Yaounde, Cameroon — Central African Republic officials say they are meeting with the governments of neighboring countries in an effort to stop the spread of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox.

An outbreak of the mpox virus has been confirmed in several Central African Republic (CAR) towns and villages, with fresh infections reported this week in Bangui, said one of the country’s health officials.

In addition, the Democratic Republic of Congo has seen 20,000 cases and more than 1,000 deaths from mpox, mainly among children, since the start of 2023. Over 11,000 cases, including 443 deaths, have been reported so far this year, according to previous reports.

CAR officials say scores of suspected cases also have been reported in nearby Cameroon, Republic of Congo, and Nigeria, provoking fears the disease may spread quickly.

Pierre Somse, CAR’s health minister, said the country’s government is pleading with family heads and community leaders — including traditional rulers and clerics — to inform health officials when civilians show symptoms of or suffer from fever, muscular aches, sore throat, headache or have rashes and large boils on their bodies.

Somse spoke Wednesday on state TV, telling civilians they should avoid contact with wild animals, and wash their hands with soap and water after contact with animals and sick people.

The Central African Republic said health workers have been dispatched to towns and villages where confirmed and suspected cases of mpox have been reported to transport patients and suspected cases to hospitals.

People infected by the virus will be isolated and treated free of charge in hospitals, said Somse.

Health officials are warning civilians against taking suspected patients to herbalists or African traditional healers. They say the lives of civilians and traditional healers who come in direct contact with patients out of hospitals are at risk.

Central African Republic health officials say humanitarian teams are in towns and villages searching for patients hiding due to stigma and the belief that mpox cannot be treated.

On Wednesday, Central African Republic officials said they were coordinating with neighboring countries of the Republic of Congo, Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to fight the disease.

Maxime Balalou, the Central African Republic’s communication minister and government spokesperson, said the CAR cannot stop the spread of mpox alone because its borders are very porous. He said it is difficult for any central African state to single-handedly control the movement of people, especially cattle ranchers and hunters across the Congo Basin.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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No evidence has surfaced linking the West to attacks against Wagner, although Ukraine has indicated it provided support to Mali separatists battling Russian troops.
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Nairobi — Human Rights Watch is accusing Tanzania of forcing indigenous tribes from their ancestral land in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. In a report released Wednesday, the rights group documents a Tanzanian government program to move 82,000 people off their land to use it for wildlife conservation, tourism and hunting.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania is a U.N. World Heritage Site managed by the Tanzanian government. For centuries, the Maasai tribe has lived in the area side by side with wild animals. 

In 2022, the government of Tanzania launched a program to encourage the voluntary relocation of the Maasai tribe from the conservation area to Msomera, a town about 600 kilometers (370 miles) away. 

However, what the government called a voluntary relocation plan was far from voluntary, Human Rights Watch says.   

Allan Ngari, the group’s Africa advocacy director, said the forced movement of the people is against the Tanzanian constitution and international law.  

“There are clear violations, including the Maasai people’s rights to consultation, including prior to planning and execution of the relocation, the prohibition of forced evictions, which is happening even for Msomera residents. And then their culture and development has been inhibited,” Ngari said. “So, there’s just a general disregard of the obligations by the government that raises serious concerns about the prospects of any accountability, justice.” 

For the 86-page report, titled “It’s Like Killing Culture,” Human Rights Watch interviewed at least 100 people, including Ngorongoro Conservation Area residents who were resettled.  

Community members say they were not informed about the resettlement plans and that consent was not sought.

In January, government spokesman Mobhare Matinyi said the relocation process was ongoing and on the right track despite some civil societies and others spreading false information. According to local activists, some 8,000 people have been relocated.  

Ngorongoro is home to more than 80,000 people, but since 2021 residents say the government has reduced the availability of essential services in the area like water, land for food production and adequate schools. 

Local media reports the government has denied reducing such services. But Ngorongoro resident Denis Oleshangay said authorities are edging them out of their homes.  

“The government is trying to make the situation uncomfortable, to make them restless, to make the situation hard for the human being to survive, by denying them the right to access all important places for pasture and water,” Oleshangay said. “But as a result of that, many people lost their livestock because now they have not enough place to pasture. The situation in schools, you have no permit to build even a collapsing classroom, build houses.” 

Residents also say government-employed rangers assault and beat them with impunity, and that moving around Ngorongoro has become dangerous.  

Over the years, the Tanzanian government has developed a plan to set aside more land for tourists, wild animals, and game hunting. 

Authorities argue that though they allowed the Maasai to live within national parks, the growth of their population has put them in direct competition with wildlife.   

Ngari of Human Rights Watch said the government needs to discuss its plan with the affected communities and provide necessities to those still residing in the conservation area. 

“We are asking for availability and accessibility of basic services,” Ngari said. “So there needs to be a restoration of funding and resources to the Ngorongoro conservation area. This has been removed by the government.” 

The New York-based group says the government needs to respect the rights of the indigenous people and ensure their survival, well-being, and dignity. 
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Cairo — Sudan’s military leader, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, survived a drone attack Wednesday on an army graduation ceremony he was attending in the country’s east, the military said. The attack that killed five people was the latest twist in the conflict Sudan has been going through since a popular uprising removed its veteran leader Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

The attack by two drones took place in the town of Gebeit after the ceremony was concluded, the military added. Burhan was not hurt, according to Lt. Col. Hassan Ibrahim, from the military spokesman’s office.

