In Burkina Faso, at least 400 people have been awaiting trial on terrorism charges for years, including several minors. In this report from Ouagadougou, Henry Wilkins speaks to family members of those living in legal limbo.

Camera: Henry Wilkins

 
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The World Health Organization recommended Wednesday that children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions on the continent with moderate-to-high malaria transmission receive a malaria vaccine.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, proved effective in a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019. 

The WHO said malaria is a top killer of children in sub-Saharan Africa, causing the deaths of more than 260,000 children under age 5 every year. 

The vaccine, which requires four doses, counters P. falciparum, “the most deadly malaria parasite globally, and the most prevalent in Africa,” WHO said in a press release. 

“For centuries, malaria has stalked sub-Saharan Africa, causing immense personal suffering,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said in a statement. “We have long hoped for an effective malaria vaccine and now for the first time ever, we have such a vaccine recommended for widespread use. Today’s recommendation offers a glimmer of hope for the continent which shoulders the heaviest burden of the disease and we expect many more African children to be protected from malaria and grow into healthy adults.” 

Substantial benefit

According to WHO, pilot program data showed that more than two-thirds of children who were not sleeping under bed nets were benefiting from the vaccine, and that there was a 30% reduction in “deadly severe malaria, even when introduced in areas where insecticide-treated nets are widely used and there is good access to diagnosis and treatment.”

The pilot program also found that the vaccine had a “favorable safety profile” and was “cost effective.” 

According to The Wall Street Journal, it could still be years until the vaccine is widely available. 

The vaccine has been under development for 30 years by GlaxoSmithKline, a global pharmaceutical company; PATH, a global nonprofit focused on health issues; and some African research organizations, WHO said. 

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation provided late-stage development funding for the vaccine, WHO said. 
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Officials from Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria have agreed to work together to reconstruct the Lake Chad Basin. The region has been a hotbed of insecurity due to attacks from Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram and its offshoots. The officials met in Cameroon’s capital this week and said the area is gradually returning to normalcy, but unemployment is pushing young people to join militant groups.

Close to 400 representatives of rights groups, funding agencies, United Nations agencies and the African Union met in Yaounde to map out ways of improving living conditions in the troubled Lake Chad Basin.

In a statement, governors from the region said member states and funding agencies will intensify rebuilding and stabilization efforts of the area.

Ahunna Eziakonwa is U.N. assistant secretary general and the regional director for Africa at the U.N. Development Program. She said many of the towns and villages in the Lake Chad Basin need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

“Houses have been destroyed, schools have become nonfunctional, markets, stores destroyed. The rule of law is completely erased with police stations completely destroyed, so a stabilization program tries to rebuild the livelihoods and lives of people who have been affected by first of all making sure we reconstruct those facilities that serve the police for instancem,” said Eziakonwa.

Since the death of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau earlier this year, thousands of the group’s fighters have defected or surrendered, according to regional governments and officials of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a regional military alliance fighting the Boko Haram insurgency.

The task force made up of troops from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria said attacks by its troops in Boko Haram-controlled areas have made Shekau’s militants weaker.

Richard Fonteh Akum is the executive director of the Institute for Security Studies based in Pretoria, South Africa. He said now is the time to launch sustainable development efforts, while Boko Haram is in apparent decline.

“What may seem as normalcy right now could actually be the silence before another storm of attacks. A few years ago, there was a fracturing within Boko Haram which saw the groups splinter and see the emergence of the Islamic State West Africa Province, but at the same time Boko Haram came out stronger. So, I think unless we have a framework which allows for multi-level peace and stabilization, it will remain extremely challenging to move towards normalcy and effective reconstruction,” he said.

Akum said to stop endemic poverty in the area, roads should be improved for fishers, herders and crop farmers to transport their produce to markets.

The amount of money needed to for rebuilding efforts of the Lake Chad Basin wasn’t disclosed during the meeting, but Cameroon said it will allocate $300 million to spend on infrastructure destroyed by Boko Haram.
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The U.N. Children’s Fund reports that Islamist insurgents are recruiting young children to fight in northern Mozambique’s volatile, oil-rich province of Cabo Delgado. 

UNICEF says it has received numerous reports of children being forcefully recruited by the Mozambican militant group al-Shabab. It says the group — not affiliated with the Somali insurgency of the same name — has reportedly taken boys and girls from their families and villages. 

UNICEF notes there is evidence of sexual violence against girls and of young girls being forced into marriage with their abductors.

Human Rights Watch recently said the boys, some as young as 12, are being trained in bases across Cabo Delgado and forced to fight alongside adults against government forces. 

UNICEF spokesman James Elder says there is no accurate count of the number of children that have been recruited, but it is believed to be in the thousands. He says some of the children have been rescued, but none have been released by their militant captors. 

“The recruitment and use of children by armed groups destroys families and communities,” Elder said. “Children are exposed to incomprehensible levels of violence, they lose their families, they lose their safety, they lose their ability to go to school. And, of course, the recruitment and use of children is a grave violation of international law.” 

Elder says the recruitment of child soldiers has been going on since al-Shabab and other armed groups attacked Cabo Delgado in March. The United Nations reports dozens of people were killed and nearly 40,000 people fled to safer areas in the region. 

Two weeks ago, Elder says, UNICEF signed an important Memorandum of Understanding with the Mozambican defense forces which spelled out what government forces should do when they encounter children with armed groups. 

“So that training is very, very important so that they know to treat children as children and as victims and then immediately get the support of organizations like UNICEF,” Elder said. “And that can be everything from help to psychosocial support. Those early stages of support for a child who is being recruited, whether as a helper, whether as someone armed, are absolutely critical.” 

