Category: Africa

The Burkinabé government decided Wednesday that the nation’s flagship cycling competition Tour du Faso will take place from October 29th to November 7. A major comeback for the event as after Angolan Antonio Dario’s victory in 2019, the race took a one-year hiatus — due to the onset of the unprecedented global COVID-19 pandemic preventing it from holding in 2020. The Council of Ministers of Burkina Faso during Wednesday’s meeting defined the contours of the 33rd edition of the race — which will kick off in Banfora and finish in…

In the Kapiti Nature Reserve in southern Kenya, this dromedary is furiously undergoing a PCR test to detect a cousin of COVID-19, Mers, which could one day cause the next global pandemic. Two metres high and weighing 300 kilos, the beast rumbles and struggles, restrained at the neck, muzzle and tail by three camel drivers, while the veterinarian in the blue coat hurriedly proceeds with the dreaded sampling. “Taking a sample from the animal is difficult because you never know what can happen (…) if you do it wrong, it…

Several thousand Central Africans, mostly from President Faustin Archange Touadéra’s United Hearts Movement (MCU), took to the streets of Bangui on Thursday. The march began at the sports complex in Bangui to the headquarters of the UNMISCA. The people decried the discourse during an interview with RFI last Friday of Mankeur Ndiaye the Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations in the Central African Republic. In his remarks, Mankeur Ndiaye had stressed that the Central African solution is not military. At the same time, he had congratulated the…

Mali will hold presidential and parliamentary elections in February next year, the country’s interim government announced on Thursday. Lieutenant Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, the minister of territorial administration, told journalists in Bamako that the first round of voting will take place on February 27 with a second round of vote in March. The announcement of the dates according to the government is a sign of its commitment to “strictly uphold” a pledge of an 18-month transition for returning to an elected civilian government. An electoral plan presented by the transitional authorities…

Parents and relatives gather for prayers at the Chibok school where hundreds of schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram jihadists seven years ago. Several more mass kidnappings of schoolchildren have occurred in northern Nigeria since Chibok, resulting in hundreds of schools being shut in a region where the literacy rate and school enrolment are already very low. On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram gunmen seized 276 girls aged between 12 and 17 from the Government Girls Secondary School in the remote town of Chibok in Borno state. “Although most escaped…

The Central African Republic on Tuesday took delivery of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines for the UN Mission in the country. The AstraZeneca jabs were received at the Bangui airport by UN and government officials. SOUNDBITE (French) Denise Brown, MINUSCA Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the Central African Republic: “The arrival of these vaccines which are intended primarily to vaccinate and protect our peacekeepers – our blue helmets – will allow us to stay by your side. We will protect ourselves in order to continue to protect…

Coinciding with the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egypt fired on Tuesday the centuries-old Midfa Al-Iftar or Ramadan Cannon at Cairo’s historic Salah El-Din citadel after 30 years of silence. The cannon, last fired from the citadel in 1992, underwent a restoration program as part of the country’s plan to develop archaeological sites. The cannon, will be fired every day throughout the month at sunrise and sunset to mark the beginning and end of the daily fast. Worshippers in the Egyptian capital also expressed their joy at…