标签： Africa

In the remote, mountainous badlands of Kenya’s western West Pokot County, a routine search for a missing goat has upended life forever for a tiny rural community, drawing tens of thousands of hopeful prospectors from across Kenya and neighboring Uganda in a frenzied modern gold rush.

Thirty-three-year-old Manasse Lomachar, a local goat herder, stumbled onto the find that ignited the rush entirely by chance several weeks ago. While wandering the riverbanks looking for his stray animal, he came across a small group of women panning for trace gold deposits in the seasonal riverbed. When he joined their efforts, he unearthed a 3-gram gold nugget that he sold for 36,000 Kenyan shillings, equal to roughly $280. Word of his find spread like wildfire, setting off a wave of migration that transformed the once-quiet bush grazing grounds into a sprawling, makeshift mining camp pocked with deep excavation pits and mounds of discarded earth.

Local authorities confirm that at the peak of the rush, roughly 10,000 prospectors converged on Cheporor, the small village near the discovery site. While small-scale alluvial gold panning has long been a quiet side income for local women, who typically earn between $8 and $23 a week from small finds, the discovery of larger deposits in early August 2026 is what drew crowds of inexperienced hopefuls. Many of these new arrivals rely on erratic, low-income small-scale farming to get by, and even a tiny gold find could reshape their family’s long-term stability. Rumors of large early finds spread rapidly, exaggerated as they passed from person to person, bringing in people with little to no mining experience who hoped to replicate the early successes.

For many who joined the rush, the draw is straightforward: escaping generational poverty and covering basic life costs that remain out of reach on a farmer’s income. Patrick Lokolia, a farmer and herder from the nearby village of Napawoi, came to the site hoping to earn extra money to cover mounting school fees for his children. Eighteen-year-old Abigael Chelengat, who had never mined before traveling to Cheporor from a nearby district, says she is searching for gold to pay her own school fees and keep her younger siblings enrolled in classes. Even those who have yet to find any gold remain undeterred. Mugisha Godfrey, an artisanal miner who traveled from eastern Uganda for $27 to reach the site, says he cannot return home empty-handed, despite sleeping under open trees and working around the clock in harsh conditions. As of mid-August, around 2,500 prospectors remain on site after the initial wave of new arrivals faded when many gave up the search without finding significant deposits.

The sudden influx of people has created both unexpected economic opportunities and severe growing pains for the underdeveloped region. More than 200 new small businesses have sprung up around the mining site to serve the new population: vendors like Irene Ameja, who traveled from neighboring Baringo County, sell food, bottled water, and other daily essentials to workers. Ameja says she hopes to earn enough to expand her small business long-term, but she also highlights the steep challenges of operating in the remote area: there is no access to clean drinking water or bathing facilities, and women face increased safety risks after dark, as the vast majority of people camped on site are men.

Local officials acknowledge the unregulated rush has placed immense strain on an area with almost no existing infrastructure: there is no piped water, limited sanitation services, and no formal housing. Public health teams have been deployed to the site to monitor conditions and prevent outbreaks of preventable disease. Security patrols have also been increased amid widespread concerns about sexual violence and the vulnerability of women and girls working and camping in the open. Authorities are also preparing for the September start of the school year, implementing measures to remove underage miners from the site and encourage children to return to classes.

As prospectors continue their search, many are digging ever-deeper pits to reach potential deposits, and multiple truckloads of excavated material have already been sent to the nearby town of Ortum for commercial processing. Officials are still waiting on test results to confirm the size and commercial viability of the overall gold deposit, leaving the long-term future of mining in Cheporor uncertain.

For Lomachar, the man whose accidental find started the rush, the solution is not to shut down mining operations but to formalize and support the local industry. He points to the thatched-roof huts that make up most of the nearby village as proof of the area’s deep poverty, and says organized, supported mining could lift the entire community out of deprivation. He is calling on the Kenyan government to provide local miners with equipment like metal detectors to more safely and effectively map and extract deposits, turning the accidental discovery into long-term, sustainable development for the region.

TUNIS, Tunisia – A devastating maritime disaster has unfolded off the southern coast of Tunisia, where an overloaded vessel carrying irregular migrants capsized, claiming at least two lives and leaving a dozen more unaccounted for, Tunisia’s National Guard confirmed in a statement released Saturday. Only one survivor has been pulled from the Mediterranean Sea alive so far.

National Guard spokesperson Houssem Eddine Jebabli confirmed to Tunisia’s state-run news agency TAP that recovery teams have retrieved two bodies from the wreckage, which have since been transported to a medical facility on the nearby tourist island of Djerba. Speaking to local national broadcaster Mosaique FM, Jebabli noted that initial investigations suggest roughly 15 migrants were on board the small vessel when it departed from the coastal stretch between the southern Tunisian cities of Zarzis and Ben Guerdane.

