At least 57 people have been confirmed dead in days of clashes between antigovernment fighters and Somaliland security forces in the disputed city of Las Anod after local leaders said they wanted to rejoin the federal government of Somalia, a doctor reported Saturday.

Abdimajid Hussein Sugulle, the director-general of a public hospital in Las Anod, told The Associated Press that more than 400 people also were wounded in nearly a week of fighting.

Authorities in Somaliland, a region that separated from Somalia three decades ago and seeks recognition as an independent country, announced a unilateral cease-fire on Friday night. But residents said skirmishes continued in and around the eastern city.

Somaliland and the Somali state of Puntland have disputed Las Anod for years, but the city has been under Somaliland control.

The Somaliland government accused clan militants of targeting its army facilities. In return, traditional elders accused Somaliland forces of invading the city and said the only way to restore peace was for the troops to leave.

The United Nations has said the fighting has displaced more than 80,000 people. Water and electricity have been cut off amid shelling.

“Indiscriminate shelling of civilians is unacceptable and must stop,” the U.N. and international partners said in a statement earlier in the week.

The Somali Red Crescent Society said the dead included one of its volunteers, who was killed by a stray bullet.
…

On the packed streets of Nairobi, Cyrus Kariuki is one of a growing number of bikers zooming through traffic on an electric motorbike, reaping the benefits of cheaper transport, cleaner air and limiting planet-warming emissions in the process.

“Each month one doesn’t have to be burdened by oil change, engine checks and other costly maintenance costs,” Kariuki said.

Electric motorcycles are gaining traction in Kenya as private sector-led firms rush to set up charging points and battery-swapping stations to speed up the growth of cleaner transport and put the east African nation on a path toward fresher air and lower emissions.

But startups say more public support and better government schemes can help further propel the industry.

Ampersand, an African-based electric mobility company, began its Kenyan operations in May 2022. The business currently operates seven battery-swapping stations spread across the country’s capital and has so far attracted 60 customers. Ian Mbote, the startup’s automotive engineer and expansion lead, says uptake has been relatively slow.

“We need friendly policies, taxes, regulations and incentives that would boost the entry into the market,” said Mbote, adding that favorable government tariffs in Rwanda accelerated its electric transport growth. Ampersand plans to sell 500 more electric motorbikes by the end of the year.

Companies say the savings of switching to electric and using a battery-swap system, rather than charging for several hours, are key selling points for customers.

“Our batteries cost $1.48 to swap a full battery which gives one mobility of about 90 to 110 kilometers (56 to 68 miles) as compared to the $1.44 of fuel that only guarantees a 30 to 40 kilometer ride (19 to 25 miles) on a motorcycle,” Mbote said.

Kim Chepkoit, the founder of electric motorbike-making company Ecobodaa Mobility, added that “electricity costs are going to be more predictable and cushioned from the fluctuation of the fuel prices.”

Ecobodaa’s flagship product is a motorcycle with two batteries, making it capable of covering 160 kilometers (100 miles) on one battery charge. The motorcycle costs 185,000 shillings ($1,400) without the battery, about the same as a conventional motorbike.

Other cleaner transport initiatives in the country include the Sustainable Energy for Africa program which runs a hub for 30 solar-powered charging stations for electric vehicles and battery-swapping in Kenya’s western region.

Electric mobility has a promising future in the continent but “requires infrastructural, societal and political systemic changes that neither happen overnight nor will be immune to hesitance,” said Carol Mungo, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

The move to electric transport “will require African governments to rethink how they deliver current services such as reliable and affordable electricity” and at the same time put in place adequate measures to address electric waste and disposal, Mungo added.

Some financial incentives are on the way.

Earlier in February the African Development Bank announced that it will provide $1 million in grants for technical assistance in Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and South Africa.

The African continent records a million premature deaths annually from air pollution, according to a soon-to-be-released study by the U.N. environment agency, Stockholm Environment Institute and the African Union obtained by The Associated Press.

Studies by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition say a reduction of short-lived climate pollutants can cut the amount of warming by as “much as 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit), while avoiding 2.4 million premature deaths globally from annual outdoor air pollution.”

But Mungo warned that cleaning up transport is just one step toward better air quality.

“There are so many emission factors in cities,” she said. “E-mobility, however, looks broadly beyond the transport sector to infrastructure development and urban planning, which in the end can solve complex pollution issues on in Africa.”

 
…

While others in her Zimbabwean village agonize over a maize crop seemingly headed for failure, Jestina Nyamukunguvengu picks up a hoe and slices through the soil of her fields that are lush green with a pearl millet crop in the African country’s arid Rushinga district.

“These crops don’t get affected by drought, they are quick to flower, and that’s the only way we can beat the drought,” the 59-year old said, smiling broadly. Millets, including sorghum, now take up over two hectares of her land — a patch where maize was once the crop of choice.

Farmers like Nyamukunguvengu in the developing world are on the front lines of a project proposed by India that has led the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization to christen 2023 as “The Year of Millets,” an effort to revive a hardy and healthy crop that has been cultivated for millennia — but was largely elbowed aside by European colonists who favored corn, wheat and other grains.

The designation is timely: Last year, drought swept across much of eastern Africa; war between Russia and Ukraine upended supplies and raised the prices of foodstuffs and fertilizer from Europe’s breadbasket; worries surged about environmental fallout of cross-globe shipments of farm products; many chefs and consumers are looking to diversify diets at a time of excessively standardized fare.

All that has given a new impetus to locally-grown and alternative grains and other staples like millets.

Millets come in multiple varieties, such as finger millet, fonio, sorghum, and teff, which is used in the spongy injera bread familiar to fans of Ethiopian cuisine. Proponents tout millets for their healthiness — they can be rich in proteins, potassium, and vitamin B — and most varieties are gluten-free. And they’re versatile: useful in everything from bread, cereal and couscous to pudding and even beer.

Over centuries, millets have been cultivated around the world — in places like Japan, Europe, the Americas and Australia — but their epicenters have traditionally been India, China, and sub-Saharan Africa, said Fen Beed, team leader at FAO for rural and urban crop and mechanization systems.

Many countries realized they “should go back and look at what’s indigenous to their agricultural heritage and what could be revisited as a potential substitute for what would otherwise be imported — which is at risk when we had the likes of pandemic, or when we have the likes of conflict,” said Beed.

Millets are more tolerant of poor soils, drought and harsh growing conditions, and can easily adapt to different environments without high levels of fertilizer and pesticide. They don’t need nearly as much water as other grains, making them ideal for places like Africa’s arid Sahel region, and their deep roots of varieties like fonio can help mitigate desertification, the process that transforms fertile soil into desert, often because of drought or deforestation.

“Fonio is nicknamed the Lazy Farmers crop. That’s how easy it is to grow,” says Pierre Thiam, executive chef and co-founder of New York-based fine-casual food chain Teranga, which features West African cuisine. “When the first rain comes, the farmers only have to go out and just like throw the seeds of fonio … They barely till the soil.”

“And it’s a fast growing crop, too: It can mature in two months,” he said, acknowledging it’s not all easy: “Processing fonio is very difficult. You have to remove the skin before it becomes edible.”

Millets account for less than 3% of the global grain trade, according to FAO. But cultivation is growing in some arid zones. In Rushinga district, land under millets almost tripled over the past decade. The U.N.’s World Food Programme deployed dozens of threshing machines and gave seed packs and training to 63,000 small-scale farmers in drought-prone areas in the previous season.

Low rainfall and high temperatures in recent years in part due to climate change, coupled with poor soils, have doused interest in water-guzzling maize.

