NPR News -Africa

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.

Marvellous Durowaiye/Reuters

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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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June 15, 20258:52 AM ET

One of Khartoums oldest and most loved hotels has survived coups, wars, and even a bomb attack, but it couldn’t weather Sudan’s civil war.

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June 13, 20255:22 PM ET

The Basketball Africa League crowns a new champion this weekend, marking the venture’s fifth anniversary. But can the NBA-backed league turn courtside glam and pan-African buzz into lasting success?

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June 13, 20255:00 AM ET
Pastor Billiance Chondwe has known 9-year-old Diana Lungu since she was born. He helped her mother through a rough pregnancy and during Diana’s early years. Diana’s mother died of AIDS when Diana was nearing her third birthday.

Ben de la Cruz/NPR

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Ben de la Cruz/NPR

Night had fallen hours ago, but Billiance Chondwe was not slowing down.
On Feb. 20, he frantically tapped out texts on WhatsApp, dialed distant acquaintances and left voice messages from his home in Zambia. He’d pause only to close his eyes and think of whom else he could reach out to for help.
He urgently needed to find medication for Diana Lungu. She’s an orphan, she’s 9 — and she’s HIV-positive. She’d run out of the daily pills she takes to suppress the virus. Without the pills, the virus would surge back.
“I called the whole night … calling everyone,” remembers Chondwe, 53, a reverend known in his community simply as Pastor Billy. “I slept around..

June 12, 20255:08 PM ET
A protester holds a banner and shouts at a Kenyan police officer during a demonstration over the death of Kenyan blogger Albert Ojwang, who died in police custody. June 12 2025

Luis Tato/AFP

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Luis Tato/AFP

NAIROBI, Kenya —Protests erupted across Kenya Thursday over the death of 31-year-old blogger Albert Ojwang, who died in police custody under suspicious circumstances.
Ojwang was arrested last week in Homa Bay, in western Kenya, after criticizing Kenya’s Deputy Inspector General of Police, Eliud Lagat, on social media. Ojwang was transported over 200 milesto Nairobi, the capital, on Friday, where he died hours later.
A former teacher, turned blogger, Ojwang had been writing about Lagat’s alleged involvement in a bribery scandal which had previously been reported by the press.
Police initially claimed Ojwang”hit his head on a cell wall,” but an autopsy revealed he was tortured to death. Dr. Bernard Midia, one of five..

June 7, 20257:00 AM ET
Kenyan journalist and human rights activist Boniface Mwangi (R) and Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire (L) during a joint press conference in Nairobi on June 2, 2025 following their three-day detention and alleged torture by Tanzanian authorities.

Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images

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Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images

JOHANNESBURG —At a packed press conference this week two East African activists wiped away tears as they detailed their alleged sexual assault and torture while in detention in Tanzania.
Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire – who was given an “International Woman of Courage” award by the US State Department last year – said they had traveled to neighboring Tanzania in mid-May to monitor the “sham” court case of an opposition leader there.
They allege they were both subsequently detained by a state security official and men in plain clothes. Mwangi described in graphic detail ho..