International law states any child associated with an armed group is to be considered a child and a survivor of violations. Elder says children who have been associated with armed groups are double victims and must be treated as such. 

 
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With two years left in his term, Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio told Voice of America that expanding political freedoms, improving education, holding past leaders accountable for corruption, and promoting gender equality are his administration’s priorities. 

His platform comes amid record-setting government debt, soaring consumer prices and continued high employment. Political critics are questioning the government’s borrowing strategy, which will send indebtedness to more than $4 billion. 

VOA’s Peter Clottey spoke with Bio about his agenda and how he plans to move the country forward. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

VOA: You’ve been quite vocal about human capital development. What are you doing about it? 

Bio: I started talking about human capital development even before I was elected. I think it was actually on that basis that Sierra Leoneans chose me instead of any other person. I have stated to them that in as much as Sierra Leone can boast of many natural minerals like gold, diamond, bauxite, the most important or the most precious of those for me is the human being. If we can invest appropriately in the human being, it will be the basis for development. And it was on that basis that I actually used it as the flagship program in my campaign. And quite apart from what other people think about human capital development, I have defined it to be good health, good education and food security. I realized that not everybody had access to education because of the level of poverty in our country. So, I decided to do the heavy lifting. The government decided to pay for every child for free primary school to the end of high school.

VOA: How are you funding this project and how sustainable will it be? 

Bio: That is a very good question because it is quite expensive. But I have always said that it is not as expensive as ignorance when the population in not educated. For me, in the 21st century and with the fourth industrial revolution looming, education is an existential thing. We must have it or perish as a nation. It is expensive. But what have we done? We have been able to close most of the loopholes, you know, for corruption in the country. And that is how we’ve been able to first get the seed money. And once we got going, we have been able to attract a lot of allies. The Global Partnership for Education, the World Bank, a lot of institutions are supportive.

VOA: Would you say that your administration has implemented measures to ensure that you meet the standards of good governance that Sierra Leoneans expect from you? 

Bio: Talking about good governance definitely reminds me about transparency, accountability and making sure that we free up the political space so that all the political parties can freely partake in elections and the elections are credible. We have done quite a lot in that direction in the past three years. Today, we have removed the death penalty. It has been hanging in the law books and it’s been used by several governments to take away the opposition, to threaten them, to silence them. For me, I have decided that that is a thing of the past. And I took that to the parliament of Sierra Leone, and it’s off the law books today. The seditious libel law — this is a law that has been used to threaten journalists and a lot of them have been locked up. As I speak to you, that is also the thing of the past. If you check in our prisons today, there is no journalist in prison for practicing journalism. 

VOA: What is your government doing about gender equity and empowerment? 

Bio: When I took over, women were definitely at the edge. They did not have the necessary space. They did not have the necessary support. What I have done, apart from bringing a lot of women into governance, is to make sure that they feel a part of our development process, they feel a part of being Sierra Leonean. Rape was rampant. I declared a national emergency, and we have amended the Sexual Offenses Act. And now, the punitive measures are stricter. We’ve set up special courts for that. We have a special, one stop sentence to deal with rape and other issues. 

 
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South Sudan media rights groups condemned comments by a key parliament member who said that news organizations could have their licenses revoked if they report on parliamentary expenditures — including lawmaker salaries — without prior authorization from the speaker. 

Paul Youane Bonju, who is the chairperson-designate of the information committee in South Sudan’s reconstituted National Legislative Assembly, said journalists risk being sued if they do not follow what he termed the proper procedure for reporting on lawmakers’ financial transactions. 

“Some [reporters] are new in the field and I need to bring them on board by trying to tell them the right procedures if they visit the parliament, because the parliament is a body that enacts laws,” he said in a news conference last week. 

“If you are coming to engage with such a body, you must also be conversant of how to go about it,” Bonju said. “In some instances, some of the media, instead of coming to me or going to the office of the clerk, sometimes they contact either the staffs, or they get the information from sources that are not authorized to release some of the information.” 

Bonju cited media reports five years ago about $40,000 that was allotted to lawmakers by President Salva Kiir for allowances and car loans. 

The reports about the allotment caused a widespread backlash in the world’s newest country, where the government owes many workers back salaries and the average teacher makes less than $400 per year. 

Media groups say Bonju’s comments are an attempt to conceal information from the public as South Sudan attempts for forge a shaky democracy. 

Micheal Duku, executive director of the Association for Media Development in South Sudan, said parliamentary members cannot stop the media from reporting on their work which is in the public interest. 

“The media is regulated by law and when it comes to information that is categorized, there are classified information and unclassified information,” Duku told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus. “So long as this falls under unclassified information, the public has the right to know.” 

Bonju’s comments come as South Sudan journalists are facing increasing pressures on their reporting. 

Three journalists recently were detained, and a radio station was closed as the government clamped down on efforts by activists to stage what they called a peaceful public uprising. 

Agents also detained a government broadcaster after he allegedly declined to report news about recent presidential decrees on the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation airwaves. 

South Sudan ranks 139th out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, in which 1 is the freest. 

The reconstituted legislature was inaugurated in August this year by Kiir under the leadership of Jemma Nunu Kumba as speaker of the house. 

In an interview with South Sudan in Focus, Bonju said his comments were aimed at clarifying parliamentary procedures for press coverage. 

“I was telling them, ‘Look, I am not warning you, but I am rather cautioning you to be sure that if you want anything to do with emolument of the MPs, please contact the relevant offices, the relevant departments,'” he said. 

 
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The song “Oh Teachers” by Cameroonian singer Aunty Clo blasted through speakers Tuesday at Yaounde’s city council courtyard with about 200 teachers listening. 