According to Mosaique FM’s reporting, which draws on testimony from the lone survivor, the boat set sail early Thursday. The survivor, found floating in a life jacket by a passing commercial vessel on Saturday, was able to alert authorities to the disaster, prompting an immediate search and rescue operation. An Associated Press photojournalist on site confirms that both a military helicopter and multiple coast guard vessels have been deployed to the incident area to locate additional survivors. Authorities say all on board were attempting the dangerous crossing to reach Italy, one of the most common entry points for migrants seeking to enter the European Union.

Zarzis has for decades served as a major departure hub for migrants from Tunisia and across the African continent who hope to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. The coastal city already bears the scars of repeated migration tragedies: in 2022, another boat carrying 18 people went missing off its shores, sparking widespread weeks-long protests. Local families of the missing accused Tunisian authorities of conducting inadequate search efforts, and criticized officials for burying several recovered remains without proper identification or notifying next of kin.

The latest disaster comes amid a shifting policy landscape for migration in the region. Irregular departures from Tunisia have dropped dramatically since the Tunisian government signed a wide-ranging migration agreement with the European Union in 2023. That deal included hundreds of millions of euros in EU funding and specialized technical support to strengthen Tunisia’s border control operations and train coast guard personnel, all aimed at curbing irregular migration and cracking down on human trafficking networks operating across the Mediterranean. The EU alone allocated 105 million euros ($121 million) in migration-specific assistance to Tunisia in 2023.

While overall departure numbers have fallen, the fatal incident confirms that dangerous, unregulated crossings from Tunisia’s southern coast have not stopped. For local communities in Zarzis and surrounding areas, the ongoing risk has left hundreds of families in perpetual limbo, waiting for news of relatives who disappeared attempting the crossing over the years.

Beyond the persistent danger of sea crossings, the 2023 EU-Tunisia migration deal has drawn sharp criticism from global human rights organizations, which have raised urgent alarms over the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers held in Tunisia. Groups have documented widespread allegations of serious abuses, including mass collective expulsions, targeted racial violence, arbitrary detention, and systemic mistreatment of Black African migrants. In a report released last July, Amnesty International warned that EU funding for Tunisian border control is directly contributing to these ongoing serious human rights violations, saying that refugees and asylum seekers are “deliberately trapped in a system that offers neither protection nor a safe way out.”

Fresh coordinated attacks on multiple rural communities in Nigeria’s central Niger State have left at least 40 people dead and more than 100 others abducted, according to official police statements and local resident accounts obtained by the BBC. The violence, which unfolded shortly after Friday congregational prayers in the Borgu Local Government Area, was carried out by assailants dressed in military-style uniforms, targeting four villages: Dekara, Gidan Zana, Sabon Gida, and Masaka.

Police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun confirmed that authorities are pointing to criminal bandit gangs as the primary suspects behind the assault. These groups have long operated across large swathes of northern Nigeria, carrying out kidnappings for ransom, looting, and targeted violence against isolated civilian communities. Local resident accounts detail a methodical attack: gunmen first entered Dekara immediately after prayers, rounded up residents, and forced them into nearby forested hideouts before advancing to adjacent villages to repeat the assault. Local state legislator Jafar Muhammad Shetiman Borgu later verified to the BBC that the attacks had indeed taken place.

This latest incident marks an escalation of violent activity in the remote Borgu region, a strategically located area that shares borders with Kebbi State, Kwara State, and the Republic of Benin. The attack is unrelated to an earlier wave of abductions in the same local government area earlier this month, when Nigerian security forces rescued 145 people kidnapped from four other Borgu villages. That operation was part of a larger nationwide security push that freed a total of 308 abducted people across the region, including more than 160 captives taken from communities in neighboring Kwara State.

Beyond the persistent threat from criminal bandit gangs, the Borgu area has also increasingly become a hub for activity by jihadist insurgent groups that have expanded their footprint from northwestern Nigeria into cross-border regions. Local officials report that jihadist fighters have begun entering civilian communities in recent months to impose strict religious restrictions, and Shetiman warned that the latest violence has sparked new fears that gunmen are actively working to recruit vulnerable young people into their ranks.

The security crisis in Borgu has deepened over recent weeks: just seven days before this latest attack, local officials recorded more than 20 civilian deaths in another violent incident in the local government area. The region has long been a hotbed for mass abductions, including a high-profile 2025 November incident where gunmen seized more than 200 school pupils from a secondary school in Papiri, Niger State. Those children were eventually released after a month of captivity.