Videos posted by Al Araby TV showed multiple people running along a dusty road at the time of the drone attack, while other footage showed people at the graduation ceremony apparently looking to the sky as the drone strike hit.

Another video posted on Facebook by the Sudanese Armed Forces showed a crowd of people gathering around Burhan following the drone strike, cheering for him as he smiled.

“A spontaneous popular gathering of the people of the Jebait region with the President of the Sovereign Council and Commander-in-Chief following the graduation of a new batch of officers,” the post read. 

Sudan has been torn by war for more than a year between the military and a powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces or RSF. With fighting in the capital, Khartoum, the military leadership largely operates out of eastern Sudan near the Red Sea Coast.

The RSF has not commented on the assassination attempt yet, which comes nearly a week after its leader said that he planned to attend cease-fire talks in Switzerland next month arranged by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, head of the Rapid Support Forces fighting Sudan’s army, emphasized at the time that the talks would become “a major step” toward peace and stability in Sudan and create a new state based on “justice, equality and federal rule.” 

The Sudanese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday responded to the U.S. invitation to the talks in Geneva, saying the military-controlled Sudanese government is prepared to take part but said that any negotiation before implementing the Jeddah Declaration “wouldn’t be acceptable to the Sudanese people.” 

The Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect Civilians passed last year meant to end the conflict, but neither side committed to its objectives. 

Representatives from the Sudanese Army and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamadan Dagalo, engaged in revived talks brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, focusing on the delivery of humanitarian aid, achieving ceasefires and paving the way toward a permanent cessation of aggression, among other objectives. 

In its Tuesday statement, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry accused the RSF of being the only party that attacks cities, villages and civilians. The military-controlled Sudanese government demanded sanctions be imposed on “rebels to stop their continuous aggression, end their siege on cities, and open roads.” 

“Those taking part in the initiative are the same as the parties who participated in the Jeddah talks, and the topics are identical to what was agreed upon,” the statement read. 

The ministry added that the military-led government must be consulted about the planned agenda for any negotiations and parties taking part, with the provisions in the Jeddah Declaration being the basis of future talks. 

Cameron Hudson, the former chief of staff to the special envoy to Sudan, said the military government’s response is “far more positive and open” than he had anticipated because it opened the door to preliminary talks with the U.S. 

The Rapid Support Forces were formed from Janjaweed fighters created under former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s. 

More than 4.6 million people have been displaced as a result of the conflict, according to the U.N. migration agency. Those include over 3.6 million who fled to safer areas inside Sudan and more than one million others who crossed into neighboring countries. More than 285,300 people have fled to Egypt.
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Rabat, Morocco — Morocco’s King Mohammed VI on Monday pardoned three journalists detained for years, as hundreds of prisoners saw their sentences commuted to mark the monarch’s 25th anniversary on the throne.

Omar Radi, Soulaimane Raissouni and Taoufik Bouachrine, as well as historian and rights advocate Maati Monjib, were among the 2,476 people pardoned, a government official said on condition of anonymity.

Rights groups, including Reporters Without Borders (RSF), had denounced the jailings of Radi and Raissouni, detained since 2021 on charges of sexual assault they deny.

Human Rights Watch has accused Morocco of using criminal trials, especially for alleged sexual offenses, as “techniques of repression” to silence journalists and government critics.

The country’s top court rejected in July 2023 the final appeals of two journalists.

Morocco ranked 129th out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
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Johannesburg — Former South African president Jacob Zuma has been expelled from his longtime political home, the African National Congress, after throwing his support behind a rival political party and campaigning for it ahead of May’s game-changing elections.

Zuma was a member of the African National Congress, or ANC, for 65 years. 

The octogenarian politician joined the anti-apartheid movement as a young man in 1959. Like fellow ANC stalwart Nelson Mandela, he was jailed on Robben Island for his part in the fight against white minority rule. 

Also like Mandela, Zuma went on to serve as president after the advent of South Africa’s democracy. 

But his association with the storied movement saw an ignoble end on Monday. 

“Jacob Zuma has actively impugned the integrity of the ANC and campaigned to dislodge the ANC from power,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said, explaining the party’s decision to expel Zuma. 

Zuma, 82, was forced to resign in disgrace near the end of his second term as president in 2018 amid numerous corruption scandals. He is widely accused of enabling what is known in South Africa as “State Capture” — basically the handing over of state-owned enterprises and even some ministries to his businessmen friends. He denies wrongdoing. 

Bitter at the ANC, Zuma threw his weight behind the newly-formed uMkhonto weSizwe, or MK party, in December 2023. Despite his suspension from the party, he remained a member of the ANC while acting as the public face and leader of the populist MK party. 

While Zuma himself was barred from running for office due to a prior criminal conviction, he campaigned for MK using vicious rhetoric against his successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa. 

Despite the corruption allegations against him, Zuma has retained massive support in his home province of Kwa Zulu-Natal. MK did very well there in May 29 elections, which saw it become the third biggest party in South Africa with almost 15 percent of the vote. 

