Over the past few years, people in South Africa have been questioning the role corruption has played in their country's recent fortunes. In June, the Zondo commission - an inquiry named after it's chairperson Chief Justice Raymond Zondo - reported widespread corruption during the presidency of Jacob Zuma. It found that ANC leaders, including former and current government ministers, allegedly participated or encouraged looting at a massive cost to the country. Mr Zuma is standing trial on allegat...
Jul 12, 2022•15 min
Coconuts. Such a versatile product. You can eat them, you can drink its fresh sweet juice. You can even use it on your skin and hair. But as Alan has been finding out they can also be made into coco-peat and they can produce energy. So a very handy crop. And this is why Nigeria, despite growing plenty of them, last month, the country launched a coconut planting initiative in the southwestern town of Badagry in Lagos. It's part of a drive to promote the fruit as a cash crop and help the country b...
Jul 11, 2022•16 min
A decades-long civil war has killed thousands and displaced millions in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Neighbouring countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have also been sucked into the conflict. DR Congo accuses Kigali of sponsoring the M23 rebels, which have recently escalated the conflict after a period of calm. Rwanda denies this, but President Kagame recently acknowledged he was preparing for the worst…with many people suggesting he meant a possible armed confr...
Jul 08, 2022•18 min
Earlier this year, Ons Jabeur, from Tunisia, became the first Arab woman and African woman to win a WTA 1000 title - a major title in the women’s game. Now at number two in the world, she is the highest ever ranked African player. She’s been in great form and is playing her first ever semi final at a grand slam – and not the least at Wimbledon - widely regarded as the most prestigious tennis tournament. Although the continent has had several tennis players reaching the highest levels of the spor...
Jul 07, 2022•17 min
For many years people in South Africa have been dealing with rolling blackouts. But in recent days the outages have increased to six hours per day, causing unprecedented disruption. The state-owned power company Eskom has blamed the most recent ‘load shedding’ on striking workers. On Tuesday afternoon they reached an agreement with unions that could ease the supply issues, but warned that things could take time to get back to usual. In the meantime, South Africans must live with the disruption a...
Jul 06, 2022•13 min
Across the continent, Covid-19 cases rose by 36% on average last week. Those figures might have sounded scary a couple of years ago. But the World Health Organization expects Covid related deaths to drop by 94% this year. Many countries have dropped restrictions related to the pandemic. In Botswana though, a mask mandate remains in place. The US Centre for Disease Control raised concern about the number of cases there in June. So, is Covid-19 still a serious threat for Africa? And when might Bot...
Jul 05, 2022•12 min
In June 2022, the US Supreme court overturned “Roe v Wade”, a landmark case which legalised abortion in 1973. It came after a young woman challenged the criminal abortion laws in Texas. Her case was heard on appeal in the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by the US constitution. But now nearly 50 years later, America’s most senior legal body has overturned that right, which means laws in individual states will now determine whether wo...
Jul 04, 2022•17 min
In 2018 Nigeria were crowned champions of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s biggest football competition, for the ninth time. And they have only been to the tournament 11 times. With the 12th edition getting underway in Morocco from July 2, after it was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic, the defending champions start their quest for a tenth title. Nigeria go into the tournament as firm favourites and the Super Falcons have proven themselves as the queens of women’s football ...
Jul 01, 2022•14 min
Hope has been a midwife in Cameroon’s anglophone region for 27 years. Recently, she worked with a mother to quadruplets and sadly, only two of the babies survived. Providing care to the mother and babies was made even more difficult by the ongoing security crisis. The region has seen years of violence between separatist militants and government forces. For people living there, it has made every aspect of life more challenging. So, how are people coping in Cameroon’s anglophone region? #AfricaDai...
Jun 30, 2022•20 min
For more than 20 years she’s been co-chair of the world’s largest private foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works with projects aiming to fight poverty, inequality and infectious diseases. For years the foundation has poured billions of dollars into global health, education for girls among many others. And at a recent gathering in Kigali, The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation committed money to a $4 billion pledge to help eradicate malaria and neglected tropical diseases –...
