NPR News -Africa

June 5, 20256:01 PM ET
Enlarge this imagePresident Trump announced a new travel ban on 12 countries.

Evan Vucci/AP

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Evan Vucci/AP

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.
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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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Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

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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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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May 27, 20254:21 PM ET

NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Program, about the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo and cuts to WFP funding.

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May 25, 20259:41 AM ET

NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe talks with Nigerian space scientist Temidayo Oniosun about how the new African Space Agency could help make the continent more resilient to climate change and extreme weather.

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May 24, 20258:00 AM ET
US President Donald Trump, right, and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, second right, as a video plays during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.

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JOHANNESBURG — President Trump claims a “genocide” of white people, particularly Afrikaner farmers, is taking place in South Africa.
When he met the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump played him a video — previously shared at least twice on social media byhis advisor Elon Musk — that he said was evidence of this.
“Now this is very bad, those are burial sites right there. Burial sites. Over a thousand. Of white farmers,” Trump said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The video showed a road lined on either side with scores of white crosses and a procession of cars carrying mourners paying their respects.

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May 22, 20258:54 AM ET
President Trump meets South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday.

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Evan Vucci/AP

JOHANNESBURG — “All in all it was awful but it could have been worse,” was how one South African newspaper summed up President Cyril Ramaphosa’s extraordinary Oval Office meeting with President Trump on Wednesday.
Africa Trump ambushes South Africa’s president with false claims of ‘white genocide’Many South Africans — including members of the government delegation visiting Washington — had feared a repeat of February’s heated exchange between Trump and and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But despite what another newspaper called “serious provocation” by Trump — which included the dramatic moment he asked to dim the lights and played a lengthy video montage purporting to prove what Trump falsely claimed was a “genocide” against South African white farmers..

May 21, 20255:53 PM ET

President Trump meets in the Oval Office with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Bilateral relations are at their lowest since the end of apartheid.

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