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In Pemba, the port city of Cabo Delgado, the wait is coming to an end for some, as they are reunited with their relatives. But the situation is far from calm in the town of Palma, and other areas, where locals are fleeing.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
The attack took place early Sunday morning, a day after the first presidential results were announced.
Maputo — Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Thursday night announced the extension of the state of emergency, decreed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, for a further month.
Addressing the nation, Nyusi recalled that the first case of Covid-19 in Mozambique was diagnosed on 22 March, and when the state of emergency was declared, there were only eight known cases, and no deaths.
Under the renewed state of emergency, he said, it was imperative to obey the rules on social distancing, to wear masks in public places, and to obey 14 day periods of home quarantine, in the case of all people entering Mozambique, and all those who have been in direct contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases.
As for lifting the emergency measures, Nyusi said the Scientific and Technical Commission advising the government will reflect on the best moment to re-open schools, particularly for those grades about to face exams.
More sweeping measures, such as the full reopening of the land, sea and air borders to the transport of people and goods \"will be studied depending on the trend of the Covid-19 pandemic in Mozambique\", added Nyusi.
Mozambique mō˝zəmbēk´ [key], officially Republic of Mozambique, republic (2005 est. pop. 19,407,000), 302,659 sq mi (784,090 sq km), SE Africa. It borders on the Indian Ocean in the east; on South Africa and Swaziland in the south; on Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi in the west; and on Tanzania in the north. Maputo is the capital and largest city.
Sections in this article:
There are now more than over 100,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.
According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when.
As of May 13, every African country had recorded an infection, the last being Lesotho.
We shall keep updating this list largely sourced from the John Hopkins University tallies, Africa CDC and from official government data.
SUGGESTED READING: Africa’s COVID-19 deaths pass 100,000 mark
Major African stats: May 29 at 7:00 GMT:
\t
\t\tConfirmed cases = 129.452
\t\tNumber of deaths = 3,792
\t\tRecoveries = 53,400
\t\tActive cases = 72,260
Countries in alphabetical order
\t\tAlgeria – 8,997
\t\tAngola – 74
\t\tBenin – 210
\t\tBotswana – 35
\t\tBurkina Faso – 847
\t\tBurundi – 42
\t\tCameroon – 5,436
\t\tCape Verde – 390
\t\tCentral African Republic – 755
\t\tChad – 726
\t\tComoros – 87
\t\tCongo-Brazzaville – 571
\t\tDR Congo – 2,660
\t\tDjibouti – 2,914
\t\tEgypt – 20,793
\t\tEquatorial Guinea – 1,043
\t\tEritrea – 39
\t\tEswatini – 279
\t\tEthiopia – 831
\t\tGabon – 2,431
\t\t(The) Gambia – 25
\t\tGhana – 7,303
\t\tGuinea – 3,553
\t\tGuinea-Bissau – 1,195
\t\tIvory Coast – 2,641
\t\tKenya – 1,618
\t\tLesotho – 2
\t\tLiberia – 269
\t\tLibya – 105
\t\tMadagascar – 656
\t\tMalawi – 203
\t\tMali – 1,194
\t\tMauritania – 346
\t\tMauritius – 334
\t\tMorocco – 7,643
\t\tMozambique – 233
\t\tNamibia – 22
\t\tNiger – 955
\t\tNigeria – 8,915
\t\tRwanda – 349
\t\tSao Tome and Principe – 458
\t\tSenegal – 3,348
\t\tSeychelles – 11
\t\tSierra Leone – 812
\t\tSomalia – 1,828
\t\tSouth Africa – 27,403
\t\tSouth Sudan – 994
\t\tSudan – 4,346
\t\tTanzania – 509
\t\tTogo – 422
\t\tTunisia – 1,068
\t\tUganda – 317
\t\tZambia – 1,057
\t\tZimbabwe – 149
SUGGESTED READING: rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa II
[FrontPageAfrica] Monrovia -- The Government of Sweden supports transparency and accountability as important measures for anti-corruption in Liberia through contribution of 15 million Swedish Krona (USD 1.7 million) to Center for Transparency & Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL).