Jun 29, 2022•16 min
Police in South Africa are examining how 21 teenagers died at a drinking tavern in the city of East London. The youngest to have died on Saturday night was just 13 years old. The minimum drinking age in South Africa is 18, so they should not have been in the spot. There were no visible injuries on the bodies of the victims, so police have said that a crush is unlikely. There have been reports that the victims may have been poisoned. Whatever happened in the early hours of Sunday morning, people ...
Jun 28, 2022•11 min
An investigation by BBC Africa Eye has found young people living with disabilities being trafficked from Tanzania to Nairobi. They found that they are then being forced to beg on the streets to bring in cash for the traffickers. Njeri Mwangi travelled to Tanzania and met parents who were tricked into letting their children move away, with the promise of a better life. And she joined Kenyan police as the information from her investigation led to arrests of alleged traffickers in the capital. She ...
Jun 27, 2022•18 min
This week you may have been hearing about a big meeting in Rwanda, as the heads of the 54 Commonwealth nations gather in Kigali. But for many, the Commonwealth, with its roots in the British Empire, feels like an outdated organisation – despite representing 2.5 billion people. The last member to join it was Rwanda, this year’s host. So what are the main issues arising? For Africa Daily, Alan Kasujja talks to two friends and former colleagues about their experiences of the meeting so far....
Jun 24, 2022•16 min
There’s been a noticeable change in the images of Africa we are now seeing on our screens. These pictures are so different from the ones the media has often shown of the continent. Gone are the children looking desolate and hungry with extended bellies, surrounded by flies, now it’s the images of rich, beautiful and increasingly famous people, living their best lives for the world to see. This is the new opulent and glitzy reality world of African celebrities who are unapologetic about their wea...
Jun 23, 2022•16 min
In much of the world, social media platforms are the number one source of information for young people. So it’s disturbing that several reports have been released showing that Kenya’s social media space is being flooded with misinformation, fake reports and distorted truths – all aimed at misleading voters ahead of the general elections this August. The latest includes findings by the Mozilla Foundation which discovered manipulated TikTok videos spreading political lies and ethnic hatred - viewe...
Jun 22, 2022•17 min
"I ask: where are my father's bones? My brother's bones?" In April 1972, Hutu rebels in the south of Burundi launched an assault on the Tutsi led government. Their aim was to overthrow the administration of then president Michel Micombero. In the ensuing chaos, at least a thousand people, including government officials, were brutally murdered. But the country’s army quickly contained the insurgency and attempted coup. This was followed by more than three months of revenge killings against the Hu...
Jun 21, 2022•17 min
“Here in our culture when you don’t see the body of someone, for the woman you can’t go back to sleep on the bed. You have to stay on the floor all the time. So this is what the family has gone through. For them that tooth is the body of their father”. Patrice Lumumba is a national hero in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. He became the country’s first prime minister at the age of just 35, after it won independence from Belgian rule in June of 1960. But less than a year later, he was over...
Jun 20, 2022•16 min
For several decades, the Maasai community in Loliondo in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro district have been involved in a land dispute with the government. Thousands of Maasai have lived for years on the fertile 1,500 square km piece of land – using its abundant water sources for their livestock. But the authorities no longer want the Maasai living there, as they say land and wildlife is being put at risk because of the rapidly expanding human population. The situation came to a head recently when authori...
Jun 17, 2022•12 min
Budget airline Ryanair recently introduced a policy that forced South African travellers to the UK to do a test in the Afrikaans language. This, it said, was aimed at proving the passengers’ nationality, in an effort to weed out those using counterfeit passports. The quiz contained questions such as ‘what is South Africa's international dialling code?’, ‘what is its capital city?’ and ‘who is the current president?’. Anyone who failed this test was refused travel and refunded the cost of their t...
Jun 16, 2022•11 min
Fans say it’s the future of virtual money; experts say it's tamper-proof; billionaires have been made. But cryptocurrency has also led millionaires to lose everything – while Kenya’s ICT minister says last year Kenyans lost more than $120 million to crypto scams. When Bitcoin was first launched in 2009, one bitcoin was worth 0. By mid-April last year, the value of one bitcoin peaked at $60,000 US. But In the last seven months, the highly volatile online currency has lost more than 60% of its val...
