Global Pulse

标签： Africa

非洲

  • Mother of Cape Verde’s goalkeeper: ‘I’m going to see my son play in the World Cup’

    Mother of Cape Verde’s goalkeeper: ‘I’m going to see my son play in the World Cup’

    For years, Ana Candia Evora has watched her son Vozinha’s career from thousands of miles away, cheering on Cape Verde’s star goalkeeper from her home without ever getting the chance to see him compete in person on an international stage. That long wait is finally over, as the mother of the Cape Verde national team shot-stopper has confirmed she will travel to the United States to watch her son compete in the upcoming World Cup, turning a lifelong dream into a reality.

    Vozinha, one of the most recognizable and accomplished players on Cape Verde’s national squad, has built a reputation as a formidable presence between the goalposts over his decade-long professional career. For Evora, following her son’s journey has meant celebrating clean sheets and tournament runs from afar, limited to watching matches on television and celebrating with family after big wins. The opportunity to travel to the World Cup in the U.S. is not just a trip to see a match — it is the culmination of years of supporting her son through the ups and downs of professional sports, from his early days playing youth football in Cape Verde to his rise as the national team’s starting goalkeeper.

    Football fans across Cape Verde have rallied around Evora’s upcoming trip, with many sharing messages of excitement on social media. The moment when Evora walks into the stadium to watch her son line up for a World Cup match is already being framed as one of the most heartwarming human interest stories of this year’s tournament, a reminder of the family sacrifice and support that underpins every elite athlete’s journey to the world’s biggest sporting stage.

  • South Africa builds another site to ease overcrowding and speed up deportation of Malawian nationals

    South Africa builds another site to ease overcrowding and speed up deportation of Malawian nationals

    JOHANNESBURG – Escalating tensions over undocumented migration in South Africa have pushed authorities to launch construction of a second temporary deportation center, a response to dangerous overcrowding at an existing processing facility where thousands of Malawian nationals have waited for weeks to return home.

    The development comes months after widespread anti-illegal immigration protests across Johannesburg and other major South African cities, where demonstrators demonstrated against the presence of foreign nationals, stoking deep friction between local communities and migrants. Thousands of Malawian citizens have since fled their places of residence in South Africa, citing fears of anti-migrant violence, and converged on the first deportation camp located in Durban’s Sherwood neighborhood. As of this week, an estimated 10,000 people have been camped at the site for more than seven days, with new arrivals swelling the population daily.

    Frustrations over lengthy processing delays boiled over this week, when protesting migrants at the Sherwood site clashed with police on Wednesday. Migrants threw rocks, sticks and logs at officers, who responded by firing rubber bullets and deploying stun grenades to disperse the crowd. The overcrowded conditions have already created a humanitarian emergency: according to South African officials, at least 12 women have given birth at the site since migrants began gathering there, with women and young children forced to share cramped, unsanitary space alongside thousands of men.

    Durban Mayor Cyril Xaba confirmed Thursday that the new facility is designed to act as an overflow camp to alleviate pressure on the overstretched Sherwood site. The center will operate strictly as a 14-day temporary measure, Xaba emphasized, and will not be converted into a permanent refugee or migrant settlement.

    The repatriation process has been slowed by multiple administrative and logistical hurdles. All undocumented Malawians must first appear in South African courts to confirm their irregular status before deportation can proceed. Additionally, the Malawian government has only provided a limited number of buses to transport returnees, and has issued a public appeal for donations to cover the cost of additional transport. As of Thursday, just 10 buses carrying deportees have departed Durban for Malawi since processing began.

    South Africa’s Home Affairs spokesperson Cyril Mncwabe confirmed that all migrants gathered at the camp are undocumented and residing in the country illegally. The 60 immigration officials assigned to process the crowd will need several more weeks to complete screenings for all people at the site, Mncwabe added. Police officers are currently conducting background checks to flag any migrants with pending criminal cases before deportation.

    In an update Thursday, the Malawian government reported that 560 of its citizens returned home Wednesday aboard eight buses, with another 10 buses scheduled to carry 700 additional returnees Thursday. Malawi is the third African nation in recent weeks to organize large-scale repatriation of its citizens from South Africa, amid rising anti-migrant sentiment across the country. Ghana previously arranged a flight to repatriate roughly 300 of its undocumented citizens, and all deportees are banned from re-entering South Africa for a period of five years following their return.

    Associated Press video journalist Alfonso Nqunjana contributed on-site reporting from Durban, South Africa.

