sunday.

Six members of one family were killed when their home was set on fire, according to witnesses. “They killed at least 12 people, injured four others, abducted women and children after rustling many livestock,” resident Auwal Hassan told Reuters by telephone.

Sokoto police spokesperson Ahmed Rufai also told the outlet that an investigation had been launched and that the force would provide further information later. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The northwest region of Africa’s most populous nation has faced persistent attacks by heavily armed gangs commonly known as bandits. The groups raid rural communities, kidnap residents for ransom, steal livestock, and demand payments from farmers seeking access to their land.

Nigeria has also experienced an upsurge in mass abductions amid a worsening security crisis, despite President Bola Tinubu declaring a nationwide security emergency in November and ordering the recruitment of thousands of additional police officers and military personnel. Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province and the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansaru group have been blamed for attacks on villages, churches, and schools, as well as mass kidnappings.

On Sunday, the Nigerian Army said troops foiled an attempted “infiltration” of a military base in Zamfara State by terrorists. An army officer and a police officer were killed, while nine of an unspecified number of abducted civilians were rescued, the military said in a statement.

OPERATION FANSAN YAMMA: TROOPS REPEL TERRORISTS' INFILTRATION AT FOB KASUWAN DAJI, INFLICT HEAVY CASUALTIES AND RESCUE ABDUCTEES

Troops of Sector 2, Operation FANSAN YAMMA, deployed at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Kasuwan Daji, Kaura Namoda Local Government Area of… pic.twitter.com/gH2aGW8UeI

— Nigerian Army (@HQNigerianArmy) August 2, 2026

The US deployed around 200 troops to Nigeria in February for training and technical support after conducting joint airstrikes with Nigerian forces in December. Most have since been withdrawn, although Washington continues intelligence sharing and wider security cooperation with Abuja, according to the US Africa Command.

Despite new US involvement, attacks and mass abductions have continued. In May, Amnesty International said a Nigerian military airstrike on the crowded Tumfa market in Zamfara State killed at least 100 civilians, including women and girls. The military confirmed conducting a strike but disputed reports of civilian casualties.

Samuel Memeh, chairman of the opposition Democratic Leadership Alliance, told RT last month that the US deployment “has not yielded significant improvements” in Nigeria’s security. He argued that foreign military assistance alone could not defeat the armed groups, saying that “local problems require local solutions.”

The Ebola outbreak currently spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) is the largest the country has ever faced, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday. 

Infections are spreading despite months of response efforts, according to the agency. The current outbreak, DR Congo’s 17th, has reportedly surpassed the country’s 2018-2020 Ebola epidemic to become the largest on record. 

The currently untreatable Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no approved vaccines, was initially detected in the Mongbwalu health zone in Ituri Province, but has spread across five provinces in two months and now affects 49 health zones, the agency noted. The affected provinces are Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo.  

The outbreak is “intensifying, with sustained transmission and continued increases in reported cases and deaths,” the WHO stated. 

The latest Congolese Ministry of Health data put the number of confirmed cases at 3,674, up from the 3,605 reported by the WHO as of July 30. The death toll has climbed to 1,621, while 760 patients remain in isolation or are hospitalized and 666 people have recovered. The overall case fatality rate stands at 44.1%.  

The agency said insecurity, mass displacement, population movements, and cross-border travel are hampering containment efforts and raising the risk of further spread. Despite those challenges, the Congolese Health Ministry said surveillance systems and laboratory testing remain operational, while contact tracing has improved, although it remains below target. The nationwide contact follow-up rate currently stands at 78%. 

WHO said a substantial scaling up of the response involving the Congolese authorities, the UN agency, and international partners will be needed to bring the outbreak under control. 

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered dozens of carved tombstones, pottery coffins, and funerary objects at the ancient site of Tel El-Deir in the northern province of Damietta, the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has announced.

The excavation, carried out by a mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), revealed around 20 limestone tombstones carved with human figures. The stones are decorated with religious motifs including the griffin, Agathodaemon, and Isis-Thermouthis, highlighting a blend of ancient Egyptian beliefs with Greco-Roman influences.

According to officials, the tombstones indicate that their owners occupied a distinguished social position, and that Tel El-Deir was a funerary center with its own social and religious significance rather than just a cemetery.

“The site, spanning from Egypt’s Late Period to the end of the Roman era, serves as a living archaeological record of centuries of social, religious, and funerary evolution in the Nile Delta,” the ministry said.

“These discoveries provide a more complete picture of the ritual and symbolic rites associated with burial practices across various periods,” the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mohamed Abdel-Badie, noted.

The ministry reported another archaeological breakthrough on Thursday, revealing the first integrated bath complex to be scientifically uncovered at the Tel Nasser archaeological site in Egypt’s Port Said Governorate. The discovery, dating to the late Ptolemaic and Roman periods, provides data on settlement patterns and the development of architecture and public infrastructure in the eastern Nile Delta.

Last week, Egyptian archaeologists also uncovered a new funerary complex at the Tel Athar Quesna necropolis in Menoufia province. The excavation unearthed hundreds of ushabti figurines, protective amulets, imported Rhodian pottery, and other burial artifacts.

The events unfolding in Ceuta should not be reduced to the familiar European language of invasion, emergency and border control. From a Pan-African perspective, what we are witnessing is the human consequence of a profoundly unequal economic relationship between Africa and Europe.

Spain now has an opportunity to move away from the conventional European model of engagement with Africa and learn from the partnerships developed by countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, and India. These relationships are not without problems or contradictions. Nevertheless, they have generally approached African countries as political and economic partners, supported infrastructure and productive development, and recognized Africa as an emerging center of global power rather than merely a source of raw materials, migration, and insecurity. 

Spain can draw lessons from these experiences while developing its own distinctive partnership with Africa, based on geographical proximity, historical connection, mutual development and respect for African sovereignty.

