Africa

Despite Ethiopia’s outlawing of physical cryptocurrency exchange, the country welcomes Bitcoin mining operations.

Bitcoin mining has become increasingly popular in Ethiopia since China expelled the industry from its territory in 2021.

After the prohibition was lifted, the largest corporations in China dispersed worldwide in search of new locations that would accommodate their energy-intensive business practices.

When cargo containers containing powerful mining computers appeared near electricity substations associated with the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam last spring, that journey brought many individuals to Africa.

A total of 28 insurers have so far declared they will not insure Eacop following pressure from climate activists.

The 1,443-kilometre pipeline from Hoima in western Uganda to the Tanzanian Indian Ocean port of Tanga, is majority-owned (62 percent) by French oil giant TotalEnergies and state oil companies of China, Uganda and Tanzania.

Eacop is planned to pass through areas of sensitive ecological importance, including national parks and wildlife reserves. There has been criticism from international environmentalists.

According to Dickens Kamugisha, executive director of the Kampala-based Africa Institute for Energy Governance (Afiego), the Ugandan government is likely to lower its standards and offer attractive terms because it’s heavily indebted.

“The government currently has over $25 billion in debts, 80 percent of which has been accumulated during the time when it’s been pursuing these oil projects. The government is now desperate that it is likely that it will lower its expectations to attract investors,” Mr Kamugisha said.

The arrests came just three weeks after seven activists from another anti-pipeline group, Students against Eacop Uganda, were arrested and detained under similar circumstances, by the same judge. They spent almost four weeks in maximum security and will also appear in court on Wednesday charged with common nuisance. If convicted, they face a custodial sentence of 12 months.

"It is not normal to detain suspects for even a day for a common nuisance charge,” said attorney Ronald Samuel Wanda, who is representing 15 pipeline protesters. “These arrests are arbitrary … Arresting those protesting peacefully demonstrates that the government of Uganda does not respect its own constitution.”

French oil giant Total and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation are on the cusp of building a massive crude oil pipeline right through the heart of Africa – displacing communities, endangering wildlife and tipping the world closer to full-blown climate catastrophe.

International rights groups have documented those speaking out against the oil pipeline.

“Despite political and economic challenges, 2023 saw air cargo markets regain ground lost in 2022 after the extraordinary Covid peak in 2021. Although full-year demand was shy of pre-Covid levels by 3.6 percent, the significant strengthening in the past quarter is a sign that markets are stabilising towards more normal demand patterns,”

Decapitated and dismembered: in Kenya, the sordid murder in January of Rita Waeni, a 20-year-old student, was an electric shock in this East African country, where femicide and gender-based and sexual violence are often silent.

“Stop killing us,” thousands of people, mostly women, chanted on January 27 during a “march against femicide” in Nairobi, the capital. “I’ve never been to a protest, but I felt compelled to come and fight for this. (…) Absolutely nothing justifies the murder of a woman,” explained Beatrice Obiero, a 34-year-old engineering student.

More than 7.4 million people have been forced to leave their homes in search of safety within and outside Sudan.

So-called emergency response rooms (ERRs) - essentialky teams of volunteer medical staff, engineers and other emergency experts across the country - are addressing civilian needs amid the current bout of violence and insecurity stemming from clashes with rival military forces in April 2023.

The goal is simple: reach those facing the risk of death, famine, disease and difficulty obtaining drinking water, electricity and communication services.

"We are united by humanitarian work and the sense of responding to the repercussions of war and helping people,” says Hanin Ahmed, a young Sudanese activist with a master’s degree in gender and specializing in peace and conflict, who founded an emergency room with one of her colleagues.

Researcher Felix Kiprono and his colleagues recently released a report about Kenya's alarming rise in female killings as the country is reeling from at least 10 reported murders of women in the first month of the year alone.

One gruesome killing involved a victim whose dismembered remains were found stuffed into a plastic bag at a short-term rental apartment.

Titled Silencing Women, he says the report "aims to shed light on the disturbing reality of women's lives at risk, providing crucial information to address victim blaming, under-reporting and to inspire meaningful action".

But Mr Kiprono has been appalled by the reaction to its findings, in particular on social media which is sometimes described in Kenya as a "manosphere" - a network of online platforms focusing on the promotion of masculinity and opposed to feminism.