  • Zimbabwe vote to extend president’s term underscores the staying power of Africa’s aging leaders

    Zimbabwe vote to extend president’s term underscores the staying power of Africa’s aging leaders

    In a move that spotlights a growing, widely debated trend across the African continent, Zimbabwe’s National Assembly has passed sweeping constitutional amendments that will defer national presidential elections by two years and extend the current tenure of 83-year-old President Emmerson Mnangagwa from five years to seven. The vote, which passed by an overwhelming margin, pushes the 2028 scheduled election to 2030, adding two extra years to Mnangagwa’s time in office. The legislation also includes a controversial provision to shift presidential selection from a direct popular vote to a vote by sitting lawmakers, and it now moves to the Senate for final approval, where a majority in favor is widely expected.

    This development is far from an isolated incident. It underscores the enduring grip of aging political leadership across Africa, a region that holds the distinction of being the world’s youngest continent by population but counts seven of the globe’s 10 oldest national leaders among its ranks. Latest data from the United Nations confirms that Africa’s median population age is just 20, with more than 60% of all residents under the age of 30. Yet a 2025 Pew Research Center analysis finds that seven of the 16 world leaders older than 80-year-old former U.S. President Donald Trump are based on the African continent.

    Mnangagwa first took power in 2017, following a military-backed ouster of former long-time ruler Robert Mugabe, who left office at 93 as the world’s oldest serving head of state at the time. Today, he is part of a cohort of elderly African leaders who have held power for decades, many of whom have altered constitutional rules to extend their tenures. At 93, Cameroon’s Paul Biya is the oldest sitting head of state in the world, having held office since 1982 – a full year after Ronald Reagan first became U.S. president, with seven U.S. presidents having held office since Biya took power. Roughly 70% of Cameroon’s population is under the age of 35. In neighboring Equatorial Guinea, 84-year-old Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has ruled for 47 years as Africa’s longest-serving leader, and has already positioned his son to succeed him as vice president. Ivory Coast’s 84-year-old Alassane Ouattara was sworn in for a fourth term in December 2025, following an election marked by low voter turnout and widespread civil unrest. Malawi voted 85-year-old Peter Mutharika, who previously held office from 2014 to 2020, back into the presidency in 2024. In Uganda, 81-year-old Yoweri Museveni – a long-time U.S. security ally who has faced repeated accusations of authoritarianism from critics – was sworn in for a seventh consecutive term in May 2025, pushing his total rule to 40 years. Like Mnangagwa, all of these leaders have amended or eliminated constitutional term limits to remain in power.

    Blessing Vava, director of the Johannesburg-based Southern Africa Coalition for Democracy and Accountability and a researcher focused on democratic governance, notes that Zimbabwe’s constitutional changes are just one example of a continental pattern. “The population in Africa is getting younger, but the average age of presidents is rising, and tenures are getting longer,” Vava explained. “Zimbabwe is not an exception. It’s the continental norm. Zimbabwe is just one data point in a much broader story of constitutional erosion for political survival.” Vava added that the disconnect between the continent’s young population and aging ruling elite creates a dangerous imbalance: “So you get 25-year-olds making up the majority of a country’s population, but 75-year-olds decide the candidate or rule. Youth are mobilized for votes and not for power.”

    The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a U.S.-based think tank focused on the region, highlights the stark divides that define African leadership tenure today. Out of the continent’s 54 sovereign nations, roughly 20 actively enforce constitutional term limits, the organization reports. Others, however, have abolished term limits entirely, found loopholes to bypass them, or operate under military regimes that have suspended constitutional rule entirely, clearing the way for long-serving leaders to entrench their power.

    Even as the aging elite retains control in many nations, the past few years have seen the emergence of a new cohort of younger leaders across parts of the continent. In Senegal’s 2024 election, 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye won the presidency, becoming one of the youngest elected leaders in African history. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, 49, has held office since 2018. In other cases, younger leaders have risen to power via military takeovers: 42-year-old Mahamat Idriss Deby seized control of Chad in 2021 after his father, former long-time ruler Idriss Deby, was killed while fighting rebel forces, and won a formal presidential election in 2024. In Burkina Faso, 38-year-old army captain Ibrahim Traoré took power in a 2022 coup, making him the youngest sitting leader on the continent. Military coups have also brought younger leaders to power in Mali and Guinea in recent years.

    Even with these emerging shifts, analysts maintain that the vast majority of African political systems remain dominated by long-ruling, aging elites, leaving young, democratically inclined leaders with very limited pathways to seize power through electoral processes.

  • Ebola cases increase almost 40% in a week as death toll passes 200

    Ebola cases increase almost 40% in a week as death toll passes 200

    DAKAR, SENEGAL – Just one month after the Ebola outbreak was formally detected across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern region and neighboring Uganda, the death toll has surpassed 200, marking it the most severe early-stage Ebola outbreak on record, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) confirmed in a Thursday briefing.

