Star Wars: When white cinema fans turn to social media to hurl racist slurs at black movie screen queens and kings
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi, a member of an old order of beings known for their stoicism. Suffice it to say, if you’ve upset one of them, you’ve made a grievous error. Yet here is Ewan McGregor, the man inside Kenobi’s robes, looking directly at the camera – and he...
How drought and food shortages are wreaking havoc on Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan…by numbers
Six million people or 40 per cent of the population in Somalia is “acutely food insecure”, according to data captured by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The number includes 81,000 people already at a “catastrophe” level of hunger, with a real risk of famine in...
Four seasons without rain puts 17 million people in Horn of Africa at risk of famine, made worse by war in Ukraine
Hammered by four droughts in a row, as many as 17 million people are going hungry in three countries in the Horn of Africa, with aid agencies warning that the hardest-hit areas are threatened by famine. In the arid pastoralist regions of southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and much of Somalia,...
Patience with South Sudan government’s sluggish action on peace deal waning at home and abroad
Civil society leaders, religious leaders and the international community are becoming exasperated at the listless peace deal and the increase in violence in South Sudan. “These agreements have been deliberately undermined, and the way they’re being implemented – particularly the current one – not taking the country anywhere...
South Sudan planning for elections against backdrop of crippling conflict that’s killing scores, displacing hundreds
South Sudan’s transitional government is due to wrap up in less than 10 months. Yet the country’s future looks as bleak as it did in 2018 when rival parties signed a deal to end a crippling civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people. The peace agreement was supposed to end...
Defeated in Middle East, Islamic States terror group turns Africa into its theatre of jihadist extremism
The Islamic State terrorist organisation has been decimated in Iraq and Syria in recent years and is now seeking to expand operations in Africa, taking aim at some of the continent’s most fragile regions. African countries now account for nearly half of all deaths at the hands of the Islamic...