Aunty Clo’s lyrics are about how teachers should be respected and protected as they are the ones tasked with molding young minds for the future and Cameroon’s development.

Most of the teachers attending the protest, held to mark U.N.-declared World Teachers Day, say they fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the north or fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists in the west.  

Fifty-two-year-old Peter Tar, a spokesperson for the teachers, says instructors working in Cameroon’s conflict zones endure a lot of suffering.

“Teachers are being persecuted every day, every hour. Some have been brutally killed. Others, brutally deprived of some parts of their bodies, forced out of their areas to become internally displaced persons. Some are now jobless. My heart bleeds for these teachers. I pray peace should return,” he said.

Tar said he escaped from a government school in the town of Ndop after separatist fighters kidnapped him. 

The protest was organized by the Cameroon Association of Teachers in Crisis. Tar said the teachers want the international community to know that they are suffering. 

More than 40 teachers have been killed in Cameroon since 2017.  At least 300 others were abducted and freed only after their families paid ransom.

Hundreds of schools in the north and west were destroyed or shut down.

Valentine Tameh, president of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, says teachers sometimes have no option but to flee the violence.

“It becomes, really, a sorry spectacle, seeing teachers running with their families, some losing their lives, some fleeing to areas where they cannot do anything to sustain themselves. We are appealing that everyone who is engaged in a kind of war should understand that teachers and the milieu in which they operate are sacrosanct and fighters should understand that, without teachers, the community is preparing for a kind of dark ages,” Tameh said.

Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, says the military is protecting schools, teachers and school children in regions where there is a security crisis. 

He encouraged teachers who fled insecurity to return to relatively peaceful areas for the sake of the children in need of education.

“We’ve just recruited 5,000 teachers to support those who have already been in the field. When you (teachers) go to teach in a region of Cameroon, you must know that it is your country. The children, who are there, are all our sons and daughters, so we have to do everything necessary for them to have a safe education because they are the actors who tomorrow will continue building Cameroon,” Etoundi Ngoa said.

The United Nations declared October 5 as World Teacher’s Day in 1994 to honor educators for the important role they play in economic development and other sectors.
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 Journalist Tesfalem Waldyes, the founder and editor-in-chief of Ethiopia Insider, an Ethiopian news and analysis website, was released Tuesday after spending three days in police custody.

“I just talked to him,” said Eshete Bekele, a journalist with Deutsche Welle’s Amharic service and Tesfalem’s former colleague. “He just got out,” he told VOA.

Prior to his release, Tesfalem’s colleagues and friends said his whereabouts hadn’t been known since Saturday, but federal police confirmed his detention to BBC’s Amharic service, saying there was nothing to be concerned about. The police didn’t give an explanation for the arrest or provide additional details. 

Tesfalem, however, had access to a lawyer and was held for questioning at the Federal Police Commission, near Mexico Square, according to media reports. 

Befeqadu Hailu, the executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said Tesfalem went missing after covering the Irreecha festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Irreecha is a cultural event celebrated by Ethiopia’s ethnic Oromo community.

Befeqadu said via Twitter that Tesfalem’s plan for Sunday was to report on the festival, which also took place at a second location, Bishoftu. 

The annual event is traditionally held in Bishoftu, a town located in the Oromia region, about 40 kilometers south of Addis Ababa.

After covering the event in in Addis Ababa, Tesfalem posted a video on Ethiopia Insider’s Facebook page that showed attendees expressing their criticism of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration. 

Attendees also demanded the release of political prisoners, chanting, “Jawar, Jawar!” 

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist and opposition leader, has been imprisoned, charged with terrorism and other crimes alongside other prominent Oromo politicians. 

In 2014, Tesfalem was among three journalists and six bloggers, who became known as the “Zone 9 Bloggers” and were arrested for inciting violence among other charges, including terrorism. He spent more than one year in prison and was later released. Zone 9 Bloggers were recipients of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2015.

The CPJ Monday condemned Tesfalem’s recent arrest.

“This is the latest in a string of attacks on the press that expose a government keen to stifle, rather than nurture, independent or dissenting coverage,” the advocacy group said in a statement posted on Twitter. 

The nonprofit has documented several arbitrary arrests, attacks and the expulsion of at least one journalist in recent months.

“Is filming anti-government protesters now forbidden in the country?” asked Reporters Without Borders, another advocacy group that called for Tesfalem’s release while he was being held.

“He did nothing but his job,” RSF said in a Twitter post that also said Tesfalem was arrested while filming a demonstration. 

There was no response to the latest arrest from the Abiy government.

Separately, Prime Minister Abiy was sworn in for a second term on Monday.   The event comes as the national government remains engaged in a nearly year-old armed conflict with forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
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World leaders, politicians and pop stars are among thousands of individuals revealed to be concealing huge wealth through a network of anonymous companies. The revelations, known as the Pandora Papers, are part of a huge leak of almost 12 million files from the archives of several legal firms, which shed light on the secret world of offshore finance.
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War crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of child soldiers, have been committed in Libya since 2016, a United Nations investigation revealed on Monday. 

The Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, established by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said Europe-bound migrants face abuse in detention centers and at the hands of traffickers, while detainees languishing in horrific conditions are tortured.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes have been committed in Libya, while violence perpetrated in prisons and against migrants there may amount to crimes against humanity,” the mission said in a statement. 

Their report documents the recruitment and direct participation of children in hostilities as well as the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of prominent women. 

The mission established that from late 2019, Turkey facilitated the recruitment of Syrian child mercenaries aged 15 to 18 to fight alongside the Government of National Accord’s forces. 

