03 January 2023
Tunisia: Employees of the state transport company were on strike yesterday Monday over salary payment delays. And in late January, the country’s biggest union UGTT will hold a two-day strike (including transport workers) to protest “the government's marginalisation of public companies.”
BBC Africa Live 03 January 2023. 5:06
Mozambique: Herds of elephants desperate for water have destroyed houses, granaries, crops in central parts of the country. Such elephant rampages have become a big problem in the country as the animals leave “conservation areas in search of food and water”.
BBC Africa Live 03 January 2023. 4:34
Ethiopia: EMA, the “state-funded Ethiopian Media Authority”, demands that authorities cease “harassing media workers, particularly investigative journalists”. Of late, the agency says having noted an increase in attempts to halt their work.
BBC Africa Live 03 January 2023. 8:23
Tanzania: After six years, President Samia Suluhu Hassan lifted the ban on political rallies that her predecessor Magufuli had imposed to weaken opposition parties. The latter also want changes to the constitution so as to reduce the power of the President and “to safeguard the independence of the electoral commission and the courts”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64151793
02 January 2023
Malawi/Cholera: Schools in the country’s two main cities (Lilongwe and Blantyre) will not open for at least another two weeks because of cholera – 595 people have so far died; almost all of the country’s districts are concerned.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64144610
Ghana/Gigantism: The article is about 29-year-old Sulemana Abdul Samed, one of the world’s tallest men – he measures 7ft 4in or 2 meters and 23.5 cm and growing – and how the Marfan syndrome brings social and physical problems with it: an abnormally curved spine and a heart condition, amongst many others.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64032268
Uganda: The promotor Abbey Musinguzi (aka Abitex), organiser of the New Year concert in a shopping mall in Kampala that saw a crowd crush kill 10 (7 of them children), has been arrested. It is being investigated whether negligence was to blame for the deaths: only one of the four exits was open and that one exit became a bottleneck where people got crushed and trampled.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world/africa