Young Africans do not risk their lives at sea because Europe possesses higher fences. They do so because the present international economic system has concentrated opportunity, capital and mobility on one side of the Mediterranean while denying them on the other. 

Spain must, of course, protect its borders, preserve public order and ensure the safety of the people of Ceuta. No responsible African position requires Spain to surrender its sovereignty or tolerate disorder. Nevertheless, security measures alone cannot resolve what is fundamentally a question of development, dignity, and economic justice.

Spain is particularly well-placed to recognize this.

Under its current government, Spain has increasingly demonstrated a willingness to distance itself from some of the harshest and most arrogant tendencies of mainstream European and North American foreign policy. It has shown greater sensitivity towards the Global South, defended international law in difficult circumstances, and spoken of Africa not merely as a source of migration or insecurity, but as an equal strategic partner.

Spain’s relationship with Africa is also distinctive. It is certainly not free from the history of colonialism, military confrontation, and political inequality. No honest African analysis should conceal this. Yet Spain’s connection with Africa cannot be defined exclusively by colonialism.

Spain and Africa are geographical neighbors. They share Mediterranean and Atlantic spaces, centuries of human movement, commercial exchange, and profound cultural interaction. Much of Spanish history, language, architecture, agriculture, music, and identity was shaped through its relationship with North and West Africa.

Africa is therefore not a distant region lying beyond Spain’s strategic horizon. It is part of Spain’s immediate historical and geographical environment. This gives Spain an opportunity to lead Europe towards a different relationship with the continent.

The dominant Western approach has too often treated Africa through four narrow lenses: minerals, migration, terrorism, and geopolitical competition. African countries are approached when their resources are required, when their votes are needed, when their young people arrive at European borders, or when Western powers fear the growing influence of China, Russia, and other actors.

That model has failed Africa, and it will eventually fail Europe as well.

Spain can offer another path. It can support African industrialization rather than importing African raw materials. It can encourage joint ventures, technology transfer, and local production rather than relationships based on extraction. It can invest in African agriculture, renewable energy, transport, education, digital infrastructure, and manufacturing while ensuring that employment and value remain inside Africa.

It can also expand legal mobility, university exchange, vocational training, and circular migration so that movement between Africa and Spain becomes organized and mutually beneficial rather than dangerous and controlled by smugglers.

The long-term answer to Ceuta is therefore not simply a larger wall. It is the creation of an economic space in which a young African does not have to cross a border illegally to imagine a dignified future.

At the same time, African governments must accept their own responsibilities. They must confront corruption, economic exclusion, unemployment, and the failure to provide their youth with credible opportunities. Pan-Africanism cannot place every failure at the feet of Europe while exempting African elites from accountability.

Spain should reject the politics of fear that turns desperate human beings into an invading army. African states should reject the political manipulation of migration and prevent vulnerable young people from being used as instruments of diplomatic pressure.

The crisis offers Spain a choice. It can follow the conventional European response: more fear, more militarization, and more distance from Africa. Or it can remain faithful to the better principles it has recently articulated and help construct a new relationship between Europe and the African continent.

From a Pan-African perspective, Spain should be encouraged to choose the second road. But genuine leadership will not be measured by how effectively Spain closes the gate. It will be measured by whether Spain helps build a world in which fewer people are forced to knock desperately upon it.

The Gauteng Political Killings Task Team has discovered the body of a missing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party member, bringing a tragic end to the search for 51-year-old Aaron Makola, who disappeared earlier this month.

National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said Makola was reported missing after he vanished on 10 July 2026. A day later, on 11 July, his vehicle was found abandoned, raising concerns about his whereabouts and prompting an investigation.

Mathe said the Gauteng Political Killings Task Team officially took over the investigation on 20 July after engaging with Makola’s family and obtaining information that investigators believed could assist in tracing him.

“An extensive investigation led members of the GP PKTT to Delmas on Thursday, July 30, 2026, where the EFF member was tragically found,” she said.

“Investigations are at an advanced stage to identify and apprehend those responsible for the murder, including both the perpetrators and any individuals who may have orchestrated the crime,” said Mathe.

Authorities have not yet established a motive for the killing, and the Gauteng Political Killings Task Team continues its investigation.

In another case, a 34-year-old man appeared before the Cullinan Magistrate’s Court for the murder of Monica Dube, the Election Coordinator and Secretary for the EFF in Tshwane Region Two. Sipho Lucky Mahlangu is facing charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances and murder. He abandoned his bail application. 

It is alleged that during the early hours of June 13, Mahlangu and an accomplice broke into the deceased’s residence in Wallmansthal through a window.

On July 4, Mahlangu was spotted at a taxi rank by the deceased’s daughter, who alerted the police, leading to his subsequent arrest. For further investigations, the matter has been postponed to September 17.

First published by IOL

The African Union (AU) supports South Africa’s proposal for a continent-wide discussion on migration following recent tensions over illegal immigration, the South African Foreign Ministry has said.

Clayson Monyela, the head of public diplomacy at South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), said on X on Thursday that Pretoria has “defeated the attempt to single out & isolate” the country during discussions at the AU. 

“The AU has agreed with us. The AU will discuss the migration issue broadly & look at the ‘Pull & Push’ factors,” he wrote. Monyela added that countries should examine the factors driving migration and said sending, transit, and destination countries “must collaborate to find solutions.”

The request followed a diplomatic dispute between the two countries after Ghana said one of its nationals was killed during anti-immigration protests in South Africa and raised concerns over the safety of African migrants. Pretoria rejected the claim, saying police investigations showed the man was shot a day before the protests in what authorities described as an extortion-related criminal attack.

“We welcome any discussion that will be comprehensive on migration to deal with all issues, including the root causes of illegal migration,” the minister said.

South Africa has stepped up deportations and border enforcement in recent months as part of its migration policy. Government figures show that more than 53,000 foreign nationals had been processed for deportation or repatriation as of July, after the authorities intensified a nationwide crackdown on illegal migration.