    Dr. Wessam Mankoula, a medical epidemiologist with Africa CDC, told reporters that the outbreak has already recorded 894 confirmed cases as of this week—three times the caseload seen at the same 30-day mark during Uganda’s 2000 Ebola outbreak, which registered 224 cases at the corresponding point. The higher current count is partially explained by delayed detection: health authorities only confirmed the outbreak’s existence on May 15, weeks after community transmission was first suspected. Since last week alone, confirmed cases have jumped 38%, and the virus has already spread to 32 separate health zones across eastern Congo.

    What makes this outbreak particularly dangerous is its strain: it is caused by the rare Bundibugyo Ebola virus, for which no approved vaccines or specific antiviral treatments exist. Early testing did not screen for this less common variant, as most of Congo’s 16 previous Ebola outbreaks were linked to the Zaire strain, a more widespread variant for which effective vaccines are already available. As of this week, 74 infected patients across the affected region have recovered, and researchers are currently advancing development of experimental treatments including targeted monoclonal antibodies for Bundibugyo.

    Over 90% of all confirmed cases are concentrated in Congo’s eastern Ituri Province, with additional cases detected in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces. The virus has already crossed the international border into Uganda, where 19 confirmed cases and two deaths have been documented to date.

    Public health officials are facing steep barriers to bringing the outbreak under control, starting with critical gaps in contact tracing. Africa CDC estimates that for the 894 confirmed cases, between 17,000 and 35,000 close contacts should be monitored for symptoms. As of Thursday, only roughly 4,000 contacts—less than 15% of the projected total—have been located and are under active evaluation.

    “We are still far from controlling the situation of this outbreak,” Mankoula said, noting that long-running insecurity and geographic isolation in Ituri have hobbled tracing efforts. Decades of armed conflict in the province have displaced nearly one million people, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, leading to constant population movement as communities flee violence. Ituri’s dense forests, underdeveloped road infrastructure, and scattered remote villages mean accessing affected communities can take multiple days of travel. Tracing efforts are further complicated by the large population of artisanal miners working in the region’s mineral-rich interior, who move frequently between isolated mining sites with little official oversight.

    Compounding these challenges are critical gaps in funding and personnel. Of the more than $900 million in international pledges committed to the outbreak response, only $90 million has actually been disbursed to frontline response teams, Mankoula said. Africa CDC estimates it requires 540 trained response personnel to fully address the crisis, and currently has only 84 staff deployed to the affected region.

    Mankoula added that the organization is working urgently to accelerate the release of committed funds, saying: “We’re keeping our fingers crossed those new pledges will be fast tracked, and we’ll be following up with different member states and different partners about their commitment to turn those pledges into actual money released to their affected countries or partners.”

  • ‘My brother hid in a rice sack’: The refugee stars playing at the World Cup

    ‘My brother hid in a rice sack’: The refugee stars playing at the World Cup

    As the 2026 World Cup unfolds across North America, three standout players taking the pitch for Australia, Germany, and Canada share a powerful, little-told common bond: all descend from African refugee families who fled devastating conflict to build new lives abroad. For these athletes, their presence on football’s biggest global stage is more than a personal achievement — it is a platform to amplify the stories of displaced people everywhere, even as growing policy shifts around the world roll back access to refugee resettlement.

    For Germany defender Antonio Rüdiger, a 33-year-old Real Madrid stalwart and two-time Champions League winner, the road to the World Cup began long before he was born. His parents fled Sierra Leone’s brutal 11-year civil war in the 1990s, making a treacherous 340-kilometer trek from their home district of Kono to the capital Freetown in search of safety. Rüdiger’s uncle took extraordinary measures to protect his young nieces and nephews from rebel factions that kidnapped thousands of children to serve as child soldiers: he hid the group inside a sack of rice, and on multiple occasions, the family pretended to be dead to avoid gunfire or abduction. After securing refugee status in Germany, Rüdiger was born in Berlin, growing up in a shared government refugee center. That early experience shaped the work ethic that carried him to the top of global football. “Nothing is given in life. You have to work for things, you have to sacrifice a lot to get where you want to go,” he told BBC Sport Africa.