Despite MK’s success, Zuma rejected the results, falsely claiming voting irregularities without any evidence. Mbalula also referenced this when announcing the expulsion. 

“Furthermore, former president Zuma has been running on a dangerous platform that casts doubt on our entire constitutional edifice,” Mbalula said. “He has meted out a host of anti-revolutionary outbursts, including mischievously calling into question the credibility of our electoral processes without cause.” 

Official election results saw the ANC lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since the start of democracy in 1994, forcing it to form a coalition in order to govern. MK is now the official opposition in parliament, led by a Zuma-aligned disgraced former judge. 

Professor David Everatt of Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand School of Governance said he was surprised it took the ANC so long to expel Zuma. 

“It shows very clearly that the balance of forces has swung very clearly against Jacob Zuma and he doesn’t have the support inside the ANC to try and defend himself,” Everatt said. 

But political analyst Sandile Swana noted that the ANC had protected Zuma for years. 

“All of them have supported Jacob Zuma in one form or another and tolerated the decay in the ANC, so Zuma is one of the stars of the decay and demise of the African National Congress, that is his legacy,” Swana said. 

Zuma is due in court next year to face corruption charges over a 1999 arms deal.
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KINSHASA, Congo — Seven people were killed and many others were injured during a stampede at a music concert in Congo’s capital, authorities said Sunday.

The stampede occurred Saturday at the 80,000-capacity Stade des Martyrs stadium in the heart of Kinshasa where Mike Kalambayi, a popular Congolese gospel singer, was performing, Kinshasa Gov. Daniel Bumba said.

State television RTNC said seven people were killed in the chaos and some of those injured were admitted to intensive care.

Authorities did not comment on what caused the stampede, saying an investigation was underway. However, the local music management company that organized the event said the chaos erupted when “the security services tried to neutralize some troublemakers.”

An estimated 30,000 people attended the concert, which featured several other musicians and pastors, the management company Maajabu Gospel said in a statement.

Videos that appeared to be from the scene and broadcast of the event showed large crowds gathered outside the stadium in front of barricades as they waited to enter. Inside, people could be seen rushing to the center stage.

Congo has witnessed such stampedes in past years, often blamed on poor crowd control measures such as excessive use of force. Eleven people died in a similar crush at the same stadium last October during a music concert.
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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — At least 19 people drowned when their boat sank in a river in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region Saturday, the region’s official media said Sunday.  

“Seven people including a child were saved in difficult circumstances,” the Amhara Media Corporation (AMC) added, quoting a local administrator.

The boat was taking passengers across the Tekeze river, which runs along Ethiopia’s border with Eritrea before it crosses into Sudan at the point where the three countries meet.

Officials said that 26 people were estimated to have been on board the boat at the time of the accident at around noon (0900 GMT) on Saturday.   

Only two bodies have been recovered, AMC said, adding that those rescued had been taken to nearby hospitals.  

Media access to remote northern Ethiopia is heavily restricted by the authorities, with information often trickling in hours later.  

Amhara — Ethiopia’s second most populous region — has been wracked for months by clashes between the Ethiopian military and an ethnic Amhara militia known as Fano.

It was also caught up in the neighboring region Tigray’s war, with its regional forces fighting alongside federal government troops against Tigrayan rebels.

The boat accident is the second major incident in Ethiopia in recent days. On Monday, a landslide in the south killed over 250 people.
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N’Djamena, Chad — Access to Chad’s largest online news platform has been suspended since Friday, an organization for Chadian online media reported on Sunday.

The group said the website for Tchadinfos.com, the leading news organization in the Sahel country, had been taken offline after it refused to comply with a request from former adviser to the Chadian President Abakar Manany.

“A few weeks ago, M. Manany demanded via his lawyers that Tchadinfos remove all articles written about him — we refused to take them down because these are factual articles,” the website’s general manager Mamadou Djimtebaye told AFP.

“He then reached out to our U.S.-based host via his lawyers in South Africa to suspend us,” Djimtebaye added.

The Organization for Online Media in Chad in a statement denounced “serious attacks on press freedom and the freedom to inform,” asking that an independent probe be launched into Manany and his “potential accomplices.” 

Manany did not respond to AFP requests for comment.

Tchadinfos runs a website as well as a radio station and a television channel in Chad, one of the poorest nations in the world.
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Cairo, Egypt — A court in Libya on Sunday sentenced 12 current and former officials to terms of up to 27 years in prison over their involvement in the collapse of two dams last year that sent a wall of water several meters high through the center of a coastal city. Thousands of people died.

The two dams outside the city of Derna broke up on Sept. 11 after they were overwhelmed by Storm Daniel, which caused heavy rain across eastern Libya. The failure of the structures inundated as much as a quarter of the city, officials have said, destroying entire neighborhoods and sweeping people out to sea.

The Derna Criminal Court on Sunday convicted 12 current and former officials of mismanagement, negligence and mistakes that contributed to the disaster, according to a statement from the office of the country’s top prosecutor.

The defendants, who were responsible for managing the country’s dams, were given prison terms that ranged from nine to 27 years, the statement said, without identifying them. Three of the defendants were ordered to return “money obtained from illicit gains,” the statement said without elaborating.

The court acquitted four other people, it said.

