NPR News -Africa

April 29, 202512:39 PM ET
Community health worker Geoffrey Chanda used to distribute HIV medications to long-haul truck drivers and sex workers at truck stops like this one near the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ben de la Cruz/NPR

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Ben de la Cruz/NPR

On a morning in early April, Geoffrey Chanda’s phone was going off almost constantly. Truck drivers were calling him.
“They are crying: ‘We’ve got no [HIV] medicine. Where do you get [it] from?’ ” says Chanda, 54.
For 15 years, Chanda has been meeting truckers in dusty parking lots at the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to give them their HIV medications. Now, he says, he doesn’t know what to tell them.
He’s lost his job as a community health worker. The U.S.-funded program he worked for — which supported the mobile clinic where he collected the medications for distribution — shut down.

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April 26, 20258:54 AM ET

Sudan’s capital city Khartoum has been liberated after more than two years of civil war. But as NPR’s Emmanuel Akinwotu witnessed when he travelled there, it has been left in ruins.

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April 25, 20251:41 PM ET
Angeline Murimirwa of Zimbabwe has really racked up kudos for her work as head of CAMFED, a charity that has enabled millions of girls in five African countries to stay in school — and thrive with the help of mentors. Murimirwa is one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2025. Above: She accepts an award at Rihanna’s 3rd Annual Diamond Ball in 2017.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

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Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

I don’t mean to humble brag, but I am on a first name basis with one of the most influential people in the world (according to the new list from Time magazine).
It’s not Serena Williams. It’s not Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
It’s Angeline Murimirwa, who goes by “Angie.”
I interviewed Angie back in 2018 in a pub in Oxford. We were attending the Skoll World Forum – a yearly gathering of social activists and advocates. She was then Africa director of CAMFED — the Campaign for Female Education)..

March 25, 20252:31 PM ET
Susan Anderson began using skin lightening creams at age 12. Now 52, she has stopped using the products but her skin shows the damage they caused.

Yagazie Emezi for NPR

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Yagazie Emezi for NPR

Susan Anderson, age 52, sits in the corner of a sunlit waiting room at a dermatology clinic in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Dark patches of skin, dotted with brighter pigments, surround her eyes and cover her cheeks.
“It used to be much worse,” she says, scrolling through pictures of her face on her phone, taken more than a year ago, when the blotches were raw and parts of her skin seared pink. Doctors who first saw her said it looked as if she had first-degree burns.
The first time Anderson used a skin whitening cream she was 12. Her stepmother gave it to her but didn’t tell her what it was for. “She never explained it to me,” she says. “I just felt it was a normal cream, and I was using them. I was naïve and I was vulnerable.”

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March 22, 20258:08 AM ET
Southern Sudanese who have returned to the south by barges stand on the banks of the Nile river in Juba’s port on Jan. 10, 2011.

Jerome Delay/AP

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Jerome Delay/AP

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Another conflict is looming in the world’s youngest country, South Sudan, whichgained independence from Sudan in 2011 and saw civil war erupt shortly after its foundation.
A tenuouspower-sharing deal is teetering on the brink. An evacuation of non-emergency U.S. government employees is underway, and the United Nations has warned of a “regression” amid political infighting and escalating militia violence.
On Saturday, the German government was the latest to temporarily close its embasy in the capital Juba. “After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is once again on the brink of civil war,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on social media.

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March 22, 20258:05 AM ET

Sudan’s military forces have retaken the country’s seat of government after nearly two years of Civil War. Could this be a turning point?

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March 21, 20257:38 AM ET
Sudanese army members film themselves inside the presidential palace, as the Sudanese army says they have taken control of the building, in Khartoum, Sudan, March 21, 2025, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video.

Social Media/Reuters

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Sudan’s army recaptured the presidential palace on Friday, marking a significant turning point in a brutal two-year civil war, which has killed as many as 150,000 people and displaced 12 million.
Footage released by the Sudanese army showed triumphant soldiers brandishing their rifles in the air and cheering in the battered grounds of the palace after days of intense fighting with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, who had occupied Sudan’s seat of power since the war erupted in April 2023.
Through a megaphone in the complex, soldiers announced “The republican palace has now returned to the arms of the homeland” in footage posted on local Sudanese media. ..

March 20, 20259:52 PM ET
Kirsty Coventry reacts after she was announced as the new IOC President at the International Olympic Committee 144th session in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Thursday, March 20, 2025.

Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

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Thanassis Stavrakis/AP

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Zimbabwean Olympic swimmer Kirsty Coventry has had an eventful career, from the pool, to parliament.
The country’s former dictator, Robert Mugabe, called her “a golden girl,” while the man who deposed him in a coup — Emmerson “the Crocodile” Mnangagwa – appointed her his minister of sports.
Now the 41-year-old is taking on a whole new role, after beingvoted in on Thursday as the first female — and first African — president of the International Olympic Committee [IOC]. She’s also the youngest.
“The young girl who first started swimming in Zimbabwe all those years ago could never have dreamt of this moment,” she said after winning a majority 49 of 97 votes, and ..

March 18, 20255:30 PM ET

Rwanda is widely believed to be backing the rebel group that’s taken over much of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the past two months. The DRC has asked groups to sever ties with Rwanda.

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March 18, 20254:38 AM ET

Rwanda is widely believed to be backing the rebel group that’s taken over much of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in the past two months. The DRC has asked groups to sever ties with Rwanda.

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