Kenya has ramped up its efforts to control the twin challenges of the coronavirus and malaria by introducing locally made testing kits for the two diseases. Kenya’s Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) says the kits offer quicker detection and will soon be exported to the region. Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi. Videographer and producer: Amos Wangwa
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Talks between Chad’s military-led government and armed rebel groups due to start Sunday in Qatar have been postponed, African diplomats and officials said.

The talks are aimed at paving the way for an “inclusive national dialogue” and elections which the leader of the Chadian junta Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno has promised by October.

Deby took over as head of a Transitional Military Council (TMC) in the poor landlocked central African country after his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who had ruled Chad for three decades, was killed in fighting with rebels in April last year. 

African diplomats in Doha said Sunday’s talks in Qatar had been delayed because preparations for the meeting had not been completed.

“Some delegations are here. The talks did not start today but could start in coming days,” a source with knowledge of the meeting told AFP on condition of anonymity as no-one was authorized to speak publicly.

Chadian sources close to the negotiations told AFP in N’Djamena that the junta was insisting on inviting more than 80 members of the 23 armed rebel groups — a request initially denied by Qatar.

Other sources, also speaking on condition of anonymity, blamed the delay on difficulties for would-be participants — some of whom live in Libya or Sudan — to obtain travel documents.

After taking power in last April, Deby, 37, dissolved Chad’s parliament and repealed the constitution, but he promised “free and transparent” elections within 18 months.

However, a national forum designed to chart the country’s future has been put back from February to May. Preliminary talks have also been held up several times amidst recriminations between the government and opposition.

In mid-February, Chad’s military junta accused prominent rebel leader Timan Erdimi, who heads the powerful Union of Resistance Forces, of seeking to bring in Russian mercenaries to derail the reconciliation process.

Erdimi, who was one of the fiercest opponents of Deby’s father, was contacted by AFP at the time but refused to comment on the allegation.

The African Union, European Union and France, the former colonial power, have supported the junta leader but insisted he must keep to his promised timetable to hold elections.
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Malawi has received nearly 300,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine under COVAX, the global initiative founded to foster equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. This is the first vaccine donation this year, after the country’s stocks were depleted in December. The donation from Japan Saturday is part of about 2 million doses of AstraZeneca Japan is prepared to send to Malawi.

Health authorities in Malawi say the donation is the first COVID-19 vaccine consignment from Japan to a country in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malawi’s health minister, Khumbize Kandodo-Chiponda, says Malawi feels honored to receive the vaccine donation when it is needed most.

“This is so timely because we have over about 700,000 Malawians who have already received the first dose of AstraZeneca. You are aware that we had our last consignment in December. By 31 December, we finished all the doses of the AstraZeneca which we had. So we haven’t had AstraZeneca from 1 January,” said Kandodo-Chiponda.

So far, Malawi administers three types of COVID-19 vaccine: Johnson &Johnson, Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

However, the country has so far vaccinated only about 7% of the population amid continued vaccine hesitancy largely stemming from misconceptions and doubts over its efficacy.

However, the frequency of shipment of the 1.9 million doses Japan is keeping for Malawi will depend on Malawi’s commitment in increasing vaccine use.

Kandodo-Chiponda said the condition is in line with the government’s new arrangement.

“You remember that last year, in March, we had over 20,000 doses expiring on us. So, what we have agreed with COVAX is that we should be getting them in parts. Otherwise, as government, we have already made procurement of over 2 million doses but we are saying ‘we don’t want anything to expire on us, our consumption rate is still very, very low,” she said.

Maziko Matemba, Malawi’s national ambassador on health, says the condition on the forthcoming vaccine donations should be a wakeup call to the Malawi government to make sure it does not lose vaccine donations from other countries.

“This is the first time the donor has put a condition on the COVID vaccines which Malawi received as a donation. And this just shows that our partners who are supporting us with these vaccines, they have noted that maybe we are not doing much in terms of demand creation but also uptake,” he said.

The World Health Organization has called for each country to vaccinate at least 70% of their population by June.

Malawi announced last month that it has set itself a target of vaccinating 50% by June.

“As a country, we are behind our projections because we would have loved that at least by this time, we would have been taking about at least 15% of the eligible people to have been vaccinated. But we are way behind. This is mainly [because of] vaccine hesitancy. It is still there, some people still not yet convinced that they need to get the vaccine. So, it is work in progress,” said Kandodo-Chiponda.

A recent U.N. report says although the COVAX facility has helped increase vaccine supplies in Africa, the continent is struggling to expand rollout, with only 11% of the population fully vaccinated so far.

But Kandodo-Chiponda said the Malawi government is devising a plan to increase its vaccine uptake which includes increasing an ongoing door-to-door vaccination campaign.
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Zimbabwean police Saturday used dogs and tear gas to break up the country’s main opposition party rally as President Emmerson Mnangagwa delivered an address a few kilometers away unhindered.  

Police descended on thousands of unsuspecting members of the Zimbabwe Citizens’ Coalition for Change waiting for their leader, Nelson Chamisa, to address them in Gokwe, about 300km southwest of Harare for VOA News. The police used dogs and tear gas to disperse the rally for allegedly violating COVID-19 regulations barring more than 100 people from gathering.

Fadzayi Mahere, spokeswoman of Citizens’ Coalition for Change, was among them and blames President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

“We saw a regrettable selective application of the law by the Zimbabwe Republic Police. So, the police, on Mr. Mnangagwa’s instructions, made an about turn and purported to prohibit our rally, contrary to law and constitution. No explanation was given why our rally was banned, whereas Mr. Mnangagwa’s rallies are allowed to proceed. A further concern is the abuse of COVID regulations as a weapon to shrink the democratic space. As the Citizens’ Coalition for Change we continue to demand a level playing field.”

Zimbabwe’s home affairs minister, Kazembe Kazembe, who is in charge of police, refused to comment Sunday.

Harare-based political commentator Rejoice Ngwenya says Mnangagwa’s government seems to be taking the template from its predecessor. The late Robert Mugabe’s administration used to crush opposition gatherings.