The United Nations (UN) conducts a number of peacekeeping missions throughout the world. Beginning in 1960, the UN began missions in various countries in Africa. While just one mission occurred through the 1990s, turmoil in Africa escalated and the majority of missions were run from 1989 on.
Many of these peacekeeping missions were the result of civil wars or ongoing conflicts in African countries, including Angola, the Congo, Liberia, Somalia, and Rwanda.
Some of the missions were brief while others lasted years at a time. To confound things, some missions replaced previous ones as tensions in the countries escalated or the political climate changed.
This period is one of the most dynamic and violent in modern African history and its important to review the missions that the UN carried out.
ONUC - UN Operations in the Congo
Mission Dates: July 1960 through June 1964
Context: Independence from Belgium and the attempted secession of the Katanga province
Outcome: Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, at which point the mission was expanded. The Congo retained the secessionist province of Katanga and the mission was followed by civilian aid.
UNAVEM I - UN Angola Verification Mission
Mission Dates: January 1989 through May 1991
Context: Angolas lengthy civil war
Outcome: Cuban troops were withdrawn one month ahead of schedule, having completed their mission.
The mission was followed by UNAVEM II (1991) and UNAVEM III (1995).
UNTAG - UN Transition Assistance Group
Mission Dates: April 1990 through March 1990
Context: Angolan Civil War and Namibias transition to independence from South Africa
Outcome: South African troops departed Angola. Elections were held and a new constitution approved.
Namibia joined the UN.
UNAVEM II - UN Angola Verification Mission II
Mission Dates: May 1991 through February 1995
Context: Angolan Civil War
Outcome: Elections were held in 1991, but the results were rejected and violence escalated. The mission transitioned to UNAVEM III.
UNOSOM I - UN Operation in Somalia I
The U.N. refugee agency is appealing for $186 million to protect and assist hundreds of thousands of civilians who have been forced to flee from escalating, increasingly brutal attacks from multiple armed groups in the volatile central Sahel region.
The agency reports attacks by Islamist extremists and criminal gangs in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have crippled life in the border towns and areas, and forced people to flee their homes multiple times.
Baloch said money from the appeal is a critical lifeline for all these people on the run and for the communities hosting them.
“If we do not get enough support, the consequences on the ground for these people in terms of basic needs — food, water, shelter would be disastrous,” Baloch said.
Baloch said 3.1 million people in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Mauritania are in desperate need of humanitarian support.
The UN Security Council called Thursday for \"sustained efforts\" in preventing the illegal trade of natural resources from the DR Congo, as gold in particular fuels conflict between armed groups in the region.
UN experts who monitor implementation of the sanctions detailed multiple cases of trafficking in a recent report, stating that gold from the country was flowing into Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates and Tanzania.
\"The group traced Congolese gold to regional refineries and other international destinations and found that some refineries acted as brokers, used cash payments, undertook refiner-to-refiner trading and used corporate networks to obscure ownership, thereby inhibiting supply chain accountability,\" the report said.
The experts added that \"in terms of natural resources, the Congolese gold sector remained vulnerable to exploitation by armed groups and criminal networks and to unregulated trading.\"
DR Congo sits on top of large reserves of cobalt, copper, gold and other valuable minerals, but is nonetheless one of the world's poorest countries, with average per capita revenue of $490, according to World Bank data.
More than 210 000 people, most of them women and children, have been forced to flee their homes in northern Mozambique since 2017, when a shadowy Islamist group started waging deadly attacks on the region, the UN said Thursday.
Around 50 000 of those displacements have occurred in the past three months, as the jihadists ramped up their bloody campaign in the southern African country's gas-rich Cabo Delgado province.
\"Displacement has risen rapidly as violence has escalated, with 211 485 people now estimated to be internally displaced in Cabo Delgado,\" the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement, citing IOM statistics.
Since October 2017, the jihadists have wrought havoc among the province's communities, staging around 300 attacks, burning huts, decapitating villagers and killing more than 1 100 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).
The latest attack, which occurred in the Macomia district late last month, is considered by experts to be the most violent and most organised by the group locally known as Al-Shabaab, which has no link to the jihadist group of the same name that operates in Somalia and Kenya.