Sunday’s verdict could be appealed before a higher court, according to Libya’s judicial system.

The oil-rich North African nation has been in chaos since 2011 when a NATO-backed uprising-turned-civil war ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed. For most of the past decade, rival administrations have claimed authority to lead Libya. Each is backed by armed groups and foreign governments.

The country’s east has been under the control of Gen. Khalifa Hifter and his self-styled Libyan National Army, which is allied with a parliament-confirmed government. A rival administration is based in the capital, Tripoli, and enjoys the support of most of the international community.

The dams were built by a Yugoslav construction company in the 1970s above Wadi Derna, a river valley that divides the city. They were meant to protect the city from flash floods, which are not uncommon in the area. The dams were not maintained for decades, despite warnings from scientists that they could burst.

A report by a state-run audit agency in 2021 said the two dams hadn’t been maintained despite the allocation of more than $2 million for that purpose in 2012 and 2013.

The flood of water from the dams left as much as one-third of Derna’s housing and infrastructure damaged, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.

The World Health Organization said more than 4,000 flood-related deaths have been registered, but the head of Libya’s Red Crescent previously cited a death toll of 11,300. OCHA said at the time that along with the registered deaths, there were at least 9,000 missing people.
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Cotonou — At least seven members of Beninese security forces and five rangers working with a conservation nonprofit have been killed in an attack by an armed group in Benin’s National Park W that is overrun by militants, according to the conservation group. 

The attack Wednesday happened not far from the Mékrou River in the 10,000-square-kilometer (3,800-square-miles) park which straddles the borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, the African Parks group said in a statement Saturday. 

Authorities in Benin have not yet spoken about the attack, which is common with the government and the military. 

It is the latest in a surge in violence in which jihadis from the conflict-battered Sahel region that is south of the Sahara Desert have spread farther into West Africa, targeting coastal states like Benin. 

It was not clear which jihadi group carried out the attack in Park W, into which militants from troubled neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger have recently moved, raising fears they could use its vast protected area as a base for infiltrating other West African countries. 

The al-Qaida linked JNIM group has been the most active in the Sahel and most recently in coastal West African states like Benin and Togo. 

Although they were once believed to be spreading to the coastal states for better cover to recuperate, get financing and gather weapons to launch more attacks on Sahel governments, their fighters have started to attack communities and security forces as militancy begins to take root. 

 
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BUNDIBUGYO, Uganda — The drunken man kicked the saucepan off the fireplace, demanding to know why dinner was not ready. Then he struck his wife with a piece of firewood, triggering a fight. They grappled before being separated.

The skit about domestic violence had been staged for the benefit of villagers in western Uganda. Some looked puzzled. Some were amused. But others watched in horror as drama mirrored reality.

Here, in a remote farming community near the border with Congo, domestic violence mostly targets women. Those acting out the skit are not immune.

Eva Bulimpikya, who played a woman who fought back, said her real husband had attacked her the previous night after coming home late.

“He was drunk. From nowhere, he said, ‘Can you come and open?’ Because I was almost asleep, when I delayed to open he started complaining … Then he slapped me,” she said.

Years ago, she said, she was slapped so hard that her hearing was impaired. She still gets headaches.

A local nonprofit group that staged the skit says domestic violence is so widespread in this part of Uganda that it’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t been affected. The mountainous district of Bundibugyo is about 400 kilometers from the capital, Kampala.

Representatives of the group, Ourganda, affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said they were compelled to act in 2022 when they encountered a woman and her child who had been attacked by her drunken partner. The child’s head had swollen, and his mother worried he might die.

Ourganda led efforts to prosecute the offender, who was jailed for six months and is now on peaceful terms with his wife. The rare prosecution energized locals and launched the group’s campaign to fight what it saw as the normalization of domestic violence. At the time, 47 of 50 women it surveyed in Bundibugyo said they had experienced violence in the previous week.

The group, working in 10 villages, focuses on instilling fear in offenders as much as educating them. An accused perpetrator is asked to sign a “reconciliation form” in which they pledge never to commit the same offense.

Signing the form prevents an escalation that might lead to police involvement, but the form is also kept as evidence for possible prosecution if the agreement is breached, said Vincent Tibesigwa Isimbwa, Ourganda’s leader in Bundibugyo. Only five of about 100 people have violated the agreement so far, he said.

An expert on gender-based violence in Uganda, Angella Akoth of ActionAid Uganda, said such work targeting perpetrators is recommended, calling it “male engagement strategy.”

The men who separated the fighting couple in the skit were members of a real-life “Mankind Club,” one of many set up by Ourganda to respond as quickly as possible to outbreaks of violence. Thomas Balikigamba, a local man who was jailed for six months over domestic abuse, said he warns others of the harshness of incarceration. “In our drinking points, I always tell members of our group that it is very bad to fight at home,” he said.

The women who sat around the couple were described as “Soul Sisters,” with the role of counseling women or offering them shelter and clothing when they are kicked out of their homes.

Men who are “bleeding internally” — a euphemism for women-on-men violence — are also encouraged to seek support, Isimbwa said: “Any form of violence, we should not tolerate it.”