“President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, which has been calling for lifting of sanctions, saying all is now well, is now crushing the opposition’s gatherings, said Ngwenya. “It shows that ZANU-PF’s ugly way of doing things from the days of Mugabe of suppressing the opposition is still there. So that it means nothing will change – in terms of sanctions – unless the government changes the way it treats the opposition. This is not the new dispensation which people were looking forward to. We are still in Mugabe’s days.”

The opposition Citizens’ Coalition for Change said that its rally scheduled for Sunday in Kwekwe, about 300 kilometers south of Harare, would go ahead. Zimbabwe holds by-elections on March 26 to fill some seats in Parliament that have become vacant since the last election, in 2018.
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With a flick of his brush, Ghanaian painter Daniel Anum Jasper armed actor Paul Newman with a pair of revolvers. Unfinished paintings of a bell-bottomed John Travolta and nunchuck-spinning Bruce Lee adorned the walls of his crammed Accra studio.

Jasper, a veteran movie poster designer, was finishing up one of the 1969 classic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” commissioned by a foreign collector who had reached out over Instagram.

From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Ghana developed a tradition of advertising films with vibrant hand-painted posters. Local cinemas were flourishing in the West African country, and artists competed over who could entice the largest audience with their often gory, imaginative and eye-popping displays.

Jasper was a pioneer of the tradition and has been painting movie posters on repurposed flour sacks for the last 30 years. But the market for his work, which once had people clamoring for theater seats, has changed.

“People are no longer interested in going out to watch a movie when it can be watched from the comfort of their phones,” Jasper said.

“But there is a growing interest in owning these hand-painted posters internationally,” he added. “Now they hang them in private rooms or show them in exhibitions.”

With the rise of the internet, Ghana’s independent cinemas fell into obscurity. But Jasper’s work has gained appeal abroad, including in the United States, where the posters are valued as unique representations of a specific period in African art.

Western action flicks were mainstays of the tradition, as were Bollywood films and Chinese pictures. Many of the posters include paranormal elements and gratuitous violence even if the films had none, and physical features are wildly exaggerated.

Joseph Oduro-Frimpong, a professor in pop culture anthropology at Ghana’s Ashesi University, has several of Jasper’s paintings. He has collected the posters for years and has been known to buy up a closing video store’s entire supply.

He plans to display his posters at the Centre for African Popular Culture opening at the university later this year, and said he hopes people appreciate their historical significance.

“Of course there is an esthetic value to the posters, how crazy it is and all of that, but we use them to have a conversation with students,” he said.

“We tell them not to think about what they’re seeing now… [but] to think of these art forms as symbols of history that can tell their own stories.”
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South Africa’s labor ministry says Chinese tech firm Huawei is non-compliant with the country’s employment policies.

Huawei is in talks with the ministry over infringements of the country’s employment policies that require 60% of staff to be local hires. It’s still unclear what a settlement could mean for Huawei and other foreign businesses operating in the country.

The ministry’s employment equity act sets requirements for the number of local hires, including those of disadvantaged backgrounds, at various levels within a corporate structure. And it does regular checks across industries for compliance.

“There is room to employ foreign nationals, especially on companies or employers that come to the country to invest… and also to transfer skills to South Africans. We do allow them to bring 40% of their employees…. We realized that 90% of its workforce, that Huawai is foreign nationals, which is against our employment policies,” says Fikiswa Mncanca-Bede, a lawyer for South Africa’s Department of Employment and Labor.

The labor department launched legal proceedings against Huawei earlier this month.

On Friday, the ministry confirmed it was in settlement negotiations with the tech firm on how to correct the discrepancies.

Huawei did not respond to requests for comment.

Mncanca-Bede says the government’s action should send a signal to all companies that non-compliance will not be tolerated.

“We’re not targeting Huawei, but we’re also coming for the big companies in South Africa, … because we want to ensure that transformation does not just become a talk, but it must be seen as a reality…. Transformation means even if you employ South Africans, who are the South Africans that were employing? Are they addressing the imbalances of the past?” Mncanca-Bede asked.

The employment equity act aims to correct historic inequalities in the country, including racial preferences from the apartheid era that benefited white workers.

But those regulations are still not playing out as planned in the workforce.

“There’s rampant violation of regulations by big companies and small company, and South African companies, not just, you know, these international companies. I would definitely say in relation to all of our labor laws, there’s enforcement problems. I think that the Department of Labor is under resourced,” said Kgomotso Musanabi, a law lecturer at the University of Johannesburg.

In addition to inequities, South Africa is experiencing rampant unemployment, with upwards of 35% of people being jobless.

Musanabi says it’s even worse among the country’s youth.

“I think that government is trying to make an attempt to ensure that all South Africans are employed. But not only that South Africans are employed, but that they acquire sort of globally relevant skills that they need to compete in international markets, particularly tech skills,” Musanabi said.

Companies that are non-compliant face fines.

But labor lawyer Johanette Rheeder says for companies as big as Huawei, those fines are a drop in the bucket and unlikely to have a broader chilling effect.

“In South Africa there’s in many businesses also an attitude of we’ll fix it when we’re caught out. Bigger businesses that’s got a better a better social conscience, if I can call it that, do comply…. The middle size and the smaller businesses who just can’t afford to comply with all of these legislations, so they basically fix it when they offered when they caught out,” Rheeder said.

Instead, she says bridging education and skills gaps in the country — rather than going after foreign workers — is the best way to address unemployment and inequity.

“The biggest, biggest thing that we can do in my view in this country is to upskill people…  there are some strategies that [are] in place, but it’s always the struggle between upskilling our local people and not giving jobs to foreigners,” Rheeder said.

The labor department said talks with Huawei are expected to conclude Friday.
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The World Food Program warns Madagascar will continue to suffer severe food shortages and acute hunger if it does not tackle the climate crisis.

Madagascar has been buffeted by four powerful tropical storms in as many weeks. The toll from the recurrent cyclones has been huge. The full impact of the last storm, Tropical Cyclone Emnati, which made landfall Wednesday, is not yet known. However, the United Nations says Cyclone Batsirai, which hit Madagascar on February 5, killed 120 people, and displaced 143,000.