Maputo — 60 former guerrillas from Mozambique's main opposition party, Renamo, natives of the district of Muanza, in the central province of Sofala, have received building materials, agricultural tools, clothing and other goods, as part of the programme to demobilise and disarm the Renamo militia, and reintegrate its members into civilian life.
According to a report in the Beira daily paper \"Diario de Mocambique\", the 60 men had been stationed at a Renamo base known as \"Pombo Verde\" (\"Green Pigeon\") in Dondo district.
\"Pombo Verde\" is presumably the same base in Dondo visited recently by an inspection team including representatives of the government, of Renamo, and of the international Contact Group, set up to facilitate the dialogue between the two parties.
Mirko Manzoni, the head of the Contact Group, and the special envoy to Mozambique of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, issued a statement saying that the base was found to be empty, with no people and no weapons.
Pedro Muchanga, who had commanded the \"Pombo Verde\" base, said he was happy, and called on other Renamo guerrillas to come out of the bush and return to their communities.
10 people died in Northern Burkina Faso Sunday after an attack on a humanitarian convoy by armed terrorist groups, the government said.
In a statement, the government said the attack on the Foubé-Barsalogho area by the groups targeted a humanitarian convoy returning from Foubé after having delivered food aid there.
According to local police, the dead include 5 civilians and 5 police officers.
The Burkinabe government also announced the killing of 30 people by armed groups in the east of the country Saturday.
The East and North of Burkina Faso are the most affected regions of the country by jihadist attack which have left more than 900 dead and 860,000 displaced over the past five years.
Opposition candidates allege election foul play as they call for the outright cancellation of the vote.
[Thomson Reuters Foundation] Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) decries use of child solders by army and militias after upgrade in U.S. Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report
Maputo — Unidentified assailants kidnapped a 67 year old businessman, Lyacat Umargi, in the central Mozambican city of Beira on Friday night.
According to Daniel Macuacua, the Sofala provincial police spokesperson, cited in Monday's issue of the independent newssheet \"Carta de Mocambique\", Umargi was abducted in the Ponta-Gea neighbourhood, at about 19.00 by two men.
Macuacua said the businessman was alone.
Umargi owns a shop in Beira, and is joint owner of the company \"Moreira & Silva\", which is based in Beira, and sells sports equipment.
Umargi is the seventh businessman kidnapped in Mozambican cities so far this year.
Colombia ranks among the top five nations with the greatest diversity of plant and animal species in the world; more different kinds of birds and amphibians make their home here than in any other place on the planet.
In the early 1990s, together with other movement leaders, she led a campaign that secured more than 5.9 million acres in territorial rights for Colombia’s black rural communities.
Multinational corporations moved in to exploit its natural riches such as gold and oil and to introduce foreign mono-crops like the African palm.
They also secured increased government restrictions to mitigate environmental and cultural damage along the coast.
She has spoken out against U.S. and European aid and investment in Colombian operations linked to violence and human rights violations in meetings with U.S. Congress people and advocacy groups, at talks at colleges through the U.S. and Canada, and in meetings held by global trade institutions such as the World Trade Organization.
[Dalsan Radio] The Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management Khadija Mohamed Diriye today met with the UK Special Envoy for Famine Prevention and Humanitarian affairs Nick Dyer to discuss further development of co-operation between Somalia and the UK.
The trade of substandard foodstuffs is controlled by criminal cartels that run from Kenya with regional links to Uganda, Tanzania and Somalia.
While genuine traders follow Kenya's import regulations, criminals are bringing in food products such as sugar, maize, rice, milk powder, vegetables and pulses full of mercury, lead and other insoluble matters unfit for human consumption.
There are three main value chains and routes used by criminals to smuggle or import food into Kenya.
One report estimates that 150 000 tonnes of sugar valued at US$400 million are smuggled into Kenya from Somalia every year, denying the Kenyan government the revenue owed to it.
Many government-backed food sector industries such as sugar and dairy are struggling to stay afloat in Kenya, leaving most of the industry to the private sector.
Armed groups have committed massacres and other atrocities, and defence and security forces have also been responsible for grave human rights violations in these provinces as well as in other parts of the country.
\"I am appalled by the increase in brutal attacks on innocent civilians by armed groups, and by the reaction of the military and security forces who have also committed grave violations, including killings and sexual violence.