The debate has intensified following anti-immigration demonstrations held across South Africa in June. Protest organizers demanded tougher action against undocumented migration, while rights groups warned against xenophobia and attacks on foreign nationals.

A US government map misplaced every African country it highlighted during a presentation at a major international AIDS conference, prompting an apology from the State Department.

The map appeared on Sunday during a presentation by Jeff Graham, the top US health official overseeing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), at the AIDS 2026 Conference in Rio de Janeiro. The session focused on Washington’s new health funding agreements with African governments, but all six countries identified on the map were incorrectly positioned.

Nigeria was placed in the Sahara, making the West African coastal nation appear landlocked, while Mozambique was moved from southeastern Africa to the Horn of Africa. Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) appeared on the opposite side of the continent, and the locations or borders of Cameroon, Malawi, and Uganda were also inaccurate.

An examination of the image found a watermark indicating that it had been created using OpenAI technology, Reuters reported. The company was quoted as saying that it is investigating the incident.

“This was an unfortunate error caused by a team member who hastily altered the slide deck immediately before the presentation at the AIDS 2026 Conference,” a State Department spokesperson said on Thursday.

🇺🇸🌍 The U.S. State Department can’t even locate African countries on a map.

During an official presentation in Rio de Janeiro, the American delegation displayed an AI-generated map placing Nigeria in the Sahara, Mozambique on the Horn of Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire on the… pic.twitter.com/3iuvPRr7gH

— DD Geopolitics (@DD_Geopolitics) July 30, 2026

The error was first publicized by AIDS campaigner Emily Bass, who described the slide as “disrespectful to African collaborators.” Matt Petit, an artificial intelligence and geopolitics specialist at the Atlantic Council, said whoever created and approved it “did not know where countries in Africa are and did not care to check their work.”

The presentation concerned Washington’s America First Global Health Strategy, introduced as part of an overhaul of foreign assistance following the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development after President Donald Trump returned to office last year.

The map incident is not the first geographical gaffe by a US administration. In 2017, Donald Trump twice pronounced Namibia as “Nambia” while addressing African leaders. In 2022, Joe Biden thanked Colombia instead of Cambodia for hosting an ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh, according to the official White House transcript.

A quarter of young Africans believe US foreign aid cuts could benefit their countries by pushing governments to tackle domestic challenges instead of relying on external assistance, African Youth Survey 2026 shows.

At the same time, nearly half of respondents said the closure of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) would have a negative impact.

The survey found that 26% of respondents viewed the aid cuts positively, while 46% expected adverse consequences, 16% said they would make no difference, and 11% were unsure. Optimism about the cuts was strongest in Ghana and Nigeria, whereas concern was highest in Mozambique, Rwanda and Kenya.

The report said just over half of respondents (53%) expected healthcare services and disease prevention to be the sectors hardest hit by the reduction in US funding. “Concern [was] felt most acutely in Zambia and Mozambique, where over four-in-five (83%) already report experiencing the impact, and in Kenya, where three-quarters (75%) say the same,” it said.

African Youth Survey 2026 was conducted by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation among 4,901 people aged 18 to 24 across 16 African countries. Researchers carried out face-to-face interviews in Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The findings echo the views of some African policy experts, who argue that the reduction in foreign aid could encourage governments to rely more on domestic resources.

“The collapse of USAID funding provides Africa and its leadership an opportunity to take a fundamental rethink of its over-reliance on Western foreign assistance and donor aid,” Michael Owuor, a researcher at the Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS), told RT.

The US is pushing to secure a role for American companies in a $12.5 billion Ethiopian Airlines airport project. Washington is seeking greater commercial and infrastructure influence in Africa, where China now has a stronger presence.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Middle East and Africa Mark Mitchell described Bishoftu International Airport as a “transformative” project during a virtual briefing in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

“Across agencies… the Department of Commerce has closely engaged in pushing to secure strong United States participation,” he said after talks with Ethiopian Airlines officials.

Construction began in January about 40 km southeast of Addis Ababa. Ethiopian Airlines says the first phase will be completed in 2030 and handle 60 million passengers annually. Capacity is expected to reach 110 million when fully developed, making it Africa’s largest airport.

The project is intended to accommodate the state-owned carrier’s rapid expansion. Ethiopian Airlines reported a 20% increase in revenue to a record $9.1 billion in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to the Ethiopian News Agency. It transported 20.7 million passengers and added nine aircraft and four international routes. The carrier now operates more than 170 planes and serves 150 international destinations.

Under a financing mandate signed last August, the African Development Bank plans to provide a $500 million loan and lead efforts to mobilize $8.7 billion for Bishoftu.

The push comes despite lingering trade tensions. Ethiopia remains excluded from the US African Growth and Opportunity Act program after Washington suspended its eligibility in 2022, citing human rights violations during the conflict in northern Ethiopia.

For much of the outside world, Africa is still imagined primarily as a rural rather than an urban continent. Its familiar visual language consists of savannahs, deserts, tropical forests, ocean shores, safaris and villages.

With a few exceptions – Cairo, Cape Town, perhaps Marrakesh – African cities have rarely become destinations or cultural symbols in their own right. Yet anyone trying to understand the continent’s future should look not only at its mines, farms and ports, but also at its construction sites, commuter routes and rapidly expanding suburbs.

The decisive process is urbanization. More than 700 million Africans already live in urban areas, and this number is expected to reach approximately 1.4 billion by 2050. Around 80% of the continent’s population growth over the coming decades will be absorbed by cities and towns. More than 60 African cities already have populations above one million; by the middle of the century, there may be around 159.

Big city life

These numbers may seem abstract until one imagines what they mean on an ordinary weekday morning. In Lagos, Nairobi, Abidjan or Dar es Salaam, urban growth is experienced as a queue for a minibus, a new row of shops beside a road, an apartment block rising behind a market, or another hour added to the daily commute.

