Fishermen in the Chinese fleets that ply the waters off the coast of West Africa spend between 20 and 30 days aboard a boat, where their biggest concerns are typhoons, getting caught in the machinery and ropes used to pull hauls of fish in, and boredom that they try to alleviate by sleeping, smoking, and reading between shifts.
Kigali, Rwanda
In the spring of 1994, violence erupted in Rwanda after a plane carrying then president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down. Thousands of ethnic Tutsis, a minority group who became a target after Habyarimana’s death, sought refuge in the country’s Catholic and Protestant churches.
More than 5,000 guns—three 15-foot pyres of rifles and pistols—were set ablaze in a field on the outskirts of Nairobi this week. Kenya’s deputy president William Ruto oversaw the burning, a message to the public that illegal arms trade will not be tolerated.
Dadaab in Kenya’s arid northeast is the world’s largest refugee camp, housing between 263,000 to 350,000 people, mostly Somalis fleeing strife in their own country. In six months, the Kenyan government says it will close the complex down, extending its original deadline from the end of November.
Huye District, Rwanda
Ethiopia’s internet is among the least free in the world. According to a new index released by the nonprofit Freedom House, Ethiopia ranked ahead of only Iran, Syria, and China, out of 65 countries in terms of access to the internet, censorship, and freedom of information. It ranked the worst of any country in Africa.
A crisis-mapping platform born of post-election violence in Kenya is now being used to monitor violence and intimidation in the United States.
In Africa, Donald Trump is believed to have said that Africans are lazy, that African immigrants in the United States should be deported, and that Africa as a continent should be recolonized. With Trump’s presidential win, these comments, allegedly made over the past two years, have begun to circulate again.
Germany is prepared to invest millions of euros into African countries in hopes of persuading migrants to stay home. The country’s development ministry will release details of a “Marshall Plan with Africa” in the coming weeks—a reference the monumental US aid and investment program in Europe after World War II.
Johannesburg, South Africa
Nairobi, Kenya
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie has been actively weighing in on the US election. Her short story on Donald Trump’s campaign from the perspective of his wife, Melania, is a study of a man-child, desperate for external approval. She penned an open letter of appreciation to first lady Michelle Obama, who has been campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Now, in an essay published days before the election, she tackles a question that has persisted throughout the campaign: Clinton’s supposed lack of likability.
It’s the report that confirms South Africa’s worst fears about corruption: that the state has been captured. In 355 pages, former public protector Thuli Madonsela and her team of investigators outline in detail just how much control the Gupta family, a wealthy Indian immigrant family, has over South Africa’s resources. The Guptas’ close friend, president Jacob Zuma, as well as two ministers implicated in the report, went to court to stop its release. But it was finally released on Nov. 2, after protests and a court battle.
The 355-page report detailing corruption in South Africa’s ruling party offers one rare uplifting moment. In the report, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas reveals more details of how he turned down an offer by the powerful Gupta family of 600 million rand (about $44 million) to be the country’s finance minister.
When the results of Kenya’s presidential election in 2007 came in, announcing the victory of Mwai Kibaki, his opponent Raila Odinga refused to accept the results, charging that the vote had been rigged. Soon, violence and rioting swept the country. By the end of two months of unrest, more than a thousand people had been killed and half a million Kenyans were displaced.
Ethiopia’s prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn has reshuffled his cabinet, appointing 21 new ministers including a new head of communications, Negeri Lencho, an Oromo professor at the Addis Ababa University college of humanities and journalism.
On the evening of Oct. 28, Mouhcine Fikri, 31, and his fishmonger friends in the northern port city of Al Hoceima, Morocco, dived into a garbage truck where authorities had tossed about $11,000 worth of swordfish. Sales of the protected species are banned. The garbage compactor began operating and Fikri’s friends escaped. Fikri was crushed to death. Photos of Fikri’s lifeless body in the garbage truck quickly circulated on social media, culminating in protests following his funeral on Oct 30.
A nondescript 24-year-old man in blue jeans and a grey sweatshirt walked up to a security guard outside of the United States embassy in Nairobi yesterday (Oct. 27) and stabbed him in the face, shouting “Why? Why?”
More African countries are looking East for inspiration on how to grow and manage their economies. According to a survey by Afrobarometer, China is the second-most popular international presence on the continent, only slightly behind the United States. ”China rivals the United States in influence and popularity as a development model,” the report, released today (pdf), concluded.
Traffic is a problem in Nairobi. A short commute can last for hours during morning or evening rush hour. Buses and motorbikes cut in and out of traffic, worsening congestion. It’s estimated that road congestion costs Kenya’s capital as much as $570,000 a day in lost productivity.
The floodgates have opened. Over the past two weeks, three African countries have said they will leave the International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. The latest, Gambia, is perhaps the boldest.
A music video released this month by Luket Ministries, an Oklahoma missionary group working in Uganda, features five white women in traditional Ugandan dresses dancing with plastic jerry cans, knocking back deworming tablets, and eating sukuma wiki, or kale, with their hands. They sing and strut to the tune of Justin Timberlake’s song “Sexy back,” with modified lyrics, ”I’m bringing missions back.”
Al Shabaab militants have claimed responsibility for shooting dead a Somali intelligence officer as he walked to mosque in Mogadishu and ramming a suicide truck into an African Union military base in Beledweyne.