“You’ll find the ones who grew maize are the ones who are seeking food assistance, those who have grown sorghum or pearl millet are still eating their small grains,” said Melody Tsoriyo, the district’s agronomist, alluding to small grains like millets, whose seeds can be as fine as sand. “We anticipate that in five years to come, small grains will overtake maize.”

Government teams in Zimbabwe have fanned out to remote rural regions, inspecting crops and providing expert assistance such as through WhatsApp groups to spread technical knowledge to farmers.

WFP spokesman Tatenda Macheka said millets “are helping us reduce food insecurity” in Zimbabwe, where about a quarter of people in the country of 15 million — long a breadbasket of southern Africa — are now food insecure, meaning that they’re not sure where their next meal will come from.

In urban areas of Zimbabwe and well beyond, restaurants and hotels are riding the newfound impression that a millet meal offers a tinge of class, and have made it pricier fare on their menus.

Thiam, the U.S.-based chef, recalled eating fonio as a kid in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, but fretted that it wasn’t often available in his hometown — the capital — let alone New York. He admitted once “naively” having dreams making what’s known in rural Senegal as “the grain of royalty” — served to honor visiting guests — into a “world class crop.”

He’s pared back those ambitions a bit, but still sees a future for the small grains.

“It’s really amazing that you can have a grain like this that’s been ignored for so long,” Thiam said in an interview from his home in El Cerrito, Calif., where he moved to be close to his wife and her family. “It’s about time that we integrate it into our diet.”
…

South Sudan has accused Kenya of trying to steal disputed territory along their border after communal clashes left at least eight people dead.

Parliamentarians are piling pressure on South Sudanese President Salva Kiir to recall the house from recess so they can discuss the simmering border dispute. Fighting occurred last weekend in the area, in and around the town of Nakodok, a few miles from an oil field on the Kenyan side of the border.

South Sudan says Kenyan troops tried to take control of Nakodok, an area of Kapoeta East County. Abdullah Angelo Lokeno, the county commissioner, said eight people were reported to have been killed from the Kenyan side. He said the situation was now calm, and that he had urged the government of South Sudan “to return the people of Kenya to their place so that citizens can get to rest. The government should come and control the situation.”

In 2009, Kenya and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement — the ruling party of what was then southern Sudan — signed an agreement to establish a temporary border control post at Nadapal to facilitate cross-border movement of people, goods and services.

The meeting was held in Nairobi with representatives from both sides, according to documents seen by VOA.

Juol Nhomngek, a South Sudanese lawmaker, said the agreement no longer holds, as it is not anchored in any legislation passed since South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011.

“Even if there were an agreement, it could not be given without the consent of the parliament that represents the people,” Nhomngek said.

On Thursday, Kiir dispatched his special adviser to Nairobi, a move seen as an effort to ease the tension between the two countries. The mission came a day after Kenya sent Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria to Juba to deliver a message from President William Ruto.

South Sudan Foreign Affairs Minister Mayiik Ayii Deng said the government hopes to use diplomatic means to resolve the impasse.

Kiir is under immense pressure to reconvene the national assembly to discuss the matter. Bol Joseph Agau, a member of parliament and a member of the National Democratic Movement Party under the South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), said, “We need the parliament to be recalled by the head of the state. His excellency, the President Salva Kiir, needs to see that we have a big need for the parliament to be reopened.”

Some leaders said South Sudan would not cede even an inch of territory.

Dau Deng Dau, deputy minister for foreign affairs, said South Sudan “is called a country because of a defined territory and population, and we want to inform our youths to be calm, be patient, your country is addressing all these matters.”

The deputy foreign affairs minister said South Sudan had several other areas that, in his words, had been entered by neighboring countries, specifically Kenya and Uganda. He said South Sudan’s border commission was working with both countries to resolve the issues.
…

The Indian government’s plan to introduce African cheetahs into the wild in India after relocating them from the African continent has been criticized by many conservationists who call the idea “ecologically and scientifically flawed.”

Last month, South Africa signed an agreement to send dozens of African cheetahs to India over the next decade. The first batch of 12 cheetahs, seven males and five females, is expected this month, according to the agreement.

They will be released into India’s Kuno National Park (KNP) in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where eight African cheetahs are living.

“Following the import of the 12 cheetahs in February, the plan is to translocate a further 12 annually for the next eight to 10 years,” said a statement issued by the Indian government the last week of January.

The first batch of eight African cheetahs was airlifted from Namibia and released in the park in September 2022, marking the beginning of the Indian government’s ambitious Cheetah Introduction Project (CIP) to reintroduce the big cats to India.

Asiatic cheetahs in India became extinct over seven decades ago.

When the first group of African cheetahs arrived, S.P. Yadav, head of Project Tiger, said that the extinction of the cheetah in the country was a massive loss of biodiversity.

“It is our moral and ethical responsibility to bring back the cheetah to India,” he said.

‘Ecologically unsound project’

However, conservationists are divided over the Indian government’s current plan to introduce African cheetahs in India.

In an opinion piece published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in October, a group of wildlife scientists from India, South Africa and other countries said that India’s current Action Plan for Introduction of Cheetah in India (APICI) — a plan prepared by CIP experts — was “ecologically unsound, costly and may serve as a distraction rather than help global cheetah and other science-based conservation efforts.”

The CIP of the Indian government estimates that a maximum of 21 cheetahs can reside in the 748-square-kilometer KNP.

Wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, one of the authors of the opinion piece, told VOA that the KNP is too small to host a viable population of the big cats.

“Average cheetah density in the best of the habitats in Africa is 1 per 100 square kilometers. Based on an extrapolation using the density data from Africa, science informs us that seven to eight cheetahs, to a maximum of 10 cheetahs can reside within the 748-square-kilometer KNP,” Chellam said.

“With an area of only 748 square kilometers, KNP is just too small to host a viable population — estimated at about 50 adults — of the introduced cheetahs.”

Echoing Chellam’s views, South Africa-based large carnivore expert Michael G.L. Mills said that the KNP is not suitable for India’s cheetah action plan.

“The range quality is also important for maintaining a viable cheetah population, with a need for open or semi-open habitat, with sufficient, suitable wild prey, free from anthropogenic (made by humans) pressure and free-ranging dogs,” Mills told VOA.

Mills said Kuno National Park, which is 748 square kilometers in area, is unfenced, harbors about 500 feral cattle and is surrounded by a forested landscape with 169 human settlements is not the size and quality to permit self-sustaining and genetically viable cheetah populations. Nor are other landscapes, he said.

“Adopting such a speculative and unscientific approach, as seems to be the case in this venture, will likely lead to human-cheetah conflicts, death of the introduced cheetahs or both, and will undermine other science-based species recovery efforts for the cheetah, both within India and globally,” Mills added.

‘Cheetahs will do very well’

However, experts involved in India’s cheetah program disagree.

Yadvendradev Jhala, dean of the Wildlife Institute of India and lead scientist of the CIP, said that he “totally disagrees” with those who are critical of the APICI action plan.

“The cheetah reintroduction project is about the restoration of functional ecosystems. I am amazed to see how learned wildlife biologists could be blind or, choose to be blind, to the conservation importance of this project,” Jhala told VOA, noting that the real challenge begins when cheetahs are released as free ranging.

Since they were translocated to India five months ago, all eight cheetahs are still in fenced enclosures at the KNP to help them acclimatize to their new home.

“Their survival will depend on how safe the national park and its surroundings are made from poachers and their snares,” Jhala said. “As a species, the cheetah from Africa will adapt and do very well in the Indian habitat, climate and with predators and prey.”