    Rüdiger is far from alone among World Cup participants in carrying a refugee heritage. Canadian captain and Bayern Munich star Alphonso Davies spent his earliest years in a Ghanaian refugee camp after his family fled civil war in Liberia, a conflict that ravaged the West African nation alongside Sierra Leone in the 1990s and early 2000s. Today, Davies is part of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) symbolic “Game Changing Team,” a group of elite refugee-background athletes assembled to demonstrate what displaced young people can achieve when given safety, opportunity, and a warm welcome. “Canada gave me the opportunity to be who I am and to be what I want to be in life,” Davies told UNHCR, recalling his first days in the country: going to school for the first time, playing the sport he loves, and building new friendships.

    The Australian men’s national squad, the Socceroos, fields three forwards with African refugee roots: 20-year-old Nestory Irankunda of Watford, Mohamed Toure of Norwich City, and Awer Mabil of Spain’s Castellón. All three were either born in African refugee camps or grew up in them before resettling in Australia, and Irankunda recently made history as the Socceroos’ youngest-ever World Cup goalscorer after netting in a 2-0 group stage win over Turkey. Australia’s professional footballers association has leaned into the squad’s extraordinary multicultural identity, releasing a video featuring every player naming their birthplace or family heritage to highlight the tangible benefits of immigration.

    Rüdiger, Davies, Irankunda, and dozens of other participating players have lent their names to the UNHCR campaign, alongside other high-profile athletes such as Rüdiger’s Real Madrid teammate Eduardo Camavinga (whose family fled Angola for France), former Chelsea winger Victor Moses (whose parents resettled in Nigeria from the UK), former Bosnia goalkeeper Asmir Begovic (who found refuge in Germany as a child escaping Balkan conflict), and Iraqi striker Ali Al-Hamadi (whose family fled after his father was imprisoned under Saddam Hussein’s regime).

    UN High Commissioner for Refugees Barham Salih noted that children make up a disproportionate share of the world’s displaced population, with an estimated 48.8 million displaced children globally. Many face family separation, trauma, and abuse while fleeing war, violence, and persecution.

    Despite the widespread celebration of these players’ success at the tournament, Rüdiger and other campaign participants warn that global public and political attitudes toward refugees have shifted dramatically in recent years, with growing stigma targeting displaced people. “The narrative goes a bit more blaming the refugees,” Rüdiger said, arguing that public empathy for those escaping conflict has eroded. “Obviously, you have always the good and the bad. This is life, we all are not perfect. But the thing is, if one person does bad, are all bad? You cannot smear it on everyone, because that’s not fair. Because you have people who come here, they really want to change their life, they’re doing good, they’re trying to learn. They learn the language, they go to school, they achieve something in life.”

    That shifting political landscape is particularly visible in the United States, one of the 2026 World Cup’s three co-hosts. Immediately after his inauguration in January 2025, Republican President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Programme (USRAP), the country’s formal resettlement system that has admitted more than 3.7 million refugees since its launch in 1980, including more than 500,000 from African nations. Later that year, the Trump administration capped annual refugee admissions at just 7,500 for the current fiscal year — a historic low — and rearranged priority rules to favor white South African refugees, based on Trump’s widely discredited claims of a “genocide” against Afrikaners.

    State Department data shows that in the first seven months of the fiscal year (October to April), just 6,069 refugees were admitted to the U.S., and all but three of those resettled people came from South Africa. That marks a stark reversal from the final full year of former Democratic President Joe Biden’s term, when the U.S. admitted 100,034 refugees total, 34,017 of whom came from 32 different African nations. The Democratic Republic of the Congo topped that list with 19,923 resettled refugees, followed by Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan.

    The Trump administration has defended the cuts, arguing they are “justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest,” but humanitarian organizations have roundly condemned the policy. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of resettlement non-profit Global Refuge, told BBC Sport Africa that the policy is a devastating betrayal of the values the World Cup represents. “Sadly, right now, the most vulnerable in Africa and across the world have been shut out entirely,” she said. “What we will see [at the World Cup] is the US spending this summer celebrating, as they should, what humans can achieve when they’re given a chance. US policymakers have spent the past year making sure fewer people get that chance, and it is a stark and deeply troubling contradiction.”

    O’Mara Vignarajah drew a contrast to 1994, the last time the U.S. hosted the World Cup, when the country resettled more than 100,000 refugees. “We knew back then that hosting the world and welcoming the world were not separate ideas,” she said. “But we have seem to have forgotten that.”

    While U.S. policy has grown dramatically more restrictive, Canada — another World Cup co-host — has seen its annual refugee acceptance numbers rise over the past decade, even as it has shifted toward stricter immigration rules in recent years. Data from Canada’s Refugee Protection Division shows that 9,972 refugee claims were approved in 2016, a figure that grew to 50,067 by 2025. Thirty-eight African nations are represented among recent approved claims, with Nigeria recording the highest number.

