As Russia’s Africa Corps fights in Mali, witnesses describe atrocities from beheadings to rapes
- The Associated Press
A new Russian military unit that replaced the Wagner mercenary group is carrying out abuses including rapes and beheadings as it teams up with Mali ‘s military to hunt down extremists, dozens of civilians who fled the fighting have told The Associated Press.
Refugees described a new reign of terror by Africa Corps across the vast, lawless stretches of northern Mali. They claim the unit is using the same brutal tactics as Wagner in accounts not previously reported by international media.
Many described horrific stories of indiscriminate killings, villages razed, abductions and sexual violence. Some showed videos of villages burned by the “white men.” Others found bodies of loved ones with liver and kidneys missing.
Refugee firefighters in Mauritania battle bushfires to give back to the community that took them in
- The Associated Press
In this region of West Africa, bushfires are deadly. They can break out in the blink of an eye and last for days. The impoverished, vast territory is shared by Mauritanians and more than 250,000 refugees from neighboring Mali, who rely on the scarce vegetation to feed their livestock.
For the refugee firefighters, battling the blazes is a way of giving back to the community that took them in when they fled violence and instability at home in Mali.
Girls and women fleeing Mali describe sexual violence by Russian forces
- The Associated Press
The girl lay in a makeshift health clinic, her eyes glazed over and her mouth open, flies resting on her lips. Her chest barely moved. Drops of fevered sweat trickled down her forehead as medical workers hurried around her, attaching an IV drip.
It was the last moment to save her life, said Bethsabee Djoman Elidje, the women’s health manager, who led the clinic’s effort as the heart monitor beeped rapidly. The girl had an infection after a sexual assault, Elidje said, and had been in shock, untreated, for days.
Her family said the 14-year-old had been raped by Russian fighters who burst into their tent in Mali two weeks earlier.
Donegal to Dakar: the Irish play about British rule hitting home in post-colonial Senegal
- The Guardian
On a humid evening in Dakar, an Irish jig echoes through the country’s air-conditioned national theatre. The breathy, woody sound of the west African Fula flute brings a different cadence to the traditional tune. Actors dance across the stage, their peasant costumes stitched from African fabrics.
The dialogue is in French, the playwright is Irish and the players are Senegalese.
Set in 1833, Brian Friel’s Translations follows British soldiers sent to rural Donegal to translate Gaelic place names into English - exploring themes of language, identity and colonialism. It's arrival in West Africa comes amid renewed debates over the former colonial power’s sphere of influence, as the region’s nations distance themselves from Paris.
South Sudan reeling from U.S. aid cuts just when it needs help the most
- CBC NEWS
South Sudan holds the third-largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa, and its government depends almost entirely on oil exports to stay afloat. But years of corruption, a five-year civil war, the conflict next door in Sudan — the route for those exports — and repeated weather events that have displaced thousands have left most people in South Sudan dependent on aid.
As of 2024, nine million people, or more than 70 per cent of the population, were dependent on some form of foreign assistance, according to the UN. Now, that dependence is colliding with shrinking resources and a hunger crisis.
‘Children are bound to die’: Corruption, aid cuts and violence fuel a hunger crisis in South Sudan
- The Associated Press
At 14 months, Adut Duor should be walking. Instead, his spine juts through his skin and his legs dangle like sticks from his mother’s lap in a South Sudan hospital. At half the size of a healthy baby his age, he is unable to walk.
Adut’s mother, Ayan, couldn’t breastfeed her fifth child, a struggle shared by the 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women who are malnourished in the east African country.
A recent U.N.-backed report projects that about 2.3 million children under 5 in South Sudan now require treatment for acute malnutrition, with over 700,000 of those in severe condition. The report attributes the rising numbers to renewed conflict in the northern counties and reduced humanitarian assistance.
‘If they had killed me, it would have been better’: Sudanese Rape Victims Speak from Chad's Refugee Camps
- Al Jazeera
Since April 2023, the war between the RSF and Sudanese armed forces has displaced nearly 13 million people — most of them women and girls.