Domestic violence is a global curse. World Health Organization figures from 2021 show that one in three women worldwide has been subjected to some form of it. In Uganda, a 2020 survey by U.N.-backed local authorities found that 95% of women and girls had experienced physical or sexual violence, or both, after turning 15.

Isimbwa said he has been threatened by some locals for trying to empower women. But Ourganda aims to take its work to more villages and “create rapport” with local officials who make or break efforts to prosecute offenders, he said.

“We have created more awareness in communities. Now people tend to know what they are supposed to do. They try their level best to make sure that they don’t violate other people’s rights,” he said.

Many in Bundibugyo who spoke to The Associated Press said domestic violence is often sparked by financial disputes and disagreements over sex — quarrels that can be intensified by alcoholism and illiteracy.

Most cases are never prosecuted. Out of 2,194 cases of teenage pregnancy in 2023 — a broad category that encompasses some forms of domestic violence — only 54 were reported to the police in Bundibugyo, said Pamela Grace Adong, the district’s probation and social welfare officer. Bundibugyo is home to around 20,000 people.

“It is now going up,” she said of gender-based violence. “For example, last year we got around 575 cases … But this year – this is now June – we have around 300.”

Ourganda’s mediation work helps to police communities, she said.

In the town of Sara-Kihombya, a collection of mud houses across from the Seventh-day Adventist church run by Ourganda, many men congregate in bars in the morning and stay the whole day.

Domestic violence is said to rise between October and February, peak season for harvesting the cocoa plants dotting the volcanic soil. Some couples fight over how to share the earnings, many residents said.

If a man returns home from selling cocoa and the woman asks for some money, “that is war,” said Linda Kabugho, a kindergarten teacher who said that until recently she was repeatedly attacked by her husband.

The 23-year-old Kabugho, who dropped out of secondary school when she became pregnant in 2022, said she would fight with her husband when he came home feeling miserable over his soccer betting losses. “He brings all the anger on me,” she said. “We fight, we fight, we fight.”

Last year she reached out to local officials who introduced her to Ourganda. The couple were counseled by a group of Soul Sisters, and she is now one of them. The man was warned he risked going to jail if he beat his wife again.

Kabugho said her husband had not beaten her in many months, and she thinks of him as a responsible man.

“A least now I can sleep. I can eat very well,” she said. “We are somehow safe, and I am somehow safe.”
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KENITRA, Morocco — Golden fields of wheat no longer produce the bounty they once did in Morocco. A six-year drought has imperiled the country’s entire agriculture sector, including farmers who grow cereals and grains used to feed humans and livestock.

The North African nation projects this year’s harvest will be smaller than last year in both volume and acreage, putting farmers out of work and requiring more imports and government subsidies to prevent the price of staples like flour from rising for everyday consumers.

“In the past, we used to have a bounty — a lot of wheat. But during the last seven or eight years, the harvest has been very low because of the drought,” said Al Housni Belhoussni, a small-scale farmer who has long tilled fields outside of the city of Kenitra.

Belhoussni’s plight is familiar to grain farmers throughout the world confronting a hotter and drier future. Climate change is imperiling the food supply and, in regions like North Africa, shrinking the annual yields of cereals that dominate diets around the world — wheat, rice, maize and barley.

The region is one of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change. Delays to annual rains and inconsistent weather patterns have pushed the growing season later in the year and made planning difficult for farmers.

In Morocco, where cereals account for most of the farmed land and agriculture employs the majority of workers in rural regions, the drought is wreaking havoc and touching off major changes that will transform the makeup of the economy. It has forced some to leave their fields fallow. It has also made the areas they do elect to cultivate less productive, producing far fewer sacks of wheat to sell than they once did.

In response, the government has announced restrictions on water use in urban areas — including on public baths and car washes — and in rural ones, where water going to farms has been rationed.

“The late rains during the autumn season affected the agriculture campaign. This year, only the spring rains, especially during the month of March, managed to rescue the crops,” said Abdelkrim Naaman, the chairman of Nalsya. The organization has advised farmers on seeding, irrigation and drought mitigation as less rain falls and less water flows through Morocco’s rivers.

The Agriculture Ministry estimates that this year’s wheat harvest will yield roughly 3.1 billion kilograms, far less than last year’s 5.5 billion kilograms — a yield that was still considered low. The amount of land seeded has dramatically shrunk as well, from 36,700 square kilometers to 9,540 square miles 24,700 square kilometers.

Such a drop constitutes a crisis, said Driss Aissaoui, an analyst and former member of the Moroccan Ministry for Agriculture.

“When we say crisis, this means that you have to import more,” he said. “We are in a country where drought has become a structural issue.”

Leaning more on imports means the government will have to continue subsidizing prices to ensure households and livestock farmers can afford dietary staples for their families and flocks, said Rachid Benali, the chairman of the farming lobby COMADER.

The country imported nearly 2.5 million tons of common wheat between January and June. However, such a solution may have an expiration date, particularly because Morocco’s primary source of wheat, France, is facing shrinking harvests as well.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ranked Morocco as the world’s sixth-largest wheat importer this year, between Turkey and Bangladesh, which both have much bigger populations.

“Morocco has known droughts like this and in some cases known droughts that las longer than 10 years. But the problem, this time especially, is climate change,” Benali said.
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Dakar, Senegal — Mali’s army and its Russian allies suffered a major setback and significant losses on Saturday while fighting separatists in the country’s north, a spokesman for the rebels told AFP. 