The interior minister of Niger’s decision this week to suspend the activities of Maison de la Presse (Press House), an independent media organization, is the latest in a series of government actions to crack down on the press and free expression in the West African country.

The minister’s January 29 decree also announced the creation of a new management committee for the media organization headed by the Interior Ministry’s secretary general. Maison de la Presse is an association that promotes freedom of information in Niger as well as the exchange of ideas and debate among media professionals. The government did not provide any reason for the suspension.

Steps include prioritising public spending measures that raise growth, fixing the revenue collection problem facing all African countries, and restructuring unsustainable government debt, writes Jonathan Munemo, Professor of Economics at Salisbury University.

Maasai societies are highly patriarchal, and governance of the conservancies has typically fallen to men. Now, however, a new generation of women are taking up leadership roles and guiding jobs, and Ripoi is one of the few conservancies in the greater Mara ecosystem where women hold administrative rights: making decisions on cattle grazing zones and financial matters, and discussing employment opportunities – including whether jobs go to women.

The Nigerian government should adopt and act on recommendations made by member states at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process earlier this week.

The recommendations, made on January 23, cover a range of concerns, including the death penalty, lack of justice and accountability for abuses by government security forces and other actors, women’s political participation, sexual and gender-based violence, child marriage, and rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

The UPR is a peer-review process in which UN member states assess each other’s human rights records and recommend changes to comply with international standards. Human Rights Watch contributed recommendations for states before the review. This is Nigeria’s fourth UPR.

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Thousands of women marched in major cities on Saturday carrying placards that called for an end to femicide, with messages reading #StopKillingUs #EndFemicideKe and #WeJustWantToLive. Other signage bore the names of women who have been killed in recent months, with the messages “Say Their Names” or “SheWasSomeone”. Tens of thousands of posts calling for an end to the violent killings trended online.

At least 500 cases of femicide have been recorded in Kenya since 2016. Organisations that document the deaths say the actual number may be higher due to unreported cases or incidents where details are omitted in police or media reports, leaving the deaths miscategorised.

A majority of the cases of femicide were perpetrated by men who knew the women and were in intimate relationships with them, according to the data organisation Africa Data Hub. It found that many of the killings were preceded by systematic domestic violence.

A BBC investigation has uncovered a network of fake social media accounts in Uganda. Under false identities, they spread pro-government messaging and target critics with threats.

The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 600,000 people a year, mainly in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

Children under five years old account for more than 80 percent of deaths on the continent. Following a pilot phase, the RTS,S vaccine is being rolled out at scale across Africa, starting in Cameroon.

At a hospital in the town of Soa, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the capital Yaounde, six-month-old Noah Ngah became the first to receive the injection at the facility.

Rights groups are calling for the Kenyan government to urgently investigate and prosecute cases of femicide, after the brutal murders of two women.

“This is a national crisis – we are not doing enough as a country to protect women,” said Audrey Mugeni, the co-founder of Femicide Count Kenya, an NGO that documents the number of women killed across the country each year.

Last year, Femicide Count Kenya recorded 152 killings – the highest in the past five years. Representatives from the nonprofit, which records reported cases only, says the actual number of killings is likely to be much higher.

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Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza

On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions. The German Government is yet to fully atone for the genocide it committed on Namibian soil. Therefore, in light of Germany’s inability to draw lessons from its horrific history, President @hagegeingob expresses deep concern with the shocking decision communicated by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany yesterday, 12 January 2024, in which it rejected the morally upright indictment brought forward by South Africa before the #InternationalCourtofJustice that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in #Gaza.

Worryingly, ignoring the violent deaths of over 23 000 Palestinians in Gaza and various United Nations reports disturbingly highlighting the internal displacement of 85% of civilians in Gaza amid acute shortages of food and essential services, the German Government has chosen to defend in the International Court of Justice the genocidal and gruesome acts of the Israeli Government against innocent civilians in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza. Various international organizations, such as Human Rights Watch have chillingly concluded that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.

President Geingob reiterates his call made on 31 December 2023, “No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza”. In that vein, President Geingob appeals to the German Government to reconsider its untimely decision to intervene as a third-party in defence and support of the genocidal acts of Israel before the International Court of Justice.