    For stars like Rüdiger and Davies, their performances on the World Cup pitch are meant to serve as a reminder of what welcome can achieve: they are playing for the countries that gave their families a second chance at life, and in doing so, they hope to reignite global empathy for refugees around the world.

  • Ivory Coast’s Wahi denied entry to Canada

    Ivory Coast’s Wahi denied entry to Canada

    The 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America has been rocked by fresh off-field controversy, as Ivorian international forward Elye Wahi has been barred from entering Canada for his nation’s critical Group Stage match against Germany this Saturday. The 23-year-old Nice attacker, who started in the Elephants’ opening tournament win over Ecuador, is currently entangled in a French domestic investigation into alleged spot-fixing in Ligue 1, marking the second time a World Cup participant has been denied Canadian entry over ongoing legal issues in this edition of the tournament.

    Reports first emerged last month that Wahi was taken into police custody ahead of the World Cup, with accusations that he intentionally received a yellow card during a May 2025 Ligue 1 fixture between Nice and Metz. Spot-fixing, a form of match manipulation that targets specific in-game events rather than the final result, allows corrupt actors to profit from manipulated betting markets; in this case, the fifth yellow card of Wahi’s 2025-26 season triggered an automatic suspension for the first leg of Nice’s relegation play-off against Saint-Étienne on 26 May. The first leg ended in a goalless draw, with Wahi returning for the second leg to score twice in a 4-1 victory that secured Nice’s spot in France’s top flight for the following season.

    French judicial authorities have confirmed the broad outlines of the investigation without explicitly naming Wahi. A spokesperson for the Marseille Public Prosecutor’s Office told The Athletic that a 23-year-old Ligue 1 player was arrested as part of a probe into organized fraud, organized sports corruption, criminal proceeds handling, and money laundering. Following questioning in police custody, the player was released, with investigations still ongoing as of the tournament’s opening week.

    The French Football League (LFP) later confirmed this week that it had been alerted to “an unusually high volume of bets placed on a warning [yellow card] involving the player Elye Wahi.” In an official statement, the governing body of French professional football noted that it would refrain from further public comment amid the active investigation and ongoing confidentiality requirements ordered by law enforcement, and that no disciplinary proceedings have been opened to date. The LFP added, however, that it reserves the right to take action as the probe progresses, and reaffirmed its commitment to protecting the integrity of French club competitions: “it will act with the utmost firmness against any behaviour that could compromise it.”

    The Ivorian Football Federation (FIF), which confirmed Wahi’s entry denial in an official statement released June 17, said it has not received formal notification of any judicial or administrative proceedings against the player. “To date, the FIF has not been officially notified of any judicial or administrative proceedings involving him,” the statement read. “In this particularly delicate period, the FIF extends all its support to the player and reaffirms its confidence in him. Elye Wahi remains an important element of the Ivory Coast national team.”

    The federation confirmed that Wahi will not travel with the squad to Toronto for the Germany fixture, after failing to secure the required entry authorization from Canadian authorities. Wahi will remain in the United States until the Elephants conclude their Group Stage matches, which include a subsequent fixture against Curacao in Philadelphia next Thursday. BBC Sport has reached out to both Wahi’s representatives and FIFA for additional comment on the matter, with no formal response released as of publication.

    Wahi’s entry denial comes just days after another high-profile World Cup participant was barred from entering Canada: Ghana star Thomas Partey, the former Arsenal midfielder, was refused a visa after he failed to disclose ongoing criminal proceedings in the UK, where he faces seven charges of rape and one count of sexual assault related to allegations from four separate women between 2020 and 2022. Partey has pleaded not guilty to all charges and is scheduled to stand trial in 2027. A last-ditch appeal by the Ghanaian government for a special temporary entry waiver for the Panama match was rejected by Canada’s federal court in Ottawa, leaving Partey unable to participate in Ghana’s opening tournament win.

  • Gunmen attack airport in Niger’s capital as explosions, gunfire heard

    Gunmen attack airport in Niger’s capital as explosions, gunfire heard

    In the early hours of Thursday, heavily armed gunmen launched an assault on Diori Hamani International Airport, the primary air gateway for Niger’s capital city of Niamey, triggering intense exchanges of gunfire and powerful explosions that shook the surrounding area, according to on-the-ground witnesses and a senior national security official.

    The anonymous security official, who is not permitted to speak publicly about ongoing operational matters, confirmed that the attackers successfully breached the airport’s outer security perimeter before forces were rapidly deployed to counter the assault. At this early stage of investigations, the identity and affiliation of the assailants remain unconfirmed, with no immediate claims of responsibility emerging from any militant group.