The WFP says years of severe drought, recurrent storms and other extreme weather events have pushed vulnerable communities to a breaking point.

WFP spokesman Tomson Phiri says many thousands of people are facing extreme hunger because of widespread storm damage to agricultural land. This includes the rice crop that was just weeks away from harvest.

“Now cash crops like cloves, coffee and pepper have also been severely affected. And this is a country where the majority of people make a living from agriculture. An estimated 90% of crops could be destroyed in some areas of affected regions,” Phiri said.

Additionally, he notes a resulting shortage of food in the marketplace is likely to result in soaring prices in the coming months.

The WFP warns weather extremes will trigger runaway humanitarian needs if Madagascar does not address the climate crisis. Phiri says WFP staff is in a race against time to assist those affected.

“Our longer-term climate adaptation work helps communities to prepare for, respond to, as well as to recover from climate shocks and stresses. For example, WFP’s integrated risk management in the districts of Ambovombe and Amboasary last year reached 3,500 smallholder farmers with insurance, savings, and climate-adapted agriculture practices training,” he said.

Phiri says such programs need to be scaled up, especially for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. He notes there is little time to lose as forecasts predict another tropical system already is forming in the southwest Indian Ocean.
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The United States barred on Friday travel by Somali officials and other individuals to the United States, accusing them of “undermining the democratic process” in Somalia.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States imposed the visa ban after Somalia pushed back to March 15 parliamentary elections due to have been completed Friday.

“We are now imposing visa restrictions under this policy against a number of Somali officials and other individuals to promote accountability for their obstructionist actions,” Blinken said in a statement issued by the State Department.

No central government has held broad authority for 30 years in Somalia, which is caught in a lengthy election process repeatedly held up in a power struggle between President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and Prime Minister Mohammed Hussein Roble.

The parliamentary election, which started in November, is an indirect process that involves clan elders picking the 275 members of the lower house, who then choose a new president on a date yet to be fixed.

Data from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs shows 4.3 million people in Somalia are affected by drought, with 271,000 displaced as a result.

The al Qaida-linked al Shabab group, which frequently carries out gun and bomb attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere in Somalia, has also been an impediment to the election.

In mid-February, a suicide bomber targeted a minibus full of election delegates, killing at least six people in Mogadishu.

The delegates were unharmed.
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“Vision Media Services Limited” reads the inscription on a metal gate leading to a compound on a dusty road in Jabi, a district in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

A communication mast tapers into the sky next to a golden-yellow one-story building that houses a media conglomerate comprising seven radio outlets and one television station.

Vision FM is the company’s mainstay. Shuaibu Mungadi, its chief operating officer, runs the station with four other senior broadcasters who pride themselves on each having at least 30 years’ experience in journalism.

But the once bustling corridors are quieter than usual. Voices of top company executives who are gathered in a meeting room to discuss the station’s future can be heard from the reception area.

They’re reviewing the unexpected sanctions on the station’s popular Idon Mikiya or Truth to Power show. 

The one-hour current affairs program airs at 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and is the station’s most successful. At least 30 million listeners tune in every week from across northern Nigeria, station managers say.

But on Jan. 28, all that changed. Nigerian media regulator, the National Broadcasting Commission, ordered Vision FM to suspend the show for six months and fined the station about $12,500.

At a recent meeting on the suspension, Mungadi sat at a table flipping through documents as management discussed a way forward. Weeks of dialogue have yet to pay off, he told VOA.

“The constitutional role of the media is being trampled by the government, that is the position of things. The government is vehement, the government is indifferent,” Mungadi said.

VOA’s requests for a comment from the media regulator were declined.

But in its letter to the broadcaster, the regulator cited a Jan. 5 show that discussed controversies over Rufai Abubakar, head of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Nigerian media and critics have questioned Abubakar’s suitability to lead the agency.

The regulator alleged that Vision FM broadcast trade secrets and other issues regarding the national security agency, and that its commentaries lacked fairness and balance.

The content, including information about agency appointments, constituted “a breach of the provision of section 39(3)(b) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which imposes restrictions on matters concerning government security services or agencies established by law,” the letter read.

But Mungadi said authorities are twisting the law to stifle views and said the show was just raising important issues.

The Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and other rights groups criticized the suspension.

The regulator’s actions come amid an increase in media repression that critics say has worsened under President Muhammadu Buhari.

In January, NIA agents demanded that People’s Gazette reveal the identity of a source use in the newspaper’s reporting about the agency director. In an unrelated incident, unidentified men beat a journalist and damaged equipment at Thunder Blowers, a news website in Zamfara state.

Media rights groups say journalists risk arbitrary detentions or charges under a 2015 cybercrime law.  They note that last year, the president suspended Twitter for seven months.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Nigeria is one of the most difficult places in West Africa to report from, with journalists spied on, arrested, attacked or even killed.  The country registered a five-point decline on the World Press Freedom Index last year, ranking 120 out of 180 where 1 is freest.

Authorities deny they are suppressing press freedom. The media regulator has previously said it is not restricting the media but warned news outlets to be conscious of their reporting and said that defaulters will be called to order. 

Vision FM feels loss

Back at the radio station, things have not been the same. Every week the station loses about $25,000 usually generated from advertisements and sponsorships, Mungadi said.

The suspension is taking a toll.

“We lost our marketing because there’s so much sponsorship on this program, those sponsorships were withdrawn,” Mungadi said.

Without that revenue, Mungadi said, he is unsure how long the station can keep up with salaries.

Listeners are also calling to ask why the show is no longer broadcast.

“Once it is five o’clock you’ll see a lot of people calling, ‘I am on your station now but I am not hearing Idon Mikiya, what is happening?’ Even if the program comes back we’re going to lose a lot of listeners,” said station manager Abdul Alugbere.

Supporters in the northern Nigerian states of Kano, Sokoto, and Bauchi attempted to protest the suspension but, Alugbere said, they were stopped by the police.

The suspension shows authorities are not open to criticism, said Kolawole Oluwadare, director of SERAP.

The Nigerian nonprofit focuses on fighting corruption and economic and social rights.  When the regulator suspended Vision FM’s show, SERAP issued a statement urging authorities to lift the ban.