A city expands first not in an architect’s drawing, but through millions of private decisions: a family moving closer to work, a trader renting a stall, a landowner dividing a plot, a developer adding three floors to a building originally designed for one.

For many urban residents, mobility remains a daily negotiation. Nairobi has its brightly painted matatus (minibuses); Abidjan its gbakas and shared taxis; Johannesburg its minibus networks; Lagos its motorcycles, ferries and trains.

It is a restructuring of the economy. Migration from villages to cities usually involves a change in employment: agriculture ceases to be the only mass source of income, while work emerges in construction, trade, transport, services, manufacturing and public administration. Cities create consumer demand, concentrate education and healthcare, and support the formation of new professional and middle classes. Standards of housing, employment and leisure change with them.

African societies are still, in many respects, learning to live in cities of unprecedented scale. The urban culture associated with regular transport, predictable municipal services, codified land use and stable public space has not become universal.

“Announcement of the future” – or a dysfunctional community?

The architect Rem Koolhaas, who spent years studying Lagos, Nigeria, initially described it as “the ultimate dysfunctional city.” He later became interested in the initiatives that allowed it to function despite weak formal structures. At another point, he called Lagos not a backward city, but “an announcement of the future.”

Lagos often seems to anticipate problems that other global cities are only beginning to face: extreme density, informality, infrastructure operating above its intended capacity, and a constant overlap between trade, transport and public life. But there is also a danger in romanticizing improvisation.

What looks inventive to an architect visiting for a week may feel exhausting to a resident who spends four hours commuting or buys water from a tanker because the public network does not reach the neighborhood. The future African city cannot depend on improvisation alone.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, six African metropolitan areas are expected to have populations above ten million by 2035: Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa, Greater Johannesburg, Luanda and Dar es Salaam. Another 17 cities may exceed five million residents. Africa’s 100 leading cities are expected to account for more than 60% of the continent’s GDP by that year.

This means an extraordinary rise in demand for housing, roads, railways, offices, schools, hospitals, electricity, water and urban administration. It also means that municipal governments will increasingly resemble the governments of small countries.

Changing the scale

Lagos State illustrates the change in scale. Its proposed 2026 budget amounted to ₦4.237 trillion (around $3.06 billion). Such a figure no longer describes a municipal treasury in the traditional sense. A megacity must do more than collect waste, issue building permits and repair roads. It has to construct transport systems, manage land, organize the supply of energy and water, attract investment, create employment and respond to flooding, heat and coastal erosion.

The project had been delayed for years, a reminder of the financial and administrative difficulty of building infrastructure in a rapidly changing metropolis. Yet its eventual opening also showed that African megacities are gradually acquiring the institutions needed to complete complex projects.

The physical appearance of the continent’s cities is changing alongside their systems of movement. Older images – informal settlements, unfinished buildings, rubbish dumps and overcrowded markets – have not disappeared. But beside them are new business districts, residential compounds, transport corridors, parks and administrative quarters. International firms including OMA, Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, UNStudio and SOM now treat Africa as a serious market for architecture and urban development.

What skyscrapers are for?

Skyscrapers occupy a special place in this transformation. At first glance, Africa does not need them. In many countries, land remains available, while the immediate urban problems are not a shortage of vertical space but insufficient electricity, water, sewage, transport, safety and waste management. A high-rise cannot exist apart from these systems and is therefore a test of the city beneath it.

For decades, the symbol of African high-rise construction was the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg, completed in the 1970s and rising to 223 meters. It reflected the corporate power of Johannesburg’s old central business district.

Later, South African leadership passed to The Leonardo in Sandton, which reaches 234 meters. The change was geographically revealing. Johannesburg’s business life had moved north from the historic center towards a district offering stronger private security, newer offices and more concentrated capital.

In the 2020s, the geography of African skyscrapers expanded dramatically. Egypt completed the Iconic Tower in its New Administrative Capital, reaching approximately 394 meters.

Morocco built the 250-metre Mohammed VI Tower near Rabat.

In Abidjan, the planned 421-meter Tour F is intended to become the tallest building on the continent. Addis Ababa has also produced proposals for headquarters towers exceeding 300 meters.

These projects form part of a continental competition for a new skyline. They express political confidence and the desire to place African capitals on the visual map of global modernity. Yet their meaning differs from that of many post-independence towers built during the second half of the twentieth century.

At that time, high-rises often functioned primarily as monuments to sovereignty. They declared that a newly independent state possessed ministries, banks, airlines and corporations worthy of monumental headquarters. Their economic role was sometimes secondary, and some remained partially vacant or poorly connected to the surrounding city.

Today, a skyscraper is more likely to be presented as an investment asset. It may combine offices, apartments, hotels, retail and conference facilities. It can help capitalize expensive land and meet demand from banks, telecommunications companies, energy firms and state holdings. Investment in office space can also support the formal economy: contracts, taxation, registered companies and stable employment.

They require constant air conditioning, imported materials and uninterrupted electricity. Their façades may look modern in computer renderings but prove badly adapted to dust, humidity, intense sunlight or unreliable maintenance.

When African architects find local ways 

A different approach can be seen in the work of Burkinabè architect Diebedo Francis Kere. His buildings use local materials, shade, natural ventilation and community participation not as decorative references to tradition, but as practical technologies. The Pritzker Prize jury praised his understanding that architecture is “not about the object but the objective” and emphasized the importance of buildings rooted in place and community.

Kere’s career began not with a tower, but with a school in his home village of Gando. The building used compressed earth blocks and a raised roof to create ventilation and protect classrooms from extreme heat. Villagers participated in its construction. Years later, reflecting on the project, he said: “I wanted to give something to my people, and that has given me an international career.” This may offer a more important model for African architecture than height alone. The innovation lies in combining modern engineering with local climate, labor and materials.

Climate is already becoming one of the defining problems of African urban design. Heatwaves, floods and coastal erosion are intensifying precisely as cities grow denser.

