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
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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..
June 5, 20256:01 PM ET
Enlarge this imagePresident Trump announced a new travel ban on 12 countries.
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President Trump announced a new travel ban on 12 countries.
Evan Vucci/AP
President Donald Trump has issued a new travel ban, barring travelers from 12 countries and partially restricting travelers from seven others from coming to the U.S. We hear from reporters in Asia, Latin America and Africa to hear how targeted countries might be affected.
June 4, 20254:29 PM ET
People who fled violence in Darfur walk through a makeshift encampment in the western Darfur region on April 13, 2025.
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JOHANNESBURG — The food that a United Nations convoy was taking to the besieged Sudanese city of El Fasher would have been the first humanitarian aid desperate families there had received in over a year.
But they never got it.
The 15-truck convoy was on its way to the city in the Darfur region on Monday when it came under attack. Five UN staff were killed, several others injured, and the supplies damaged.
The UN condemned “in the strongest possible terms this horrendous act of violence against humanitarian personnel who literally put their lives at risk in an attempt to reach vulnerable children and families in the famine-impacted areas of Sudan.”
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“It is devastating that the supplies have not reached the civilians in need,” it said in a statement.
..
June 4, 20253:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageSouth African President Ramaphosa meets President Trump amid tensions over Washington’s resettlement of white Afrikaners that the U.S. president claims are the victims of “genocide.”
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South African President Ramaphosa meets President Trump amid tensions over Washington’s resettlement of white Afrikaners that the U.S. president claims are the victims of “genocide.”
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
How the false notion of “white genocide” traveled from the political fringes to the Oval Office. The week on Code Switch, we’re talking to a reporter who was in the room during a meeting when President Trump pushed this conspiracy theory on the president of South Africa. And we’re digging into what Trump’s fixation on white South Africans tell us about anxieties over white replacement here in the U.S.
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This episode was produced by ..
June 4, 20253:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageWhy is the Trump administration offering refugee status to white Afrikaners?
Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
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Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
Why is the Trump administration offering refugee status to white Afrikaners?
Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
You may have heard that the U.S. gained 59 new residents last month from South Africa – and that more came this past weekend. They’re all white Afrikaners: a white minority group descended from European colonists. Trump has given some of these white Afrikaners refugee status because he claims a “white genocide” is happening against them in South Africa. This claim is untrue. So where is it coming from?
And why might this claim be politically expedient for the Trump administration? And what parallels can we see between some of the white Afrikaners and the American right? Brittany sits down with South African journalist Kate Bartlett and Sean Jacobs,..
May 28, 20253:56 PM ET
Enlarge this imageDr .Sara Abdurahaman at Al-Buluk Pediatric Hospital treats an 8-month old baby in the critical care unit of a malnutrition ward.
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Dr .Sara Abdurahaman at Al-Buluk Pediatric Hospital treats an 8-month old baby in the critical care unit of a malnutrition ward.
Faiz Abubakr for NPR
The civil war in Sudan has been ongoing for more than two years causing some fifteen million people to be displaced and the collapse of the country’s healthcare system in many places. In the capital Khartoum, there were once nearly 100 public and private medical facilities, now none are operational. We go to Khartoum to see how residents are coping with the lack of medical care.
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