    Following the conclusion of the initial clash, an Associated Press reporter on site observed that Nigerian soldiers had established extensive checkpoints on all major access roads leading to the airport, conducting thorough searches of every passing vehicle and pedestrian as part of post-attack security sweeps.

    Thursday’s incident marks the second high-profile attack targeting the Niamey airport facility in 2024. Back in January, the Islamic State group claimed credit for a near-identical strike that specifically targeted Niger’s unmanned aerial drone assets stationed at the airport. In the wake of that earlier assault, military authorities announced they had significantly strengthened security protocols and patrols across the airport complex.

    The airport itself holds far more than civilian aviation significance: it houses a major Nigerien Air Force base, and serves as the operational headquarters for the joint military command of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), the regional bloc formed by Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. All three nations are currently governed by military juntas that took power via coups in recent years, and all three have grappled with a years-long surge in deadly jihadi insurgent violence that has destabilized large swathes of the Sahel region.

    Security analysts warn that despite stepped up defensive measures, militant groups continue to pose severe, persistent threats to high-profile targets across Niger and the broader Sahel. Beverly Ochieng, a senior security analyst at global risk consulting firm Control Risks, noted that the airport’s central role as the AES headquarters makes it an especially attractive symbolic target for extremist groups seeking to undermine the regional alliance’s security operations.

    “The symbolism of the airport as headquarters for AES will drive intent by militants to target it,” Ochieng explained.

    The ongoing instability comes amid a broader shift in regional geopolitics, as the three junta-led Sahel nations have cut military cooperation with Western powers including France and the United States, and moved closer to other global powers including Russia, while still struggling to contain the expanding jihadi insurgency that has killed thousands and displaced millions across the region since 2012.

  • Lawyer of Uganda opposition figure Besigye charged with treason-related offence

    Lawyer of Uganda opposition figure Besigye charged with treason-related offence

    A high-profile political crackdown in Uganda has drawn sharp international condemnation after a prominent opposition-aligned lawyer and former mayor was arrested from his private residence and charged with a treason-related offense linked to his representation of jailed dissident leader Kizza Besigye.

    Erias Lukwago, who currently serves as lead legal counsel for Besigye — a veteran opposition figure standing trial on multiple treason counts — made his first public appearance at a magistrate’s court in Kampala this week. Local journalists covering the hearing reported that Lukwago appeared visibly physically weakened, just days after security forces seized him from his home early Monday.

    During the court proceeding, Lukwaga formally entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of failure to report alleged treasonous activity. The magistrate ordered him remanded in state custody until next week, when the next phase of his case will convene.

    The arrest immediately sparked backlash over its open ties to Uganda’s most senior military officer: Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the country’s Chief of Defence Forces and son of long-ruling President Yoweri Museveni. The general publicly took credit for the operation on his social media channels, even posting graphic content that stoked further outrage.

    Among the posts shared by Kainerugaba was a photo appearing to show a blindfolded Lukwago held in an undisclosed location. In a separate, unapologetic message, the general wrote, “I’m proud of all the hurt and pain I will inflict on the criminal Lukwago!”

    Opposition leader Bobi Wine, who fled Uganda in 2021 after contesting the presidential election over threats to his life, has alleged the arrest was ordered directly by Kainerugaba to stop Lukwago from formally serving the general with a court summons. In a post to X calling for collective action, Wine wrote: “I call upon all of us to reject and resist this brazen impunity.”

    Before Lukwago’s court appearance, his family had filed a legal petition seeking a court order to force security forces to disclose his location and release him. The family’s legal team accused authorities of abducting Lukwago, and noted that Kainerugaba had already publicly claimed responsibility for the seizure and the mistreatment his client had faced.

    This incident is far from the first time Kainerugaba has drawn controversy for incendiary social media posts. The general has a documented history of inflammatory remarks, including past boasts of abducting and torturing opposition political figures, with many of his controversial posts eventually taken down after public outcry.

    Lukwago’s legal work centers on Besigye, Uganda’s most high-profile opposition dissident who was abducted from neighboring Kenya in late 2024 and forcibly returned to Uganda to face treason charges. Besigye’s political history with Museveni stretches back decades: he once served as Museveni’s personal physician before splitting from the ruling establishment in 1999, and has challenged Museveni for the presidency in multiple elections, facing repeated detentions over the years.