The unrest in the North African country has had a dramatic impact on Libyans’ economic, social and cultural rights, said the mission. 

“All parties to the conflicts, including third states, foreign fighters and mercenaries, have violated international humanitarian law, in particular the principles of proportionality and distinction, and some have also committed war crimes,” said Mohamed Auajjar, who chaired the three-person mission. 

The mission said it had identified groups and individuals — both Libyan and foreign — who may bear responsibility for the violations, abuses and crimes. 

The list will remain confidential until it can be shared with appropriate accountability mechanisms. 

Fact-finding mission 

In June 2020, the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top rights body, adopted a resolution calling for sending a fact-finding mission to Libya. The move had Tripoli’s support. 

The experts were charged with investigating alleged violations and abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law in Libya since 2016. 

Auajjar was joined by fellow human rights experts Chaloka Beyani and Tracy Robinson. 

The experts said more time is needed to probe further allegations of the direct participation of children in hostilities. 

Libya has been torn by conflict since the 2011 toppling and killing of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, with rival administrations vying for power. 

The mission said civilians had paid a heavy price, notably because of attacks on schools and hospitals, while anti-personnel mines left by mercenaries in residential areas have killed and maimed civilians. 

The report said reliable information indicated that people from the Russian private security firm Wagner were operating as mercenaries. 

There are “reasonable grounds to believe that Wagner personnel may have committed the war crime of murder” in the shooting of detainees south of Tripoli in September 2019. 

The investigation established that hundreds of mostly Russian-made landmines had been planted next to houses in April-May 2020. 

Migrants abused 

Meanwhile, migrants seeking passage across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe are subjected to a litany of abuses in detention centers and at the hands of traffickers, said Beyani. 

In jails, some prisoners are tortured daily, the report said. 

“Arbitrary detention in secret prisons and unbearable conditions of detention are widely used by the state and militias,” Robinson said. 

The mission said there were allegations of “widespread abductions, systematic torture and mass murders” in the town of Tarhuna, southeast of Tripoli. The report included images of several potential mass grave sites. 

“The scale of the atrocities in Tarhuna demands far more focused attention,” Robinson told a press conference. 

Authorities in Libya on Monday announced the discovery of 10 bodies in a new mass grave in Tarhuna, the latest morbid find after years of rule by the notorious al-Kaniyat militia. 

“Two sites were discovered. Four unidentified bodies were extracted from the first, and six from the second,” the department charged with searching for remains said, adding that it expected to unearth more bodies. 

The fact-finders’ report will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. 

The experts want the council to extend their mandate for a further year. 

 
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Seven U.N. humanitarian officials expelled by Ethiopia are no longer in the country, the world body confirmed Monday.

“They have been moved from the country to ensure their safety,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.

“Our priority is to make sure that our staff can go about their work safely,” he said when questioned further by reporters. “And if we cannot do that, then we have to take other steps.”

On Thursday, the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed gave the officials 72 hours to leave Ethiopia. The government alleged that they had meddled in the country’s internal affairs and leveled other charges against them, including diverting aid and telecommunications equipment to the rebel Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

On Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “shock” at the announcement, and spoke by phone with Abiy on Friday.

The officials who were declared “persona non-grata” include the U.N. deputy humanitarian chief, the deputy humanitarian coordinator, and the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) representative.

The United Nations said Ethiopia does not have a legal basis to expel the staffers. U.N. staff are protected under immunity conventions and the U.N. Charter. The organization maintains that such expulsions can only happen on a country-to-country basis.

“We stand by the neutrality and the even‑handedness and professionalism of our staff,” spokesman Haq said of the staffers.

The Ethiopian government has said the U.N. may replace the expelled officials, but Haq said there are currently no plans to do so.

“At this stage, we believe that the staff that the secretary‑general and the U.N. secretariat have deployed are the people who are fit for the job, and we believe that they should be allowed to go about their work without hindrance,” he said.

He added that the U.N. is evaluating its options as it continues to do its work in Ethiopia.

The U.N. Security Council discussed the matter on Friday, and diplomats said it could meet again this week for another round of discussions.

Millions in need

The Ethiopian federal government has been engaged in an armed conflict with TPLF rebels in the northern Tigray region for nearly a year. The TPLF succeeded in pushing government forces out of the region, and the conflict has now spilled into the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar.

Of the six million people who live in Tigray, the U.N. says 5.2 million need some level of food assistance. More than 400,000 people are already living in famine-like conditions, and another 1.8 million people are on the brink of famine.

The U.N. has said for months that it has encountered difficulties in reaching the people of Tigray. One hundred aid-filled trucks are needed daily to meet the soaring needs, but since mid-July, only 606 have been allowed into the region.

“The U.N. has not been allowed to bring in fuel since the end of July, leading to some of our partners having had to severely reduce or suspend their activities,” Haq told reporters. “Cash to run operations is also running out. Medical supplies are depleted, with nearly 200,000 children having missed critical vaccinations.”

Last Wednesday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said that after 11 months of conflict and three months of a de facto government blockade, the humanitarian crisis in Tigray is spiraling out of control.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Griffiths said the humanitarian crisis there is a “stain on our conscience,” as civilians starve because aid workers are being blocked from getting enough supplies to them.

The next day, the government in Addis Ababa said it was expelling the seven high-ranking U.N. staffers.
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Suspected jihadis killed 14 soldiers Monday in an attack in northern Burkina Faso, the defense ministry said, in the latest bloodshed to hit the region plagued by Islamist violence.

