Vaccine safety advocate Brandy Vaughan mysterious death sums up Africa’s ‘suicide’ via ‘dirty’ drugs
When Covid ravaged the world between from late 2019 to 2022, Africa looked destined for what had been cast as imminent Armageddon in Africa, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa raised a key concern that African scientists have yet to address: To what extent should Africans trust vaccines manufactured by Big...
State capture to mafia state: Interlinking politics and business in South Africa’s evolution into organised crime centre
A report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gitoc) released in September 2022 argues that South Africa has increasingly become a centre of organised crime, transcending national boundaries. The picture emerging from the report is that there are organised networks inside and outside the state that enable, facilitate...
Environmental scientists propose how Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt can end impasse over Africa’s largest dam
A team of environmental scientists has a proposal to end a long-running dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam. Ethiopia is several years away from completing the almost-$5-billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the White Nile River, which is intended to provide electricity to a country...
Relegated to irrelevance by UN and the West, Western Sahara people are forced into servitude by international apathy
Fresh fruit and vegetables, sold commercially in the camps’ markets, are largely unaffordable for most Western Sahara refugees. Cheaper, processed food is available, but that has contributed to a “double burden of malnutrition”, which includes obesity among women and under-nutrition in children. Thirty-one-year-old Fatimalo Mustapha Sayed manages a community vegetable...
Double standards: Western Sahara’s ‘frozen conflict’ boiling up again as world is hooked to war in Ukraine
Najla Mohamed-Lamin was at home with her new-born son when she received a call that her youngest brother, Hamdi*, had been hit in a Moroccan drone strike in Western Sahara, a war the international community has effectively chosen to ignore. “There were eight of them. They were just making tea...
Analysts identify complex mixtures of botanical resins, other materials used to embalm Egyptian mummies
Labelled pots found in a 2,500-year-old embalming workshop have revealed the plant and animal extracts used to prepare ancient Egyptian mummies – including ingredients originating hundreds and even thousands of kilometres away. Chemical analysis of the pots’ contents has identified complex mixtures of botanical resins and other substances, some of...
Why a river in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, is on its ‘deathbed’ as informal settlements take up empty spaces
Vultures scavenge for dead animals along a river-turned-sewer conduit in Kenya’s capital Nairobi. Its waters turn from clear to black as it traverses informal settlements and industrial hubs. The river and its tributaries cross Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum with close to 200,000 residents, and other informal settlements. It skirts dozens...
Vaunted cryptocurrency runs into a storm as economies fight money laundering, black market crimes
For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware and money laundering – despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. New evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on...
How writing became my refuge as a woman escaping atrocities of South Sudan’s civil war
It was only a few days after I had arrived at a Ugandan refugee camp with my family in mid-2016 that I received the devastating news: Our house back home in South Sudan had been broken into, burgled, and destroyed. I had just endured a terrifying few weeks. Our hometown...
Scientists mystified by how Africa rode waves of Covid, ignored publicised data on high risks of infection
In a video recorded and posted online by Dr John Campbell – a retired nurse educator – the contradictions between the World Health Organization’s directives regarding the need for Covid-19 shots in Africa and the actual situation on the ground are astonishing. As of December 12, 2022, WHO was still...