“(The suspension) again shows the government’s intolerance for whatever is perceived as critical views of government action. We have also approached the station because we’re willing to take this up in the public’s interest,” said Oluwadare.

For now, Mungadi and his team at Vision Media continue to make efforts to reverse the suspension. But he said they’d never renege on journalistic standards, no matter the cost.

“We are journalists, we cannot be intimidated into discarding issues of public interest.  We shall rather remain sanctioned than compromised,” said  Mungadi.
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Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, has signed an election reform law that activists hope will improve transparency and promote inclusion.

Buhari signed the 2022 electoral amendment bill in his village Friday, with cabinet members and lawmakers in attendance.

During the signing, the president said the bill contained “salient and praiseworthy provisions that could positively revolutionize elections in Nigeria through the introduction of new technological innovations.”

The signing followed a campaign by electoral reform activists urging the president to approve the bill, which lawmakers passed in January.

New law has support of civic groups

Activists applauded the president’s signing of the bill. Godbless Otubure is the founder of Ready to Lead Africa, one of the civic groups that supports the new law.

“A lot of people told us we were joking that this is Nigeria, nobody is going to give you good electoral reforms,” Otubure said. “But we sustained the campaign and today, the president of Nigeria signed the electoral bill into law. We’re excited. It’s not a perfect legislation but it’s an incredible improvement of what we currently have.”

Notable innovations in the law include electronic transmission of election results, electronic voter accreditation and greater accommodations for people with disabilities.

The president said the law will improve the efficiency, clarity and transparency of Nigeria’s elections, and address disputes often arising from dissatisfied candidates and political parties.

Youth program manager encouraged

Ibrahim Faruq is a program manager of the Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth and Advancement. He is encouraged by the new law.

“In the roll-up to the 2023 general elections, we’re going to continue these engagements and find ways that we can actually turn up our democracy so that citizens can enjoy the dividends of our democracy,” Faruq said.

Lawmakers had passed similar bills five times in the past but the president refused to sign them, saying they needed more work.

Now, as Nigeria heads to the polls in one year, many will be watching to see how – and if – the new bill changes the status quo.

 
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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday approved an amended electoral law that will allow electronic transfer of vote results during the 2023 elections in a bid to improve transparency. 

Ballots in Nigeria have often been marred by electoral fraud claims and court challenges since the country returned to civilian rule in 1999. 

The bill allows the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to authorize electronic transmission of voting results and the electronic registration of voter identities to help prevent fraud. 

“There are salient and praiseworthy provisions that could positively revolutionize elections in Nigeria through the introduction of new technological innovations,” Buhari said during the signing of the bill. 

“These innovations would guarantee the constitutional rights of citizens to vote and to do so effectively.” 

A dispute over the electronic transfer of votes erupted in the senate last year during a debate over the law, when the ruling APC party said INEC could only manage the electronic ballot transfer with the national telecoms commission. 

That outraged the opposition, which said the move would undermine the independence of INEC. The senate later voted to allow INEC to decide. 

Buhari, who was first elected in 2015, had initially rejected the new law over its inclusion of primaries to choose candidates, claiming it would infringe on party bylaws and lead to insecurity during the polls. 

A former military ruler, he will step down after serving two four-year terms, and political leaders are already maneuvering for position before the February 2023 ballot. 

No clear candidate has emerged to replace Buhari, but the ruling APC party has several hopefuls, including influential former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu.   

The country’s independent electoral commission INEC came under fire after Buhari’s re-election in 2019 over claims the ballot was not free or transparent. 

The opposition challenged the results in court in part because of concerns over the legality of the electronic transfer of tallies. 

Buhari won 56 percent of the 2019 vote, but his rival Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) filed a challenge in the Supreme Court. 

 
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The International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has suspended Zimbabwe’s and Kenya’s memberships over government interference in the countries’ football associations.

Zimbabwe authorities say they were acting against corruption, incompetence and sexual abuse. Zimbabwe’s football association denies the allegations, which FIFA says should be investigated without the government’s interference.

FIFA President Giovanni Infantino announced the suspensions at a press conference broadcast February 24 on the football governing body’s website.

“We had to suspend two of our members associations, Kenya and Zimbabwe, both for government interference in the activities of the football associations of these (countries). Associations are suspended from all football activities with immediate effect. They know what needs to be done for them to be readmitted or for the suspension to be lifted,” he said.

FIFA suspended the two countries’ associations after their governments pushed aside the associations’ leaders.

Kenya in November replaced the Football Kenya Federation with a caretaker committee while Zimbabwe’s Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) took control of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA).

FIFA has maintained that the allegations should be investigated internally rather than by governments taking over.

On Friday, Zimbabwe’s SRC chairperson Gerald Mlotshwa hit back at FIFA.

“It appears FIFA does not recognize the laws of Zimbabwe insofar as they relate to corruption and sexual harassment,” he said. “Its demands for reinstatement constitute an interference with statutory obligations of SRC as well as the judicial processes of the country.”

Officials in Zimbabwe suspended ZIFA in November on allegations of corruption, incompetence and sexual harassment.

Authorities accused ZIFA officials of diverting funds from FIFA and the government for personal use and of seeking sexual favors from female players and employees.

ZIFA’s suspended board deny all the allegations and in December called for a probe of the Sports and Recreation Commission, saying it was conducting a “witch hunt” under the guise of cleansing football.

A ZIFA lawyer declined to comment on FIFA’s suspension, saying they were still digesting the statements by the football governing body and the sports commission.

Zimbabwe sports journalist Hope Chizuzu said ZIFA’s suspended board was urging FIFA to suspend Zimbabwe.

“Now that that request has been granted, it is interesting to see what will become of the same because what this simply means is the suspended executive committee cannot operate,” Chizuzu said.

Zimbabwe sports commission’s Mlotshwa said the football association’s board will remain disbanded, and the SRC will continue to run it, despite FIFA’s suspension.