“The military detachment of Yirgou” in the Centre-Nord region’s Barsalogho department was “the target of a terrorist attack” around 0500 GMT on Monday, junior defense minister General Aime Barthelemy Simpore said.

“Fourteen soldiers were killed during the fighting and seven wounded were evacuated,” he said in a statement, with the death toll higher than the nine given earlier by security sources.

“Several terrorists were neutralized during the response,” he added, praising the soldiers’ “great fighting spirit.”

A ground and air counteroffensive was immediately launched to “neutralize the attackers,” he added.

A security source told AFP an enormous amount of equipment was lost, with some burned and some taken away by the attackers.

Burkina Faso has seen regular, deadly jihadi attacks since 2015, mostly in the northern and eastern regions close to the Mali and Niger borders.

But on Saturday, it was the south that was hit, with two soldiers killed by a makeshift bomb in Larabin near the Ivory Coast border.

Back in the north, five soldiers were killed during a reconnaissance mission in Mentao last Wednesday, also by a makeshift bomb, the armed forces said.

In mid-September, a suspected jihadi attack killed six gendarmes escorting fuel tanks for a mining company.

Such attacks, normally blamed on jihadi groups affiliated to the Islamic State or al-Qaida, have killed around 2,000 people and forced more than 1.4 million to flee their homes. 
…

Journalist Tesfalem Waldyes, the founder and editor-in-chief of Ethiopia Insider, an Ethiopian news and analysis website, is in police custody, according to media reports.

Tesfalem’s colleagues and friends said his whereabouts hadn’t been known since Saturday, but federal police confirmed his detention to the BBC, saying there is nothing to be concerned about.

Police didn’t give additional details. Shortly after the detention, Befeqadu Hailu, the executive director of the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, said Tesfalem went missing after covering the Irreecha festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. Irreecha is a cultural event celebrated by Ethiopia’s ethnic Oromo community.

Befeqadu also said via Twitter that Tesfalem’s plan for Sunday was to report on the festival, which also took place at a second location, Bishoftu.

The annual event is traditionally held in Bishoftu, a town located in the Oromia region, about 40 kilometers south of Addis Ababa.

After covering the event in Addis Ababa, Tesfalem posted a video on Ethiopia Insider’s Facebook page that showed attendees expressing their criticism of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s administration.

Attendees also demanded the release of political prisoners, chanting, “Jawar, Jawar!”

Jawar Mohammed, an Oromo activist and opposition leader, has been imprisoned, charged with terrorism and other crimes alongside other prominent Oromo politicians.

In 2014, Tesfalem was among three journalists and six bloggers, who became known as the “Zone 9 Bloggers” and were arrested for inciting violence among other charges, including terrorism. He spent more than one year in prison and was later released. Zone 9 Bloggers were recipients of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award in 2015.

The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least seven journalists are imprisoned in the country.

Separately, Prime Minister Abiy was sworn in for a second term on Monday.

The event comes as the national government remains engaged in a nearly year-old armed conflict with rebels in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region.
…

Burkina Faso has been making headlines for an Islamist insurgency that has created one of the world’s fastest growing humanitarian crises. But one man is showcasing what the country has to offer beyond conflict with a group he created called “Burkina Faso is Chic.” Henry Wilkins reports from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
…

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his family are among the world leaders said to have hidden away billions of dollars in secret offshore accounts.

Records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show the Kenyatta family has a half-billion-dollar fortune tied up in at least seven foundations and tax havens in various countries, including Panama and the British Virgin Islands. 

The family enlisted the services of one of the largest banks in Switzerland, Union   Bancaire Privee, to register and establish a foundation in Panama to manage and   shelter its wealth, which it began building under its patriarch, Jomo Kenyatta, who   became Kenya’s first president in 1964 after it gained independence from Britain. 

The ICIJ cites a United Nations backed commission that found that one sixth of all  properties once held by Europeans in the colonial era were “cheaply sold” to Kenyatta, his family and allies, including Daniel arap Moi, Jomo Kenyatta’s vice president and the man who succeeded him when the elder Kenyatta died in 1978.

The Kenyatta family thrived during Moi’s authoritarian rule over the next two decades, founding a dairy that has expanded across East Africa and is now Kenya’s largest milk producer, as well as acquiring large stakes in other domestic enterprises, including a  major bank and upscale hotels. 

The Pandora Papers also reveal that the Kenyattas secretly owned a number of offshore shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. One of the companies, owned by Uhuru’s brother Muhoho, had a bank account that held an investment portfolio worth $31.6 million in 2016. From 1999 to 2004, Uhuru’s mother, Ngina and his two sisters held shares in a BVI company they used to buy an apartment in an upscale London neighborhood. 

Forbes magazine ranked Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya’s richest person and the 26th wealthiest in Africa in 2011, two years before he was elected president as a self-described anti-corruption crusader.
…

As Desmond Tutu turns 90 on Thursday, he remains indisputably the moral voice of South Africa. But age is catching up with him. 

The jovial emeritus archbishop retired in 2010 and rarely speaks in public, in a country that sometimes feels adrift without the leadership of its anti-apartheid liberation icons. 

Even though South Africa has eased its COVID-19 precautions, the birthday festivities will be muted and largely online. 

Renowned for his radiating energy and infectious laughter, Tutu is expected to attend a special service Thursday at St George’s Cathedral, where he once held the pulpit as South Africa’s first black Anglican archbishop. 

Later that day, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation will host an online lecture by the Dalai Lama, Ireland’s former president Mary Robinson, rights activist Graca Machel and South Africa’s ex-ombudswoman Thuli Madonsela, respected for her courageous exposure of corruption. 