Even after multiple sustained military and police counter-insurgency operations, large portions of Niger State remain largely inaccessible to security forces. Vast, unmonitored forested areas provide ideal hideouts for armed groups, who use these safe havens to launch regular raids on undefended, isolated rural communities. This persistent security gap has allowed violence and kidnapping for ransom to become endemic across north central Nigeria, posing one of the most pressing internal security challenges to the Nigerian government.

A new hijacking attributed to Somali pirates has underscored a sharp resurgence of maritime banditry across the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean, with an Eritrean-flagged oil tanker becoming the sixth commercial vessel seized since mid-April, a senior Somali maritime security official has confirmed to the Associated Press.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to speak publicly about the incident, the official confirmed that six armed pirates boarded the M.T. Sibu 1 on Thursday. The hijacking took place roughly 136 nautical miles, or 252 kilometers, east of Yemen’s coastal city of al-Mukalla, after which the hijacked tanker was steered toward the coast of Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region.

The hijacked tanker, operated by UAE-based Qatrat Alnada Almasi Ship Management, already faced U.S. Treasury Department sanctions imposed last year. The vessel was designated over allegations it forms part of an Iranian “shadow fleet” — a network of unregistered or obscurely owned vessels used to ship Iranian petroleum products in violation of American trade restrictions.

Aboard the Sibu 1 at the time of the seizure were 20 crew members, hailing from a range of nations: 16 Indian nationals, one Syrian, one Sudanese, one Iraqi, and one crew member whose nationality has not yet been confirmed. Details of the tanker’s last port of departure and intended final destination remain unclear as of Friday.

This hijacking comes just three days after Somali pirates seized another commercial vessel, the Cameroon-flagged general cargo ship Lutuf, off Somalia’s northern coast. Maritime tracking data shows the Lutuf carried 10 people on board, including six Indian crew, one Turkish national, one Georgian national, and two Serbian armed security guards.

The Sibu 1 hijacking fits a clear pattern of escalating pirate activity stretching back four months. The current wave of attacks began on April 21, when the Palau-flagged tanker Honor 25 was seized off Somalia’s coast. Pirates followed that seizure with captures of the Sward on April 26, the Eureka on May 2, the Asana on July 17, and the Lutuf earlier this month.

Notably, the attacks have taken place increasingly far from Somalia’s traditional territorial waters, indicating expanded operational reach for pirate groups. The Eureka was hijacked while anchored off Yemeni territory, and the Asana was seized approximately 65 nautical miles, or 120 kilometers, southwest of al-Mukalla, Yemen.

Data from the International Maritime Bureau underscores the outsized impact of this renewed Somali piracy surge. The organization recorded 38 total incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea across the globe in the first half of 2026, five of which were full hijackings. Over that period, Somali pirates held 94% of all crew members taken hostage worldwide, the bureau reported.

In a statement released Friday, Puntland’s Security Ministry sought to distance local authorities from the resurgence of piracy, claiming that forces outside of Puntland’s control are behind the recent wave of attacks. The ministry did not name any specific group or country responsible for enabling the attacks, and AP has not been able to independently verify this claim.

Puntland officials also confirmed they have deployed additional security forces along the region’s lengthy coastline in response to the crisis. The statement also condemned recent airstrikes that hit civilian fishing boats and local infrastructure near coastal communities where hijacked vessels are being held. The ministry called on the nations responsible for strikes near the coastal town of Garacad on August 18 and 20 to publicly explain the actions, though it did not identify which country carried out the attacks, and the allegations remain unconfirmed independently.

Three weeks after Spain’s deadliest modern migrant border crisis, the first group of unidentified victims of the disaster were laid to rest on Friday at a Muslim cemetery in Ceuta, the Spanish North African territory that became the flashpoint for the mass crossing event. As an Islamic cleric recited traditional funeral prayers over the plots, workers lowered plain white body bags into cinderblock graves, each marked only with a numbered stone — a temporary measure to enable future identification and recovery by surviving family members. All 18 migrants interred on Friday were men, and their burials followed Islamic tradition, with bodies positioned to face Mecca, just a short sea crossing away from the mainland Europe the migrants had hoped to reach.

The 18 buried Friday are part of a death toll that has surpassed 90 people, all of whom died amid the mass influx of more than 72,000 people who crossed into Ceuta from neighboring Morocco in late July. Most of the deceased lost their lives either by drowning or in a chaotic stampede as crowds pushed to cross a breakwater barrier at a key border checkpoint.