The West African nation’s military leaders, who took power in a 2020 coup, have made it a priority to retake all of the country from separatist and jihadi forces, particularly in Kidal, a pro-independence northern bastion. 

“Azawad fighters are in control in Tinzaouaten and further south in the Kidal region,” said Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, a spokesman for an alliance of predominantly Tuareg separatist armed groups called CSP-DPA. 

“Russian mercenaries and Malian armed forces have fled,” he added. “Others have surrendered.” 

He also shared videos of numerous corpses of soldiers and their allies. 

“The Malian army has retreated,” a local politician told AFP, citing at least 17 dead in a provisional toll. 

“The CSP people are still in Tinzaouaten. The army and Wagner are no longer there,” he said, referring to the Russian mercenary group.  

Fighting also took place further south toward Abeibara, the politician said.  

A former United Nations mission worker in Kidal said: “At least 15 Wagner fighters were killed and arrested after three days of fighting” adding that “the CSP rebels have taken the lead in what happened in Tinzaouaten.”  

Mossa Ag Inzoma, a member of the separatist movement, claimed that “dozens and dozens” of Wagner fighters and soldiers had been killed and taken prisoner. 

Fighting on a scale not seen in months broke out Thursday between the army and separatists in the town of Tinzaouaten, near the border with Algeria, after the army announced it had taken control of In-Afarak, a commercial crossroads in Kidal.  

Mali has been unsettled by violence by jihadi and criminal groups since 2012. 

A junta led by Colonel Assimi Goita took power in 2022 and broke the country’s traditional alliance with France, in favor of Russia. 
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Port Sudan, Sudan — Besieging Sudanese paramilitary forces pounded El Fasher on Saturday, witnesses said, killing 22 people in Darfur’s last city outside their control, according to a hospital source. 

El Fasher has become a key battleground in the 15-month-long war pitting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the regular Sudanese army. 

The battle for the North Darfur state capital, seen as crucial for humanitarian aid in a region on the brink of famine, has raged for more than two months. El Fasher is the only capital RSF doesn’t hold. 

Witnesses said El Fasher had come under heavy artillery bombardment by the RSF on Saturday. 

“Some houses were destroyed by the shelling,” one witness said. 

A doctor at the city’s Saudi Hospital told AFP on the condition of anonymity that the “bombardment of the livestock market and the Redeyef neighborhood killed 22 people and wounded 17.” 

A pro-democracy activist group said it had counted 22 bodies and the casualty toll was expected to rise. 

There was no immediate comment from the RSF, which has in the past denied shelling civilian targets. 

Over 300,000 people have fled their homes in El Fasher due to the fighting which started in April, the United Nations said. 

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest reported bombardment since the start of the month, when 15 civilians were killed in the shelling of another city market. 

Intense fighting for El Fasher erupted on May 10, prompting a siege by the RSF that has trapped hundreds of thousands of civilians. 

Last month, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an end to the siege. 

U.S. mediators are expected to make a new attempt in Switzerland next month to broker an end to the fighting. The talks are due to start on August 14. 

Previous negotiations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, have failed to put an end to the fighting which has displaced millions, sparked warnings of famine and left swathes of the capital Khartoum in ruins. 
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Vincent Leygonie is representing South Africa at the BMX Freestyle event at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Ihsaan Haffejee has the 27-year-old cyclist’s story.
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ABUJA, Nigeria — As the sun blazes down in Abuja, Ahmed Bukar turns on his home air conditioner to a blast of hot air. The cooling gas that the appliance runs on is leaking from the charging valve on the unit. A technician had recently helped him refill the air conditioner with gas, but he didn’t test for possible leaks. 

In Abuja and across Nigeria, air conditioners sprout from the walls as the appliance turns from a middle-class luxury into a necessity in an increasingly hot climate. The industry is governed by regulations prohibiting the release of cooling gases into the air – for example, by conducting leak tests after an appliance is fixed. Still, routine release of gases into the atmosphere because of shoddy installations, unsafe disposal at the end of use, or the addition of gas without testing for leaks is a common problem in Nigeria, though unlawful. 

The cooling gases, or refrigerants, have hundreds to thousands of times the climate warming potency of carbon dioxide, and the worst of them also harm the ozone layer. Following global agreements that promised to limit these gases from being spewed into the air, like the Montreal Protocol and Kigali Amendments, Nigeria has enacted regulations guiding the use of these gases. But enforcement is a problem, threatening Nigeria’s commitments to slash emissions. 

“Those laws, those rules, nobody enforces them,” said Abiodun Ajeigbe, a manager for the air-conditioning business at Samsung in West Africa. “I have not seen any enforcement.” 

‘I was not taught’ 

The weak regulatory system for the cooling industry in Nigeria is evident in the rampant lack of proper training and awareness of environmental harm caused by refrigerants among technicians, according to Ajeigbe. And it is common to see. 

After uninstalling an air conditioner for a client who was moving to another neighborhood, Cyprian Braimoh, a technician in Abuja’s Karu district, casually frittered the gas from the unit into the air, preparing it to be refilled with fresh gas at the client’s new location. 