Freetown has responded through its “Freetown the Treetown” program, which pays residents to plant and maintain geotagged trees. The program treats vegetation not as beautification but as infrastructure: shade, slope stabilization, water retention and protection against urban heat.

Across the continent, reflective roofs, shaded streets, urban forests, green roofs and climate-resilient road materials are gradually entering municipal policy. The African city of the future may therefore look less like a forest of sealed glass towers and more like a layered system of courtyards, arcades, planted streets, mixed-use districts and buildings designed to function even when electricity is interrupted.

What African urbanization means for the world

The central dilemma of African urbanization is the balance between symbol and system. Architecture cannot compensate for the absence of urban governance. Without strategic planning, a city grows as a collection of fragments: a luxury tower beside an unpaved road, a gated district beyond the reach of public transport, a railway without sufficient feeder buses, a new administrative capital separated from the population it is intended to govern.

Africa in the twenty-first century is not only a continent of demography, resources and conflicts. It is a continent of future cities. It must still answer fundamental questions: what will form the center of the city beyond the port, market and government quarter; who will finance new infrastructure; who will maintain it; and how density, accessibility, climate and local identity can be combined.

These answers matter far beyond Africa; some of the world’s largest urban agglomerations of the coming century will grow here. Their architects and governments will be forced to experiment with forms of density, transport, housing and climate adaptation for which no established global model is entirely adequate.

Five Kenyan security officers were killed after their patrol vehicle struck an improvised explosive device near the Somali border allegedly planted by Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants, Kenyan police have said.

The officers included four members of Kenya’s elite Special Operations Group (SOG) and one National Police Reservist. The reports also said gunfire was exchanged after the blast before the suspected terrorists fled the area.

“A patrol team from SOG Alungu came into contact with Al-Shabaab militants in the general area of Wantey Dam,” a police officer said as quoted by Reuters.

The attack took place at around 12 PM in El-Raamo in the Kutulo area on the Alungu route, a road commonly used by Kenyan security forces near the border with Somalia. According to the reports, the victims included Administration Police officers Ngaira Wekesa, Patrick Mwaura Karumba, Peter Mbugua Mburu and Yasin Kiptoo Lomer, as well as National Police Reservist Adan Adow Gedi. 

Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent groups, particularly Al-Shabaab, have been carrying out regular attacks in several African countries since 2007. The terrorist group continues to conduct raids, bombings, and targeted assassinations in an effort to destabilize the Somali government and regional security structures, and also establish its own rule based on a hard-line interpretation of Sharia law.

The latest attack comes months after Somali government forces reported major operations against Al-Shabaab. In June, Somalia’s Ministry of Defense said government troops, supported by airstrikes, killed more than 30 militants in the Somali Middle Shabelle region. 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and Rwanda have traded accusations over a proposed plan to disarm a militant group operating on the Congolese side of their shared border, exposing renewed tensions over a peace deal mediated by US President Donald Trump.

Kinshasa announced on Tuesday that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) has signed a protocol covering disarmament, demobilization, and relocation to designated cantonment sites.

Congolese Regional Integration Minister Floribert Anzuluni said FDLR members would not be forcibly returned to Rwanda, while fighters and their dependents could relocate to a third country if conditions for voluntary repatriation were not met. He said there was no agreed estimate of the number involved, while the cantonment sites and implementation timetable were still being determined.

Congolese government spokesman Patrick Muyaya described the protocol as a “major turning point” in addressing the FDLR issue, saying it complies with the Washington Accords and demonstrates Kinshasa’s progress toward fulfilling its commitments.

He accused Rwanda of using the FDLR’s presence as a pretext to justify aggression against DR Congo for 30 years.

Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe rejected the protocol as a “delaying maneuver” by Kinshasa, arguing that the FDLR is not a party to the Washington Accords but the armed group targeted by their security provisions.

“The FDLR genocidaires are not a party to these accords; they are instead their subject,” he wrote on X, adding that DR Congo’s principal security obligation was supposed to be fulfilled within 90 days.

Nduhungirehe also accused Kinshasa of intensifying military support for the FDLR and integrating many of its fighters into the Congolese army since the accords were signed on December 4, 2025. DR Congo has previously denied supporting the armed group.

Relations between the two African states have been strained for decades by the rebel war in eastern Congo. Kinshasa has repeatedly accused Kigali of backing the M23 rebel group, allegations the Rwandan government has denied.

Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since fighting between M23 and Congolese forces escalated in January 2025, with the rebels seizing Goma, the capital of North Kivu, and Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu.

Fifteen elephants have died across Kenya’s Amboseli ecosystem over the past month, with preliminary laboratory tests pointing to a possible toxic substance, local media reported on Wednesday, citing the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS).

The fatalities were recorded between June 24 and July 24 in Amboseli National Park, Kimana Sanctuary and the Kuku Ranch area, The Star reported.

KWS Head of Communication Duncan Wanyama told Kenyans.co.ke that the elephants were found at multiple locations “surrounding the park, approximately 15 to 30 km from its boundaries.”

Ten of the elephants developed similar symptoms before dying, including a partial paralysis that left them unable to stand. They died within one to two days after the onset of illness, while the remaining five carcasses were too badly decomposed or had been scavenged, preventing veterinarians from determining the cause of death.

According to KWS, “the condition primarily affected adult females and their calves, with only one adult male” among the reported cases.

“Preliminary laboratory findings from the University of Nairobi detected a potential toxic substance in the samples collected from several of the affected elephants,” KWS said as quoted by Kenyans.co.ke. 

However, the agency stressed that additional testing is required to determine the concentration of the substance. “Importantly, there is no evidence that this incident poses any risk to human health,” KWS added, as cited by The Star.

KWS said environmental investigations are continuing, including testing water sources and screening for other potential contaminants in the affected areas. The agency has also stepped up surveillance across the ecosystem and is closely monitoring elephant populations.