Conservationist M.K. Ranjitsinh, a member of a court-appointed committee advising the government on the cheetah introduction project, said that apart from the KNP, there are three other sites being readied where African cheetahs would be introduced.

“All the selected sites, including KNP, do have sufficient prey base, as of now, to support a certain number of cheetahs and what we hope to do is to conserve the areas so that the prey base goes up,” Ranjitsinh told VOA.

“Scientists have found that these sites have the potential presently and in the future. We are prepared to take a few losses, which are bound to happen in any translocation and any reintroduction of this kind.”

According to the estimate by the APICI, with the introduction of around 100 African cheetahs over the next decade, after 15 years, the KNP is expected to have an established population of 21 cheetahs.

Conservationist Chellam said, “Twenty-one cheetahs just doesn’t constitute a viable population. As a result, there is no question of the introduced African cheetahs playing any other larger conservation role in India.”
…

Scientists have a mystery on their hands after the discovery of 330 stone tools about 2.9 million years old at a site in Kenya, along Lake Victoria’s shores, that were used to butcher animals, including hippos, and pound plant material for food.

Which of our prehistoric relatives that were walking the African landscape at the time made them? The chief suspect, researchers said on Thursday in describing the findings, may be a surprise.

The Nyayanga site artifacts represent the oldest-known examples of a type of stone technology, called the Oldowan toolkit, that was revolutionary, enabling our forerunners to process diverse foods and expand their menu. Three tool types were found: hammerstones and stone cores to pound plants, bone and meat, and sharp-edged flakes to cut meat.

To put the age of these tools into perspective, our species Homo sapiens did not appear until roughly 300,000 years ago.

Scientists had long believed Oldowan tools were the purview of species belonging to the genus Homo, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives. But no Homo fossils were found at Nyayanga. Instead, two teeth – stout molars – of a genus called Paranthropus were discovered there, an indication this prehistoric cousin of ours may have been the maker.

“The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools. Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology,” said anthropologist Thomas Plummer of Queens College in New York City, lead author of the research published in the journal Science.

The term hominin refers to various species considered human or closely related.

“When our team determined the age of the Nyayanga evidence, the perpetrator of the tools became a ‘whodunit’ in my mind,” said paleoanthropologist and study co-author Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program. “There are several possibilities. And except for finding fossilized hand bones wrapped around a stone tool, the originator of the early Oldowan tools may be an unknown for a long time.”

The molars represent the oldest-known fossils of Paranthropus, an upright-walker that combined ape-like and human-like traits, possessing adaptations for heavy chewing, including a skull topped with a bony ridge to which strong jaw muscles were attached, like in gorillas.

Other hominins existing at the time included the genus Australopithecus, known for the famous even-older fossil “Lucy.”

“While some species of nonhuman primates produce technologies that assist in foraging, humans are uniquely dependent on technology for survival,” Plummer said.

All later developments in prehistoric technologies were based on Oldowan tools, making their advent a milestone in human evolution, Potts said. Rudimentary stone tools 3.3 million years old from another Kenyan site may have been an Oldowan forerunner or a technological dead-end.

The Nyayanga site today is a gully on Homa Mountain’s western flank along Lake Victoria in southwestern Kenya. When the tools were made, it was woodland and grassland along a stream, teeming with animals.

Until now, the oldest-known Oldowan examples dated to around 2.6 million years ago, in Ethiopia. The species Homo erectus later toted Oldowan technology as far as Georgia and China.

Cut marks on hippopotamus rib and shin bones at Nyayanga were the oldest-known examples of butchering a very large animal – called megafauna. The researchers think the hippos were scavenged, not hunted. The tools also were used for cracking open antelope bones to obtain marrow and pounding hard and soft plant material.

Fire was not harnessed until much later, meaning food was eaten raw. The researchers suspect the tools were used to pound meat to make it like “hippo tartare.”

“Megafauna provide a super abundance of food,” Plummer said. “A hippopotamus is a big leather sack full of good things to eat.”
…

The threat posed by the Islamic State group remains high and has increased in and around conflict zones, and the group’s expansion is “particularly worrying” in Africa’s center, south and Sahel regions, the U.N. counterterrorism chief said Thursday. 

Undersecretary-General Vladimir Voronkov told the Security Council that the group, also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, continues to use the internet, social media, video games and gaming platforms “to extend the reach of its propaganda to radicalize and recruit new supporters.” 

“Daesh’s use of new and emerging technologies also remains a key concern,” he said, pointing to its continuing use of drones for surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as “virtual assets” to raise money. 

Voronkov said the high level of threat posed by the Islamic State group and its affiliates, including their sustained expansion in parts of Africa, underscores the need for multifaceted approaches to respond – not just focused on security but on preventive measures, including preventing conflicts. 

Defeated in 2017

The Islamic State declared a self-styled caliphate in a large swath of territory in Syria and Iraq that it seized in 2014. The extremist group was formally declared defeated in Iraq in 2017 following a three-year bloody battle that left tens of thousands dead and cities in ruins, but its sleeper cells remain in both countries. 

Some 65,600 suspected Islamic State members and their families — both Syrians and foreign citizens — are still held in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria run by U.S.-allied Kurdish groups, according to a Human Rights Watch report released in December. 

Voronkov said the pace of repatriations remains too slow “and children continue to bear the brunt of this catastrophe.” At the same time, he said, “foreign terrorist fighters” who joined the extremist group are not restricted to Iraq and Syria and “move between different theaters of conflict.” 

Voronkov said “foreign terrorist fighters with battlefield experience relocating to their homes or to third countries further compounds the threat” from Daesh. 

Weixiong Chen, acting head of the Security Council Counterterrorism Committee’s executive directorate, told members that the failure to repatriate foreign nationals from the camps provides Daesh “with ongoing opportunities to recruit from camps and prisons and facilitate radicalization to violence and the spread of terrorism.” 

He said the threat from Daesh “presents a complex, evolving and enduring threat in both conflict and non-conflict zones.” 

Chen pointed to Daesh’s continued exploitation of “local fragilities and intercommunal tensions,” particularly in Iraq, Syria and parts of Africa, and the expansion of its affiliates in parts of Africa. 

He also cited Daesh’s revenue generation and fundraising through a wide range of ways, “including extortion, looting, smuggling, taxation, soliciting donations and kidnapping for ransom,” as well as its use of social media and gaming platforms. The Islamic State’s dominant means of moving money continues to be unregistered informal cash transfer networks and mobile money services, he said. 

Daesh’s access to conventional and improvised weapons, “including components of unmanned aircraft systems, and information and communications technologies continue to contribute to the terrorist menace,” Chen said, pointing to its use of improvised, stolen or illegally trafficked weapons to launch lethal attacks against a range of targets.
…

A rash of killings across Africa has renewed focus on the risks facing those working to expose wrongdoing.

The killings of two journalists in Cameroon and a respected human rights defender in Eswatini, along with the suspicious death of a well-known editor in Rwanda have raised questions about whether justice will be done.

The cases also underscored the dangers of impunity ­­­— with such incidents sending an unsettling message to government critics and the free press.

“There can be no doubt that when journalists are killed with impunity there is a chilling effect. It’s trite, but murder is the ultimate form of censorship,” Angela Quintal, head of the Africa program at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told VOA.

“The lack of consequences for those who kill or harm journalists obviously also emboldens others who believe they too can get away with it or allows those who threaten journalists to continue to do so,” she said.