If he followed the country’s regulations, he would collect the gas into a canister, preventing or minimizing the gas’s environmental harm. Technicians like Braimoh and those who serviced Bukar’s appliance without testing for leaks are self-employed and unsupervised. But they often get customers because they offer cheaper services. 

“I was not taught that; I only release it into the air,” said Braimoh, who originally specialized in electrical wiring of buildings before fixing air conditioners to increase his income options. He received patchy training that did not include the required safety standards for handling refrigerants. And he still did not conduct a leak test after installing the air conditioning unit at his client’s new location, which is required by the country’s cooling industry regulations. 

Installations done by well-trained technicians who follow environmental regulations can be costlier for customers. It’s often the case in Nigeria, where hiring the services of companies like Daibau, who later helped Bukar fix his leaks, could result in higher costs. 

Manufacturers who offer direct refrigeration and air-conditioning installation services to big commercial customers have tried to self-regulate with safety training and certifications for their technicians, Ajeigbe said. 

Potent greenhouse gases 

According to industry professionals and public records, the most common air conditioners in Africa still use what’s known as R-22 gas. This refrigerant is less harmful to the ozone layer compared to the older, even more damaging coolants called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs have been largely eliminated, thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which was created to protect the ozone layer, the vital shield in the atmosphere that protects against cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. 

But R-22 is 1,810 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Just one pound of the coolant is nearly as potent as a ton of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, but while CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for over 200 years, R-22 stays in the atmosphere for around 12 years. R-22 air conditioners also have low energy efficiency and most of the electricity powering them in Africa is from fossil fuels. 

Nigeria plans to phase out the R-22 refrigerant by January 1, 2030. But with lax enforcement, meeting the phaseout target is in doubt, Ajeigbe said. 

Newer air conditioners that use a family of gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) don’t harm the ozone and consume less electricity. But HFCs are still potent greenhouse gases and account for around 2% of all human-caused warming in the atmosphere. 

One HFC, R-410A, which is still a common refrigerant in Europe and the United States, has a warming potential 2,088 times greater than that of carbon dioxide and lasts roughly 30 years in the atmosphere. Air conditioners running on it are the next most common in Africa. 

Another HFC, R-32, is 675 times more potent than CO2, lasts about five years in the atmosphere, and is more energy-efficient. But it is just “marginally” in the African market, Ajeigbe said. 

Air conditioners running on HFCs are more expensive, meaning they’re less popular than the more polluting ones, according to sellers and technicians in Abuja and Lagos. 

A wider problem 

It’s not just Nigeria. In Ghana, the cooling industry also struggles to get technicians to comply with environmental standards. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “poor servicing practices prevalent” in the country are largely driven by consumers, who choose low-trained technicians on price considerations and neglect recommended standards. 

In Kenya, the demand for cooling systems is growing as temperatures warm, the population grows and electricity access expands. Air conditioners running on R-22 are still very common in Kenya, but the National Environmental Management Authority told The Associated Press there have not been new imports since 2021, in line with 2020 regulations. 

The regulations require technicians handling refrigerants and cooling appliances to obtain a license, but that is not enforced, technicians told AP, leaving space for environmentally unsafe practices. 

“You just need to be well-trained and start installations. It’s a very simple industry for us who are making a living in it,” said Nairobi-based technician Jeremiah Musyoka. 

One cooling gas that’s energy-efficient and less harmful to the atmosphere, R-290, is slowly gaining traction as an alternative for refrigeration and air conditioning in developed markets like the European Union. The demand for efficient heat pumps is rapidly expanding in the EU, but adoption in Africa remains insignificant because of cost barriers and limited awareness. 

Countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya have also identified R-290 as the product that will ultimately replace HFCs, but models using it are not commercially available. And they still have to worry about specialized training for technicians because of R-290’s high flammability. 

“It worries me there is not enough training and existing regulations are not enforced,” Ajeigbe, manager at Samsung, said. But he said enforcing the import ban on banned gases and the appliances that use them would make a difference. 

Anastasia Akhigbe, a senior regulatory official at Nigeria’s National Environmental Standards and Regulations Agency, added that increasing awareness among appliance importers, technicians and consumers about the environmental impacts of certain refrigerants would also help. 

“Enforcement is a known challenge, but we are moving gradually,” Akhigbe said.
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Manzini, Eswatini  — Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is the only country left in Africa that maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province. Eswatini is nevertheless a growing trade partner with China, which means the country has to be careful as it reaches out to other nations in Asia for new economic opportunities.

Eswatini’s recent efforts to build stronger ties with South Korea, Singapore and Bhutan could be interpreted as a move away from China, its biggest trading partner in Asia. The kingdom imported more than $109 million in goods from China in 2022.

But government spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo said such a conclusion was presumptive. He argued that diplomacy is a fluid process, driven by a country’s interests, and that Eswatini’s current focus on developing relations with other Asian nations reflected a strategic assessment of what is best for the kingdom.

“We are establishing diplomatic relations with many countries,” Nxumalo said. “Geopolitics is not centered in one position. Geopolitics is controlled and influenced from various corners of the globe. As the kingdom of Eswatini, that’s where we want to make our presence available, and that’s where we want to make our presence felt, where there’s geopolitics activities – whether economical trade or diplomacy or even political processes, we would want to be engaged. …

“So Eswatini is, therefore, according to our cardinal foreign policy, an enemy to none but a friend to all.”

