21 December 2022
My two main sources for the article summaries, BBC Africa and The Conversation, are in holiday mode since 19th of December, BBC Africa has switched off its “Africa Live” programme and does only “Latest Updates”, The Conversation republishes articles from its archives. As I do not invent news: sorry for the dearth of them for the time being…
Cameroon: After six years of detention with “his trial inexplicably adjourned more than 100 times”, former head of the country’s public broadcaster Amadou Vamoulké has been condemned to 12 years’ imprisonment for “embezzling money and awarding staff salary bonuses without authorisation”. Even if the accusations are right – he denies any wrongdoing –, the trial certainly hat not been up to acceptable standards.
BBC Africa Latest Updates 21 December 2022. 17:24
Gambia: According to the government, a coup attempt has been thwarted. Four soldiers have been arrested, three of their alleged accomplices are said to be on the run. Military reservists have been put on stand-by, but the situation is said to be totally under control. Since his coming to power, President Adama Barrow has lost a lot of his popularity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64055295
20 December 2022
Hippopotamus instead of elephant ivory: With the ban on elephant ivory trade tightening, ivory from the hippopotamus’s lower teeth is increasingly used as a substitute – they are denser/harder to carve than elephant teeth, but are used for carved decorations alike. Yet these animals are “vulnerable to extinction” (IUCN classification since 2016), their worldwide population is estimated to have dropped by 30% between 1994 and 2016 to between 115,000 and 130,000. But EU and East and South African countries have opposed stricter rules for hippopotamus ivory trade. “(T)hree-quarters of the estimated 13,909 hippos whose parts and products were (legally) traded between 2009 and 2018” come from Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Little is known about how much poaching and illegal trade takes place. Hippopotamus could – like elephants before them – become an endangered species (or even “critically endangered” in the case of the forest elephants).
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63931103