标签： Africa

Widespread public anger over weeks of crippling, extended electricity outages boiled over into street demonstrations across The Gambia this week, forcing police to deploy tear gas to disperse crowds of hundreds of frustrated protesters just months ahead of a highly contested presidential election.

The unrest, which unfolded Monday night across the capital Banjul and its surrounding suburban areas, was sparked by persistent blackouts that local residents report can stretch for up to 48 consecutive hours. The outages have grown increasingly severe since June, exacerbated by record high temperatures during the region’s hot season that have sent residential demand for electricity surging for cooling and daily use.

In the Westfield district, crowds advanced on the headquarters of the National Water and Electricity Company (Nawec), The Gambia’s state-run power utility, chanting calls for incumbent President Adama Barrow to step down. Additional demonstrators gathered outside the vice president’s official residence in Farato, where signage at a local office of Barrow’s ruling National People’s Party was damaged during the unrest. Protesters reportedly burned tires and blocked major roadways to voice their discontent.

In a national televised address delivered Tuesday evening, Barrow acknowledged the severe hardship the outages have imposed on ordinary Gambian households, admitting that systemic failures in government planning, power generation infrastructure, and maintenance routines have created what he called a “national security” emergency. He called on citizens to exercise patience, noting that the current electricity crisis is not unique to The Gambia, and has impacted multiple nations across West Africa.

“When you lie down in the heat and the dark, believe that you are not alone in that darkness,” Barrow said in his address. He detailed tangible steps the government is taking to resolve the crisis, promising that a 24-megawatt new generating unit being installed at the Brikama power station will be fully operational by the end of October, and that additional new generators will be delivered to the country by the end of the current week. A contract for a 50-megawatt utility-scale solar power plant in Soma has also been finalized, though a completion timeline for that project has not yet been announced.

Barrow warned demonstrators against damaging public infrastructure, arguing that destruction of public assets would only prolong service disruptions by diverting limited public funds away from system upgrades and into repairs. “Let us not destroy in a moment of anger what we suffered so long to gain,” he added. “I know that the fans have stopped turning, children work in the dark, mothers throw away stale food, and the heat is unbearable by day and by night.”

Nawec Chief Executive Gallo Saidy echoed Barrow’s call for patience, explaining that the shortages have been compounded by reduced imported electricity from the regional power grid. Lower than average rainfall across the region this year cut into hydropower generation available through cross-border transmission lines, which The Gambia relies on to supplement its domestic output—most of which currently comes from imports from neighboring Senegal and Guinea.

The unrest comes as The Gambia prepares for a presidential election scheduled for December, where Barrow is seeking a controversial third term in office. Opposition figures and critics have challenged the legality of his third-term bid, adding heightened political tension to a moment of already strained public frustration over basic service delivery.

CAIRO – A devastating new wave of global aid cuts is set to shut down 36 additional health facilities across Sudan this year, cutting off life-saving medical care for more than 470,000 vulnerable people and pushing an already collapsed humanitarian system to the breaking point, international aid organizations confirmed Tuesday. This latest development compounds three years of unrelenting crisis that has torn Sudan apart since full-scale civil war erupted in 2023.

Sudan’s once-functional public health network, which boasted 6,500 primary care facilities and 300 state-run hospitals before the conflict, has suffered catastrophic damage since fighting broke out. By September 2024, World Health Organization data shows that between 70% and 80% of health facilities in the worst-affected regions of the country are already permanently shuttered or barely operating with minimal resources.

The conflict that triggered this collapse began in April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between Sudan’s regular national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) boiled over into widespread, cross-country combat. Three years on, the war has killed no fewer than 59,000 people, displaced 13 million more from their homes, and pushed large swathes of the population into catastrophic famine conditions.

As funding dries up, more international aid groups are being forced to scale back or withdraw entirely, leaving clinics without access to essential pharmaceuticals and basic operating budgets. For Sudanese patients, this means enduring expensive, dangerous long-distance journeys to access even the most basic medical care, representatives from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) explained.

Mesfin Teklu Tessema, senior technical health director for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), emphasized the irreversible damage these cuts are inflicting on what little remains of Sudan’s health infrastructure. “These cuts are stripping away what little capacity remains, closing facilities, sending health workers home, and cutting off supply lines for medicines and nutrition treatment. The system is already stretched past its limit,” Tessema said.

Mohammed Mahdi, IRC’s director for East Sudan, told the Associated Press that all 36 facilities set for closure are currently supported by his organization. The shutdowns will cut off access to essential health and nutrition services for an estimated 473,700 people across the country. Mahdi added that a tiny handful of facilities may be able to stay open through the end of September using limited alternative funding, but no long-term solutions exist to keep them operating beyond that date.

According to MSF, the funding crisis began after the U.S. announced sweeping aid cuts last year, which led to the expiration of core grants for many humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan by June 2024. Multiple major European donors have also reduced their aid allocations to the country, leaving providers with no way to secure replacement funding to keep services running.

