NPR News -Africa

October 11, 202511:32 AM ET
Supporters of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) hold the new campaign fabric bearing the image of Cameroon’s President and presidential candidate Paul Biya.

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‎/AFP via Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — After a newspaper reported in 1897 that the great American writer Mark Twain had died, a bemused — but very much alive — Twain famously quipped: “the report of my death was an exaggeration.”
This century, several aging African leaders have also had to reject premature reports of their deaths, like Cameroon’s Paul Biya last year whenrumours of his demise spread on social media after he wasn’t seen in public for a month.
It turned out the 92-year-old, who has the distinction of being the world’s oldest, non-royal, leader, was simply in residence at his second home in Switzerland.
Cameroon incumbent President Paul Biya flanked by his wife, Cameroon First Lady Chantal B..

October 9, 202512:17 PM ET
Replicas of the obverse and reverse of the Nobel Peace Prize medal displayed at The Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.

Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

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Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

UPDATE: Click here to read about the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
Anticipation is growing and bookies around the world are taking bets on who’ll be awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, with President Trump among the most high-profile — and controversial — contenders.
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will announce the winner. The committee says the award goes to the person or organization that has done the most “for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.”
Trump has received multiple nominations and has never made a secret of his desire to win the prestigious accolade. And, as the first phase of his Gaza peace pla..

October 8, 20259:51 AM ET

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Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly series in which NPR’s international team shares moments from their lives and work around the world.
It was my fifth day aboard a boat in the Mediterranean Sea with the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, while reporting on their attempts to rescue migrants stranded at sea. We’d set off a year ago from the Italian port of Civitavecchia, and in the 10 days I was aboard their ship, the Geo Barents, they saved 258 lives.
These migrants — some whole families, one teenager traveling alone, many young men, a mother with her three young children — had started their journey in Libya, paying smugglers thousands of dollars for this chance to reach Europe. A shot in the dark.
For the rescuers on the Geo Barents, this work was exhausting, traumatizing — and inspiring. They could be at sea for months. The best respite was on the boat’s helipad. The spot variously served as a jogging track and a place for yoga and me..

October 6, 20253:05 PM ET
Former senior commander of the Sudanese Janjaweed militia Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, appears for a hearing over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Darfur conflict in 2003-04 at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Koen Van Weel/AFP via Getty Images

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Koen Van Weel/AFP via Getty Images

LAGOS, Nigeria — The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has convicted Ali Muhammad Ali Abd–Al-Rahman, a leader of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed militia, for his role in atrocities committed during the genocide in the western region of Darfur more than 20 years ago. It is the court’s first conviction for crimes in Darfur, where similar violence has flared again amid Sudan’s ongoing civil war.
Judges found that mass killings and sexual violence were part of a plan backed by Sudan’s former government to crush a rebellion by African ethnic groups in the western region. Abd–Al-Rah..

A number of human rights activists carry posters and wave the Straw Hat Pirates’ Jolly Roger flag from the anime One Piece during the 873rd Kamisan Action in Jakarta, Indonesia, on August 14, 2025.

Claudio Pramana/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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Claudio Pramana/NurPhoto via Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Gen Z-led protests are making waves from Africa to Asia, and while the issues spurring them are different, the symbol they’re using is the same: a grinning skull and crossbones wearing a straw hat.
It was there when young people angry with the lavish lifestyles of the elite brought down Nepal’s government last month. It was visible in the Indonesian and Philippine protests this year, and again when Madagascan youth marched against chronic water and electricity shortages over the past 10 days. Right now, it’s being waved at protests raging over poor healthcare in Morocco.

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Why are frustrated youth taking to the streets ..

August 6, 20254:12 PM ET
A broken transformer in Badagry, Nigeria that hasn’t worked for over 5 years. Local residents say electricity officials have never been sent to repair it.

Emmanuel Akinwotu/NPR

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Emmanuel Akinwotu/NPR

In Africa’s most populous country more than a third of residents have no access to electricity. Even those connected to the nation’s crumbling power grid cannot rely on it. And the situation isn’t improving. We go to Nigeria to see how people cope with the lack of access to power.

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August 6, 202511:53 AM ET

Fourteen million people in Sudan have been displaced by war and famine. The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum writes about the scale of destruction in her article, “The Most Nihilistic Conflict on Earth.”

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August 1, 20251:20 AM ET
A sedated rhino is being prepared before a hole is drilled into its horn and isotopes carefully inserted, at a rhino orphanage in Mokopane, South Africa, Thursday, July 31, 2025.

Alfonso Nqunjana/AP

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Alfonso Nqunjana/AP

MOKOPANE, South Africa (AP) — A South African university launched an anti-poaching campaign Thursday to inject the horns of rhinos with radioactive isotopes that it says are harmless for the animals but can be detected by customs agents.
Under the collaborative project involving the University of the Witwatersrand, nuclear energy officials and conservationists, five rhinos were injected in what the university hopes will be the start of a mass injection of the declining rhino population.
They’re calling it the Rhisotope Project.
Professor James Larkin drills a hole into a rhino’s horn to inject radioactive isotopes, at a rhino orphanage in Mokopane, South Africa, Thursday, July 31, 2025.

Alfonso Nqunj..

July 26, 20257:00 AM ET
A man stands in front of a damaged and burnt house following a deadly gunmen attack in Yelwata, Benue State, Nigeria, on June 16, 2025.

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Marvellous Durowaiye/Reuters

YELWATA, Nigeria — Villagers scrub streaks of blood from the walls of brick huts and barns. Others still search through torched sacks of crops, clothes and scattered belongings, to salvage what they can, weeks after a massacre.
Last month, dozens of attackers stormed the farming village of Yelwata in Benue state — Nigeria’s fertile “breadbasket” — killing at least 160 people. Armed with rifles, machetes and fuel, they struck as families slept. The assault, one of the deadliest in recent memory, sparked outrage from religious leaders and lawmakers around the world.
The massacre unfolded in the country’s volatile Middle Belt, where Christian farming communities like Yelwata sit on fertile land—and at the fault l..

June 27, 20254:53 PM ET

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have signed what President Trump is calling a peace deal. But the text leaves lots of questions in a complicated war in a mineral rich region of Africa.

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