For Gambian MPs, repealing female genital mutilation ban guarantees them re-election

For Gambian MPs, repealing female genital mutilation ban guarantees them re-election

Rights advocates also worry Gambia’s bill could inspire similar legislation in other African countries with FGM bans. Kenya’s high court rejected a petition to reverse its ban in 2021. Gambia’s President Adama Barrow, whose election in 2016 ended more than two decades of oppressive rule under Jammeh, said his government would continue enforcing the ban while the bill works its way through parliament.

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Out of Zimbabwe: How African grandmothers mental health therapy is being embraced by the world

Out of Zimbabwe: How African grandmothers mental health therapy is being embraced by the world

Older people are at the centre of a homegrown form of mental health therapy in Zimbabwe that is now being adopted in places like the United States. The approach involves setting up benches in quiet, discreet corners of community clinics and in some churches, poor neighbourhoods and at a university. An older woman with basic training in problem-solving therapy patiently sits there, ready to listen and engage in a one-on-one conversation.

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How past abuse-ridden foreign interventions feed fears in Haiti that Kenyan forces are US pawns

How past abuse-ridden foreign interventions feed fears in Haiti that Kenyan forces are US pawns

Fears of a new occupation are still strong among Haitians, many of whom hold the US responsible for the current chaos. The US supported Henry and is often perceived as having propped up a corrupt elite with links to gangs they sometimes trained, and to have done little to stop the massive smuggling of weapons and munitions into Haiti.

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Gang violence in Haiti drops as Kenyan police start street patrols but fears of trouble linger

Gang violence in Haiti drops as Kenyan police start street patrols but fears of trouble linger

Several hundred Kenyan police officers landed in Port-au-Prince on June 25, four months after gangs joined forces in a coalition called Viv Ansanm (Live Together) on February 29, starting a rebellion that plunged the country into violent chaos and forcing acting prime minister Ariel Henry to flee, then resign.

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Kenya mourns a giant whose death coincides with a youth revolution with bearing on African politics

Kenya mourns a giant whose death coincides with a youth revolution with bearing on African politics

As Kamukunji MP, Maina Wanjigi helped small-scale and petty traders start the Gikomba Market and the Shauri Moyo craftspeople yards that have evolved into key subsectors of the national economy as they have been replicated in other major towns.

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Media fact-check of claims linking Covid vaccines to cancer deaths results in retraction of peer-reviewed study

Media fact-check of claims linking Covid vaccines to cancer deaths results in retraction of peer-reviewed study

The researchers found a 2.1 per cent mortality increase in 2021 and a 9.6 per cent increase In 2022. They determined that age-adjusted death rates for leukemia, breast, pancreatic and lip/oral/pharyngeal cancers increased significantly in 2022 after a large portion of the Japanese population had received the third dose of an mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.

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Kenya police peacekeepers land in Haiti finally amid concerns about how they will restore order as ‘nothing clearly established’

Kenya police peacekeepers land in Haiti finally amid concerns about how they will restore order as ‘nothing clearly established’

The roots of Haiti’s problems date back to colonial times. Although the Caribbean nation became the world’s first Black republic in 1804, it was forced to pay billions to France in order to secure its freedom. That debt crippled Haiti economically and – combined with decades of dictatorships, natural disasters, political and environmental mismanagement, a long US military occupation, and a debilitating US trade embargo – contributed to its recent turmoil.

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Survey: South Sudan’s six million antelope population is world’s largest land mammal migration, but poaching on the rise

Survey: South Sudan’s six million antelope population is world’s largest land mammal migration, but poaching on the rise

The estimate from the nonprofit African Parks, which conducted the work along with the government, far surpasses other large migratory herds such as the estimated 1.36 million wildebeests surveyed last year in the Serengeti straddling Tanzania and Kenya. But they warned that the animals face a rising threat from commercial poaching in a nation rife with weapons and without strong law enforcement.

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Amazon Files: Emails show Amazon caved in to pressure from White House to suppress books critical of vaccines

Amazon Files: Emails show Amazon caved in to pressure from White House to suppress books critical of vaccines

As pressures from the White House reverberated up Amazon’s corporate ladder, the head of the books team approved the adoption of a new policy to apply a “Do Not Promote” label to so-called anti-vaccination books.

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Europe and Middle East airlines cash in on thriving human trafficking as Indians, Africans scramble for the US

Europe and Middle East airlines cash in on thriving human trafficking as Indians, Africans scramble for the US

Along the way to the US border, Ismaila Diop, 30, a small-business owner from Senegal, landed at Managua aboard Avianca flight TA315. Traveling in a group of about a dozen Senegalese migrants, Diop was passed off to organised groups of smugglers who went by their first names only or called themselves “Mama Africa.”

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