NPR News -Africa

February 12, 20249:05 AM ET
Enlarge this imageFighters ride in a vehicle moving in a military convoy accompanying the governor of Sudan’s Darfur State on Aug. 30, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

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AFP via Getty Images

Fighters ride in a vehicle moving in a military convoy accompanying the governor of Sudan’s Darfur State on Aug. 30, 2023.

AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations warns that the conflict in Sudan has caused one of the world’s largest human displacements.
It began about 10 months ago, when the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group began fighting each other for political control.
Last week, the U.N. pleaded for more aid to the region. It said the fighting had displaced more than 10 million people — many of them fleeing to neighboring countries. It’s also left 18 million people facing acute food insecurity.
Africa Sudan’s war passed 6 months, with much of the world consumed by other conflictsJames Elder is a spokesperso..

February 12, 20247:17 AM ET

While millions of football fans were focused on the Super Bowl in the U.S., billions of soccer fans were watching the Africa Cup of Nations over the past month.

February 12, 20245:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageA wooden boat was spotted at night in international waters north of Libya by Doctors Without Borders’ rescue team aboard the MV Geo Barents.

Valerio Muscella for NPR

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Valerio Muscella for NPR

A wooden boat was spotted at night in international waters north of Libya by Doctors Without Borders’ rescue team aboard the MV Geo Barents.

Valerio Muscella for NPR

ABOARD A SHIP ON THE MEDITERRANEAN — It’s 2 a.m. and the team on the MV Geo Barents rescue ship has just spotted a boat in distress.
The migrants on board the small wooden fishing vessel are waving the light of their cellphone screens to attract attention after the boat’s engine cut out. They’ve been drifting for hours in the pitch black, hundreds of miles offshore in the Mediterranean Sea.
When the rescuers from Doctors Without Borders reach them, they find 162 people, 29 of them children, so tightly packed into the vessel that many can only..

February 10, 20245:52 PM ET

This week, the United Nations pleaded for more aid to Sudan, after nearly 10 months of war. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is working to draw more attention to the crisis there.

February 10, 20249:52 AM ET
Enlarge this image26-year-old Zainab Sankoh in a shack at the Kingtom dump site in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A self-described “hustler,” Sankoh used to send money home to support her family and her young daughter in a village in the south of the country. Now, she spends almost all her money on kush. “My life is miserable” said Sankoh. “This is not the Zainab I used to be.”

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

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Tommy Trenchard for NPR

26-year-old Zainab Sankoh in a shack at the Kingtom dump site in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A self-described “hustler,” Sankoh used to send money home to support her family and her young daughter in a village in the south of the country. Now, she spends almost all her money on kush. “My life is miserable” said Sankoh. “This is not the Zainab I used to be.”

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

It’s barely 9 a.m. but the cramped alleyways of Kaduna in the western end of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, are already pack..

February 8, 20245:32 PM ET

We hear rare eyewitness testimony from Darfur, one of the worlds unseen and often forgotten conflicts — which has resulted in the largest child displacement crisis in the world.

February 8, 20248:06 AM ET
Enlarge this imageA child receives a measles vaccination at a clinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, where a 2022 outbreak saw some 700 children die from the highly infectious childhood disease.

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

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Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

A child receives a measles vaccination at a clinic in Harare, Zimbabwe, where a 2022 outbreak saw some 700 children die from the highly infectious childhood disease.

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

Measles is on the rise around the world, and even experts who saw it coming say the increase is “staggering.”
The World Health Organization said in December that its European region (which extends into parts of western and central Asia) saw an “alarming” increase in measles cases – from under a thousand in 2022 to more than 30,000 last year.
John Vertefeuille, directorof the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Immunization Division, said in a statement that the numbers are “stagge..

January 22, 20245:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageAnthropologist Carla Handley, center, meets with Wario Bala, right, to present the results of a DNA study she conducted seven years ago in his community in northern Kenya.

Rebecca Siford

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Rebecca Siford

Anthropologist Carla Handley, center, meets with Wario Bala, right, to present the results of a DNA study she conducted seven years ago in his community in northern Kenya.

Rebecca Siford

Anthropologist Carla Handley is sitting cross-legged in a mud-walled house in a Kenyan village called Merti. She’s meeting with a man dressed in a flowing blue robe and a woven cap of red and white. His name is Wario Bala and he’s a member of Kenya’s Borana ethnic group, a nomadic people who raise cattle across Kenya’s northern regions.
Handley introduces herself, then adds that she’s “known locally as Chaltu Jillo Hanti” – the Borana language name bestowed on her by elders in the community. An interpreter transl..

January 21, 20245:48 PM ET

Police in Nigeria have rescued five sisters who were kidnapped in the capital in early January. The fate of the sisters has gripped a country where kidnapping has become an epidemic.

January 20, 20247:41 AM ET
Enlarge this imageIs the series of snowy storms in North America making you a little … um … squirrely? Well imagine if this was the first time you ever saw snow in your life! We reached out to people in the Global South and other parts to share their stories of the first time they saw snow.

Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

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Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Is the series of snowy storms in North America making you a little … um … squirrely? Well imagine if this was the first time you ever saw snow in your life! We reached out to people in the Global South and other parts to share their stories of the first time they saw snow.

Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images

Has the novelty worn off yet? Much of North America is snowed in, and unless you’re a school-age kid angling for a snow day, the white stuff may be losing its charms by this time of year.
But what if you’d never seen snow before? Thinking back to when s..