“We have a well-considered road map in Zimbabwe for the reform of football administration in Zimbabwe,” Mlotshwa said. “In the meantime, domestic football will continue as normal throughout the country with the support of the SRC. ZIFA executive committee and its general secretary will remain suspended. Football in country will be reformed for the benefit of all stakeholders, with or without the assistance of FIFA.”

While suspended, Kenya and Zimbabwe will not receive any funding from FIFA, and their football teams will not be allowed to play in any matches organized by FIFA or the Confederation of African Football.
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Human Rights Watch says older people are often the forgotten victims in Africa’s conflict zones. The rights group issued a report Wednesday looking at abuses suffered by the elderly in 14 countries, mostly African nations, caught up in conflict, ranging from Mali to Ethiopia to Mozambique.

Mary Malia, a 68-year-old South Sudanese woman and mother of five, says one evening in July 2016 a rebel group attacked her village in the eastern Equatorial state.

“The time these people came, they came to our houses, beat us up and took everything we had. While beating us, they wanted to take me. But one of them asked, ‘where do we take this old woman? Let us leave her here.’ So they left me. After a while, I walked on foot to Uganda without anything on me,” Malia said.

The widow now lives in a refugee camp in northern Uganda.

Malia’s story is all too common in the conflict zones of Africa, where older people often have little defense against gunmen who attack rural villages. A new Human Rights Watch report titled “No One Is Spared” details the situation. 

Bridget Sleap, a senior researcher on the rights of older people at Human Rights Watch, says the predicament of the elderly in conflict zones is often overlooked.

“We found that time and again older people were at risk of abuses during the armed conflict, including summary execution, arbitrary detentions and rape.… The reality of the war is that no one is spared and that older people remain ignored and invisible victims,” Sleap said.

Investigators say both armed groups and the government forces they often fight are responsible for the abuses. 

Sleap says the attackers of older people often take advantage of their physical weakness and or unwillingness to leave their homes.

“Older people can be heightened or particular risk of abuse for a number of reasons.  One of them is when they are unable to flee the fighting when it comes to their communities. Some choose to stay to protect their property or to protect their homes. Others are unable to run away, to escape the violence or sometimes they don’t have family members to support and help them flee,” Sleap said.

Even if the elderly avoid physical injury, they can be left isolated and poor as family members flee and communities under attack disintegrate.

HelpAge International, an organization that stands for the rights of older people, says older people in conflict zones can suffer severe stress, leading to depression and post-traumatic disorders.

The group’s Africa regional representative, Carole Agengo, says societies cannot forget their seniors when talking about how to cope with conflict.   

“Older people must be included in the pre-conflict warning signs, in the pre-conflict arrangement, older people must be included in the discussion so that their interests are known to the community and also known to the warring parties… it’s possible during the conflict the harm that happens to older people could be minimized,” Agengo said.

Older people sometimes face difficulty in accessing humanitarian assistance in displacement camps.   

Human Rights Watch calls on humanitarian agencies to be inclusive of older populations and make sure to meet their needs.
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Nigeria’s real estate market has been expanding rapidly, but so has the number of people in need of housing in Africa’s most populous country. Nigeria’s Central Bank says the country suffers a growing deficit of at least 22 million homes. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja. Camera: Emeka Gibson.
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The security of civilians in Mali has improved in recent years, but the country must remain vigilant, according to human rights experts.

Alioune Tine, who was appointed in 2018 by the United Nations Human Rights Council to assist the Malian government in protecting its citizens, visited the country February 8-17.

During a video press conference on Tuesday, Tine noted an improvement in security in central and northern parts of the country. However, he also voiced concern about the withdrawal of international partners from Mali after France announced February 17 that its troops would leave because of tensions with the military government.

Tine ended his remarks by calling for “more integrated security strategies focused on the protection of civilian populations and their fundamental human rights.”

The improved security situation coincides with a military offensive in the past few months by the Malian army. Some activists say that the offensive involved arbitrary arrests and disappearances among the Fulanis, an ethnic group that resides mostly in north and central Mali. Fulanis say they are often unfairly accused of being jihadists.

Ibrahim Diallo is a member of two Fulani cultural organizations, Tabital Pulaaku and Pinal. He said that during a recent offensive in Niono, in Mali’s Segou region, some Fulani youth fled when they saw the army, fearing they could be unfairly targeted. As they fled, Diallo said, they were fired upon.

Diallo said he knows two people who were shot and has heard that they died, but has not seen the bodies.

Aly Barry is a doctor from the Mopti region in central Mali and a member of a Fulani association. He said from Bamako via a messaging app that the Malian army’s successful advances are “undeniable,” but that actions have negatively impacted the human rights of civilians.

Barry said a few dozen people were arrested February 20 in Niono, but he doesn’t know if they are in prison or dead.

Aguibou Bouaré is president of the National Commission on Human Rights, a governmental organization that independently investigates human rights abuse accusations in Mali. Bouaré confirmed that the security situation in the center and north of the country has improved, but said the commission has concerns about human rights abuses during the past few months of “ramping up” by the Malian army.

He said his group is recording allegations of human rights violations that are attributed to the armed security forces during this period, and that the investigations are continuing.

VOA reached a Malian army spokesman by phone, but he refused to comment on the incidents in Niono or elsewhere in the country.
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Sudan’s military government is seeking funding from Russia, following the West’s cutoff of financial aid to Khartoum.

Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as “Hemedti,” was in Moscow on Thursday discussing bilateral relations with Russia — just as Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine, sparking global condemnation.

Economic analyst Samah Salman, with the U.S.-Educated Sudanese Association, says Hemedti’s Moscow visit must be viewed in the context of Sudan’s economic crisis, which got worse when the U.S. and other Western countries halted financial aid and reversed an earlier decision to cancel much of Sudan’s debt.

Since then, Sudan’s local currency has steadily deteriorated against the U.S. dollar, while the country’s inflation rate remains one of the highest in the world.

Sudan’s top military rulers — including General Himedti and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — are looking to Russia for support in case the U.S. follows through on threatened sanctions against them, said Salman.

“I believe General Himedti and General Burhan, they know that the possibility of targeted sanctions from the U.S. looms over their heads after they carried out the October 25 coup, and Himedti will be looking to an alliance with Russia for continued military and financial assistance,” Salman told VOA.