  • The pressure to have baby boys can harm African mothers’ health

    The pressure to have baby boys can harm African mothers’ health

    In the bustling open-air bars of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Prosper Mbumba and his wife Régine Ntumba sit together reflecting on a years-long journey shaped by centuries-old cultural tradition. When the pair married, they planned for just two children — but unyielding custom demanded one of those children be a son. Four daughters later, they continued trying, only breathing a sigh of relief when their first son finally entered the world. For Mbumba, a human rights activist from the Luba ethnic group, raising only daughters once carried the weight of social shame. “In my tribe, in my culture, that was like an insult,” he explained. “I should do my best to get more children, expecting to have a boy.” Today, after welcoming two sons, Mbumba says he finally feels a quiet sense of completion.

    This personal story is far from unique across sub-Saharan Africa, a region grappling with the world’s highest rate of maternal mortality. Home to the planet’s fastest growing population, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 70% of all global maternal deaths, with roughly 180,000 preventable pregnancy-related deaths recorded across the continent each year, according to World Health Organization data. While global maternal mortality rates have declined gradually over recent decades, multiple interconnected forces keep the death toll stubbornly high in this region — from underfunded healthcare systems and widespread shortages of skilled medical personnel, to limited access to contraception, and deep-seated cultural pressure that forces women into repeated, dangerous pregnancies in pursuit of male heirs.

    Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, entrenched social norms frame sons as the only acceptable heirs to preserve clan lineage and family legacy, since daughters typically join their husband’s clan after marriage. This belief is so deeply woven into the social fabric that many women themselves internalize it, accepting repeated risky pregnancies as an unavoidable part of married life. Congo exemplifies this crisis: UN data puts the country’s total fertility rate at 5.9 children per woman, one of the highest in the world, driven both by cultural preference for large families, early marriage, and systemic barriers to contraception access.

    Patrick Djemo, a medical doctor who leads MSI Reproductive Choices in Congo, says the pressure to produce sons disproportionately harms women. “A lot of pressure is exerted on couples, and, as you know, mostly it is the woman who is blamed for giving birth to a girl,” Djemo explained. He added that men often use their traditional decision-making power to block their partners from accessing contraception, even when women want to stop having children. MSI Reproductive Choices operates in seven of Congo’s 26 provinces, providing contraception, reproductive counseling, and legal safe abortion to women across rural and urban areas.

    Current data from the UN Population Fund shows that roughly 29% of Congolese women of reproductive age have an unmet need for family planning — meaning they want to stop having children or space out their pregnancies but lack access to effective contraception. Congolese authorities have recognized the scope of the crisis and launched a five-year strategic plan aimed at guaranteeing universal access to affordable, high-quality family planning services for all women of childbearing age by 2026. But delivering on that promise remains an enormous, uphill challenge: Congo covers an area roughly the size of Western Europe, with cripplingly poor infrastructure and ongoing armed conflict in its eastern regions that disrupts access to healthcare for millions.

    Annie Tshiamala, head of Congo’s national association of midwives, has witnessed the human cost of this pressure first hand for more than 30 years. She still recalls one particularly harrowing case: a 40-something woman, bloodied after a difficult ninth delivery, who immediately asked if the newborn was a boy. The woman already had eight daughters, and her marriage hung in the balance over her failure to produce a male heir. When a colleague revealed the baby was another girl, Tshiamala says the woman broke down in despair: “Oh, my Lord. Why?” Tshiamala herself has faced similar pressure from her own mother-in-law, who demanded she have more children after she gave birth to four sons. Refusing the demand, she says, was only possible because her husband supported her choice.

    Even educated, professional women in urban Kinshasa are not spared this social coercion. Gloria Masanka, a radio presenter for the country’s national broadcaster, is mother to two young daughters after a decade of marriage. She has already suffered two miscarriages and develops dangerous high blood pressure during pregnancies, but her in-laws still demand she keep trying for a son. “When you don’t have boys, you are not worth respect,” Masanka said, explaining that without a male heir, the family name is seen as lost. The pressure has sparked repeated family conflict: her husband has even openly threatened to take a girlfriend to father a son if she cannot.

    This investigation into maternal mortality in Africa is supported by the Gates Foundation, with The Associated Press retaining full editorial control over all content.

  • ‘I buried my parents one day after the other’ – Ebola mourners learn how to grieve safely

    ‘I buried my parents one day after the other’ – Ebola mourners learn how to grieve safely

    In the bustling, unusually quiet Nyamurongo cemetery of Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, fresh mounds of dirt dot the grassy ground at a rate no resident has seen before. This city sits at the epicenter of an ongoing Ebola outbreak that has claimed nearly 200 lives in recent months, and every new grave tells a story of devastating loss and a desperate fight to stop the virus’s spread.

