United States military commands sustains airstrikes on Al Shabaab in Somalia as UN extends sanctions
Following its first airstrike in Somalia under second term US President Donald Trump – made public by The Pentagon on February 1 – Africom reports four more similar sorties to date. Two, specify the number – three – of actual strikes with the others reported as “collective self-defence air strikes”.
Trump finds ‘less soot’ in stripping tiny African kingdom Lesotho of $8m in humanitarian aid
Musk in September was meeting with Lesotho’s Prime Minister Sam Matekane, while trying to do business with the southern African nation.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela play explores Black women’s long wait for absent husbands during South African freedom struggle
Madikizela-Mandela, who died in 2018 aged 81, was accused of kidnapping and murdering people she allegedly suspected of being police informants under apartheid. She also faced allegations of being unfaithful to Mandela during his 27 years in prison.
Kenya, Egypt, Cameroon and South Sudan implicated again in smuggling of Sudan’s gum Arabic used in manufacture of Coca-Cola
In the year after Sudan’s civil war began, the country’s gum arabic exports to the EU fell, even as exports from countries like Egypt, Kenya, Cameroon and South Sudan rose.
Serious funding questions raised as new Somali peace support takes over from previous under-resourced military mission
Past missions – the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and ATMIS – depended heavily on donor funding. The EU paid for troops’ stipends, while the UN provided logistical support packages to the missions and Somalia Security Forces through the UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS).
AfDB President Adesina says the bank is keen on boosting integration, economic transformation
During the meeting Amb Lang’at lauded the bank’s contribution to Kenya’s development and that of the entire continent, through high-impact financing across infrastructure, food production and economic inclusion of women and youth.
Senegal signs peace deal with factions separatist rebels but there are doubts it’ll be implemented
Senegal’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comments about the claims. The rebels’ calls for the region’s independence will be difficult to neglect despite the new deal, said Mohamed Traoré, a doctoral researcher at the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.
How education programme for migrant and refugee children in Mauritania is cutting numbers of asylum seekers in Europe
The school for children of migrants and refugees, set up in 2018 as an early response to the growing need, is the kind of programme envisioned as part of the 210 million euro ($219 million) accord the European Union and Mauritania brokered last year.
Publish or perish: Why internet publishing is new storehouse of knowledge for deprived African scholars
In Africa South of the Sahara, South Africa and Nigeria have progressed fastest in the adoption and use social media in academic libraries. However, it is true to say that in most African universities there is still a lot of hesitation to use academic production in social media such as Researchgate.net and Academia.edu to measure academic success and reward those who publish in these media, however qualitative their work is. This is probably true in most universities of the world.
Witchcraft case that implicates Zambian president shines light on colonial-era law, exposes how politicians invest in black magic
Police say the men in the current case were arrested in a hotel room in the capital, Lusaka, in December after a cleaner reported hearing strange noises. They were found in possession of a bottled chameleon and other items including a mysterious white powder, a red cloth and an unidentified animal’s tail. The men also face charges of cruelty to animals.
