Tag: africanews

Papa Massata Diack, the son of former global athletics supremo Lamine Diack, had his five-year prison sentence for corruption involving Russian doping cases confirmed by a Paris appeals court on Thursday. Diack, who was sentenced in absentia because he refuses to leave his native Senegal, had his fine from the original trial reduced by half to 500,000 euros ($530,000). Diack,… Read More

Ugandan lawmakers on Thursday introduced legislation to parliament that proposes tough new penalties for same-sex relations in a country where homosexuality is already illegal, defying criticism from human rights groups. Annet Anita Among, the speaker of parliament, referred the bill to a house committee for scrutiny, the first step in an accelerated process to pass the proposal into law. There… Read More

Amnesty International on Thursday called on the Ethiopian authorities to lift the blocking of access to several social networks, including Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and Youtube, which have been inaccessible since February 9 in Ethiopia. “The Ethiopian authorities, for a month, have been preventing people in the country from accessing certain social networks,” which “clearly violates the rights of citizens to… Read More

Egypt has eased the conditions for granting its nationality to foreigners who invest in dollars in the country plagued by inflation and a lack of foreign currency, local media reported Wednesday. A law passed by parliament in 2018 and amended by the prime minister in 2019 had paved the way for Egyptian nationality to be obtained through investment, such as… Read More

The sinking of a mini ferry in Gabon, departing from Libreville to reach Port-Gentil, has left “at least two people dead and 28 missing,” a port authority official who wished to remain anonymous told AFP Thursday. After the departure of the passenger ship, “the crew reported an ingress of water between 3:00 and 4:00 am,” the company Royal Cost Marine… Read More

The United States’ candidate to head the World Bank, Ajay Banga, on Wednesday called for a revamp of the development model to better meet the challenge of climate change. Banga, who is on trip to Kenya, said the world cannot continue to “pursue the prior model of (an) emission heavy growth system,” and rallied for adaptation. “We cannot afford it,… Read More

Tunisia’s president hosted Wednesday (Mar. 8) his counterpart from Guinea-Bissau. The visit to Tunis of the Ecowas chairman came amid racist attacks targetting sub-Saharan migrants in the north African nation. During a national security council last month, president Kaies Saied linked undocumented immigrants to violence and crimes. From the Carthage palace, he denied racism insisting on his will to uphold… Read More

At three months old, even future kings of the savannah like to play. In Senegal, a video of three cubs that would have hardly been imaginable a few years ago, has given hope that the revered West African lion, which has been decimated over time, will be revived. The US-based wild cat conservation organisation Panthera has released never-before-seen images of… Read More

The African forest, the Congo Basin, is the largest tropical forest in the world after the Amazon, and spans six countries, including Gabon. As well as being a treasure trove for biodiversity, forests like these act as the planet’s green lung, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimating that they absorb approximately 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide… Read More

Prosecutors in the trial of six people accused of murdering Italy’s ambassador to DR Congo in 2021 requested the death penalty Wednesday, during an indictment hearing in the capital Kinshasa. The central African country has observed a de-facto moratorium on capital punishment since 2003, according to the United Nations, but courts continue to hand down death sentences. Luca Attanasio, Italy’s… Read More