7 April 2021
Niger: After the recent coup attempt: an overview of factors destabilising the country. Poverty + ethnic division + division in the army. Add terrorists/insecurity in the South-West and South-East of the country. Mohamed Bazoum, the new president, is set to continue the work of his predecessor: “During his campaign, he labelled his policy platform Renaissance 3, a continuation of Issoufou’s Renaissance 1 and Renaissance 2 governing agendas.” Niger’s neighbours are happy about this continuity.
https://theconversation.com/botched-coup-in-niger-points-to-deep-fissures-in-the-country-158330
Sudan: According to doctors, clashes between Masalit and Arabs in West Darfur have left 87 people dead and close to 200 injured over the last five days. Since the beginning of 2021, more than 100,000 people have been displaced by conflicts in West Darfur.
BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 16:25
Mozambique: President Filipe Nyusi has ruled out foreign military intervention to fight the jihadists in the country’s north. “He called for the strengthening of the country’s defence and security forces.” On Thursday, the presidents of Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe will attend a Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting in Maputo on the crisis in Mozambique which threatens regional peace and security. Nearly 750,000 people are said to have been displaced.
BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 13:26
And also BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 12:59
Ethiopie, Sudan, Egypt: The Kinshasa talks concerning the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile with AU president Tshisekedi as mediator have come to nothing. Ethiopia is accused of intransigence while it accuses Sudan and Egypt of obstructing the talks and having a rigid stance.
BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 10:11
Kenya: USAID is once again supplying the country with HIV drugs after the finance ministry granted the donation tax exemption. USAID had “declined to import the drugs through the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa), citing corruption and mismanagement. It opted to use a private company to import and distribute the drugs.”
BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 8:03
Ethiopia: Clashes near the border between Afar and Somali regions have killed dozens of people. Houses on contested land have been burnt. “(O)fficials in Afar accuse the Somali Special Forces of killing 30 people on Saturday. The authorities in the Somali region say at least 25 livestock farmers were killed by gunmen who came from over the state border in Afar.”
BBC Africa Live 07 April 2021. 7:17
Oxfam/another scandal: Two employees in Congo-Kinshasa have been suspended following allegations of sexual exploitation and bullying. Oxfam, which had only in March come out of a three-year-ban from applications for UK aid after the Haiti scandal of 2018, has once again been suspended until the new allegations are resolved. After the Haiti scandal, “(w)ith thousands of people cancelling their regular donations and the government suspending its funding of the charity, Oxfam had to make £16m of cuts.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56670162
6 April 2021
Zambia: An Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane “mistakenly landed at an airport still under construction”, 15 km away from its destination. “(A)ir traffic controllers (…) were quoted as telling the pilot that they couldn't see his plane when he informed them he was about to land.”
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 7:19
Covid-19 & Violence against Girls and Women: “Lockdowns put victims and abusers in close proximity”. And that’s just one of the adverse effects of anti-Covid-19 measures on women’s and girls’ safety from sexual and physical violence. Trying to learn lessons from Ebola in Congo-Kinshasa, the authors suggest a series of measures. First and foremost, women – and especially local women’s organisations – need to be included at all levels of response planning.
(Also see Erica N. Rosser et al., How to create a gender-responsive pandemic plan. Addressing the secondary effects of COVID-19: https://www.genderandcovid-19.org/how-to-create-a-gender-responsive-pandemic-plan-addressing-the-secondary-effects-of-covid-19/)
https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-the-past-protecting-women-and-girls-from-violence-during-covid-19-157609
Ghana/Long-term care for the ageing and frail: With the number of old people increasing, providing care for them needs to be proactively addressed on a national level – instead of neglected, as has been the case so far. The author has found “several initiatives that seemed promising as models for” the kind of care needed. Nursing homes or care homes are isolating and too expensive. Two possible solutions are offered by volunteers visiting the aged in their homes and by community health nurses who are attached to local clinics. The volunteers provided massage, physical therapy, grooming, and bathing – but they “drifted away” over time. They would need to be paid for their visits. The community health nurses’ mission needs to be extended beyond maternal and child health, to include the care of older adults, they would only need some basic geriatric training and this “would instantly create a nation-wide system to help families with the care of their frail and disabled older relatives.”
https://theconversation.com/long-term-care-for-the-aged-in-ghana-is-on-the-back-burner-here-is-how-to-change-it-158162
Tanzania: Samia Suluhu Hassan, the country’s new president has lifted media bans imposed by her predecessor and has called for transparency in the application of regulations and penalties. Government ought not to “be seen to curtail media freedom.”
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 10:34
Tanzania/Covid: It looks very much like the country’s Covid policy is going to change: Samia Suluhu Hassan will set up “an expert task force to advise government on anti-coronavirus measures” and she says that “Tanzania cannot isolate itself as an island in the fight against Covid-19”. She has also directed her foreign affairs minister “to set about mending international relations”.
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 11:13
Africa/Covid: According to a World Bank report’s estimations, African countries will need USD12bn “to buy and distribute enough coronavirus vaccines to interrupt transmission of the virus.” World Bank and IMF in another paper urge G20 nations to “extend their moratorium on debt repayments offered to the world's poorest countries” by one year.
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 5:39
Nigeria: BBC on 6 April 2021 reports on Barbara Etim James, 54 years old head of a private equity firm, who was crowned an Efik queen (of Henshaw Town, a part of Calabar in the country’s south-east) two years ago. “I'm bringing my global experience into a culture, not taking the culture into modernity.” She believes that she and people like her are more effective than politicians in bringing about change.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56563071
Kenya: The country suffers a shortage in HIV drugs after USAID stopped supplying them, accusing the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) of corruption and mismanagement. “Two important drugs - Nevirapine and Zidovudine syrup - are completely out of stock. One is used to suppress viral load and boost immunity, and the other drug is used to prevent mother-to-child transmission.” Mother-to-child transmission is said to be already on the rise.
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 16:04
Zimbabwe: Makomborero Haruzivishe is said to have been whistling to mobilise the public against police, to have thrown stones at police and their vehicles and to have resisted arrest and is to be jailed for 14 months. The outspoken critic of the authorities will appeal, but says he is ready for the sabbatical: prison.
BBC Africa Live 06 April 2021. 17:20