It’s no surprise that Sudan is turning to Russia for help, said Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

“There’s certainly an economic motivation here, although Russia is not a donor country, it’s not an economic powerhouse. So I think with the trip to Russia, it’s even more of a signal of a strategic shift and trying to play on U.S. or Western fears that Sudan, as much as it has been trying to pivot into maybe a Western or U.S. orientation, it might now in fact, be pivoting back,” Hudson told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

Building friendly ties with Sudan also serves Russia’s strategic interests in Africa, said Hudson.

“Russia grows its presence in Africa through a deeper partnership and relationship with Sudan, and if you just look at the map, they tried to gain a foothold in Libya through their support to [Khalifa] Haftar. They have clearly taken root in Central African Republic. They’re now in Mali, and so they are executing a strategy to rebuild their influence across Africa and a relationship with Sudan, and a seaport on the Red Sea gives them really a huge strategic advantage,” said Hudson.

Russia signed an agreement with former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to build a Red Sea naval base. After the military ousted Bashir and a civilian-led transitional government was put in place, the deal was put on hold. Following the coup, military rulers indicated the project may be resurrected.

Russian influence in Africa can already be seen through the Wagner Group, a private military company with Russian ties that operates in parts of Africa, according to Salman.

“Even though the Wagner Group is reported be a private security company, many reports show that it’s actually a state actor or state-linked actor, and it is one of the primary actors the Russian government is using to intensify its competition with the U.S. in Africa,” said Salman.

The Russian government has denied any links to the Wagner Group. However, Salman says Russia uses Wagner to supply countries like Sudan, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Libya, Mali and Madagascar with “military assets, weapons and funds.”

There is evidence that the Wagner Group also supports Himedti’s Rapid Support Forces in exchange for lucrative mining deals in Sudan, said Salman. The Rapid Support Forces were largely responsible for violent crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in Sudan before and after the coup.

Khartoum-based economic analyst Mohamed al-Nair argues Himedti’s visit may have been scheduled long before the Ukraine crisis.

“It came at a time that allowed their visions [Sudan and Russia] and interests to coalesce. Sudan has waited for long for the West to deliver. The West has made promises to Sudan and conferences were held in Berlin and Paris to support Sudan, but Sudan could not wait until too late when all its economic indicators deteriorated further in light of the West withholding assistance to the country,” al-Nair told VOA.

The Atlantic Council’s Hudson disputes the allegation that the U.S. was slow in supporting Sudan, saying the military coup was proof that U.S. engagement in Sudan was working.

“It was working so well in fact that the military felt threatened by the advances and the demand for civilian governance, and that’s why they took over. I talked to people in the [U.S.] Treasury Department and they told me that Sudan was in the process of getting debt relief faster than any other country in history,” Hudson told VOA.

Al-Nair said he believes Sudan “will be turning to China in the next phase.”
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Mohamed Abdi Gutale woke Thursday morning in Ukraine’s capital to a state of heightened anxiety.

“We heard two huge explosions,” said Gutale, a 30-something Somali university student in Kyiv. “And according to government officials on the TV, the bombardment targeted government sites, not civilians.”

Within hours, Gutale was fleeing Kyiv aboard a train bound for a Ukrainian community near the western border with Poland, he told VOA’s Somali Service in a phone interview. He carried a backpack and books — and uncertainty about the future, including any further studies.

Thousands of foreign students like Gutale are caught up in the crisis in Ukraine, where Russia sent invading forces early Thursday. The country had more than 76,500 international students as of 2020, Nigeria’s Premium Times website reported, citing data from Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Sciences. VOA could not independently reach the ministry, its website or Ukraine’s embassy in Washington to verify information. But Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website said the country has more than 240 universities, drawing international students from more than 150 countries every year.

Africans account for at least a fifth of Ukraine’s international students, the German news organization DW, or Deutsche Welle, reported.

One of those students is Jovice Johnas, 22. She left north-central Tanzania’s Mwanza region to pursue an engineering degree at the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, in Ukraine’s second-largest city in the country’s northeast.

On Thursday, Johnas was hunkered down in the basement of an off-campus housing unit with roughly 70 other people — at the university’s instruction, she told VOA’s Swahili Service.

“It’s an empty space, with no place to sleep, no water, no bathroom,” Johnas said, noting that it has electricity, so she can charge her phone. She said she had just enough notice early Thursday to grab a change of clothing and some bottled water; friends have shared snacks of potato chips and chocolates.

“Pray for us. … We need peace,” Johnas said when asked what message she had for the international community. She said that while she has been getting a good education in Ukraine, “a good country,” she and other students “would like the government of Tanzania to help us, by any means, get out of the country.”

Leaving the conflict area has become difficult. Ukrainian authorities closed at least three of the country’s airports to commercial traffic as of late Wednesday. Major roads and highways have been clogged with vehicles fleeing major cities, according to local reports.

The National Union of Ghana Students on Wednesday issued a statement urging the federal government in Accra “to accelerate efforts in ensuring the safety of all Ghanaian students” in Ukraine and Russia.

The student union asked that students be evacuated from Ukraine’s eastern provinces, as well as from Russia, “as the country may pose an overall hostile environment to our students.”

On Thursday, Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a statement on social media that it would help facilitate Nigerians’ evacuation as soon as airports have reopened. More than 4,000 Nigerians are studying in Ukraine, according to local news sources.

The crisis in Ukraine also has gripped the attention of Augustin Vyukusenge, an African student in Russia.

“People in shopping centers and on public transportation are calm but are following very closely the news on their mobile phones, and on mounted TV screens in metro stations — but still very, very calm,” said Vyukusenge, a Burundi native and doctoral student in communications at the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics.

Vyukusenge told VOA’s Central Africa Service that the few Russians with whom he had spoken lately “are very supportive of their government’s actions.” However, he added, Russians “are very worried of the possibility that NATO could bring war on Russian territory. … Not many of us believe that the war can reach up to Moscow. … But if war became very serious, and countries in Europe join it through NATO, we would be very worried. For now, we hope it will stay on [the] Ukraine side.”

