Category: Africa News

NAIROBI, (IRIN) – As Kenya continues to round up and detain refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in a controversial anti-terrorism operation, fears are mounting over the fate of around 300 children separated from parents arrested during the sweeps. Some of these children are reported to be held in a Nairobi stadium used as a temporary detention…

HARARE,  (IRIN) – The spike in women managing their own agricultural land following Zimbabwe’s 2000 land reform programme catapulted the country to high up in the African league of female farmers tilling their own farms, although accurate data for gendered land ownership on the continent remains a grey and contested area. Women provide the majority…

BOR,  (IRIN) – A handful of volunteers in almost deserted Bor, capital of South Sudan’s Jonglei State, remove dead bodies from homes, put them in body bags donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and place them in mass graves. Since the emergence of an armed rebellion in mid-December, government troops have lost…

HARARE/MASVINGO,(IRIN) – The Zimbabwean government has appealed to the international community for nearly US$20 million to help evacuate and assist 60,000 people at risk of being swept away by rapidly rising water in a partially constructed dam, following heavy rainfall in the normally drought-prone Masvingo province in the southeast. The region has received 850mm of…

DAKAR,  (IRIN) – Guinea-Bissau will hold elections on 16 March to end yet another post-coup regime, with many hoping the polls will help calm an internecine and drawn-out instability. Observers believe that a political coalition and deeper commitment by the international community after the polls can shore up the country’s recovery. Multiple coups and assassinations…

KAMPALA, 31 October 2013 (IRIN) – The apparent imminent demise of the 18-month-old M23 rebellion is unlikely, on its own, to deliver peace to the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where, in the absence of a significant presence of the state, at least 40 armed groups operate, and a chronic humanitarian crisis…

MAPEL, (IRIN) – Wounded in battle and a former prisoner of war, Kuot Manyok, 33, is trading the military skills gleaned from his service with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) for the life of a welder. He is one of the first batch of 290 former SPLA combatants, including 18 women, who recently graduated…