AFRICA

Scientists raise alarm about new variants, urge national disease testing ANALYSIS | AGENCIES | Foreign aid cuts could result in a major outbreak of mpox across the African continent and beyond, with virus control measures already disrupted, public health experts warn. Mpox testing and monitoring efforts in hotspot areas like the …

Canada debuts its first-ever strategy for Africa, as Ottawa seeks to diversify markets and blunt geopolitical shocks amid rising trade tensions with Washington. SPECIAL REPORT | BIRD AGENCY | Early in March, Canada unveiled its much-touted Global Africa Strategy in a subdued Toronto event, timed eight days before a cabinet …

  UNITED NATIONS | Xinhua | Local sources reported more than 300 civilians were killed in attacks on Sudan’s famine-distressed Zamzam displacement camp, UN humanitarians said on Monday. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it is gravely concerned by reports of mass casualties and large-scale displacement …

Experts say the region’s mineral certification mechanism remains patchy, under-implemented, and hindered by political and regulatory gaps ANALYSIS | RONALD MUSOKE | Fourteen years since 12 governments in the Great Lakes region unanimously agreed to create a foolproof international system for certifying and auditing minerals that have been blamed for fomenting …

Fund aimed at creating 500,000 jobs annually and lifting 11million Africans out of poverty by 2030 ANALYSIS | IAN KATUSIIME | The Global AI Summit for Africa, held in Kigali, Rwanda from April 3–4, galvanized the continent’s ambition to harness the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) for sustainable development. A …

New plant to support mining industry and promote value addition DAR ES SALAAM | Xinhua | Tanzanian Minister for Minerals Anthony Mavunde on Sunday inaugurated the country’s first-ever explosives manufacturing plant, as part of broader efforts to promote value addition and support the growth of industries serving strategic sectors such as …

Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema elected Gabon’s president LIBREVILLE | Xinhua | Gabon’s transitional leader Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema has been elected president following Saturday’s vote, the Interior Ministry announced on Sunday. Nguema secured 90.35 percent of the total votes cast in the election, Interior Minister Hermann Immongault said. Nguema has …

KINSHASA, DRC | Xinhua | The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Saturday condemned the killing of 52 civilians during the night of Friday to Saturday in the eastern city of Goma, allegedly carried out by rebels of the March 23 Movement (M23). In an official …

  Harare, Zimbabwe | Linda Mujuru Global Press Journal Zimbabwe |  It’s possible to buy pretty much anything at the market in Hopley, an informal settlement south of this capital city: rat poison, mops — even medicine. That medicine is sold without prescriptions, to buyers who don’t have a diagnosis from a doctor …

COMMENT | Gertrude Kamya Othieno | In many African cosmologies, time is not a straight line but a sacred circle. Life and death are not opposites but phases of a continuum. The departed do not disappear. They live on as ancestors, guiding the living, and sometimes returning through them. It is …