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By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Jihadist groups dislodged from Middle East battlegrounds are reportedly regrouping in West Africa, exploiting longstanding grievances between the Dogon farmers and the Puelh-Fulani nomadic herdsmen of Mali over access to limited supplies of land and water.
A militia in Dogon attire entered Ogossagou, a Fulani village and suspected jihadi hideout at about 4 a.m. local time and murdered over 100 men, women and children.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) - Since Cyclone Idai roared into the Mozambican port city of Beira on March 14, devastating losses are mounting exponentially yet international aid has been slow to reach all survivors.
Severe flooding produced by Idai's strong winds and heavy rains caused the rivers Pungwe and Buzi to break their banks. In the district of Buzi, thousands clung for their lives on trees and rooftops, as their villages turned into an ocean. Even as the rains have subsided and the waters are receding, the risk of flooding remains, as dams upstream reach full capacity.
By J C Suresh
TORONTO (IDN) – Stretching from the Gulf of Guinea in the west to the Rift Valley in the east, the Congo basin is the beating heart of African biodiversity. Spanning 530 million hectares across six countries – Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo – the basin contains some 70 per cent of the continent’s forest cover and is home to one of every five species on our planet.
By Lisa Vives and Sean Buchanan
NEW YORK | LONDON (IDN) – An estimated 1.7 million people in Mozambique were in the path of Tropical Cyclone Idai when it hit southern Africa on March 15, with upwards of 900,000 people affected in Malawi and thousands more in Zimbabwe.
With the World Food Programme (WFP) reporting that the scene of devastation is one of “inland oceans extending for miles and miles”, the major challenge now facing the region is how to get aid to those most affected.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – There were smiles all around in Kenya as French President Emmanuel Macron and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta shook hands over a series of infrastructure deals worth $3.3 billion.
It was the third stop on the French president's East African charm offensive – and the first-ever visit to Kenya by a French head of state.
France wants trade and commercial relationships that are "fair and profitable for the Kenyan people," Macron said. Alluding to Africa’s many relationships with China often freighted with debt, French investments would be respectful of the receiving country's sovereignty and sustainable, he pledged.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Joseph Kabila, ex-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, may have gone once too often to the cookie jar, taking back one by one all of the powers and rights earned by his successor from a recent election, Felix Tshisekedi.
President Tshisekedi may have had enough.
After a disputed vote that gave the former president’s allies an overwhelming majority in the upper house of parliament, 80 out of 100 seats, while the actual president’s Union for Democracy and Social Progress party (UDPS) gained only three, the newly-named senators were blocked from taking office in a surprise move by President Tshisekedi.
By Jaya Ramachandran
BERLIN | STOCKHOLM (IDN) – Global arms trade is on the upswing with the United States increasing dominance in the group of five largest exporters including Russia, France, Germany and China, which together account for 75 per cent of the total volume of weapons exports in 2014-2018. While the Middle East imports almost doubled in the past five years, Saudi Arabia became the world’s largest arms importer.
According to new data on arms transfers published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the volume of international transfers of major arms in 2014-2018 was 7.8 per cent higher than in the previous five years and 23 per cent higher than in 2004-2008.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – Fifty three minutes. That was the length of time approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) for pilot training on the upgraded Boeing 737 Max 8 jet that crashed March 10 in Ethiopia killing all aboard, according to a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association.
Nor was the 53 minutes for face to face training. It was “computer assisted” over a laptop with slides and imagery. Some of the pilots felt shortchanged.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) – An estimated 30,000 refugees have been uprooted by officials in Cameroon and Nigeria this month and sent to known hotbeds of insurgents including Boko Haram on the Nigerian side of the border.
Humanitarian groups including Action against Hunger are questioning the wisdom of forcing refugees to move to the city of Rann in Borno state, the epicentre of the decade-long insurgency that has killed more than 27,000.
By Brenda Wawa
This article first appeared on Africa Renewal, December 2018-March 2019 issue.
NAIROBI (IDN | INPS) – For years, boosting agricultural production was believed to be the solution to world hunger and malnourishment. But years of intensive farming with chemical fertilizers and pesticides has done little to move the needle on food insecurity, health metrics or life expectancy.
Today, experts have identified a new kind of hunger – one caused not by lack of food but by food that lacks essential micronutrients necessary for growth and development.
UN Messenger of Peace @JaneGoodallInst introduces @IRIforests, a new global effort uniting people of all faiths to end tropical deforestation. Watch the video and share this important message: InterfaithRainforest.org/video #FaithsForForests.