The scale of aid withdrawal is starkly visible in Um Rakuba, a vast displacement camp in eastern Sudan’s Gedaref State that hosts roughly 17,000 people forced from their homes by the war. In 2021, around 35 aid organizations operated in and around the camp; today, fewer than 10 remain. The MSF-supported hospital in the camp is now the only functional medical lifeline for camp residents and surrounding host communities, said Fabrizio Locuratolo, MSF’s humanitarian affairs manager.

Public health experts warn that collapsing access to care has already set the stage for large-scale disease outbreaks across Sudan. Ali Almohammed, MSF’s emergency health manager, confirmed that “serious disease outbreaks are already happening” in multiple regions. Measles has reached what Almohammed called “major outbreak level” in Darfur, with roughly 75% of infected patients being unvaccinated due to collapsed immunization programs. Sudan is also currently grappling with concurrent outbreaks of cholera and malaria, which are spreading rapidly in overcrowded displacement camps with no access to clean water or sanitation.

Multiple diplomatic efforts, including round after round of peace talks, have failed to end the conflict. Most recently, the United States has pushed the United Nations to impose new sanctions on both warring parties, in a bid to pressure army and RSF leaders to return to negotiations and end the catastrophic war.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — In a key procedural development in an international murder manhunt, a British man named Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, who is wanted by UK law enforcement for the brutal killing of his wife and two young daughters, entered guilty pleas to weapons and immigration offenses Tuesday at a South African court. The pleas were part of a formal plea agreement negotiated between Tshuma’s legal team and South African prosecuting authorities. The charges to which he admitted guilt include unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and violating South Africa’s immigration laws by entering the country while he was a flagged fugitive from British justice.

The case traces back to early July, when the bodies of Tshuma’s family members were discovered inside their residence just outside the town of Bedford, located north of London. On July 6, first responders found 39-year-old Nothabo Zandile Tshuma, 15-year-old daughter Natalie, and 5-year-old daughter Nala dead at the home; all three victims had sustained fatal blunt force head injuries, according to initial forensic examinations.

British law enforcement investigators have built a timeline showing that Tshuma, a British citizen with Zimbabwean roots, departed the United Kingdom on July 4, two full days before his family members’ bodies were located. Investigators say he traveled first to Zimbabwe before crossing the border into South Africa, where he remained at large until Interpol distributed a global red notice for his arrest. Acting on that alert, South African law enforcement officers apprehended Tshuma in Johannesburg on July 10, and recovered an unlicensed gun and matching ammunition in his possession at the time of arrest.

South African police have publicly stated that based on evidence collected after the arrest, they believe Tshuma intended to use the seized firearm to die by suicide before he could be taken into custody. Now, following Tshuma’s guilty pleas in the South African court case, local authorities confirmed that they will move forward with formal extradition proceedings to transfer Tshuma back to the United Kingdom once all outstanding local legal matters are fully concluded. Upon his return to the UK, Tshuma will face three separate counts of murder for the deaths of his wife and daughters, British prosecutors confirmed. The case has drawn cross-continental attention as an example of international law enforcement cooperation to bring a suspected killer to justice.

Three years into a devastating civil war that has split Sudan along military lines, the East African nation’s already tattered public health infrastructure is barreling toward total collapse, international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has declared. The catastrophic shift has been triggered by sweeping cuts to international aid, a crisis that has shuttered dozens of healthcare facilities across the country and left millions of vulnerable Sudanese without access to even basic life-saving care.

The root of the funding collapse traces back to last year, when the United States — long Sudan’s single largest international aid donor — dissolved the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), its primary foreign assistance delivery body. Dozens of local and international aid groups that relied on USAID grants were left with no time to secure alternative funding streams, MSF explained. Existing USAID-funded grants for Sudan operations officially expired in June 2026, compounding a broader global trend of declining aid: the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) confirms that total international development aid dropped by 21.3% globally in 2025 compared to 2024, with European governments also slashing their assistance budgets for conflict zones like Sudan.

Since civil war erupted in April 2023 between Sudan’s national army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the country has faced what the United Nations calls one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes on the planet. More than 33 million Sudanes — two-thirds of the country’s total population — now require urgent medical assistance, while over 19.5 million face crisis-level food insecurity and 5 million are pushed into emergency-level hunger, UN data shows.

MSF, which funds its own Sudan operations through private donations, says the withdrawal of other aid providers has created a cascading crisis that is overwhelming the few remaining functional health facilities. “War is driving Sudan’s needs; funding cuts are shrinking the response,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, MSF’s country director for Sudan. “When funding disappears from other health services, clinics close, patients have fewer places to go, and pressure shifts to the facilities that remain, including ours.”

In Darfur, the western Sudanese region that has borne the brunt of the most intense fighting over the past three years, patients are already facing deadly consequences. Sebastián Traficante, MSF’s emergency coordinator for Darfur, explained that surviving clinics and hospitals are forced to turn patients away after days-long, dangerous journeys across active conflict zones. “After a longer and more expensive journey, patients often arrive in a much more serious condition, and the hospital may already be full,” Traficante said.

