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...
Hits and misses: Wild thought, accidental visa to America, then unexpected ticket
I did not plan to go to America. The decision just made itself. One Wednesday morning on the bus along Ngong Road, Nairobi, on my way to the office, I put my hand in my inner coat pocket and discovered that I had inadvertently carried my passport. As I turned...
Marathon king Eliud Kipchoge returns home, shuns talk of retiring after Olympics gold
Eliud Kipchoge arrived back in Nairobi, Kenya after he successfully defended his Olympic marathon title at Tokyo 2020. Kipchoge finished in two hours, 8 minutes, 38 seconds on a breezy and humid day along the streets of Sapporo. It was 80 seconds ahead of runner-up Abdi Nageeye of the Netherlands....
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...
Sexual abuse: Court tells Prince Andrew the law is immune to wealth and kingdom entitlements
The Duke of York “cannot hide behind wealth and palace walls” and must respond to sexual abuse allegations filed in a US court, his accuser’s lawyer told BBC Two’s Newsnight. Prince Andrew should allow a jury to decide what happened, David Boies, the lawyer of Virginia Giuffre, said. Ms Giuffre...
Labour of love: Mastering courage for the first kiss, then an explosion of endless passion
If there is such a thing as an SI Unit for beauty, up until this point in my life, my SI Unit had been one Judy Achieng (not her real name). Back in my second year of secondary school, I had laid my eyes on her at some function in...
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...
US universities lose billions in revenue, strain financially as foreign students stay away
The Biden administration is hoping to attract tens of thousands of international students who stayed away from US campuses during the coronavirus pandemic. Foreign enrolment plummeted by 20 per cent last year costing nearly $10 billion in lost revenue. Though some students are starting to return, recovery might not be...
How resistance to caste system drove over 60 upper-caste students in India to suicide
In the late 1990s, when Raosaheb Kale became a professor at for Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, he sat on a committee to select junior researchers at the Nuclear Science Centre, about a mile away from the university in New Delhi. Among the candidates was a Dalit researcher named Rajendra...
