Covid vaccines don’t harm fertility or sexual function, medics allay fears, rumours and myths about the jab
Rumours and myths about Covid-19 vaccine effects on all aspects of reproduction and sexual functioning have spread like a Delta variant of viral misinformation across social media platforms, where people swap rumours of erectile dysfunction and fertility disruptions following vaccination. Yet studies so far have not linked the vaccines with...
Nigeria launches secret plan to lure top Boko Haram commanders out of the bush
Editor’s note: This story was based on six months of reporting and research. Government officials, former jihadists, analysts, journalists, displaced people, and civil society workers were interviewed, but nearly all asked to have their names withheld or altered due to security concerns. Malam Aliyu* lives in a neat, two-bedroom house...
Africa’s first youth games raise hopes the continent is getting ready to host Olympic Games
For decades, African athletes have travelled all over the world to take part in the Olympic Games. At the recent Tokyo Games, they took home gold, silver and bronze medals. And yet Africa has never hosted the Games, and some people are asking what it would take for the Olympics to be held on...
Ethiopia detains Tigrayan children for ‘supporting’ rebels against government
Young children among those held amid a new wave of detentions of ethnic Tigrayans suspected of supporting Tigray forces in Ethiopia’s growing war, one detainee says, while witnesses and a human rights watchdog describe fresh disappearances in recent weeks. In an interview with The Associated Press on a hidden phone,...
Tackling overmedication: Half of all doctors in US accepted $2.4 billion bribes from drug firms to prescribe their products
When my grandmother Carol Mitchell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010 at the age of 72, she was prescribed a drug called carbidopa/levodopa. She swallowed the little oblong pill four times a day – 7 am, 11 am, 3 pm and 7 pm. In the years that followed, her...
US army exit from Afghanistan sets stage for Taliban warlords to scramble for drug profits and power
The United States spent more than $8 billion over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to airstrikes and raids on suspected labs. As the United States wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world’s biggest...
Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers accused of raping, abusing Tigray women in conflict zones
Amnesty International said this week that Ethiopian government forces, Amhara region’s militia group and Eritrean forces have been systematically raping and abusing hundreds of women and girls in the conflict in the country’s northern Tigray region. As part of a new report, Amnesty spoke to 63 survivors of rape and...
Kenya, Nigeria in the eye of a gathering storm as violent nonstate actors resort to weaponised drones in wars
The risk of militarisation of drone technology in Africa represents a new asymmetric tool, which experts now fear nonstate groups may deploy to extend the reach of their coercion, reshaping the African battlefield. A study has listed Kenya in East Africa, Nigeria in West Africa, which have in recent years...
As pro-Ethiopia government forces prepare for assault, bodies of Tigrayans float on border rivers
After recent tensions with the Ethiopian government, some aid workers in the Tigray question whether advocacy is now even the right strategy. “The US has come down hard, the EU has come down hard, but is it really helping?” said the second official. “It seems like the Ethiopian government is...
Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray face starvation after suspension of relief agencies – report
The suspension of two major international relief organisations in Ethiopia could further worsen the humanitarian situation in Tigray, where an aid blockade is still effectively in place, even as conflict spreads into neighbouring regions and hundreds of thousands of people face famine. The blockade, and a cash crunch caused by...