In the case of Martinez Zogo, the Cameroonian journalist was forced into a car, having in vain sought help from a police station during the kidnapping. He was heard shouting “Help me, they want to kill me,” according to reports.

His body was found a few days later, naked and badly mutilated.

The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said that Zogo’s “fingers were cut off, his arms and legs were broken in several places, and a steel rod was rammed into his anus.”

Two weeks later, Ola Bebe, a radio host and priest, was found dead close to his home in the capital.

The killings prompted a U.N. Human Rights spokesperson to call on authorities to “take all necessary measures to create an enabling environment for journalists to work without fear of reprisal.”

The Cameroon cases were not isolated.

On Jan. 21, an outspoken critic of Africa’s last absolute monarchy, Eswatini lawyer and columnist Thulani Maseko, was shot dead through the window of his home.

He had been a constant thorn in the side of the government of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, and had been jailed for more than a year in 2014.

Amnesty International’s Southern Africa spokesperson Robert Shivambu told VOA at the time that Maseko’s death had sent a chilling message to pro-democracy activists and could signify an escalation in attacks against those who are openly seeking political reforms.

On Jan. 18, John Williams Ntwali, editor of Rwanda’s Chronicles newspaper, died when a speeding car hit the motorcycle he was traveling on.

The death of a journalist who had frequently faced threats in relation to his work raised questions among media watchdogs about whether it was really an accident.

Human Rights Watch noted that prior to his death, Ntwali had told a friend that he’d survived a number of “staged incidents” in Kigali, and a fellow Rwandan journalist told VOA that the night before he died, Ntwali had seemed anxious.

All three countries have poor records on RSF’s Press Freedom Index, with Rwanda placing 136, Cameroon 118 and Eswatini 131 out of 180 countries where 1 denotes the best conditions.

Still, authorities in each case have vowed to investigate.

This week, a Rwandan court identified the driver of the vehicle that hit Ntwali as Moise Emmanuel Bagirishya. A court convicted Bagirishya of involuntary manslaughter and fined him $920.

However, the trial was not open to the public and Bagirishya was not present for the sentencing.

CPJ’s Quintal says that the lack of transparency “merely feeds into the suspicions that all is not what it seems.”

“We cannot say for sure that it was indeed an accident until there are more facts and questions answered,” she said.

Michela Wrong, a British journalist and author of a book on Rwanda, Do Not Disturb. The story of a political murder and a regime gone bad, told VOA the country had a track record of political assassination.

“People die in road accidents in Africa every day, but Rwanda isn’t like any other African state,” she said. “This is a country with a track record of extrajudicial killings, mysterious disappearances and arbitrary arrests involving journalists, opposition party members and human rights activists.”

“Crucially, John Williams Ntwali told friends that he was receiving death threats, lived in constant fear, and had been repeatedly ordered to report to police headquarters. In that context, his death is highly suspicious,” Wrong said.

In the case of Maseko, many rights groups have intimated the government could have been connected to the killing. His death came just hours after the king, Mswati III, spoke against activists challenging his rule.

Government officials have angrily denied such claims.

Despite promising a swift investigation, no arrests have yet been made.

Eswatini government spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo told VOA that authorities were investigating numerous crimes, and that “no one case is above the other.”

He added that Maseko’s murder “is indeed taken seriously but not in isolation from other cases.”

In Cameroon however, multiple arrests have been made in the killing of Zogo, including Justin Danwe, deputy head of Cameroon’s General Directorate for External Investigations.

Danwe, who confessed to participating in the kidnapping and murder, implicated other senior officials.

VOA sent an email to the Justice Ministry requesting comment but as of publication had not heard back.

More arrests came Monday, as police detained businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga and two of his associates.

In his reporting for Amplitude FM, Zogo had alleged that Belinga was involved in a public embezzlement scheme.

CPJ’s Quintal acknowledged the high-profile arrests as a “welcoming sign,” but she said “as yet, no one has been charged and very little has been made public.”

“There are ‘leaks’ from certain quarters, but there is a lot of smoke and mirrors and misinformation and even disinformation,” she said.

“Given the reality of Cameroon today where there is a power struggle between elites with an ailing President [Paul] Biya who has been in power for 40 years, we are watching to see how things play out and whether there will indeed be justice for Martinez Zogo,” she said. 
…

Pope Francis wound up a peace mission to South Sudan on Sunday urging the people to make themselves immune to the “venom of hatred” to achieve the peace and prosperity that have eluded them through years of bloody ethnic conflicts.

Francis presided at an open-air Mass on the grounds of a mausoleum for South Sudan’s liberation hero John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash in 2005 before the predominantly Christian country broke away from Muslim Sudan in 2011.

The 86-year-old pope wove his homily around the themes that have dominated his trip to the world’s newest nation – reconciliation and mutual forgiveness for past wrongs.

The crowd sang, drummed and ululated as Francis entered the dusty area.

He begged the crowd of about 70,000 people to shun the “blind fury of violence.”

Two years after independence, South Sudan plunged into a civil war that killed 400,000 people. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the two main antagonists, bouts of fighting have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.

At the end of the service, in a farewell address shortly before heading to the airport to fly home, the pope thanked the people of South Sudan for the affection they showed him.

“Dear brothers and sisters, I return to Rome with you even closer to my heart,” he told them. “Never lose hope. And lose no opportunity to build peace. May hope and peace dwell among you. May hope and peace dwell in South Sudan!”

The pope has had a longstanding interest in South Sudan. In one of the most remarkable gestures of his papacy, he knelt to kiss the feet of the country’s previously warring leaders during a meeting at the Vatican in 2019.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, leader of the global Anglican Communion, and Iain Greenshields, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, accompanied the pope during his visit to South Sudan.

The “pilgrimage of peace” was the first time in Christian history that leaders of the Catholic, Anglican and Reformed traditions conducted a joint foreign visit.

Hope of a turning point

Earlier on his Africa trip, the pope visited Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the continent’s largest Roman Catholic community, where he celebrated Mass for a million people and heard harrowing stories from people harmed by war in the eastern part of the country.

Among the worshippers at Sunday’s Mass in the South Sudanese capital Juba was Ferida Modon, 72, who lost three of her children to conflict.

“I want peace to come to South Sudan. Yes, I believe that his visit will change the situation. We are now tired of conflict,” she said. “We want God to listen to our prayers.”

Jesilen Gaba, 42, a widow with four children, said: “The fact that the three churches united for the sake of South Sudan, this is the turning point for peace. I want the visit to be a blessing to us. We have been at war; we have lost many people.”

Francis made another appeal for an end to the tribalism, financial wrongdoing and political cronyism at the root of many of the country’s problems.

He urged the people to build “good human relationships as a way of curbing the corruption of evil, the disease of division, the filth of fraudulent business dealings and the plague of injustice.”

South Sudan has some of the largest crude oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa but a U.N. report in 2021 said the country’s leaders had diverted “staggering amounts of money and other wealth” from public coffers and resources.

The government dismissed the report and has denied accusations of widespread corruption.
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Three people have been killed Saturday in attacks on a church in southern Ethiopia, according to reports by a religious media outlet.

The violence erupted against a backdrop of tensions in the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church after rebel bishops created their own synod in Oromia, the country’s most populous region.

Abune Henok, Archbishop of Addis Ababa Diocese, described the incidents in the Oromia city of Shashamene as “shameful and heart-wrenching,” according to the Church-affiliated Tewahedo Media Center (TMC).

The TMC said two Orthodox Christian youths had been killed, and another four people injured, when Oromia special forces attacked the church in Shashamene, which lies about 250 kilometers (150 miles) south of Addis Ababa.

