NPR News -Africa

November 15, 20241:20 PM ET
Maggie Shaarawi, vice president of Animals Lebanon, tries to calm Sara the lion cub in Beirut before the animal is transferred out of the country, on Thursday.

Ali Khara for NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Ali Khara for NPR

BEIRUT — It’s hours before dawn and the marina in Beirut’s Dbayeh district is deserted apart from a small group of men lifting a metal cage labeled “live lion” onto a yacht. The passenger is a cub rescued by a Lebanese animal welfare organization from its life as a TikTok video prop.
The group from Animals Lebanon has driven to the waterfront in a small convoy of vehicles, joined by NPR, spacedwidely apartto avoid being seen as a threat by Israeli drones overhead. As the sun began to rise, columns of smoke from an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs hung over the city.

Sponsor Message

The boat trip to Cyprus on Thursday was the first part of a journey to deliver the animal to a wildlife refuge in South Afri..

November 15, 202410:27 AM ET
A technician at a Chinese pharmaceutical company works on breeding the plant sweet wormwood, used in creating artemisinin, the go-to medicine for killing the malaria parasite.

Huang Xiaobang/Xinhua via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Huang Xiaobang/Xinhua via Getty Images

Lately, Dr. Ruth Namazzi and her colleagues have been stopping one another in their hospital ward with worried looks.
Between treating patients, she says, they voice their concerns: “‘Malaria’s very stubborn,'” she says they tell her. “‘It’s not responding to treatment.'”
Namazzi is a pediatrician at MulagoHospital in Uganda, where — several times a day — she admits a child with severe malaria.
“These are very critically ill children,” she says, explaining that children are at greater risk of severe malaria than adults because they have not yet gained immunity. Severe malaria in a child can involve a high fever, convulsions, anemia, kidney damage and respiratory distres..

November 15, 20248:44 AM ET
Mahamat Djouma is happy when he gets a chance to play soccer. But most of the time this teenage refugee he is busy taking care of his five-year-old twin brothers and trying to earn money for food.

Claire Harbage/NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

When I meet him, 14-year-old Mahamat Djouma is doing what many teenagers do in their spare time: dribbling a soccer ball with his foot.
But when he’s done, tired and hungry, he doesn’t have anyone to welcome him home with a warm plate of food. Instead, he has a world of responsibilities: He’s the sole caregiver for his 5-year-old twin brothers, Hassan and Hissein, who are waiting for him in their mud brick home in a refugee camp in eastern Chad.
Mahamat and his brothers are refugees from Sudan — among the 10 million who’ve been displaced by the violence of the civil war that broke out in April 2023. The U.N. calls it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Both aid experts and the r..

November 15, 20243:23 AM ET
Rescue workers, left, remove a body from a reformed mineshaft where illegal miners are inside in Stilfontein, South Africa on Thursday.

Jerome Delay/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Jerome Delay/AP

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s government says it won’t help a group of illegal miners inside a closed mine in the country’s North West province who have been denied access to basic supplies as part of an official strategy against illegal mining.
The miners in the mineshaft in Stilfontein are believed to be suffering from a lack of food, water and other basic necessities after police closed off the entrances used to transport their supplies underground.
Goats and Soda Diamond diggers in South Africa’s deserted mines break the law — and risk their livesIt is part of the police’s Vala Umgodi, or Close the Hole, operation, which includes cutting off miners’ supplies to force them to return to the surface and be arrested.
Police had earlier indicat..

November 12, 20247:57 AM ET
Mahamat Djouma, 14, fled the war in Sudan without parents; his mother died in 2023 and his father subsequently disappeared. He came with 5-year-old twin brothers, whom he now cares for. Entesar, a 21-year-old student, also fled to escape the violence — and was raped by three soldiers. She asked to be identified by her middle name since she has not yet told close family members about the attack.

Claire Harbage/NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Claire Harbage/NPR

Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault.
When I meet him, 14-year-old Mahamat Djouma is doing what many teenagers do in their spare time: dribbling a soccer ball with his foot.
But when he’s done, tired and hungry, he doesn’t have anyone to welcome him home with a warm plate of food. Instead, he has a world of responsibilities: He’s the sole caregiver for his 5-year-old twin brothers, Hassan and Hissein, who are waiting for him in their mud brick home in a refugee c..

November 10, 20248:33 AM ET

How a unique wilderness in the Democratic Republic of Congo is being revived and preserved for future generations.

Sponsor Message

November 9, 20247:58 AM ET

We look at what will a second Trump term will mean for Africa – a continent the President elect has never visited and has openly denigrated.

Sponsor Message

November 3, 20247:48 AM ET

The Marburg virus is notable for its very high fatality rate. But in the current Marburg outbreak, in Rwanda, the fatality rate is far lower than normal.

Sponsor Message

November 1, 20244:40 PM ET
Marburg can be an exceptionally deadly virus. An outbreak in Rwanda is being handled with “unprecedented” success, say public health experts. In this photo from a 2014 Marburg outbreak in Kenya, a medical worker in protective gear carries a meal to a man quarantined in an isolation tent after coming into contact with a virus carrier.

Ben Curtis/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Ben Curtis/AP

Marburg virus is notorious for its killing ability. In past outbreaks, as many as 9 out of 10 patients have died from the disease. And there are no approved vaccines or medications.
That was the grim situation in Rwanda just over a month ago, when officials made the announcement that nobody wants to make: The country was in the midst of its first Marburg outbreak.
Now those same Rwandan officials have better news to share. Remarkably better.
“We are at a case fatality rate of 22.7% — probably among the lowest ever recorded [for a Marburg outbreak],&rd..

November 1, 202412:42 PM ET
A police officer looks through damage caused by a shell at the Omdurman Maternity Hospital in Omdurman, Sudan, on Sept. 7.

Luke Dray for NPR

hide caption

toggle caption

Luke Dray for NPR

OMDURMAN, Sudan — A drive from the sandy northern outskirts through Sudan’s once-vibrant city of Omdurman passes by shoots of normal life reemerging from the worst moments of war.
AfricaSudan’s cities transform into front lines after more than a year of warSudan’s cities transform into front lines after more than a year of warListen

·
4:59

4:59

Toggle more options

DownloadEmbed

Embed

Transcript
In bustling pockets of the city, which lies just across the Nile River from the capital of Khartoum, a stream of cars, trucks and carts hauled by d..