According to the UN Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC (UNJHRO), between 1 October 2019 and 31 May 2020, at least 531 civilians have been killed by armed groups in Ituri, 375 of them since March, when the violence soared.
In North Kivu, the launch of military operations by the government forces in November 2019led to retaliatory attacks against civilians by the main armed group, the ADF, which by 31 May had killed at least 514 civilians using machetes, axes and heavy weapons, and have been abducting children and attacking schools and hospitals.
Serious violence and killings have also been taking place in Kongo Central and Kinshasa where, between 30 March and 24 April, at least 62 civilians were killed and 74 injured during seven operations conducted by the PNC and the FARDC against militants of the politico-religious group Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK).
[Nation] The clamour for constitutional amendments through the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) has already taken a 'Yes' versus 'No' trajectory after civil society groups and a section of political leaders on Sunday expressed their opposition to the push for the changes spearheaded by President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga.
Niamey – Thousands of people have fled a camp hosting 20 000 Malian refugees in western Niger after a deadly jihadist attack devastated the site, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Around 50 jihadists on motorbikes killed three local leaders, abducted a guard, destroyed communication antennas and sabotaged the water supply at the Intikane site near the Malian border in a co-ordinated attack on Monday.
Intikane is home to around 20 000 Malian refugees and 15 000 internally displaced Niger citizens – all of whom previously fled their villages due to jihadist violence – as well as the local population.
The jihadists \"attacked the sensitive points of the site – they cut communication lines to isolate the population and they destroyed the sources for drinking water,\" he told the national public radio station after visiting Intikane.
Niger is home to nearly 60 000 Malian refugees who fled their country's north after it fell under the control of Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist groups in 2012, according to the UN.
Maputo — Ricardo Manganhe, a teacher who works for the Chibuto Municipal Council in the southern Mozambican province of Gaza, on Friday confirmed that he had lent the car used in the murder of civil society and election observation activist, Anastacio Matavel, to a member of the death squad, Nobrega Chauque.
Giving testimony to the Xai-Xai provincial court, Manganhe said he was buying the car, a Toyota Mark X, from the mayor of Chibuto, Henriques Machava.
Manganhe said it did not occur to him to contact the police to reveal that he had lent the car to Chauque: he claimed he knew Machava would contact him about the crash.
Police inspector Justino Muchanga, who was in charge of the Gaza armoury of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR - the Mozambican riot police), from which the death squad obtained the guns used in the murder, told the court he only became aware of the assassination of Matavel the following day.
The trial is due to resume on Tuesday, when the court will hear evidence from relatives of Anastacio Matavel, from colleagues of members of the death squad, and from the owners of the cars damaged in the accident.
Maputo — The Mozambican police on Tuesday found a large amount of stolen rails and other railway material in a Chinese-owned foundry in the Ceramica neighbourhood of the central city of Beira, according to a report in the independent daily \"O Pais\".
The rail director of the central division of the publicly owned port and railway company (CFM-Centro), Boaventura Mahave, said the material had been stolen from the lines linking the port of Beira to Zimbabwe, and to the Moatize coal basin in Tete province.
It has long been believed that metallic parts stolen from CFM, like metallic parts of electricity pylons, are sold to foundries which have sprung up recently in Beira and the neighbouring town of Dondo.
According to \"O Pais\", the lawyer for the Chinese company, Jose Capassura, has claimed it is too early to conclude that the metal rods produced by the foundry are made out of stolen materials.
The police have promised to investigate the case further, taking into account that the foundry acquired the raw material for making rods at night.
Coronavirus has swiftly gained status as the world's No. 1 threat but in eastern DR Congo, one of Africa's most volatile regions, militia killings and ethnic violence are an older and -- for now -- far greater source of dread.
In the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, \"civilians are being massacred,\" he said.
\"In South Kivu, Rwandan and Burundian armies are battling armed groups in the high plateaus of Minembwe, destroying everything in their wake,\" Mukwege said.
Since November, more than 400 civilians have been butchered in North Kivu province by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a mainly Muslim militia.
North Kivu and Ituri are also hosting an epidemic of Ebola, which has killed 2,279 people since August 2018.