This report originated in VOA’s Africa Division. It was compiled by Carol Guensburg, with contributions from Mohamed Olad Hassan of the Somali Service, Auriane Itangishaka of the Central Africa Service and Omary Kaseko of the Swahili Service.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has so far been met with diplomatic silence in Africa, except for a comment made by Kenya’s ambassador to the UN earlier this week. Analysts say that while many Africans disagree with Russia’s use of force, the continent’s governments are aware of Russia’s power on the world stage.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Kenya, Andrii Pravednyk, spoke to reporters in Nairobi and appealed to the international community to help his country against Russia’s invasion.

“Today, the future of Europe and the future of the world is at stake. Today Ukraine calls on the international community to take the following actions, to implement devastating sanctions on Russia now without any delay,” he said.

But so far, African governments have said nothing about the Russian aggression. One exception is Kenya, whose ambassador to the U.N., Martin Kimani, condemned the prospect of an invasion Monday, three days before Russian forces entered Ukraine.

“Kenya rejects such a yearning from being pursued by force. We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression,” he said.

Separately, South Africa issued a statement Wednesday urging Ukraine and Russia to find a way to de-escalate tensions.

Steven Gruzd is the head of the Russia-Africa Program at the South African Institute of International Affairs. He says African states are well aware of Russia’s power in the international system.

“African countries are mindful of the role Russia plays in international politics. It is a supporter without asking governance questions, without asking [about] the internal affairs of countries,” he said.

“There was a big Africa-Russia summit in 2019 in Sochi where 43 African leaders went. Russia is definitely wooing the continent and that may weigh on how critical countries are going to be,” he said.

But Grudz says in principle, African government oppose the idea of rearranging borders by force.

“We were left with colonial borders at the end of the 19th century and when our countries became independent, we decided that we would respect those borders even though they cut off ethnic groups and language groups and so on. Otherwise, it’s a recipe for total disaster. So, I think the fact that there is some political affinity between Russia and African countries would probably make the statement more muted but African countries will stand for their principles and one of those is territorial integrity and sovereignty,” he said.

Kenyan international relations expert Kizito Sabala says he doubts the Kenyan ambassador’s words at the U.N. will affect Nairobi’s relationship with Moscow.

“Russia is going to ignore this statement just like any other from the U.S. or any other partner. They are just going to proceed with what they want to do and what they think is right but in terms of relations, I don’t think it is going to adversely affect Kenya-Russia relations,” he said.

Russia has exerted increasing influence in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Mali and Libya in recent years. Some governments have used Russian mercenaries to battle insurgent groups.

The mercenaries are accused of widespread abuses against civilians. The Russian government denies any link to the mercenaries.
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As much of the world denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Thursday, the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui, hosted a tribute to Russian paramilitaries who helped beat back rebels a year ago.

In Bangui’s city center, a human-sized statue erected last year depicts Central African and Russian security forces protecting a woman and her child.

As Western countries tried in vain Wednesday to prevent Russian military aggression against Ukraine, about 100 Central Africans gathered at the monument holding Russian flags.

The group was paying tribute to Russian mercenaries who helped defend the capital, Bangui, last year against rebels.

Blaise-Didacien Kossimatchi organized the ceremony. He heads the “National Galaxy” platform, a Central African group close to the government that often holds protests against France and the United Nations.

He says they say no to everything that is a smear campaign against our army and our Russians, especially by the international press who qualify the Russians as mercenaries.. Kossimatchi adds, “no, the Russians are not here to make exactions – the Russians did nothing!”

By exactions, Kossimatchi means crimes such as rapes and killings. U.N. experts accuse Russian mercenaries of abusing civilians in the CAR. and several other countries.

Several of those celebrating the anniversary wore T-shirts that read “I am Wagner,” a reference to the Wagner Group, the shadowy Russian network that supplied the mercenaries.  

Analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is behind the Wagner Group.

Wagner’s fighters provide security for CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra and have been spotted from Syria to Libya and from Mozambique to Mali.

Yefi Kezza, a member of the ruling United Hearts Movement party, says they’re changing history. You see what is happening in Mali, says Kezza.  This is a strong message that I’m sending to the French Embassy today, he says.  It is time to cooperate with President Touadera and to try and liberate the country together, says Kezza.  We’re grateful to the Russians.  We are here today, he says, and we have invited the Russians to join us to thank them along with our national army.

No Russians attended the celebration in Bangui, but one Central African army commander was in the crowd.  

One man held a sign that read, “Russia will Save the Donbas from War,” referring to the area in southeast Ukraine that Russia declared independent this week before launching its invasion.

A CAR government spokesman declined to comment on the celebration.
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Russia has played an increasing role on the African continent through trade, aid, military training and paramilitary security. Analysts say the future of that relationship will be tested as Russia’s tensions with the West escalate amid the Ukrainian conflict.

The South African government condemned Russia’s action in a statement, saying “it is dismayed at the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine” and “calls on Russia to immediately withdraw its forces from Ukraine in line with the United Nations charter.”

Other African countries remained quiet Thursday as Russian forces pushed into Ukraine.

Russia has increased its presence on the continent in recent years and is scheduled to host a Russia-Africa summit this November.

Regardless of how African nations react to Russia’s invasion going forward, analysts say the continent will feel repercussions.

Irina Filatova is the professor at Russia’s Higher School of Economics University.

“Will it be the new cold war, or will it be the new hot war? We still do not know. But whatever it is, Africa is one, is going to be one of the victims of it,” Filatova said.

Countries reliant on imported oil and gas like South Africa will feel the pain of skyrocketing prices.

Northern African countries that import grains from Ukraine will feel disruptions in supply and price.

The conflict could also impact the availability of funding and resources for international development and aid that many African countries rely on.

Dzvinka Kachur is a researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University.

“It’s also going to create a long-term distraction from and attention from the sustainable development goals,” Kachur said. “So we can expect the budgets of states around the world will be gearing towards more militarization and not the developmental goals.”

The conflict not only risks disruptions to aid, but also military and peacekeeping support on the continent.

Pauline Bax is the deputy director for the International Crisis Group in Johannesburg.