    For Joel Lonza Makumbu, the devastation of the outbreak is not an abstract public health statistic—it is a personal catastrophe that has gutted his entire family. Standing knee-deep in the soil of his mother’s fresh grave, just one day after burying his father, Makumbu describes this as his sixth trip to the cemetery in a short stretch of weeks. Ebola has already taken his parents, three sisters, and a brother-in-law, and three more of his relatives remain in treatment centers fighting the disease. “I want to say for all people [to hear] that Ebola is true,” he stresses, a urgent warning to those who still doubt the danger of the virus amid widespread local misinformation.

    The current outbreak is driven by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which kills roughly one in four people it infects. Transmitted exclusively through direct contact with infected bodily fluids—including blood, semen, breast milk, vomit, and urine—the virus demands strict public health protocols to halt transmission, and modified, safe burial practices are widely recognized as one of the most critical interventions to stop new infections.

    Traditional Ituri funeral customs are deeply rooted in community and cultural belief: for generations, families have washed and dressed the deceased in fine clothing—women often in wedding gowns, complete with makeup—before holding multi-day ceremonies full of singing and celebration, as community members believe death is a journey to the world of ancestors, not an end. Many of these long-held practices, however, put grieving family members at extreme risk of infection, so public health teams have had to negotiate sensitive changes to these rituals.

    Today, no large crowds of mourners gather at Nyamurongo, and the traditional pre-burial body washing carried out by family members is strongly discouraged. Burials that once took days of preparation now are completed in 10 minutes, with the Ebola deceased immediately sealed in leak-proof body bags before interment. But rather than forcing communities to abandon their traditions entirely, international aid groups have worked to adapt safety protocols to honor cultural needs, wherever possible without putting lives at risk.

    “We need to be very close to the communities and engage with them very closely and make sure that they understand what’s going on, they’re informed and they consent,” explains Maria Munoz-Bertrand, public health emergency coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC). To accommodate families, the IFRC now places sealed body bags inside solid coffins fitted with small transparent panels that allow mourners to glimpse their loved one’s body; some body bags even have clear film at the top to reveal the deceased’s face. “If the family asks for something special to be included in the procedure, as long as it respects the infection prevention and control measures, and it doesn’t put anyone at risk, we will try to accommodate the wishes of the family as much as possible, because we understand that it’s a very difficult time for families,” Munoz-Bertrand adds.

    On a recent trip with an IFRC burial team to collect a body from Bunia’s Ebola treatment centre, the delicate balance of grief, culture and safety is on full display. Outside a makeshift transit morgue tent, family members wait along the roadside to accompany their loved one to the cemetery, including one grieving mother who had just lost her child to the virus. Health workers in full personal protective equipment seal the body bag inside the coffin, disinfect their path, and retreat, before six IFRC volunteers, also fully protected, retrieve the coffin for transport.

    For 34-year-old mother of four, whose body the team retrieved that day, her father Simone Nyal watches the modified process from a distance, still reeling from how quickly the virus took his daughter. “She was ill for just one week before she succumbed. She has left us her four children – I don’t know how we will cope,” he says. At the cemetery, the woman’s mother and sister wait by the open grave, and the burial is completed in less than 10 minutes. Volunteers decontaminate their gear and depart, leaving gravediggers to fill the plot.

    Negotiating these changes requires a unique blend of cultural literacy and patience, says Julienne Anoko, an anthropologist working with the World Health Organization (WHO) who has responded to multiple Ebola outbreaks across Central and West Africa. Anoko and her team spend days listening to grieving families, acknowledging their pain, and drawing on local cultural knowledge to help communities accept the necessary changes to burial practices.

    The most challenging negotiations, Anoko says, surround the burial of pregnant women who die of Ebola. Local tradition holds that a pregnant woman must “travel light” to the afterlife, requiring the fetus to be removed before burial—a practice that would expose family members to massive amounts of infectious bodily fluids. To address this, Anoko frames the restriction through a cultural lens, explaining to communities that their own ancestors would have approved of the modified practice to protect the living. “We negotiate to make the family accept the unacceptable. Sometimes it may take three days, but we negotiate, and I use the knowledge of their culture,” she says.

    Over years of working through outbreaks, Anoko has built deep trust with local communities, bridging the gap between public health science and traditional cultural values to make safety protocols acceptable. Even with this progress, the work of containing the outbreak remains far from over. Misinformation still circulates, and for families like Makumbu’s, the pain of loss is far from over—with more loved ones still fighting for survival in treatment centres. As he finishes covering his mother’s grave, Makumbu leaves with a stark warning for the world: Ebola is real, and it continues to tear through communities in Ituri, leaving few families untouched.