NPR News -Africa

October 22, 20241:58 PM ET
An aerial photograph from 2023 of the Rusayo camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Goma in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese have found refuge around Goma after fleeing fighting further north. Two new reports document a ‘staggering’ increase in rapes over the past year.

Alexis Huguet/AFP via Getty Images

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Alexis Huguet/AFP via Getty Images

When a woman goes in search of firewood and returns empty handed, Laétitia Bukébo starts to worry.
She’s worried about robbery – but also far more.
“Each time a woman returns from the forest without wood, we immediately know she’s been raped,” Bukébo says, speaking through an interpreter. “The men who rape her rob her, meaning that everything she has with her — even the wood she has with her — is taken. Everyone is looking at her with accusing looks, looks tha..

October 20, 20248:05 AM ET

A glimpse of the efforts of the Sudanese diaspora in the US — fighting to keep the attention of the world focused on the catastrophic fallout from the war back home.

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October 18, 20243:00 AM ET
Enlarge this imageBoophis siskoi is one of seven newly described species of frog found in Madagascar.

Mark D. Scherz

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Mark D. Scherz

Boophis siskoi is one of seven newly described species of frog found in Madagascar.

Mark D. Scherz

This week, scientists named seven newly described frog species.
Scientists discover thousands of new species every year — but these have a special claim to fame: They pay homage to Star Trek.
Mark Scherz is one of the authors on the paper about these amphibians and a curator of herpetology (that’s reptiles and amphibians) at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. He says these frogs’ calls sound so much like the “futuristic sounding whistles and beeps” of the Star Trek series that they named each of the seven after a captain.
These frogs live in humid rainforests in northern and eastern Madagascar, often near fast, flowing rivers. Generally, frog calls come in a variety of different ..

People prepare bodies for funeral following a tanker explosion in Majiya town, Nigeria, on Wednesday.

Sani Maikatanga/AP

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Sani Maikatanga/AP

ABUJA, Nigeria — More than 140 people, including children, were killed in Nigeria when an overturned gasoline tanker truck exploded in flames while they tried to scoop up fuel, emergency services said Wednesday. Dozens more were injured.
Deadly tanker accidents are common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, which lacks an efficient railway system to transport cargo. People often salvage fuel with cups and buckets — especially because of soaring fuel prices, which have tripled since the government ended costly gas subsidies last year.
The latest accident occurred at midnight in northern Jigawa state’s Majiya town when the tanker driver lost control on a highway, police spokesperson Lawan Adam said. Residents rushed to the scene before the “massive inferno.”

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October 10, 20244:50 PM ET
Enlarge this imageA husband comforts his wife, injured by shelling, in a corridor at the Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, Republic of the Sudan on September 5.

Luke Dray for NPR

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Luke Dray for NPR

A husband comforts his wife, injured by shelling, in a corridor at the Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, Republic of the Sudan on September 5.

Luke Dray for NPR

Sudan’s war has displaced more than 10 million people and half the country faces starvations. The country’s medical services have collapsed leaving a patchwork of charities, local groups and the Sudanese diaspora to try to provide what health care they can. NPR’s Africa correspondent takes us to one of the few remaining hospitals, near the Sudanese capital

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October 8, 20241:42 AM ET
Tunisian president and candidate for re-election Kais Saied joins his supporters after the announcement of the provisional results for the presidential elections, in the capital Tunis, Tunisia, Sunday.

Anis Mili/AP

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Anis Mili/AP

TUNIS, Tunisia — President Kais Saied won a landslide victory in Tunisia’s election Monday, keeping his grip on power after a first term in which opponents were imprisoned and the country’s institutions overhauled to give him more authority.
The North African country’s Independent High Authority for Elections said Saied received 90.7% of the vote, a day after exit polls showed him with an insurmountable lead in the country known as the birthplace of the Arab Spring more than a decade ago.
“We’re going to cleanse the country of all the corrupt and schemers,” the 66-year-old populist said in a speech at campaign headquarters. He pledged to defend Tunisia against threats foreign and domestic.

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October 6, 20248:10 AM ET

Could this weekend’s election in Tunisia sound the death knell for democracy in its third presidential election since the Arab spring?

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October 5, 20241:32 PM ET
The now-demolished Agbogbloshie Scrapyard in Accra, Ghana, once received about 15,000 tons of electronic waste each year, making it one of the largest e-waste processing sites in Africa.

Muntaka Chasant

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Muntaka Chasant

When he was just 18 years old, Emmanuel Akatire traveled about 500 miles from his home in Zorko, Ghana, to Accra, the nation’s capital, to find the only work he could — sifting through vast piles of discarded electronics to find valuable scrap metal. A week’s worth of painstaking, often dangerous work, earns him the equivalent of about 60 U.S. dollars.
“I started doing scrap work around 2021 — after I lost both my parents — to provide for the rest of my family,” he told Muntaka Chasant, a photojournalist in Ghana. “There’s no electricity in my community, no development there,” he said. So he came to Accra, which has become a major dumping ground fo..

October 4, 20244:25 AM ET

NPR’s Leila Fadel talks to Michaël Ayar of the International Crisis Group, about this Sunday’s presidential election in Tunisia. President Saied is seeking another term.

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October 4, 20244:15 AM ET

A rare snapshot of lives lived under the shadow of war. One of those cities is Omdurman — the twin city of Sudan’s capital Khartoum.

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