“A lot of attention will be taken away from conflicts that are quite urgent here in Africa, such again as the Sahel, the conflict in Mozambique and the conflict in Ethiopia,” said Bax. “A lot of diplomatic efforts will have to be put in the Ukraine crisis now and has already been put in – to the detriment of other crises here in Africa.”

However, the conflict could also bring opportunities.

Kachur says African leaders should call for changes in global power structures, especially at the United Nations.

Russia is of of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

“This is an opportunity to show that U.N. system is ineffective if the aggressor is one of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council,” Kachur said. “…. This is a good time for African countries to talk about the change of the global system of international relations and to redistribute power.”

Analysts note it’s too early to be sure how the conflict in Ukraine will affect countries thousands of kilometers away. But to the extent the world order is being altered, Africa will feel the impact.
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Seven African heads of state gathered in Kinshasa on Thursday to assess a 2013 agreement aimed at cementing peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s violence-torn east and the Great Lakes region.

The Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework aims at fostering efforts to stabilize the region.

Millions of people died from violence, disease or starvation in the 1996-7 and 1998-2003 Congo Wars — a conflict that enmeshed countries from around east and central Africa.

The Kinshasa summit, the 10th in the series, brought together the presidents of the DRC, South Africa, Uganda, Angola, the Republic of Congo, Burundi and the Central African Republic, a diplomat said.

The summit was expected to express concern about logistical and other support for armed groups that remain active in the region.

It would “take note” of joint DRC-Ugandan operations against the most notorious group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the diplomat said.

The historic operation was launched in the border area late last November, prompted by a string of massacres in eastern DRC and bomb attacks in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

The summit would also congratulate improved relations between Rwanda and Uganda and between Rwanda and Burundi after a long period of tension.

The 2013 accord was eventually signed by a total of 11 countries, including Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

The next summit will be hosted in 2023 by Burundi.
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Fighting has largely died down in Ethiopia’s Tigray region after more than a year of conflict between the federal government and Tigrayan rebels. However, clashes continue in the neighboring Afar region, where civilians have formed self-defense militias to respond to Tigrayan rebel attacks. In the town of Afdera, the main hospital is overwhelmed with injured. Vinicius Assis reports from Afdera, Ethiopia.
Camera: Vinícius Assis Producer: Vinícius Assis
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Experts are calling for increased investment in Africa’s health care infrastructure to support data collection, research and development related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on African economies.

In a recent discussion on VOA’s Straight Talk Africa program titled COVID-19 in Africa: Virus, Variants and Vaccines, experts pointed out that the global health crisis exposed poor health infrastructure on the continent.

Mo Ibrahim, the billionaire founder and chair of the London-based foundation that bears his name, spoke about inequality in vaccine distribution at the height of the pandemic.

“The vaccine apartheid did not help the situation for Africa,” Ibrahim said. However, he said he remains “quite optimistic that the pandemic in a strange way will help us move forward.”

“Going forward, we need to manufacture our own vaccines,” he said. “We should not rely on the goodwill or the sensible behavior of others.”

Last Friday, the World Health Organization announced that six African nations would be the first on the continent to receive the technology necessary to produce mRNA vaccines. The countries are Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

Health experts around the world have raised concerns over the unequal distribution of vaccines. More than 80% of the African continent’s population has yet to receive a single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to WHO.

“Much of this inequity has been driven by the fact that globally, vaccine production is concentrated in a few mostly high-income countries,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a European Union-African Union summit last week.

On the panel, Ibrahim highlighted Africa’s weak and overstretched health care system while stressing the lack of adequate investments and the effects of brain drain on health care.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, more affluent countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development have lured migrant doctors and nurses with measures such as higher pay, temporary licensing and eased entry, the OECD has reported.

WHO recommends at least one physician for every thousand people. Some African countries, such as Ghana and Chad, had as few as 0.1 medical doctors per thousand in 2019, according to World Bank data.

Panelist Aloysius Uche Ordu dispelled the assumption that infectious diseases always come from poor countries.

“We tend to look at Africa as the place where infectious diseases start. Well, that did not happen with COVID,” said Ordu, who directs the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “COVID started with a rich country and spread to other rich countries. In fact, Africa came into the picture later on.”

An official with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the continent has done a laudable job of dealing with the virus.

“We have kept the numbers low. We have mobilized our political leadership from the very top all the way down to our technical teams,” said Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, deputy director of the Africa CDC. “We have mobilized the public, and Africa has largely addressed this pandemic as a group. And this is unprecedented, and I will give us a very, very good mark.”

But the dean of health sciences at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa disagrees.

Professor Sabir Madhi noted that his country’s disproportionately high COVID-19 death toll is largely due to “much more robust” contact tracing and data collation tools than other African nations.

South Africans “constitute less than 5% of the African population yet have contributed 45% of all (COVID-19-related) deaths on the African continent,” he said.

The country of nearly 60 million people has Africa’s highest number of recorded infections and deaths — a total of 3.6 million cases and nearly 99,000 deaths as of this week, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. The center has recorded more than 420 million COVID-19 cases globally and nearly 6 million deaths.

South Africa is emerging from a fourth wave of the pandemic, largely driven by the omicron variant. According to local scientists, the variant no longer leads to high hospitalization rates and deaths in the country, a huge relief for a population reeling under lockdown fatigue.

Madhi told VOA the continent has failed to learn from experiences with the 2009 swine flu, which emphasized the need for good data collection.

He added that “the impact of the pandemic on Africa will, unfortunately, be realized only after the pandemic has passed.”

US support

The United States has committed to helping the world combat the virus. President Joe Biden pledged to donate over 1.2 billion doses through COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing initiative supported by the U.N. and the health organizations Gavi and CEPI. The initiative aims to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines to developing countries.

So far, the U.S. has donated more than 450 million doses globally, with more than 120 million doses going to 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the State Department.

Ordu said it has become imperative to strengthen STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in Africa. This, he contended, would be a sure way to overcome any future health crisis.

“Because of the growing youthful population in Africa, it is important that STEM education is an area of focus, particularly for women and girls,” he said.

This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa service.
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