The US is backing a $150 million rare earths project in Madagascar as part of a wider strategy to expand Washington’s role in Africa’s critical-minerals sector and reduce reliance on China-dominated supply chains, Reuters has reported, citing a State Department spokesperson.

The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has committed up to $4.84 million for pilot-plant work, laboratory testing, and environmental programs at the Ampasindava project, its London-listed developer Harena Rare Earths said last week.

The funding could pave the way for further US support as the project moves toward construction. A DFC official told Reuters that the agency could consider additional financing, subject to due diligence and approvals.

“Madagascar fits within that strategy, and we see opportunities throughout the country to increase US and US-aligned investment in the critical mineral sector,” the spokesperson added.

Ampasindava contains neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, which are used to manufacture permanent magnets for fighter jets, precision-guided missiles, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and electronics.

Harena expects the project to produce about 4,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides annually, including 1,700 tons of high-value magnet materials. The company is seeking an exploitation permit and aims to begin production by mid-2028.

Washington has expanded its mineral investments elsewhere in Africa. In DR Congo, the DFC is considering an equity investment in a venture between state miner Gecamines and commodities trader Mercuria to commercialize copper, cobalt, and other minerals. Chinese companies have spent years investing billions of dollars in Congolese mining and are major players in the country’s cobalt and copper sectors. A Strategic Partnership Agreement signed between Washington and Kinshasa in December 2025 also commits the parties to expanding American access to Congolese minerals and developing transport infrastructure, including the Lobito Corridor linking mining regions to Angola’s Atlantic coast.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has similarly warned that critical-mineral extraction “must not perpetuate colonial-era patterns of exploitation,” calling on African countries to prioritize local processing and beneficiation.

Sudan’s head of the Sovereignty Council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has visited frontline positions in North Kordofan after government troops recaptured key areas from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

He was accompanied by Darfur Governor Minni Minnawi, North Kordofan Governor Abdel Khalik Abdel Latif, and the commander of the Sudan Shield Forces, the army reported on Monday. Al-Burhan inspected troops in the Umm Sayala and Jabra al-Sheikh areas, where he was greeted by soldiers after arriving by helicopter.

The visit came as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) continue operations against the RSF.

Jabra al-Sheikh is considered a strategically important town on Sudan’s export route, linking North Kordofan with the capital, Khartoum, and located close to El Obeid, the state capital. According to the Sudan Tribune, military sources said the town had served as one of the RSF’s main strongholds in the region after the group’s withdrawal from Khartoum.

⭕️ رئيس مجلس السيادة يتفقد الخطوط الأمامية بجبرة الشيخ - ام سيالة pic.twitter.com/SuOj567axg

— مجلس السيادة الإنتقالي - السودان (@TSC_SUDAN) July 27, 2026

The same sources said the RSF had used Jabra al-Sheikh as a launch point for military operations across North Kordofan and as a key position for threatening supply lines and roads leading to Omdurman and El Obeid. 

Separately, Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said on Sunday that the country’s healthcare services had recovered to 75% of normal capacity. He noted that medicine supplies remained stable, several pharmaceutical companies had resumed operations, and the country’s health sector was gradually recovering.

Russia’s Africa Corps has released footage of a gunfight with jihadist militants in Mali. The videos were filmed near the settlement of Niono in the central part of the country and published on the unit’s Telegram channel on Tuesday.

“Units of the Russian Armed Forces’ Africa Corps, together with personnel of the Malian Army, were conducting reconnaissance and search operations when they engaged in a gunfight with terrorists from the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM),” reads the statement accompanying the footage.

Both videos were filmed from a helmet camera worn by one of the Russian servicemen. In the first video, one of the troops says they are facing 12 gunmen. The footage shows the soldier taking cover along a riverbank while exchanging fire with the militants, neutralizing them one by one.

The second video shows the aftermath of the gunfight, with the Russian troops destroying the motorcycles the militants had used to reach the area.

Russia’s Africa Corps has been fighting armed groups in the West African nation together with the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa).

Mali has battled a jihadist insurgency since 2012, which has spilled into neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. The three military-led states have severed defense ties with France, expelled French troops, and repeatedly accused Paris of sponsoring terrorism in the Sahel. They have since turned to Russia for security support.

During Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Niger earlier this month, Russia reaffirmed its commitment to expanding military cooperation with the three-nation Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Following talks in Niamey, Moscow pledged to strengthen the operational capabilities of the armed forces of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

South Africa and Russia have agreed to strengthen cooperation between their armies following high-level talks in Moscow focused on training, leadership development, and professional military exchanges.

South African Army Chief Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha met Colonel General Alexander Matovnikov, deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Ground Forces, on Tuesday during an official visit that began on Monday, according to official statements from both sides.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the parties discussed joint projects “aimed at enhancing the combat readiness of both countries’ armies.”

“Agreements were reached on further strengthening cooperation between the land forces in various areas,” it added.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) said the engagements were intended to strengthen bilateral defense cooperation and foster closer collaboration between the ground forces of the two countries.

The army chief also laid a wreath at Moscow’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in tribute to Soviet troops killed during World War II.

The SANDF said the engagements reaffirmed its commitment to “defense diplomacy, international military cooperation, and the development of enduring partnerships founded on mutual respect.”

Mbatha made his first visit to Moscow in May 2023 amid heightened pressure from Western countries, including the US, for South Africa to condemn Russia and scale back bilateral cooperation over the Ukraine conflict.

South Africa, a member of BRICS, has insisted on its non-aligned stance, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa arguing that Pretoria’s neutrality allows it to engage with both sides.

Pretoria and Moscow have participated in several naval exercises alongside other partners, most recently the China-led Will for Peace drills held off South Africa’s coast in January under a BRICS Plus framework. The two countries also joined China in the Mosi II exercise hosted by South Africa in February 2023.

The Ugandan Health Ministry declared the country free of Ebola on Tuesday, more than two months after an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of the virus infected 20 people and killed two.

