Africa Archives

Zimbabweans Head Out for a Better Life

Admire Gumbo, 26, from Harare’s Mabvuku high density-suburb, is loathe to leave Zimbabwe to return to Botswana. However, he feels he has no choice but to return to the neighbouring country where he worked for three years as a manual labourer.

Nobel Laureate Fights African Pullout from Global Court

By Thalif Deen

South Africa's Desmond Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace prize laureate, has launched a global campaign to stop African nations from abandoning the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC).

OP-ED: Why Keeping Girls in School Can Help South Sudan

By Agnes Odhiambo

Mary K. loved to study and wanted to be an accountant. However, when she was 16 and in class six (grade eight), her father forced her to leave school to marry a 50-year-old man who paid him 60 cows.

Ethiopian Government Choking Muslim Unrest

By Ed McKenna

The refusal by the Ethiopian government to redress grievances harboured by the Muslim community here, which comprises about 34 percent of the country’s 91 million people makes this Horn of African nation vulnerable to extremism.

Improved Seed Improves Ethiopian Farmers’ Lives

By Matthew Newsome

Ethiopian farmers are learning that seed security is the basis of food security.

Somalis Caught Between Terrorism and a Border Dispute

By Miriam Gathigah

Somali militia groups are beginning to operate in Kenya’s remote and arid North Eastern Province, an area that borders southern Somalia – a former stronghold of the extremist group Al-Shabaab.

Seeding Ethiopia’s Future Food Security

By Ed McKenna

Datta Dudettu and his seven children know what is like to go hungry. They live in Woliyta, a drought-prone area in southern Ethiopia that has experienced chronic food shortages. But hopefully, thanks to the successful use of hybrid seed, that is now firmly in the past.

Q&A: You Are One Percent Away from Being a Bonobo

By Anna Shen

When author Deni Béchard discovered bonobos shared almost 99 percent of human DNA, and based their relationships on cooperation and collaboration, he knew he had to write about them.

Africa’s Growth Story Brightens

By Jacey Fortin

Not far from the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa, a young woman named Bosena, 25, sits on the side of a busy road with a baby in her arms.

Somalia Takes Teaching to the Extreme

By Ahmed Osman

Mukhatar Jama has been teaching at a secondary school in Mogadishu for the past decade. Religious education is part and parcel of the curriculum of all schools in Somalia, but he says most parents are unaware of exactly what their children are being taught – a radical form of Islam.

Q&A: “Guinea Bissau Is Dangerously Close to Becoming a Failed State”

By Mario Queiroz

Guinea Bissau is “close to becoming a failed state,” but not due to ethnic or religious violence, which has never existed in that small West African nation, argues Nobel Peace laureate and United Nations envoy José Manuel Ramos-Horta.

Ugandan Women Put On Their Boxing Gloves

By Amy Fallon

Helen Baleke took up boxing at 16, after she was attacked by a man in Kampala’s Katanga slum. But the beating turned her into what she is today – one of only several female Ugandan amateur boxers.

U.S.-Africa Trade Mostly Benefits Oil, Textiles

By Ramy Srour

With a key U.S.-Africa trade agreement up for renewal in 2015, advocates on all sides of the issue say current policies are rife with shortcomings that leave many African businesses out in the cold.

From Africa to Brazil in the Hold of a Ship

By Fabíola Ortiz

Ornela Mbenga Sebo, a young Congolese woman, escaped in 2011 from a rebel camp in an unidentified location in Africa where she was being held as a slave and stowed away in the garbage bay of a merchant ship, with no idea where it was headed.

From Toilet to Tap for Water Scarce City

By Brendon Bosworth

In a few years, residents of the eThekwini municipality in the port city of Durban in South Africa could be drinking water that was once flushed down their toilets, as authorities are planning to recycle some of the municipality’s sewage and purify it to drinking quality standards.