Africa

A Somali native from Minnesota has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his part in holding an American journalist hostage.

The government of South Africa said on Thursday it will not assist a group of illegal miners who became trapped in a mine shaft with minimal supplies after police sealed off the entrance.

The Africa Centers for Disease Control (Africa CDC) on Thursday called for President-elect Donald Trump to honor outgoing President Joe Biden’s pledge to supply a million doses of monkeypox (or mpox) vaccine for the outbreak in central and eastern Africa.

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election was big news across Africa, although much of the news coverage was not jubilant.

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby threatened on Sunday to withdraw his country’s forces from the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a counter-terrorism alliance of African nations bordering the Lake Chad basin.

President Mahama Idriss Deby of Chad on Tuesday ordered a “nationwide military response” against the terrorists of Boko Haram, who killed over forty Chadian troops in an attack in the Lake Chad Basin.

Gay-rights activist Father Timothy Radcliffe has denied reports that he attributed the African Church’s resistance to homosexuality to an influx of foreign money, insisting that his words were “misinterpreted.”

The government of South Africa on Friday asked the Taipei Liaison Office, the de facto embassy of Taiwan, to rename itself as a “Trade Office” and relocate from South Africa’s capital city of Pretoria.

The World Bank published a study on Sunday that found 26 of the world’s poorest nations — including Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, and North Korea — are “in deeper debt than at any other time since 2006.”

Former president Donald Trump flew a newly-freed Nelson Mandela from South Africa to the United States in 1990 when there were no other options, according to a recently resurfaced report from the Los Angeles Times.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Monday said a record 123 million people have been displaced from their homes around the world – a number that has more than doubled over the past decade.

China’s Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical announced the first phase of its new manufacturing plant in the Ivory Coast will be completed by the end of this year.

Rumors began circulating this week that Paul Biya, Cameroon’s authoritarian leader for more than four decades, has died. While Biya’s government denied them on Wednesday, claiming he is alive and well in Switzerland, Biya has not made a public appearance in over a month.

About 200 women ages 18-22 from across Africa have been recruited to work in a factory alongside Russian vocational students.

Low-cost Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) have reportedly made major inroads into South Africa’s market, with industry analysts pointing to years of double-digit sales growth.

Congolese-American basketball great Dikembe Mutombo, renowned as one of the best defensive players in NBA history, has died aged 58, the league announced on Monday.

The City of Johannesburg, South Africa, has decided to rename the street on which the U.S. consulate is situated after a notorious Palestinian terrorist who tried to hijack a commercial flight in 1970 before being subdued by passengers.

A North Carolina woman who went hiking in South Africa was found dead on Sunday after going missing the day before, local officials said.

Morocco arrested 152 people on charges of using social media to incite mass illegal immigration to Ceuta, a Spanish territory.

An ancient sword that may have belonged to the army of the Egyptian pharaoh whom Moses liberated the Israelites from in the Old Testament was unearthed by archaeologists, officials say.

The U.S. agreed to help Kenya and El Salvador develop peaceful nuclear power at the annual International Atomic Energy Agency conference.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) handed out 37 death sentences in connection to the May coup attempt.

The Center for Information Resilience (CIR), a non-profit human rights group, and the UK Guardian on Wednesday accused fighters from Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of gleefully posting images of themselves committing war crimes, including the burning of civilian homes and the torture of prisoners.

Severe flooding in northeastern Nigeria, which is plagued by constant attacks from the jihadis of Boko Haram, has killed at least 30 people.

Beijing’s three-day Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) concluded on Friday with more pledges of funding for Africa, even though China’s sputtering economy may be hard-pressed to meet those commitments.

Algerian election officials on Sunday declared incumbent President Abulmadjid Tebboune the winner of a dubious election with 95 percent of the vote.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping promised more than $50 billion in financing would be available for African nations over the next three years.

A September report from Open Doors International details the dire situation faced by Christians hunted to the verge of extinction in Nigeria.

A jailbreak attempt at the overcrowded Makala Central Prison in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, turned into a bloodbath on Monday.

A Ugandan Olympic marathon runner who was living in Kenya was attacked and set on fire by her boyfriend on Sunday, police say.

Pope Francis has condemned the Islamist massacre of hundreds of civilians in the African nation of Burkina Faso, calling the attack “heinous.”

Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Burkina Faso, Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), claimed on Thursday it was targeting militias allied with the ruling junta, not civilians, when it launched an attack that killed almost 300 people last weekend.

The feud between Libya’s two governments for control of its central bank intensified on Wednesday as more oil fields shut down and the eastern government demanded the return of ousted bank governor Sadiq al-Kabir.

Prosecutors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo seek the death penalty for 50 alleged coup plotters, including three Americans.

The United Nations World Food Program is investigating two of its top officials in hunger-plagued Sudan for fraud.