Of Uganda’s 20 confirmed cases, 15 were imported from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), while five were locally acquired, the Ugandan government has said. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported no new infections after June 21 and said 18 patients recovered, with four health workers among those infected.

The epidemic remains active in DR Congo, where the Health Ministry reported 3,262 confirmed infections and 1,437 deaths as of Tuesday. Nearly 90% of cases have been recorded in war-torn Ituri Province, which borders Uganda and South Sudan.

In a statement published on X, the East African country’s Health Minister Chris Baryomunsi said “Uganda is officially Ebola free” after the last patient with a locally transmitted infection was discharged on June 16.

In a separate statement cited by Reuters, Baryomunsi said the declaration followed the “successful completion” of 42 days of monitoring that began upon the patient’s discharge.

The WHO, however, said Uganda’s 42-day countdown should have begun on July 16 after the last confirmed patient tested negative twice and was discharged. The agency said the outbreak could be declared over if no new cases emerged during that period.

The Health Ministry has said the latest outbreak differed from previous epidemics because the source and route of the imported infections were known. It added that all “transmission chains were completely characterized and reconstructed, and all identified contacts were institutionally quarantined and completed the mandatory 21-day follow-up without evidence of further transmission.”

Cape Town cardiologist Dr. Wouter Basson, who gained notoriety as the head of a secretive chemical and biological warfare program during apartheid, has failed in his latest effort to avoid disciplinary proceedings.

The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, earlier this year turned down an application by the 75-year-old Basson for a permanent stay of the proceedings before the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). Basson subsequently applied for leave to appeal, which was also turned down. The court found that the four charges he is facing are so serious that he has to face the music and that no appeal in this regard would succeed.

In December 2013, Basson was found guilty of unprofessional conduct following a disciplinary hearing that investigated complaints related to his actions in the early 1980s, when he led the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare initiative, known as Project Coast.

His sentencing proceedings began in January 2015, but were halted due to a number of factors, including legal proceedings for the recusal of committee members. The proceedings against him have not been concluded to date.

In the early 2000s, Basson faced 67 charges, but he was acquitted on all charges in 2005. Extracts of Basson’s evidence at his criminal trial were presented to the court by the HPCSA during his application for a stay of the proceedings. It also presented the affidavit of Prof Steven Miles, who will serve as its expert witness in the disciplinary proceedings.

The four charges Basson is due to face include that around 1986 to 1988 and 1992, as Project Officer at Delta G, he coordinated the production of various drugs and tear gases on a major scale. These include the production of Methaqualone — also known as Mandrax, which is a sedative drug. The usual effects include relaxation, euphoria, and drowsiness, also reducing the heart rate and respiration. Larger doses can cause depression, a lack of muscular coordination, and slurred speech. An overdose can cause delirium, convulsions, hypertonia, and death through respiratory arrest, the court noted.

Basson’s evidence at the criminal trial was that these substances, including the gases, were created to conduct crowd control. He said at the time: “You want to break the cohesion of the crowd.” He explained that protesters who inhaled the gases “just want to go home to lie down and die”.

The primary conclusion by Miles was that Basson, as a practising medical doctor, violated the ethics of the medical profession by being instrumental in the production of drugs and teargas, using these chemicals in mortars and supplying substances to tranquillise victims. Basson, in his leave to appeal application, objected to the court having considered Miles’ view in finding that he should face his disciplinary hearing.

He said these facts were not contained in an affidavit, but the court rejected this and said the allegations remained serious. The court also slammed his argument that he would face prejudice if the hearing went ahead after all these years.

First published by IOL

Somali pirates have hijacked the Tanzanian-flagged fuel and chemical tanker MT Asana off the coast of Yemen, a local news agency reported on Monday.

According to Tanzania’s The Citizen, the tanker has a crew of 20, including 10 Filipino nationals and eight Germans. Three Somali security officials also identified the captured ship as the MT Asana in comments to the BBC. They said the attackers launched the operation from a remote area near the port town of Garacad before intercepting the tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

The vessel was seized on Friday after departing the Yemeni port of Mukalla, according to the Associated Press, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the incident.

The tanker had been heading toward Bosaso in Somalia when seven armed pirates reportedly boarded the ship and forced it into Somali territorial waters near Puntland.

The Tanzanian authorities have not yet confirmed the full details of the incident. Chief government spokesman Gerson Msigwa said officials were working to verify the vessel’s connection to the country.

“We are following up, and once we have complete and accurate information, we will issue an official statement to the public,” Msigwa said.

The hijacking is the second reported seizure of a vessel off Yemen since May, when the tanker MT Eureka was captured near the port of Qana. It follows two other piracy incidents in the Indian Ocean in April.

From 2008 to 2018, Somali pirates disrupted critical world waterways, causing widespread chaos. After a period of relative quiet, pirate activity has begun to rise again. Piracy off the coast of Somalia hit its peak in 2011.

Chad has notified the UN that it is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing The Hague-based tribunal of political bias and disproportionately targeting African countries.

The Chadian Foreign Ministry announced the “sovereign decision” on Monday following what it described as an in-depth review of the court’s work since it became operational in 2002. Under the Rome Statute, the withdrawal will take effect one year after notification.

N’Djamena said the ICC’s effectiveness has remained “limited and uneven,” claiming that nine of the 13 investigations it counted concerned African countries.

The court’s record has created a widespread perception that its work is persistently concentrated on the Global South, particularly Africa, making the continent a “willing victim of a form of political instrumentalization of the ICC,” the ministry stated.

Chad joined the Rome Statute in 2006. Its withdrawal follows a US request last week for N’Djamena to reconsider its ICC membership. Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Sabre Fadoul, however, denied that Chad was withdrawing at Washington’s request. It also comes amid allegations that Chad has facilitated weapons shipments through its territory to Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. N’Djamena has repeatedly denied involvement in Sudan’s civil war.