The line-up of speakers is a reminder of Tutu’s values, surrounding himself with rights advocates at a time when South Africa’s current leaders are better known for lavish lifestyles and billion-dollar bank accounts. 

An online auction of his memorabilia last month raised $237,000 for the foundation named after him and Leah, his wife of 66 years. 

The last time Tutu himself was seen in public was in May, when he and Leah went to receive their COVID-19 vaccinations. 

He smiled and waved from a wheelchair outside a hospital, but didn’t speak to journalists waiting outside — a far cry from the buoyant personality who captivated the world with his strident opposition to apartheid, which won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. 

‘Rainbow nation’ 

Knowing him now as a towering figure on the world stage, it’s hard to remember that when he returned from his studies in Britain in the 1960s, he was subjected to the same humiliations as any other black South African.

His daughter Mpho Tutu-van Furth, with whom he has authored two books, remembers driving cross-country with her family to bring her siblings to boarding school. 

“I have a memory of stopping at a place along the way, and my dad going into the store to go and buy ice cream for us, because it was just sticky hot,” Tutu-van Furth told AFP.

“And the person saying to him that they don’t serve kaffirs inside the shop, that you have to go around to the window. And my dad just kind of slammed out of there. 

“We weren’t going to get ice cream that day.” 

Kaffir is South Africa’s worst racial slur, and the utterance today can lead to criminal charges. 

He eventually grew his leadership in the Anglican Church, creating a path towards reconciliation. He coined the term “rainbow nation”, and deeply believed that the South African experiment could show the world a new way to overcome conflicts. 

His ideas of forgiveness have fallen out of favor with some younger South Africans, who feel that black people surrendered too much in the transition to democracy, without holding apartheid criminals to account. 

What endeared Tutu to the nation was that he didn’t stop speaking out after democracy arrived.

He confronted homophobia in the Anglican Church, challenged Nelson Mandela over generous salaries for Cabinet ministers and stridently criticized the endemic corruption that mushroomed under ex-president Jacob Zuma.

“He played such a unique role,” said William Gumede, of the Democracy Works Foundation. “We were fortunate during the transition that we had him and we had Mandela, these two statesmen who were moral leaders.” 

But that era is over. 

“We’re entering a period where we’re not going to have those really big moral leaders,” Gumede said. “So how do we build the society that we want?” 

 
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Thousands of supporters of Tunisian President Kais Saied rallied in the capital on Sunday to show their backing for his suspension of parliament and promises to change the political system, acts his critics call a coup.

The demonstration in central Tunis was called in response to protests over the previous two weekends in the same location against Saied’s actions. It is expected to far outnumber those gatherings.

Demonstrators waved Tunisian flags and carried placards railing against Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that is the biggest in parliament and has acted as Saied’s main antagonist.

“We ask the president to dissolve parliament and hold accountable those who made the people suffer for a decade,” Salem Ajoudi, one of the demonstrators, said.

The president plunged Tunisia into a constitutional crisis in July by suspending the elected parliament, dismissing the prime minister and assuming executive authority.

Last month he brushed aside much of the constitution to say he could pass legislation by decree, casting into doubt Tunisia’s democratic gains since its 2011 revolution that triggered the “Arab spring” revolts across the Muslim world.

Saied’s intervention followed years of economic stagnation and political paralysis, aggravated by an impoverishing lockdown last year, a slow-starting vaccination campaign and street protests.

Many Tunisians blame those ills on a corrupt, self-interested political elite, and they see Saied, an independent elected in 2019, as a champion for ordinary people.

Among his supporters, Saied’s intervention is widely regarded as a long-overdue reset of a democratic experiment that established interests pulled off course.

“Saied is a clean president who has come to restore real democracy,” said Mongi Abdullah, a teacher from Mahdia who had come to join the rally.

While opinion polls show Saied’s moves have widespread support, his long delay in declaring a timeline out of the crisis has started to cement opposition to him.

Most of the political elite and the powerful labor union UGTT say he must start consulting more widely if he plans to amend the constitution, as he has indicated he will.

Tunisian police on Sunday arrested a member of parliament and a television presenter who have been prominent critics of Saied since July, their lawyer said. Neither the police nor army were immediately available for comment.
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An Italian offshore supply vessel on Saturday rescued 65 migrants, including women and children, fleeing Libya to Europe on a crowded, wooden boat.

The migrant boat was drifting after its engine stopped working and was spotted by the Seabird, an NGO monitoring aircraft flying over the central Mediterranean. Those on board were not wearing life vests and were eventually rescued in international waters by the Asso Ventinove supply vessel near the Bouri oilfield following a request to do so from the Seabird. An Associated Press journalist flying with Seabird witnessed the rescue.

A Libyan coast guard vessel arrived on the scene shortly afterward to inspect the empty boat. It is common for Libyan authorities to retrieve engines following rescues.

The Asso Ventinove reported that all the people rescued, including five children, appeared in good health. In radio communication with the Seabird, the captain said he was waiting for orders from the rescue and coordination center in Rome to assign them a safe place to disembark the migrants.

So far this year some 44,000 people have reached European shores by crossing the central Mediterranean from Tunisia and Libya, often at the hands of smugglers who put them on unseaworthy boats. Roughly half of those who arrived disembarked on Lampedusa, an Italian island closer to North Africa than Italy.

Despite the increasing arrivals, many fail.

As of Sept. 25, more than 25,000 people had been intercepted by the EU-trained and equipped Libyan coast guard this year and returned to the war-torn country, according to the U.N. migration agency.

Once disembarked, the migrants are often placed in squalid detention centers where they are subject to extortion, torture and abuse.

