In Case You Missed It 8/11/15 — 8/16/15

The most impor­tant in this week’s head­lines out of and con­cern­ing Africa, for those who need help catch­ing up. 

The week bring news about a live-tweet that made news around the world, a trav­el web­site that is expand­ing into mar­kets in Africa, anoth­er men­ace from the Boko Haram and a crack down on slave own­ers in Mauritania. 

Abu­ja Nation­al Hos­pi­tal Twit­ter Page

Sur­geons at Abu­ja Nation­al Hos­pi­tal in Nige­ria pre­pare an 8‑year-old patient for surgery.

1. Niger­ian Hos­pi­tal Live Tweets Surgery

Doc­tors at the Abu­ja Nation­al Hos­pi­tal in Nige­ria live-tweet­ed the open-heart surgery of an eight-year-old girl. The girl had been born with a hole in her heart, which the doc­tors repaired dur­ing the three-hour surgery.

A spokesper­son for the hos­pi­tal, Dr Tayo Haas­trup, told CNN that the rea­son for the live updates was to show that doc­tors in hos­pi­tals in Africa are more than capa­ble of per­form­ing such life-sav­ing pro­ce­dures. There are many peo­ple in Africa who are in need for open-heart and oth­er impor­tant surg­eries, and Haas­trup wants them to know that these oper­a­tions are avail­able to them.

2. Airbnb Eyes Africa

Trav­el web­site Airbnb, which lets trav­el­ers rent out rooms, apart­ments and homes over the inter­net, is plan­ning to expand it’s pres­ence in Africa.

Cur­rent­ly, Airbn­b’s busi­ness is thriv­ing: in the past year, the num­ber of users in Africa has increased by 145%. The com­pa­ny plans to con­tin­ue the trend, par­tic­u­lar­ly in hot-spots such as Kenya and South Africa. They acknowl­edge that it may not be easy due to the diver­si­ty of the African con­ti­nent and the dif­fer­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions from coun­try to coun­try. How­ev­er, they see great oppor­tu­ni­ty in the con­ti­nent, not just for their busi­ness but for trav­el­ers and local economies as well.

3. 47 Killed in Niger­ian Explosion

47 peo­ple were killed and at least 60 oth­ers injured dur­ing an explo­sion at a mar­ket in Sabon Gari, Nige­ria. The explo­sion is believed to have been a ter­ror­ist attack, and Boko Haram is sus­pect­ed to be respon­si­ble, though so far nei­ther they or any­one else has come for­ward. Boko Haram has recent­ly been active in the area, car­ry­ing out ambush­es in and around Sabon Gari and oth­er near­by towns and cities.

4. Mau­ri­ta­nia Crack Down on Slavery

Although Mau­ri­ta­nia abol­ished slav­ery in 1981, it remains in prac­tice. This week, Mau­ri­ta­nia passed a new law that expands what the coun­try legal­ly con­sid­ers to be slav­ery and dou­bles the prison term for peo­ple found guilty of own­ing slaves. Under the expand­ed def­i­n­i­tion, there are 10 new crimes that are con­sid­ered to be slav­ery, includ­ing forced mar­riage. The new law also pro­vides legal help and advice for vic­tims, allow­ing them to seek per­se­cu­tion of their cap­tors and com­pen­sa­tion for their mis­treat­ment. The law will be dif­fi­cult to enforce, but author­i­ties and activists hope that it encour­ages vic­tims to come for­ward and seek help.