In a statement on July 1, the ICC Presidency said the court “stands at the heart of the international system of accountability.” It warned that decisions by member states “to disengage from the Rome Statute risk undermining the collective pursuit of justice and weakening global efforts to end impunity.”

“America does not want its citizens to be taken to the same court,” Matsanga noted, adding that this has left “a big dent” in the ICC’s credibility.

Uganda has nominated former Foreign Minister Olara Otunnu to become the next UN secretary-general, making him the seventh candidate seeking to replace Antonio Guterres.

The East African country announced Otunnu’s candidacy in an official Foreign Ministry statement on Sunday, describing him as a statesman and international civil servant with more than four decades of diplomatic experience.

The ministry cited Otunnu’s experience in diplomacy, government, academia, and peacebuilding, saying it makes him “exceptionally well suited to lead the United Nations at this critical juncture in global affairs.”

“He successfully placed the protection of war-affected children on the agenda of the Security Council and designed the landmark compliance and monitoring regime adopted under Security Council Resolution 1612 in 2005, which remains in operation to-date,” the ministry stated.

The other five candidates are from Latin America and the Caribbean, the only regional group that has never produced a UN secretary-general. They are former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi of Argentina, former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan, former Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa, and former Guyanese Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett.

Guterres’ second five-year term expires on December 31, and his successor will inherit an organization under pressure over its response to global conflicts and growing calls for structural reform, including the African Union’s demand for at least two permanent Security Council seats.

In his vision statement, Uganda’s Otunnu pledged to pursue institutional reform, strengthen conflict-resolution efforts, and promote international oversight of artificial intelligence. He described his candidacy as an opportunity to “reinvent and renew” the UN and give it “a new lease on life.”

Misuzulu kaZwelithini, king of the Zulu people, South Africa’s largest ethnic group, has reinstated Inkosi Malusi Zondi and Prince Africa of Onkweni as royal chancellor and vice chancellor, respectively, reversing their dismissal announced by former Traditional Prime Minister Rev. Thulasizwe Buthelezi.

The reinstatement, which was announced on Friday, signaled the undoing of all decisions that were announced by Buthelezi and former royal spokesperson Prince Thulani Zulu. King’s spokesperson, Mpikayise Buthelezi, stated that despite the announcement both inkosi Zondi and Prince Africa will not immediately resume duties as their appointment awaits the king’s final approval.

In May, Buthelezi shocked the Zulu nation when he issued a statement announcing the closure of the King’s Private Office and the dismissal of the King’s Private Secretary Arnold Ndamase, inkosi Zondi and Prince Africa.

The announcement drew outrage and uncertainty as it was publicly disputed by both inkosi Zondi and Prince Africa who said that the King was the one who appointed them, but had not informed them of their removal. The moves raised questions about whether the King had sanctioned those decisions. However, two weeks later, the King announced that Ndamase was never removed from the office. The King then announced the removal of Buthelezi and Prince Thulani.

In welcoming the announcement, Prince Africa said there was never any instruction from the King to remove them from the office in the first place. He said it was the decision of the individuals who thought they were above the King and the Zulu crown, and the latest announcement was not necessarily their reinstatement, rather a correction of a wrong announcement made by the former Traditional Prime Minister and former spokesperson.

“Inkosi Zondi and I always maintained that since we were directly appointed by His Majesty, it would be the King himself that would inform us about any changes to our positions, not the Traditional Prime Minister.“

First published by IOL

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has reached 3,200, the country’s government reported on Sunday.

The latest official data shows that 1,405 people have died, putting the overall case fatality rate at 43.9%. At the same time, 571 patients have recovered, while 773 people remain in isolation or are hospitalized.

The outbreak has now spread across 48 health zones in five provinces.

Ituri remains the epicenter of the outbreak, accounting for 28 affected health zones. North Kivu has reported cases in 11 health zones. South Kivu currently has only one affected zone, where officials say no new confirmed infections have been detected for 60 days and surveillance continues. Cases have also been recorded in five health zones in Haut-Uele and three in Tshopo.

Outside DR Congo, Uganda has recorded 20 confirmed Ebola infections, including two deaths and 18 recoveries, according to official figures. France has reported one imported case linked to the outbreak, with the patient having since recovered.

On Thursday, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that insecurity could hamper efforts to contain the outbreak, limiting access to affected communities. He urged the international community to continue supporting DR Congo, saying: “The people of DRC cannot face this outbreak alone. They need sustained support from the international community. And above all, they need peace.”

DR Congo is battling its 17th recorded Ebola outbreak, which was declared on May 15. It involves the Bundibugyo strain of the virus for which there are currently no approved vaccines or targeted treatments available.

French intelligence services are preparing a third attack on Niger’s main airport after two assaults on the facility this year, the West African nation’s transitional leader, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, has said.

Tchiani made the allegation in an interview on state-owned RTN on Saturday to mark the third anniversary of the transitional authorities taking power following the ouster of French-aligned President Mohamed Bazoum. France condemned the July 2023 coup, refused to recognize the new authorities, and demanded Bazoum’s reinstatement.

“The June 18 attack was not the last because we are already tracking [them], since the objective has not been achieved. French intelligence is currently working to attempt a third attack,” Tchiani said.

Gunmen launched an assault on Diori Hamani International Airport in Niger’s capital Niamey on June 18, killing 13 people, including 11 security personnel and two civilians, according to the Sahel state’s Defense Ministry. At least 22 assailants were neutralized and about 20 suspects arrested. Al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for the attack.

On Saturday, the Nigerien leader accused French intelligence of assembling, training, and equipping militants from JNIM who were behind last month’s offensive. He said the operation was intended to simultaneously target the airport, the presidential palace, and an officer-training center in Tondibia, on the outskirts of Niamey.

Niger and its neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso have battled jihadist violence for more than a decade. The three former French colonies formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in 2023 to jointly combat the insurgency after severing defense ties with Paris over alleged French aggression and its failure to contain the militants.