It later said there had been sniper fire on the church from nearby high-rise buildings that had killed a woman and injured others.

It was not possible to independently verify the reports.

Henok called on the authorities in Oromia, also the largest geographic region in Ethiopia, to stop the “persecution” of Orthodox Christians, according to the TMC.

A statement issued by the Holy Synod later urged clergy and the faithful to wear black in protest and called for peaceful demonstrations at churches at home and abroad on February 12.

The unity of the Ethiopian Church, one of the oldest in the world and which accounts for about 40 percent of the country’s 115 million population, is under threat after the move by the rebel clergy last month.

The Church, headed by Patriarch Abune Mathias for a decade, has declared the breakaway synod illegal and excommunicated the bishops involved.

It has also accused the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of interfering in its affairs and making comments that effectively recognized the “illegitimate group.”

Addressing cabinet members earlier in the week, Abiy — who is himself from the Oromo community — called for the rivals to engage in dialogue and said both sides had their “own truths.”

The breakaway bishops accuse the church of discrimination and linguistic and cultural hegemony, saying congregations in Oromia are not served in their native language, claims rejected by the patriarchate.

Orthodox leaders have long complained of religious persecution, including the burning of churches several years ago, and relations with the government have been tense in the past, including over the Tigray conflict.

The World Council of Churches issued a statement Friday voicing “deep concern” about the developments in the Ethiopian institution.

“We call upon all political leaders in Ethiopia to support the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in its efforts to achieve unity and peace among its members,” WCC general secretary Jerry Pillay said.
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Authorities in Nigeria’s Katsina state have launched a joint security operation after 41 people were killed when a vigilante group clashed with bandits who attacked their village.

This is the latest violence ahead of the February 25 presidential and parliamentary election where insecurity has become a major concern of voters. 

Katsina state police spokesman Gambo Isah said that, as of Saturday, a joint security team that includes the military, air force and police were still searching for the perpetrators.

The bandits are believed to be holed up in the nearby Yargoje Forest, where many of the victims were found.

50 cows, 30 sheep stolen

The local vigilante group known as Yankasai was drawn from 11 communities in the Bakori area, where bandits stole 50 cows and 30 sheep before fleeing into the bush.

The vigilante group traced the suspects to the Yargoje Forest to recover the animals but were ambushed by the bandits, killing 41 and injuring two others.

“Our men are still there and as I am speaking with you presently an operation is ongoing,” Isah told Voice of America by phone. “But I cannot say there is no arrest being made but we’re waiting for the result of that operation.”

The bodies of slain vigilantes have been recovered and taken to the mortuary. The injured are being treated at the Kankara General Hospital.

Crime a concern

Katsina state is the home state of Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, and one of the most affected by growing violence perpetrated by armed gangs in northwest Nigeria.

Attacks in the region have led to criticism of Buhari’s eight-year tenure built on a promise to fix insecurity in Nigeria.

The Katsina state special adviser on security said the village attack and the killings have sparked outrage in the community. Authorities have called for calm.

Last week, Katsina state residents hurled stones at the president’s motorcade during his visit to commission projects started by the state’s governor.
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Nigerian Central Bank authorities are calling for calm as citizens march in the streets protesting cash and fuel shortages days ahead of the February 10 deadline when the country will switch to redesigned currency.  Protesters asked authorities Friday to circulate the new notes or reverse the currency switch decision. President Muhammadu Buhari assured citizens Friday that the problem will be addressed in a matter of days.

Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele told reporters Saturday authorities are taking measures to ensure smooth flow of the cash swap and minimize inconvenience.

He said there are enough of the redesigned currency and reiterated that the deadline to exchange the old bills for the new ones will not be extended beyond February 10.

On Sunday, the CBN announced a 10-day extension from January 31 for citizens to exchange world currencies for the new 200-, 500-, and 1,000-naira bills

But across many states, citizens say the new cash is yet to circulate, bringing business to a halt.

The situation snowballed into protests Friday in Oyo, Delta, Osun and Lagos states. Angry mobs vandalized banks and gas stations.

Ogho Okiti, the managing director of BusinessDay Media Ltd. said the new policy, though profitable, is already showing signs of poor implementation.

“What I think is happening is that we’re seeing an evidence of poor execution of the policy,” said Okiti. “There’s the dimension of logistics, there’s dimension of restrictions, then the dimension of accessibility, even to make transfers online you’re not able to do that. So, it’s putting so much frustration and pressure on the system”.

Nigeria is also facing intensifying fuel shortages across the country due to a disruption in the product distribution chain caused by the activities of cross-border smugglers.

On Friday, Buhari called for calm and said he has met with officials to resolve the problem in a lasting manner.

Oyo state Governor Sheyi Makinde also addressed residents in a televised broadcast, condemning violence in the state’s capital of Ibadan.

“The violence that erupted in part of Ibadan today is condemnable and will not be tolerated,” said Makinde. “In response to this I’ve suspended all campaign activities, I’ve also met with the heads of security agencies in Oyo state to restore calm. Violence cannot and will not solve our problems”.  

But across many states, citizens say the new cash is yet to circulate and the old notes have been mostly withdrawn from circulation, making business transactions difficult.

“The protest was actually peaceful, but I guess some people … all these political thugs joined, that is why it actually became violent. The bank was actually damaged totally, because they burgled the ATM machine, sike ?? parts of the windows,” said Stephen Adekunle, an Oyo State Resident.

This is Nigeria’s first currency swap in 19 years. 

Authorities say the measure is already making an impact curbing crimes, counterfeiting and corruption, as well as recalling the excess cash stashed away back into the banking system.
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Pope Francis called on Catholic clergy Saturday, especially those in Africa, to raise their voices against injustice and abuse of power by authorities. Francis was speaking to church leaders on his second day in Juba, South Sudan, where he is on a three-day ecumenical peace pilgrimage.

Pope Francis said Saturday the church should play a significant role in ending violence and bad governance in Africa by speaking out about injustices committed by those in power. 

The pope said, if we want to be pastors who intercede, we cannot afford to remain neutral before the pain caused by acts of injustice and violence. To violate any right against any woman or man is an offense against Christ. 

The pope was addressing Catholic bishops, priests, and nuns at Juba’s St. Therese Cathedral, where he also cautioned against remaining neutral to injustice. 

He said we are called to intercede for our people, to raise our voices. We cannot afford to remain neutral. 

Using a metaphor, the pope equated the Nile River, which passes through Juba from Lake Victoria, the world’s largest freshwater lake, to the Mediterranean Sea, as the tears of the people of South Sudan immersed in endless suffering.  

The pontiff asked, how can we exercise our ministry in this land, along the banks of a river bathed in so much innocent blood, among the tear-stained faces of the people entrusted to us?  

He challenged the clergy to be “courageous and generous souls, ready to suffer and die for Africa.  

He told said we need courageous, generous souls ready to die for Africa,” 

On Friday, Pope Francis urged South Sudanese leaders to shun violence and embrace peace and he also called on the international community to refrain from interfering in the affairs of a sovereign Africa. 

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is accompanying the ecumenical pilgrimage.  

“My heart breaks. I can hardly speak with sorrow for South Sudan. I beg that at every level, from the president to the smallest child, that people find the mercy of God and are transformed. And that there is peace and good government,” Welby said. “That they will not steal money. That no one kills their neighbors for cattle.”  

Rebecca Nyandeng, wife of South Sudan founding father the late John Garang, told citizens to shun ethnic divisions.  

