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While delivering the Thabo Mbeki lecture, Professor 'Funmi Olonisakin said the war in Ethiopia's Tigray region was evidence of the shortcomings of the African Union.
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Geneva — 'We share the faults' when things go wrong
The UN has pledged to \"carefully consider\" the recommendations of an operational review into humanitarian aid operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo after a draft of the document leaked to The New Humanitarian revealed widespread corruption and abuse.
The operational review was commissioned by an anti-fraud taskforce created by UN agencies and aid groups in Congo after the NGO Mercy Corps discovered a large-scale fraud scheme in late 2018 - first made public this week after a more than nine-month investigation by TNH.
\"We share the faults\" when things go wrong, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Congo, David McLachlan-Karr, said in a frank statement, vowing that the UN would do \"everything possible to maintain... trust by fighting fraud, corruption and abuse at all levels\".
McLachlan-Karr said allegations in the review that the selection committee of the UN's humanitarian pooled fund - a major pot run by the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA - had demanded kickbacks from national NGOs in exchange for contracts could \"damage donor confidence in the Fund and ancillary financing\".
The operational review said there is a mutual lack of trust between aid groups and communities in Congo, who \"perceive humanitarian aid as corrupt and driven by external agendas\".
A new major publication - the Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics - contains many important chapters that make the same point on a wide variety of topics.
Yet, while the continent features more than its fair share of authoritarian repression, in some respects African countries are leading the way.
In all these cases a combination of good leadership, institution building, and the support of ordinary people for democratic values has enabled African states to change their futures for the better.
A major casualty of the tendency to overlook the creativity and contributions of African leaders and intellectuals is the neglect of African political thought.
This is one reason why many African intellectuals have been attracted to the idea of the African renaissance.
[UN News] Disturbing reports have continued to emerge of widespread abuse of civilians in Ethiopia's Tigray region, nearly six months since conflict erupted, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.
As the African Union Chair, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired a virtual meeting of African heads of state and declared: \"The challenge of this pandemic has shown how Africa is able to work together to solve its own problems.
The Canadian Small Business, Exports and Trade Minister, Minister Mary Ng, discussed the role of the diaspora in deepening Canada-Africa trade and investment during this time whilst highlighting Africa's essential place in Canada's trade diversification.
During the conference call, McKinsey also presented their report entitled Tackling COVID-19 in Africa: An unfolding health and economic crisis that demands bold action.
McKinsey's report encourages us as Africans governments, private sector and development institutions to double down on our already proven resolve and significantly expand existing efforts to safeguard economies and livelihoods across Africa.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela was one of our recent pioneers that opened the eyes of the world to the Africa continent and and put us on a global stage.
[ANGOP] Luanda -- Angola hands over Wednesday the chair of the Committee of Experts of the United Nations Standing Advisory Committee on Security Issues in Central Africa (UNSAC) to Equatorial Guinea.
[SAnews.gov.za] With Africa Day set to be celebrated on Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on the continent to deepen its efforts to achieve a sustainable and lasting social and economic recovery for its citizens.
[ANGOP] According to the spokesman for the event, Adriano Campos, the conference will also serve to formalise and launch the ECOWAS Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Angola.
This year's celebration however comes on a backheel of a number of issues with the Covid pandemic having piled up pressure on the African economy.
[Thomson Reuters Foundation] Addis Ababa -- Hundreds of unaccompanied child refugees vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking, aid agencies warn
by Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent President-Elect Joe Biden’s administration plans to support legislation offered by District of Columbia Democratic Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton that would ensure federal agencies advertise with minority-owned businesses, including the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). “From the racial equity plan – at the direction of the President-Elect, … Continued
The post Biden-Harris Administration commits to ensure government spending with Black and minority-owned media businesses appeared first on New Pittsburgh Courier.
On the Commemoration of This Year's Africa Day, He Spoke About Africa's Achievements So Far and the Challenges Faced:
What should African countries reflect on this year as we commemorate Africa Day?
This year, the First Continental Report on Implementation of Agenda 2063, Africa's framework for development, shows the continent Africa has made some remarkable progress towards attaining the goals defined in Agenda 2063's First Ten-Year Implementation Plan.
According to the World Bank's 2019 Doing Business Index, five of the ten most-improved countries globally, are in Africa, with six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies on the continent.
Nontheless, while African countries have been enjoying notable social and economic progress, the gains made in this realm have, in most cases, not cascaded down to alleviate everyday problems such as us improved healthcare systems and the creation of the much needed jobs from Africa's youths.
Therefore, together with countries, our COVID-19 Response Plan of Action focusses on the following seven thematic areas, through which countries can remain stable both during and post COVID-19 pandemic: Health Service Delivery; Human Resources for Health; Research & Development Innovation and Local Manufacturing; Education and Training; Skills and Employability; Food and Nutrition Security; and Financing.
Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren Student Loan Debt Op-Ed
The UN Refugee Agency UNHCR says it has continued to register new refugee arrivals at the Sudanese-Ethiopian border.
Yet at the same time, some of the very health challenges African countries have wrestled with for decades have given us a clear understanding of what needs to be done, and how to do it.
By early May, 43 African countries had full border closures, 53 had closed institutions of learning, 54 had limited public gatherings, 26 had instituted the compulsory use of face masks, 32 had instituted night-time curfews and 18 had imposed nation-wide lockdowns
The African Union developed a comprehensive Joint Continental Strategy to guide cooperation between member states and set up a Covid-19 Response Fund.
The deployment of community health workers to do screening, testing, contact tracing and case management is happening in many African countries, and draws heavily on our experience with HIV and TB.
Whether it is in repurposing health protocols used with other infectious disease outbreaks, rapidly deploying health care workers to communities, or in launching mobile Covid-19 testing labs to improve national testing capacities, Africa is working proactively to overcome this global threat.
Though it is clear we will continue to rely on the support of the international community and international financial institutions to bolster the existing continental effort and build economic resilience, African countries are holding their own.
TNH has interviewed 13 current and former Mercy Corps staff members - including alleged ringleaders - several other senior UN and aid officials, six complicit business owners, journalists, civil society leaders, and displaced people in reporting trips to Minova and Kalungu.
Business owners, who played a key role in the fraud, gave Mercy Corps investigators the names of nine other aid agencies - in addition to Mercy Corps and the Danish Refugee Council, which said it had launched an internal review but provided few details - allegedly affected by the same scheme, in some cases providing details of complicit aid workers and timelines of their involvement.
Following the discovery of fraud within Mercy Corps' programmes, however, aid agencies did join forces to launch an anti-fraud taskforce and commissioned an operational review - backed with a £200,000 grant from the UK's government aid agency, DFID, which funded RRMP until it was brought to a close last year - examining the integrity of humanitarian assistance in Congo.
A 70-page draft version, circulated among aid groups last month and seen by TNH, does not take a position on the findings of the Mercy Corps investigation, but it does describe many of the same schemes: exaggerated reports of displacements, collusion between aid workers and local communities, and distributions of aid to ineligible beneficiaries.
A 'particularly striking' scale of alleged collaboration and collusion
In its investigation, Mercy Corps, one of the larger aid operators in eastern Congo, interviewed more than 220 staff members, business owners, local leaders, beneficiaries, and members of militia groups who provided corroborating details about the fraud scheme.