Being friends to all has allowed Eswatini to maintain diplomatic relations with both China and Taiwan, despite efforts by Beijing to persuade Eswatini to cut ties with the self-governing island.

China has threatened various measures against Eswatini but has never carried them out.

Nearly 60% of Eswatini’s population lives in poverty, and its economy was hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic, which was followed by a wave of protests that ruined or damaged many businesses.

Mavela Sigwane, head of transformation at the Federation of Eswatini Business Community, said the outreach efforts to South Korea, Singapore and Bhutan represent more than diplomacy; they hold the potential for significant economic benefits.

“This Korea agreement which has been signed, we are so excited about it,” Sigwane said. “It will open a number of avenues for the local businesses to also tap into the available opportunities in Korea.”

The Korea agreement Signwane referred to is a recent South Korean commitment to spend more than $20 billion in development assistance and investment initiatives in Africa.

Eswatini’s King Mswati commended South Korea for the commitments and invited South Korean businesses to invest in Eswatini.

Political analyst Sibusiso Nhlabatsi said Eswatini’s recent decision to forge economic ties with non-traditional Asian partners illustrated that Eswatini is open to exploring new alliances beyond its historical Western partnerships.

“Swaziland seeks to benefit by positioning itself to be more versatile and a multi-aligned actor in that region of Asia,” Nhlabatsi said. “Of course, there are geographical implications to this, because Swaziland’s balancing act between China and Taiwan, together with its new partners, just demonstrates that this can be a tiny country but it’s still independent on foreign policy causes, rather than automatically deferring to the interests of larger powers.”

Analysts said the expanded trade, increased investment opportunities and shared technology expected from the new alliances could diversify Eswatini’s economy, reducing dependency on any single market.
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Attacks, arrests and restrictions on journalists including over coverage of youth demonstrations is causing concern among Kenyan media. Journalists are taking to the streets to protest. Juma Majanga covered the protests and filed this report from Nairobi, Kenya. Camera: Amos Wangwa
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Yaoundé — The Central African Republic’s main opposition leader, Anicet Georges Dologuele, says he will disrupt the country’s first local elections in 36 years if the 2023 constitution and electoral laws that he says favor President Faustin-Archange Touadera’s party are not immediately revised. Rebel groups are also threatening to disrupt the polls, which the government insists will be transparent and will help restore peace and stability to the troubled state.

Anicet Georges Dologuele says Central African Republic leaders are not showing any signs they want to organize free and fair elections to end a wave of fighting that has engulfed the central African state for more than a decade.

The leader of the Union for Central African Republic Renewal party, or URCA, spoke in the capital, Bangui, on Thursday during a press conference to mark his party’s 10th anniversary.

Dologuele, a former prime minister, said his party will not take part in the October 2024 local elections, which he accused CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera of preparing to rig to favor his party, the United Hearts Movement, or MCU.

He says it is undemocratic and unethical for President Touadera to single-handedly appoint six of the eleven members of the country’s elections management body, the National Elections Authority, or ANE. Dologuele says the ANE cannot be seen as credible and transparent when a majority of its members are either loyalist or sympathize with Touadera.

The URCA party also protests rules that bar people with double nationality from running for office. That would ban Dologuele himself, who reportedly has citizenship in another, unidentified country.

Dologuele says Toudera ordered his government to bar CAR civilians who have acquired double nationality in other countries because he knows a lot of politicians who fled from the CAR who are very popular and can beat Touadera and his party in all elections.

Dologuele said if constitutional reforms are not carried out and if the ANE is not made an independent elections management body, his party will disrupt the October local elections, though he did not say how.

However, CAR government spokesperson Maxime Balalou told state TV on Friday that the elections will go forward.

Balalou says President Touadera has instructed his government to ignore opposition threats and continue educating people that the October 2024 local elections will mark a return to democracy and governance and civilians will be able to participate in local development. He says the elections are part of several requests made by the people of the Central African Republic during the National Reconciliation Dialogue that was held in March 2022.

Balalou said the CAR government will not accept calls to change a constitution backed by 95% of voters in a June 2023 referendum.

In that referendum, voters also approved scrapping the constitution’s two-term limit for presidents and extended the length of a president’s term from five to seven years.

Opposition parties say the 67-year-old president is preparing to hold on to power for many years to come.

Over 2,000 seats in 180 local councils will be at stake in the October polls. The elected councilors will then elect mayors for each of the 180 districts.

Security remains fragile as the elections draw near, as rebels and armed groups loot communities for survival, raping women and girls and creating chaos in towns and villages across the country, according to opposition groups.

CAR government officials and the United Nations insist the October elections will help restore democracy and peace to the troubled state.

The central African state descended into violence and chaos in 2013, when rebels forced then-president Francois Bozize from office.

Since then, fighting and chaos has forced close to a million Central Africans to flee to Cameroon, Sudan, and other nearby countries.
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There is no evidence that the Ford Foundation has been sponsoring protests, but there is ample evidence that it has sponsored human rights groups, journalists and government officials to address Kenyan issues.
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