She said, I am heartbroken that Dr. John died for the independence of this country, yet the very people he died for are now killing themselves. By the fact that you are still killing yourselves, it means he had died in vain. Please accept one another, stop division and stop killing each other. God has come to us in the form of the visit of Pope Francis, Archbishop of Canterbury and Moderator General of the Church of Scotland.  

The three religious leaders later, participated in a joint interdenominational prayer session.  

This historic ecumenical visit by the prominent religious leaders is considered a sign of inter-religious unity and their commitment to bear witness to the Gospel, as well as an action to promote peace and reconciliation among the people of South Sudan. 
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Pope Francis sought Saturday to console the long-suffering people of South Sudan as he opened his first full day in a country beset by conflict, poverty and humanitarian crises by encouraging priests and nuns to serve their flocks by joining in their tears.

After arriving in the world’s newest country on the first-ever papal visit Friday, Francis was spending Saturday ministering first to church personnel and then to South Sudanese who have been forced by fighting, flooding and other crises to leave their homes.

Francis was highlighting in particular the plight of South Sudanese women, half of whom are married before age 18, are subject to rampant sexual violence and then face the world’s highest maternal mortality rate.

“Let us ask ourselves what it means for us to be ministers of God in a land scarred by war, hatred, violence, and poverty,” Francis said in St. Theresa Cathedral in the capital, Juba. “How can we exercise our ministry in this land, along the banks of a river bathed in so much innocent blood, among the tear-stained faces of the people entrusted to us?”

Lush in oil and other natural resources but beset by years of civil war and conflict, South Sudan is one of the world’s poorest countries and is responsible for Africa’s worst refugee crisis: More than 2 million people have fled the country and another 2 million are displaced within its borders.

Joined by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Presbyterian head of the Church of Scotland, Francis is seeking to draw global attention to the country’s plight.

The aim of the novel ecumenical visit is to encourage South Sudan’s political leaders to implement a 2018 peace accord ending a civil war that erupted after the overwhelmingly Christian country gained independence from mostly Muslim Sudan in 2011.

The deal and many of its key provisions, including the formation of a national unified army, has stalled amid political infighting and continued clashes around the country that have forced the postponement of the first presidential election for another two years.

At the cathedral Saturday, Francis urged South Sudan’s bishops, priests, nuns and seminarians not to join religious life for social prestige, but to serve their flocks by accompanying them.

“It is precisely this art of stepping into the middle of our brothers and sisters that the church’s pastors need to cultivate: the ability to step into the middle of their sufferings and tears, into the middle of their hunger for God and their thirst for love,” he said.

On a day when South Sudan’s suffering women are expected to take the pride of place, Francis heard of the horrific sacrifices some nuns have made. Sisters Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba Luate of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart Sisters were killed in a 2021 ambush along with two others.

“Thank you, on behalf of the entire Church, for your dedication, your courage, your sacrifices and your patience,” Francis said.

Women and girls in South Sudan live a “hellish existence,” the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a report last year based on several years of interviews.

“South Sudanese women are physically assaulted while being raped at gunpoint, typically held down by men while being abused by others. They are told not to resist in the slightest way, and not to report what happened, or they will be killed,” the report said.

“It’s hard to convey the level of trauma of South Sudanese women whose bodies are literally the war zone,” commission chair Yasmin Sooka said late last year.

In his arrival speech Friday, Francis raised the plight of women and called for them to be protected and promoted.

Among those on hand for his visit to the cathedral on Saturday was Sister Regina Achan, who said Francis’ visit would encourage other sisters to keep serving.

“We stand with them because we are their voices, we don’t run away at difficult times,” said Achan.

Francis’ visit, she added, would awaken “serenity and peace in our hearts that we may work for peace and justice in this country.”

Francis issued a blunt warning on Friday to President Salva Kiir and his onetime rival and now deputy Riek Machar that history will judge them harshly if they continue to drag their feet on implementing the peace accord.

Kiir for his part committed the government to return to peace talks — suspended last year — with groups that didn’t sign onto the 2018 accord. And late Friday, the Catholic president granted presidential pardons to 71 inmates at Juba’s central prison in honor of the ecumenical pilgrimage, including 36 on death row.

Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to hold that capital punishment is inadmissible in all circumstances.
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Italy’s coast guard Friday found eight bodies, including the body of a pregnant woman, on a migrant vessel that was attempting to make the journey across the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Italy.

The bodies were unloaded on Italy’s Lampedusa island, the first stop for many migrants on the journey across the sea.

Dozens more Africans were aboard the vessel, according to ANSA, the Italian news agency.

Survivors of the journey told officials that three other people had died at sea, ANSA reported. They said a women died and fell into the water with her 4-month-old son, who drowned. In addition, survivors said a man passed out and fell into the water.

The Guardian reports that authorities on Malta had been alerted to the migrants’ situation at sea, but no rescue was dispatched. Prosecutors in Sicily have launched an investigation, the newspaper said.
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Somali Americans living in the United States have mixed reactions to the removal of congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Republican-led House of Representatives removed Omar from the panel Thursday after her past anti-Israel comments.

“We’re not removing her from other committees,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “We just do not believe when it comes to foreign affairs, especially with the responsibility of that position around the world, with the comments that you make, she shouldn’t serve there.”

The removal prompted rebukes and accusations of bigotry from Democrats.

Republicans said the action made a strong statement against antisemitism but Omar, other Democrats and the White House said it was revenge after the Democrat-held House majority ousted two Republicans from their committees in 2020.

Omar suggested she was kicked out because she is a Muslim woman who immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee.

“I am Muslim. I am an immigrant. And interestingly, from Africa. Is anyone surprised that I am being targeted?” Omar said in an emotional floor speech Thursday immediately ahead of the vote, displaying a photo of her younger self on a poster board beside her.

Political revenge

Speaking to VOA, Somali Americans have expressed alarm at the decision, describing it as “political revenge” after they said that Omar stood up and strongly opposed the GOP and allies of former president Donald Trump.

Most of them rallied in a fiery defense of Omar.

“It’s a black day for Muslim Americans, immigrants and people of color,” said Hashi Shafi, executive director of the Somali Action Alliance, a Minneapolis-based community organization. “We learned a lesson from it. Omar had served well for Muslims, the voiceless, the people of color and her constituency as well, and we hope she comes back.”

Saeed Ibrahim Cagmadhige, a business owner in Columbus, Ohio, said the decision was expected.

“She stood up to Trump, she was outspoken about Israel, a country protected by the U.S., so her removal was expected,” Cagmadhige said. “We Somalis are sorry. I hope that she returns to this committee or other higher positions in the future.”

Khadra Mohamed Shire, a member of the Somali community in Ohio, said this is “anti-American” and will damage the credibility of the U.S.

“GOP and Trump targeted Omar because she is someone who often speaks about the wrong thing on U.S. foreign policy,” said Shire.

Accused of making mistakes

Some Somali Americans said they welcome the removal of Omar from the foreign affairs panel, accusing her of making a lot of mistakes.

“It seems that she is mainly responsible for her removal, and there are reasons why she has so few friends in Congress,” Abdirishaq Sheikh Ali, a member of Somali Americans in Ohio told VOA. “I’m sorry, but I believe she is to blame for such a vote that led to her … to be removed from the panel.”

Abdulkadir Haji, a supporter of the Republican Party who unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the Ohio Legislature, said the move by his party to kick Omar off the panel was unnecessary.

“It was ugly, I didn’t recommend that the speaker would have done something like that. [It was a] Waste of time. We have other issues in front of us, including inflation, high gas prices, and the war in Ukraine, which need to be addressed. It was not better to waste time on Omar.”

Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, is one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in 2018. She is the first African-born, and the first to wear a hijab in the House chamber.

Omar arrived in the United States in the 1990s as a refugee.

Most Somali Americans, who largely live in Minnesota and Ohio, support the Democratic Party but Republicans also have been courting communities of color in Minnesota, including the Somalis.
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In 2021, the “Ghetto Project” was started in Lome, Togo, for impoverished young people. The objective was to help them get out of poor urban areas, find work and stay away from drugs. Amen Assignon looks at how the project is going. Narrator: Michele Joseph. Camera: Steven Midjola.
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Kenya has announced plans to re-open its Mandera border crossing with Somalia as part of efforts to improve border security and crack down on smuggled goods.

Kenya says plans to re-open the Mandera border post with Somalia are nearing conclusion, after high-level consultations between the two countries.

Speaking after a visit to the town of Mandera, Kenya’s Internal Security Minister Kithure Kindiki said reopening the crossing point will improve border security and stem the tide of smuggled goods used to fund terrorist activities.

“I have directed the county security teams to sit down with the agencies of government that are represented here, including customs, immigrations, and asses the requirements and provide information within one week to enable us to renovate the border post and re-start our border,” said Kindiki.

Kenya closed all of its official border crossings with Somalia in 2012 in a bid to stop incursions by al-Shabab insurgents operating from the Somali side. The border points closed included the Mandera crossing, as well as those in Lamu, Wajir and Garissa.

The shutdowns have not stopped people from crossing the border illegally or smuggling goods.

Kindiki tasked the county security team with identifying armed militants operating in the border region.

“I therefore direct the county security team to sit down with the political leaders and the elders in a plan that will be guided by the community leaders and elders, so as to flush-out armed militants from Mandera and Northeastern,” said Kindiki.

Kindiki addressed elected leaders and community elders Friday during a security tour in Mandera and Wajir counties, and he reiterated the need for elders to partake in security operations.

In the last five years, Kenya’s northeast has experienced a long series of attacks by al-Shabab fighters.

In the deadliest attack, the Islamist militant group killed nearly 150 people at Garissa University College in 2015.

Somalia-based al-Shabab has been active in Kenya since 2011, when Kenya first contributed troops to the African Union-led peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
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Police have arrested several people “strongly suspected” of involvement in the kidnap, torture and killing of a popular radio journalist, Cameroon’s presidency announced.

Martinez Zogo, 50, who spoke out against embezzlement and cronyism in the central African nation, was abducted on January 17 outside a police station in the suburbs of the capital, Yaounde.

His heavily mutilated corpse was found five days later.

President Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for more than 40 years, called for a combined police and gendarme probe into the murder.

“The investigations… have enabled the arrest of several people whose involvement in this odious crime is strongly suspected,” minister of state and presidency general secretary Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh said on Thursday.

A search was still underway for other suspects, his statement said.

About 20 prominent Cameroonian personalities wrote in French newspaper Le Monde Thursday of their “great concern in the face of the violent turn in public debate” in the country.

The signatories, who included the writer Calixthe Beyala and intellectual Achille Mbembe, noted a “long tradition of trivializing impunity and accepting atrocities.”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has described the killing as “a serious blow for democracy and freedom of the press.”

RSF’s Press Freedom Index ranks Cameroon 118 out of 180 countries, where 1 signals the best environment for media.

The government has insisted Cameroon is “a state of law, where liberty is guaranteed, including the freedom of the press.”
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Pope Francis wrapped up an emotional visit to Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday and headed to neighboring South Sudan, another nation struggling to overcome conflict and grinding poverty.

On the eve of his arrival in South Sudan, 27 people were killed in Central Equatoria state in tit-for-tat violence between cattle herders and a local militia.

In a first, the pope will be accompanied during his time in the South Sudanese capital Juba by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator. The three Christian leaders hope to jolt a peace process aimed at ending a decade of conflict, fought mostly along ethnic fault lines.

The 86-year-old pontiff, on his third visit to sub-Saharan Africa since his papacy began in 2013, was given a rapturous welcome by huge crowds in the Congolese capital Kinshasa but also confronted the reality of war, poverty and hunger.

On Wednesday, he heard harrowing stories from victims of conflict in eastern Congo who had witnessed the killings of close relatives and been subjected to sexual slavery, amputation and forced cannibalism.

The pope condemned the atrocities as war crimes and appealed to all parties, internal and external, who orchestrate war in Congo to plunder the country’s vast mineral resources to stop getting rich with “money stained with blood”.

Eastern Congo has been plagued for decades by conflict driven in part by the struggle for control of deposits of diamonds, gold and other precious metals between the government, rebels and foreign invaders. The spillover and long fallout from neighboring Rwanda’s 1994 genocide have also fueled violence.

Francis returned again and again to the theme of conflict fueled by “the poison of greed”, saying the Congolese people and the wider world should realize that people were more precious than the minerals in the earth beneath them.

‘Pilgrimage of peace’

After a meeting with Congolese bishops in Kinshasa on Friday morning and a farewell ceremony at the airport, his plane took off for Juba, where it is expected to land around 1300 GMT.

The pope, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Church of Scotland Moderator Iain Greenshields have described their first joint foreign trip as a “pilgrimage of peace”.

Welby said he was horrified by the latest killings on the day before the pilgrimage.

“It is a story too often heard across South Sudan. I again appeal for a different way: for South Sudan to come together for  a just peace,” he said on Twitter.

South Sudan broke away from Sudan to become independent in 2011 after decades of north-south conflict, but civil war erupted in 2013. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the two main antagonists, violence and hunger still plague the country.

Francis has wanted to visit the predominantly Christian country for years but each time planning for a trip began it had to be postponed because of instability on the ground.

In one of the most remarkable gestures of his papacy, Francis knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan’s previously warring leaders during a meeting at the Vatican in April 2019, urging them not to return to civil war.
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Recent visits to Africa by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen came as a new study found China’s overseas investments in the COVID-19 era are at a 13-year low. China has invested heavily in Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative and the U.S. has also recently pledged investments, with analysts saying Washington is trying to compete with China for influence on the continent.

The report by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center found loan commitments from China’s two policy banks (China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China) totaled $3.7 billion in 2021. In contrast, from  2008 to 2021 that amount was $498 billion, an average of $35.6 billion a year.

China has struggled to recoup its money from several African countries and now has to participate in complicated debt restructuring negotiations. Currently, debt talks are happening in Zambia.

Asked if Beijing had been chastened by these experiences, causing the drop in loan commitments, senior academic researcher Rebecca Ray, who co-authored the paper, said that while China has stopped offering new loans to some countries that have been unable to pay existing debt, like Venezuela, it has also been finalizing negotiations on large future loans to another indebted nation, Pakistan.

“While China may be hesitating to ‘send good money after bad,’ in some cases of borrowers who are simply unable to repay, high existing debt levels don’t seem to be a complete deterrence for them,” she noted.

US critiques and pledges

In Africa, Thomas-Greenfield blamed China for indebting African countries. She also noted that while Qin Gang, China’s new foreign minister, was also on the continent recently, “what I heard from … people and leaders when I was there very clearly was that America is in their hearts, and they are extraordinarily appreciative of the African Leaders Summit that we just hosted and the efforts that we are making to engage more proactively on the continent of Africa.”

Washington pledged to invest $55 billion in Africa at the U.S.-Africa Summit in December.