There were also more than 1,100 deaths recorded by the IOM in the Central Mediterranean this year.

 
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Algeria on Saturday rejected “inadmissible interference” in its affairs, hours after recalling its ambassador from Paris following comments by French President Emmanuel Macron reported by the French and Algerian media.

The statement, from the Algerian presidency, said it had withdrawn its ambassador following media reports of the French leader’s comments, which had not been denied.

The French daily Le Monde reported that Macron had made critical remarks about the former French colony during a meeting Thursday with descendants of figures from the war of independence.

Macron reportedly said the country was ruled by a “political-military system” and described Algeria as having an “official history” which had been “totally re-written,” the paper reported.

He said this history was “not based on truths” but “on a discourse of hatred towards France”, according to Le Monde — though he made clear that he was not referring to Algerian society as a whole but to the ruling elite.

The statement from the Algerian presidency said: “Following remarks that have not been denied, which several French sources have attributed by name to (Macron), Algeria expresses its categorical rejection of the inadmissible interference in its internal affairs.”

Macron also spoke out on current Algerian politics. His counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune was “trapped in a system which is very tough,” the French president was quoted as saying.

“You can see that the Algerian system is tired, it has been weakened by the Hirak,” he added, referring to the pro-democracy movement which forced Tebboune’s predecessor Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power in 2019 after two decades at the helm.

Visa tensions

It is the second time that Algeria has recalled an ambassador from France.

Algiers also recalled its ambassador in May 2020 after French media broadcast a documentary about the Hirak.

Saturday’s move comes amid tension over a French decision to sharply reduce the number of visas it grants to citizens of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

France said the decision, which it announced Tuesday, had been made necessary by the former colonies’ failure to do enough to allow illegal migrants to return.

The Algerian foreign ministry summoned French ambassador Francois Gouyette on Wednesday and handed him a “formal protest” note concerning the visa ruling.

It called the visa reduction an “unfortunate act” that caused “confusion and ambiguity as to its motivation and its scope.”

Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita has described the French move as “unjustified.”

Tunisian President Kais Saied expressed disappointment with the decision in a telephone call with Macron on Saturday, his office said, adding that the French leader had said it could be revised.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday that the visa reduction decision was “unprecedented.”

Paris made that choice, he said, because Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia “are refusing to take back nationals who we do not want or cannot keep in France.”

The radio said Macron took the decision a month ago after failed diplomatic efforts with the three North African countries. 

 
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One U.N. peacekeeper was killed and four more were severely wounded when their convoy hit an improvised explosive device in northern Mali on Saturday, the U.N. force in Mali said. 

The bloodshed near the town of Tessalit followed the killing of five Malian gendarmes in an ambush on a mining convoy in southern Mali earlier this week that was claimed by a group linked to al-Qaida. 

Armed attacks by Islamist militants and other groups are common across vast swaths of Mali and its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger despite a heavy presence of international troops. Thousands of civilians have been killed and millions displaced. 

“This incident is a sad reminder of the permanent danger that hangs over our peacekeepers,” El Ghassim Wane, the head of the U.N. mission known as MINUSMA, said in a statement. The peacekeeper who was killed was from Egypt. 

The mission has deployed more than 13,000 troops to contain violence by armed groups in the north and center of the country. It has recorded about 255 fatalities since 2013, making it the deadliest of the U.N.’s more than a dozen peacekeeping missions. 

In a statement issued Saturday night, the U.N. secretary-general strongly condemned the attack and “expresses his deep condolences to the family of the victim, as well as the government and people of Egypt. He wishes a speedy recovery to the injured,” the statement from the spokesperson for the secretary-general said. 
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A local jihadist leader and 18 fighters were killed during a military strike on their base in Mozambique’s insurgency-hit north, a bloc of southern African nations said Saturday.

Al-Qaida-linked jihadists have been terrorizing Mozambique’s gas-rich Cabo Delgado region since 2017, raiding villages and towns in a bid to establish a caliphate.

Local jihadist leader Rajab Awadhi Ndanjile was killed along with 18 other fighters in an offensive on September 25 on the militants’ base in the Nangade district of Cabo Delgado, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional grouping said.

Many members of the 16-nation bloc have deployed troops in Mozambique to fight the insurgents.

SADC said Ndanjile recruited and indoctrinated fighters and was involved in the first attack in the region and “subsequent attacks on villages” as well as the “abduction of women and children.”

In July, Rwanda sent 1,000 troops to Mozambique, the first country to do so. Several other SADC members followed suit.

South Africa has deployed nearly 1,500 soldiers in the neighboring country.

The insurgency has killed more than 3,300 people — half of them civilians — and displaced at least 800,000 from their homes over the past four years.
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Seasonal flooding in Sudan and South Sudan has devastated whole communities, where homes have been destroyed and farmland and livelihoods are washed away, the United Nations says.

The rains came early this year, beginning in South Sudan in late April instead of June. The buildup of massive amounts of rainwater has caused the Nile and Lol rivers and Sudd marshlands to overflow and flood large swathes of territory.

Jonglei, Unity, Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile are the worst affected states. The U.N. says nearly half a million people are suffering because of the floods.

Jens Laerke, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesman, says aid agencies are doing their best to provide emergency relief.

“Access is a major challenge though, with most of the flood-affected areas inaccessible by road, and the transport of aid by air is very costly.… Some of the flood-affected counties are also affected by ongoing violence, which creates significant challenges for the people affected and the humanitarians who try to respond to their needs,” he said.   

Laerke said aid agencies have delivered food, water purification tablets, plastic sheeting for temporary shelter, mosquito nets and medical and other supplies, but resources are limited and must be replenished.