The mass migration event was driven by a toxic combination of deep-rooted economic hardship, limited economic opportunity for young people in the region, and widespread misinformation spread across social media platforms, according to official accounts from both Spanish and Moroccan authorities, who have also pinned blame on criminal human smuggling networks. Migrants who made the crossing have repeatedly cited systemic unemployment and poverty-level wages in Morocco as the core push factors that forced them to attempt the dangerous journey.

The burials have sparked controversy, as the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (MAHR), a prominent left-leaning non-governmental organization, has called for an immediate halt to interments in Ceuta. The group is demanding that all possible efforts be made first to identify the deceased and repatriate their remains to Morocco, where most of the migrants originated, so their families can bury them according to local custom and with full dignity. In a formal statement, MAHR described the ongoing burials in Ceuta as a “new human tragedy” that adds to the broader “disaster of displacement and missing persons” plaguing the region. The NGO has also called on Morocco’s foreign ministry to take active steps to secure the return of all remains to their home communities.

The dispute over repatriation comes amid conflicting claims over why the bodies have not been returned. A spokesperson for Ceuta’s city government confirmed last week that all administrative paperwork required to repatriate the deceased migrants’ bodies had been finalized, but that Moroccan authorities had not yet accepted the transfer requests. Morocco’s foreign ministry has not responded to repeated requests for comment from the Associated Press, either regarding the Friday burials or allegations that it is blocking the repatriation process.

While the vast majority of the more than 72,000 people who crossed into Ceuta in late July returned to Morocco within days, thousands remain stranded in the small territory, prolonging a severe humanitarian crisis that has stretched local resources thin. Ceuta’s local government estimates that between 8,000 and 10,000 migrants — including vulnerable women and children — are still present in the territory, while Spain’s national government puts the figure at around 5,000. Both local authorities and Ceuta’s resident population are struggling to provide adequate shelter, food, and basic care for the remaining migrants, leaving thousands in limbo as officials on both sides of the border debate what steps to take next.

One of northern Ethiopia’s most beloved cultural celebrations centered on women and young girls will not go forward this year in Mekelle, the capital of conflict-weary Tigray region, after authorities called off the main Ashenda festival gathering over growing threats of drone attacks and renewed civil conflict.

The three-day Ashenda festival, whose name translates to “tall green grass” in the local Tigrinya language, blends Orthodox Christian religious observance of the Virgin Mary with decades of cultural tradition that centers the joy and community of girls and women. Every year, thousands of participants dress in elaborate traditional garments, style their hair in intricate braided patterns, and gather for open-air dancing and socializing — a rare seasonal freedom from the social restrictions that govern women’s public gatherings at other times of the year. For communities across Tigray and northern Ethiopia, the annual event is one of the most anticipated highlights of the cultural calendar.

This year, the core event was scheduled to be a large public gathering at Mekelle’s main stadium on Saturday. But the cancellation announced by Tigray’s culture and tourism bureau comes on the heels of a series of recent deadly drone strikes across the region that have stoked widespread fears that the 2020–2022 Tigray civil war, which killed an estimated hundreds of thousands of people, could reignite after two years of fragile peace.

Tigray regional authorities have pinned the recent wave of drone attacks on Ethiopia’s federal armed forces, though the federal government has not yet responded to requests for comment from the BBC on these accusations. The most recent strike hit Mekelle last Thursday, wounding 13 civilians and damaging residential buildings, according to Tigray’s communications affairs bureau. Regional officials also documented two earlier strikes near Dandera, a town just nine miles outside of Mekelle, on August 18 that left one person dead and another injured. A strike in the Raya-Alamata district on August 10 killed three people, regional officials confirmed.

Announcing the decision to cancel the main stadium gathering, Dori Asgedom, head of Tigray’s culture and tourism bureau, said the event could not proceed due to “ongoing drone strikes and the threat of war.” He added, “The drone attack on innocent citizens in Mekelle city is an act that history will not forgive and should be condemned.”

The Tigray regional administration has called on global actors to step in amid escalating tensions, urging the “international community to break their silence” on the recent strikes, condemn the violence, and launch urgent diplomatic efforts to prevent full-scale conflict from reigniting.

The fragile peace deal signed in 2022 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Ethiopia’s federal government brought an end to two years of brutal fighting that devastated Tigray’s infrastructure and left a massive humanitarian crisis in its wake. But tensions have spiked sharply in recent months after the TPLF dissolved the interim administration established under the peace agreement and reinstated its pre-war governing council. Both sides have repeatedly accused one another of failing to uphold the terms of the 2022 peace deal, pushing the region back to the brink of open conflict.