Yellen also noted in her January 17-28 visit to Africa that Washington has many programs “that are oriented to help efforts to build infrastructure, and when we do that, we want to make sure that we don’t create the same problems that Chinese investment has sometimes created here.” She said Beijing was “a barrier” to global efforts to restructure Zambia’s massive debt.

Yellen’s comments drew a swift and cutting rebuke from China’s embassy in Zambia, which pointed to America’s own debt problems, and an opinion article in state media Xinhua that read, “The airports where the U.S. officials landed and the roads and bridges their convoys passed during their Africa visits were likely built in cooperation with Chinese companies.” The article ended by saying, “Africa should not become an arena for a great power rivalry.”

The conclusion stated by the Xinhua article echoed comments by China’s foreign minister who, during his January visit to Ethiopia, said: “The China-United States relationship should not be about a competitive one or a zero-sum game that enlarges one’s own gain at the expense of the other.

“Otherwise, it will only hurt both sides and even the world,” Qin said.

Transforming money spent

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s landmark Belt and Road initiative to bring infrastructure to developing countries is not gone altogether, the authors of the Boston University study said; it’s just transforming the way money is spent.

“This trend is emblematic of the ‘small is beautiful’ approach to Chinese economic engagement in recent years, which prioritizes smaller and more targeted projects,” the study said.

And that’s not necessarily bad news, said Ray, pointing out that “China’s recent ‘small is beautiful’ approach to overseas development finance emphasizes projects with smaller geographic footprints and lower risks to sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous communities.”

China has moved away from concentrating its lending on the extractions and pipelines sector, said the study, which found that since 2018 more money has gone to the transportation sector.

Still, the fact that “conditions in China and in host countries are less conducive to large amounts of development finance than they were a decade ago … is concerning, as the need for development finance is at an all-time high due to the polycrisis of financial instability, climate change and pandemic,” noted co-author Kevin P. Gallagher.

However, Harry Verhoeven, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University, who also has written on Chinese loans and debt, said, “I think it’s too early to tell whether China is really ready to switch full-scale to a ‘small is beautiful’ approach. … Especially in the African context this would require some major changes in the patterns of engagement that Beijing has prioritized since the late 1990s.”

He noted that “there is no question that the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s domestic financial woes and disillusionment with growing difficulties of African sovereigns to service their debts to Chinese lenders has led to a downscaling of new Chinese loans. … But questions can be raised regarding the administrative capacity and willingness of Chinese policy banks and other government institutions to manage a much broader (and more detailed) portfolio of smaller loans.”

Signs of Chinese economic rebound

There are signs that large-scale development lending could rebound. Since China reversed its zero-COVID-19 policy and reopened this year, its manufacturing, services and construction sectors expanded for the first time in four months.

While economists had expected slow growth in China this year, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have since upgraded their forecasts. The International Monetary Fund also raised its economic growth outlook for China this week, saying it expects the economy to grow by 5.2% in 2023.

But Ray told VOA she didn’t foresee that making much difference.

“We have already seen the availability of capital for China rebounding, so I doubt that the increased economic growth will change much. The Chinese government still has significant incentives to be supporting the liquidity of its domestic financial system,” she said.

China’s economy is trying to recover after the lengthy lockdowns during the zero-COVID-19 policy and wave of infections following the policy’s reversal.

As for influence overseas and in Africa, Ray said, “It is noteworthy that Yellen did not sign any major new agreements or announce any major new projects while in Africa. If the U.S. does step into the infrastructure finance gap left by China’s declining development finance, it may be more likely to emerge through multilateral fora.”
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The United States on Thursday called on the Sudanese government to reverse a decision this week to release a Sudanese man facing the death penalty in the killing of a U.S. diplomat in 2008. 

Abdelraouf Abuzeid was found guilty, along with others, in the killing of American John Granville and a Sudanese colleague, who both worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development and were killed by gunmen in Khartoum. 

“We call on the Sudanese government to exercise all available legal means to reverse this decision and to rearrest Abuzeid,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters. 

Officials met with the Sudanese ambassador to the United States on Thursday, and the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, John Godfrey, is engaging Sudanese officials at the highest levels on the issue, Price said.  

Peter Lord, the deputy assistant secretary for East Africa, Sudan and South Sudan, will also demand action when he travels to Khartoum next week, Price said. 

“We will not relent,” Price said. 

Abuzeid’s brother said Monday that his sibling had been released by Sudan’s high court based on a multimillion-dollar 2020 settlement between Sudan and victims of attacks, including the one that killed Granville. 

The money received by Granville’s family from the Sudanese government was interpreted by a majority of the court as a release of their right to retribution and the acceptance of blood money, said a Sudanese legal source related to the case. 

Granville’s mother, Jane Granville, said Wednesday that she was horrified about hearing of Abuzeid’s release. 

“In no way did [the settlement] say that that money was going to release any of these men that killed John,” Jane Granville said. “I never would’ve accepted it if that was part of it.” 

Price said the claim that Granville’s family had extended forgiveness was false. 

U.S. Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Abuzeid’s release was “outrageous.” 

“This action further drives a wedge between the US and #Sudan, exposes the regime’s impunity, and complicates future US assistance,” Risch said on Twitter. 
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The embassies of Britain, Norway, and the United States have expressed grave concerns about possible new fighting in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. The warning by the so-called Troika Embassies comes just days ahead of Pope Francis’ first visit to South Sudan on Friday for what the Vatican is calling a pilgrimage of peace.

Serious security alarms have been sounded barely 24 hours before Pope Francis arrives in South Sudan’s capital for what is seen as an attempt by Vatican to find a lasting peace in the war-torn nation.

Already, foreign embassies have sent out warnings of a possible outbreak of war in parts of the country.

The U.S., UK and Norway, who are also peace guarantors for South Sudan’s revitalized transitional government, said violence may break out in Upper Nile, the northeastern state that borders Ethiopia and Sudan on the north.

U.S. Ambassador to South Sudan Michael Adler told reporters in Juba that the Troika Embassies will always stand with those who call and work for peace in South Sudan.

“In that regard, we note with grave concern indications of preparation for renewed fighting in Upper Nile State. South Sudanese transitional leaders and political actors in Juba have a responsibility to act to prevent this and to find peaceful and sustainable solutions.”

Michael English of UNMISS, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, said he is concerned about reports of a military buildup in an area under the control of a militia group — the Agwelek forces. The group is under the command of former South Sudanese army general turned rebel, Johnson Olony.

Agwelek, a militia perceived to be friendly to the national army, has denied these allegations.

Last year, the militia group signed an agreement with the national government to integrate part of their forces into the national army.

Paul Achot is head of the Agwelek delegation to Juba, where he’s talking with government officials about implementing the agreement signed between Agwelek and the army in January 2022.

“There is no preparation of any sort, from our side, to go and attack anybody,” he said. “So I was surprised myself to hear the UNMISS, who is supposed to be neutral, pointing fingers against us, saying that we are preparing to go and attack other forces.”

In 2022, fighting between Agwelek and other militias displaced over 60,000 people.

The South Sudanese army says it is ready to defend the population in case of renewed clashes.

Meanwhile, the government said Thursday that it will deploy over 5,000 security personnel in Juba to ensure calm during the pope’s visit.

Pope Francis is coming to Juba to deliver a message of peace and reconciliation in a country still struggling with inter-communal violence. This will be a continuation of a process that began in 2019 when the pope hosted then-political foes President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar at the Vatican.

Pope Francis will be accompanied on the ecumenical visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
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Zimbabwe is attempting to boost its agricultural sector with support from controversial partner Belarus, which is under sanctions for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko visited Zimbabwe this week on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, Zimbabwe. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe.
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