Jun 15, 2022•14 min
In April the UK government announced that they had signed a deal that would see asylum seekers to the UK processed instead in Rwanda, some 6,500km away. This caused outrage, with rights groups and campaigners calling the deal cruel, saying the asylum seekers who come to the UK have already faced gruelling and treacherous journeys and shouldn’t be sent to another country for their papers to be processed. The British government argued that the plan was designed to deter people-trafficking. Rwanda ...
Jun 14, 2022•15 min
WARNING: Some might find the language in this episode upsetting. In February 2020 a video of African children speaking Chinese went viral. In the clip, the children are seen cheering and dancing while repeating words from an unseen male voice in the background. Some of the language used in that viral video are offensive and derogatory. In the short clip, the children, all dressed in similar red costumes with a white dragon on the front pocket, are heard saying in Chinese “I’m a black devil, and ...
Jun 13, 2022•17 min
Funerals have begun for some of the forty people killed after armed men burst into a Catholic church in the town of Owo in the South West of Nigeria – shooting anyone who moved, and setting off explosives. The town’s medical facility has been overwhelmed with casualties – many of whom had been shot. The authorities say they suspect the extremist group Islamic State West Africa Province carried out the attack. If confirmed, it would be the first attack by the IS-linked militants in southern Niger...
Jun 10, 2022•17 min
Earlier this week, two brothers - Atul and Rajesh - were arrested in Dubai. For years the businessmen’s close relationship with politicians in South Africa has caused controversy. And they have been accused of allegedly bribing officials to secure lucrative state contracts during the rule of former President Zuma. The Gupta’s have always denied any wrongdoing. But South Africa is now seeking to extradite them to face charges of corruption. So, what does it all mean for South Africa…and the polit...
Jun 09, 2022•14 min
With a population of at least 20 million residents and with close to no proper city planning, Lagos is often plagued with intense traffic jams and locals often turn to commercial motorbike taxis, known locally as okada, or its 2-wheeled equivalent, keke, to get around quickly. But now due to what Lagos authorities are calling safety concerns, Nigeria’s largest city has yet again banned the okadas and kekes. This latest move to ban okadas came after the lynching of a man by suspected riders in th...
Jun 08, 2022•16 min
Monkeypox was first detected in Nigeria and the DRC in the 1970s. Since then there’ve been a number of cases in West African countries including Cameroon, the Central Africa Republic and Sierra Leone – but it hasn’t been a problem for much of the rest of the continent – and compared to major killers like malaria, HIV and TB, very few people actually die from it. And yet the World Health Organisation says African countries should be on alert - and prepare their response to it. So why is it a prio...
Jun 07, 2022•14 min
“Great plan on paper. Poor implementation. I wish things could get better… I remember when I was growing up my Grandfather used to work for the railways corporation and it was prestigious to work for the railways. He would work across Kenya, go to Tanzania and that’s not possible now.” In 2004, an East African Community Summit announced a plan to invest in and integrate railway lines and services across the region. It followed years of under investment which had led to the near collapse of most ...
Jun 06, 2022•15 min
There have been a series of suicides in the Kenyan police force in the last year - at the rate of at least one or two each month. And last month, Kenya’s Inspector General of Police announced that nearly 2,000 officers weren’t fit for service – due to issues with their mental health. That's 2,000 officers who carry guns. So how can the police service tackle these issues – for the welfare of its officers, and the safety of the public? Africa Daily speaks to the widow of a police officer who took ...
Jun 03, 2022•13 min
Since 2014, Malawi has suffered a wave of assaults against people with albinism. In that time more than 40 people with the condition have been murdered. In many of the cases, these killings are motivated by the baseless belief that the body parts bring wealth and luck. Just this week, twelve people, including a priest, a hospital worker and a police officer, appeared in court for the murder of a man with albinism. So how can people with albinism ever feel safe? Africa Daily speaks to two people ...
Jun 02, 2022•13 min
Niger is reported to be building a drone base and taking delivery of Bayraktar TB2 drones from Turkey. The pilotless aircraft were used to great effect by Ukraine in the weeks after Russia invaded. And Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the drones will “increase the military and security capacity” of Niger. Niger is often listed among the very poorest countries in the world and is dealing with multiple threats from militant groups along its borders with Mali, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. ...
Jun 01, 2022•15 min