Rights groups have documented widespread sexual violence by the RSF in Sudan but for many who fled across the border into neighbouring Chad the trauma did not end there.
Hoping for safety, they instead faced new horrors inside the refugee camps. Some had already fled sexual violence, to endure the same brutality again at the hands of the Chadian police. Children as young as three have been raped. Other women who had been abused by men they had come to trust in desperate circumstances.
Amid rising violence and dwindling aid, justice is glaringly absent.
Sudan civil war overwhelms border town in neighbor Chad as refugees find little help
- The Associated Press
Since April 2023, nearly a million refugees have crossed into Chad fleeing deadly violence in Sudan.
One town — Adré — has become a fragile frontline for an estimated quarter of a million refugees.
What began as a temporary transit camp has quietly become one of the largest refugee settlements in the region.
The modest town of 40,000 was never meant to be a permanent home. But over time, as people settled, a sprawling sea of shelters and informal businesses emerged. So did problems. Prices have shot up. Competition over water is growing. Criminality is on the rise.
With recent aid cuts, humanitarian support can’t keep up. Authorities and the UN are trying to relocate people to more established camps further inland.
But most Sudanese won’t go.
Sierra Leone declared an emergency over a powerful synthetic drug but women were left behind
- The Associated Press
At a vast landfill in Sierra Leone ‘s capital of Freetown, smoke billows over decades of decomposing waste. Zainab sits there, squinting through the soot. It is her usual spot for buying kush, a cheap synthetic drug ravaging young people in the country.
Her current home, a shack of corrugated iron, contains only a tattered mattress where she brings her clients as a sex worker. She uses her income to sustain her drug addiction.
She is one of many women in Sierra Leone who, as a result of social factors that include living conditions and stigma, have not benefited from intervention efforts after the government a year ago declared a public health emergency over rampant kush abuse. The declaration was meant to enforce criminal, public health and prevention measures to reverse the trend in Sierra Leone, as kush spreads to other parts of West Africa.
On the road in Sierra Leone with Bombali’s ‘bike ladies’
- The Guardian
Streaming through the green fields of Sierra Leone’s Bombali district, Mariama Timbo sits tall on her pink motorbike. The 26-year-old is the sole female motorcyclist in the northern province ferrying people and goods to Makeni, one of Sierra Leone’s fastest-growing cities.
In Sierra Leone, motorcycles are a lifeline. Locally known as okadas, they’re often the only affordable way to reach markets, hospitals and cities. With nearly 60% of the rural population living in poverty, commercial riding provides income to hundreds of thousands – nearly all of them men.
On International Women’s Day, the newly formed Bombali Bike Ladies are being trained under Timbo’s leadership.
“A single bike has changed my story,” she says, grinning.
Sierra Leone debates decriminalizing abortion as women and girls endanger
their lives
- The Associated Press
Sierra Leone could become the second country in West Africa to decriminalize abortion, which health workers say would significantly improve the safety of pregnant women, decrease the number of preventable deaths and bring an end to the current colonial-era law.
Tens of thousands of women and girls attempt to self-terminate their pregnancies every year in Sierra Leone, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio pointedly introduced the Safe Motherhood Bill after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, stripping away women’s constitutional protections for abortion.
But Sierra Leone since then has been torn apart by debate. Following opposition from religious leaders, the bill has been amended and now limits abortion to cases of life-threatening risk, fatal fetal abnormalities, rape or incest.
It is ambitious, but ambition builds the world’: can the Gambia’s bold plan to cut plastic pollution work?
- The Guardian
Travelling through the Gambia, it is hard to avoid the makeshift dumpsites burning along the roadsides, filling the air with toxic fumes. Outside the tourist areas, beaches and waterways are littered with plastic rubbish.
The Gambia has long acknowledged it has a problem with plastic. For nearly a decade, it has attempted to solve it through legislation, including an anti-littering law in 2007 and a ban on plastic bags in 2015.
Now, despite the failure of international plans to cut plastics pollution, the Gambia is redoubling its efforts. In October, the country released a bold roadmap to eliminate plastic over the next decade.
For many, implementation of the plan cannot come quickly enough.