Lack of money is hampering the operation, he said, with only 61% of this year’s U.N. $1.7-billion South Sudan appeal met.   

Laerke said a similar funding problem in Sudan is preventing emergency aid from being delivered to more than 314,000 flood victims. He said heavy rains have been wreaking havoc in 14 of Sudan’s 18 states since July.

“Flooding has destroyed or damaged more than 62,000 houses and displaced over 100,000 people. Bridges have collapsed and farmland has been inundated. Some 183,000 people have been reached with various kinds of assistance.  However, relief stocks also here in Sudan urgently need to be replenished to maintain the response,” he said.   

Laerke said hundreds of thousands of Sudanese will be deprived of essential supplies and services for the rest of this year without more outside support, and that the U.N.’s $1.9-billion Sudan appeal is only 29% funded.

 
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Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who led last month’s coup in Guinea, promised to respect the country’s international commitments while transitioning to civilian rule as he was sworn in as interim president on Friday. 

Doumbouya, who led the overthrow of President Alpha Conde on September 5, was sworn in by Supreme Court head Mamadou Sylla for a transition period of unspecified length. 

The new interim president spoke of his commitment that neither he nor any member of the junta would stand in any future elections that the military has promised to organize after the transition period.

His administration’s mission, he said, is to “re-found the state” by drafting a new constitution, fighting corruption, reforming the electoral system and then organizing “free, credible and transparent” elections. 

The swearing-in ceremony took place at the Supreme Court with local personalities and foreign envoys in attendance, including the Chinese and Russian ambassadors, as well as Doumbouya’s wife and mother. 

Later Friday, in a message to the nation read on television, Doumbouya said that “in the coming days a prime minister will be appointed and then a government as well as various organs of the transition.” 

He also announced the creation of a body to fight corruption.

Many Western nations limited their presence at the swearing-in to lower-rank diplomats. 

Doumbouya again said nothing about how long he will remain the interim leader of the impoverished West African nation. But he promised to “respect all the national and international commitments to which the country has subscribed.” 

Before the swearing-in, Supreme Court president Sylla compared Doumbouya’s task to piloting a ship “loaded with many painful events, numerous demands and immense and urgent expectations”. 

He urged the new leader not to let himself be diverted “by the force of the waves of demagogy and the storm of the personality cult.”

The ceremony was held on the eve of a public holiday celebrating the 1958 declaration of independence from France.

Doumbouya, 41, will serve as transitional president until the country returns to civilian rule, according to a blueprint unveiled by the junta on Monday that does not mention a timeline. 

Until then he retains the right to hire, and fire, an interim prime minister. 

The September 5 coup, the latest bout of turbulence in one of Africa’s most volatile countries, saw the overthrow of 83-year-old president Conde. 

The deposed leader is being held at an undisclosed location. 

Conde became Guinea’s first democratically elected president in 2010 and was re-elected in 2015.

But last year he pushed through a controversial new constitution that allowed him to run for a third term in October 2020. 

The move sparked mass demonstrations in which dozens of protesters were killed. Conde won re-election but the political opposition maintained the poll was a sham.

The turbulence has sparked deep concern among Guinea’s neighbors. 

The coup is the second to take place in the region, after Mali, in less than 13 months. 

The region’s bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is demanding that elections be held within six months and that Conde be released. 

Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite abundant reserves of minerals including iron ore, gold and diamonds.
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Burkina Faso on Friday suspended the Norwegian Refugee Council from conducting humanitarian aid work in the country, citing critical interviews given to the media, including VOA.

In a letter from Helene Marie Laurence Ilboudo-Marchal, minister for humanitarian affairs, the government cited interviews that NRC representatives had carried out with Voice of America and the French newspaper Le Monde as its reason for suspending the group’s activities.

The NRC said in a statement Friday that it was “working in dialogue with the government to address any concerns they may have in order to resume respectful and collaborative relations, and our humanitarian work.”

The NRC’s earlier interviews included claims that the government has been slow to register internally displaced people, citing a group of about 500 IDPs in the city of Ouahigouya who they said had been waiting weeks for registration and had not received aid.

The NRC also made a plea to the government to allow it to step in and assist with registration.

Government’s defense

In an exclusive interview with VOA this week, Bakouan Yipene Florent, a spokesperson for the ministry of humanitarian affairs, rejected the claims that the IDPs in Ouahigouya had not received aid.

He said that going back to the point of IDP registration, as soon as they arrived at the site in Ouahigouya on June 12, a team was deployed immediately and handled the enumeration process.

Florent noted that IDPs are registered only after they have been officially counted and some initial aid is provided, including food and $100 for each family.

He said the government had put in place a two-month plan for assistance for the group of IDPs.

When there’s an influx of IDPs, Florent said, they can’t be registered because traumatized people can’t immediately answer necessary questions. When the first assistance ends and there has been psychological support, registration can proceed, he said.

Conflict with extremists, bandits

There are 1.3 million IDPs in Burkina Faso, which has been embroiled in a six-year conflict with armed groups linked to Islamic State, al-Qaida and local bandits. The U.N. has called it the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian crisis.

Refugee advocacy groups have criticized the government recently because of a ban it placed on journalists visiting official IDP sites. The government said the ban was aimed at protecting the dignity of IDPs and the safety of journalists.

Daouda Diallo, of the Collective Against Impunity and the Stigmatization of Communities, a Burkinabe human rights group, criticized the suspension of the NRC in an interview with VOA. He said the decision showed a disregard for the fate of civilian populations that benefit from the NGO’s work.

The letter from the humanitarian minister said the country was doing its best to assist IDPs under difficult circumstances.
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