MSF data underscores the severity of the strain: between January and April 2026, admissions at MSF-supported facilities in central Darfur jumped 22.5% compared to the same period in 2025, just after 45 local healthcare centres in the region lost all funding and closed their doors in May alone. The collapse of frontline care has also drained remaining facilities of critical supplies, with running low on essential medicines and losing operational capacity to treat incoming patients.

Gedaref state, which hosts tens of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled fighting across the country, offers a stark example of the crisis. At Tanedba camp, home to 18,400 displaced people, the only maternity and surgical wards closed permanently when the managing aid organization pulled out in June. MSF has stepped in to run a basic emergency room, but pregnant people requiring obstetric surgery now face a three-hour trip to the nearest functional hospital in a major city. In nearby Um Rakuba camp, which hosts 17,000 displaced people — most of them women and children — the number of active aid agencies has plummeted from 35 in 2021 to fewer than 10 today.

The funding crisis is compounded by an ongoing epidemic of violence targeting healthcare workers and infrastructure, MSF added. In 2025 alone, 1,620 people were killed in attacks on medical facilities across Sudan — accounting for 82% of all global deaths from attacks on healthcare last year, the organization reports.

As world leaders prepare to gather for the annual UN General Assembly in New York, MSF is calling on global powers to reverse aid cuts and take urgent action to prevent total health system collapse in Sudan. “If support does not increase, more patients will face longer journeys, fewer treatment options and greater risk of arriving too late for care,” warned Liz Harding, MSF’s UK humanitarian representative.

Despite ongoing diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire, the civil war shows no sign of abating. Most recently, a drone attack on the army-controlled town of Umm Ruwaba in North Kordofan state killed at least 11 people on Tuesday, with a projectile striking a crowded courtyard inside a local court complex, according to local medical sources.

In the East African economic hub of Kenya, the national government has officially launched a 90-day compliance push that requires all foreign nationals operating businesses within the country to secure or renew mandatory documentation, ranging from work permits to official business licenses. The regulatory move comes in the wake of public comments from President William Ruto that triggered widespread fear and uncertainty among immigrant communities across the nation.

Presidential spokesperson Hussein Mohamed confirmed that Kenyan government agencies will coordinate with foreign diplomatic missions throughout the process to streamline the registration and renewal steps. In a public statement, Mohamed explicitly prohibited any threats, harassment, or intimidation targeting foreign entrepreneurs, emphasizing that the exercise is not intended to target law-abiding foreign business owners.

The uncertainty that followed President Ruto’s initial remarks prompted hundreds of Burundian nationals living and working in Kenya to flock to their country’s embassy in Nairobi on Monday to rush through document applications. A number of residents even made plans to return to Burundi, citing grave fears for their personal safety following targeted attacks and hostile rhetoric.

Tensions over foreign business activity have simmered in Kenya for months, as many local citizens have raised complaints that foreign migrants have taken entry-level manual jobs and launched small informal businesses, creating unfair competitive conditions for Kenyan-owned enterprises. As the largest and most stable economy in East Africa, Kenya has long drawn both foreign investors and cross-border laborers from neighboring countries including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, creating a steady flow of migrant workers and small business owners.

Last week, President Ruto publicly acknowledged that he had received widespread complaints from local small business owners who claimed foreign operators were competing through unfair, unregulated practices. In response, he directed Kenyan legislators to amend an existing bill currently under parliamentary review. The revised legislation will formalize rules for foreign participation in small-scale business sectors and carve out specific industry segments reserved exclusively for local Kenyan ownership.

That initial presidential directive quickly sparked panic across Burundian and Congolese migrant communities. Eric Munahayo, a Burundian small business owner based in Nairobi, told local media that his suburban shop was attacked by unidentified assailants after the remarks. Despite holding all required, valid business licenses and having integrated into the local community for years, Munahayo says he now faces rising hostility that has disrupted his livelihood.

In an effort to de-escalate tensions, senior Kenyan officials have moved to clarify the purpose of the new regularization drive. Mohamed emphasized that the registration process is designed to bring all foreign business operations into alignment with existing Kenyan national law and East African Community regulations that govern cross-border movement of goods, labor, and services. “Every person conducting business in Kenya is required to comply with applicable immigration, work-permit, registration and licensing requirements. Over the next 90 days, the government will conduct an orderly regularization exercise to facilitate compliance,” Mohamed explained in his official statement.

Korir Sing’oei, Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Foreign Ministry, personally visited the group of Burundian citizens gathered at their Nairobi embassy on Monday, where he offered a formal apology for the widespread misinterpretation of the president’s original directive. Sing’oei stressed that the registration process ultimately serves to protect foreign residents, saying, “We just want to know who you are, where you live and what you do so that we can provide security even for you all.”

As of Tuesday, the Burundian government had not released an official formal statement on the latest developments. But Burundian Foreign Minister Edouard Bizimana ignited cross-border tension over the weekend when he shared a video of a Kenyan individual making hostile threats against Burundian residents in Kenya. In his accompanying post, Bizimana noted that Kenyan nationals live and operate peacefully in Burundi, and warned that if the current wave of hate speech targeting Burundians continues, bilateral conditions will shift dramatically. He held the Kenyan government explicitly responsible for the safety and security of all Burundian citizens residing within Kenyan borders.