标签： Africa

On Thursday, the first group of 12 people deported from the United States touched down on Ugandan soil, marking the first known arrivals after the two nations finalized a bilateral deportation transfer deal, the Uganda Law Society confirmed this week.

The group arrived via a chartered private flight, and the Ugandan legal advocacy organization harshly condemned the process that delivered the deportees, calling the transfer an “undignified, harrowing and dehumanizing” act that effectively amounted to dumping unwanted people in the East African nation. It has launched a legal push to block further transfers, labeling the arrangement an “international illegality” and arguing the deportees have been left vulnerable to unaccountable private actors on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean with no oversight or protection.

This first transfer of deportees is part of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, a policy designed to cut flows of undocumented migration into the U.S. while removing people who have already entered the country illegally, particularly those with criminal convictions. The policy targets people who cannot be readily deported directly to their home countries by resettling them in agreed third-party nations.

U.S. federal agencies including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security have defended third-country deportation deals as a necessary mechanism to speed up the removal of undocumented people from U.S. territory. But the policy has faced sustained legal challenges in both U.S. courts and courts in the nations that receive deportees, and has sparked widespread global criticism over humanitarian risks.

The core of the controversy stems from the fact that many deportees transferred under these deals have no cultural, social or family ties to the third-party countries where they are sent, leaving them stateless and isolated. The high-stakes debate gained national attention in the U.S. earlier this year when federal officials briefly considered moving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant at the center of a heated national migration dispute, to Uganda under the agreement, before reversing the plan.

To date, the U.S. has signed similar third-country deportation arrangements with at least seven different African nations, spanning from West Africa’s Ghana to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini. Publicly released State Department details show the U.S. agreed to provide Eswatini with $5.1 million in exchange for accepting up to 160 deportees. As of this reporting, there is no public information confirming whether Uganda received similar financial compensation for agreeing to take deportees.

Details around the 12 new arrivals remain scarce: officials have not released information about their identities, citizenship or countries of origin. Okello Oryem, Uganda’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, told reporters he was traveling at the time of the arrival and had not been briefed on the landing. A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, also declined to answer questions about the deportees’ current welfare or status.

This development contradicts earlier statements from Oryem, who told the Associated Press last month that Uganda was preparing to receive multiple planeloads of deportees from the U.S. He framed the bilateral deal at the time as an act aligned with pan-African solidarity and humanitarian principle, designed to repatriate African people who were living without documentation in the U.S. Ugandan officials have also previously stated the agreement only covers non-criminal deportees of African origin, but that detail has not been confirmed for the 12 people who arrived this week.

For years, the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso has stood at the epicenter of the Sahel region’s escalating security crisis, a conflict that has shattered communities and pushed millions into displacement. A new, sweeping 316-page investigation from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has uncovered damning new findings: between January 2023 and August 2025, Burkina Faso’s government forces killed more than twice as many civilians as extremist jihadist groups operating in the country, with both sides responsible for systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Three years after Ibrahim Traoré seized power in a military coup in Burkina Faso, a damning new investigation from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has uncovered staggering civilian casualties, including allegations of systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by both state forces and armed jihadist groups. Between January 2023 and August 2025 alone, the rights organization documented 57 separate violent incidents that left 1,837 civilians dead, among them dozens of children. More than two-thirds of these deaths — 1,255 in total — are attributed to the Burkinabé military and its allied civilian militias, while the remaining killings are linked to Islamist insurgent groups active in the region.

The report’s most significant legal finding holds that Traoré and six senior military commanders may bear command responsibility for these grave human rights abuses, and recommends that all seven be formally investigated for their alleged roles. Five top jihadist leaders are also named as potentially culpable for violence against civilian populations. The BBC reached out to Burkinabé junta officials for comment on the new findings; authorities have repeatedly rejected past accusations of indiscriminate civilian killings by their forces.

When Traoré’s junta seized power in September 2022, ousting the interim military leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba who had taken power just nine months prior, its core stated justification was a promise to more effectively defeat a decade-long Islamist insurgency linked to al-Qaeda that has seized control of large swathes of Burkina Faso’s territory and destabilized neighboring countries. But the HRW report, which draws on rigorous open-source intelligence analysis — including verified photos, video footage, satellite imagery, and firsthand interviews with hundreds of witnesses and survivors — paints a far grimmer picture: that all parties to the conflict have systematically violated international humanitarian law.

“All sides are responsible for the war crimes of willful killing, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, pillage and looting, and forced displacement,” the report concludes. It specifically accuses the Traoré-led junta of committing “horrific abuses,” failing to hold any perpetrators accountable for civilian deaths, and actively blocking independent reporting to conceal the scale of suffering among trapped populations. Philippe Bolopion, HRW’s executive director, emphasized the gap between the scope of the crisis and global indifference: “The scale of atrocities taking place in Burkina Faso is mind-boggling, as is the lack of global attention to this crisis.”

One of the deadliest single incidents documented by the investigation dates to December 2023, when military forces and allied militias allegedly killed more than 400 civilians in the northern border town of Djibo. A 35-year-old survivor who spoke to researchers described losing her two daughters immediately in the attack, while she and her nine-month-old infant suffered bullet wounds. She recounted a militia fighter telling his comrades, “Make sure no-one is breathing before heading out.” Many survivors described the mass killings as “butchery,” and researchers confirmed that nearly all who lost family or escaped violence carry permanent, severe psychological trauma from their experiences.

The militias that work alongside the Burkinabé military, known as the Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland (VDP), are civilian recruits the junta enlisted to bolster counter-insurgency operations. The report also documents allegations that the junta has forced political critics to join the VDP as a form of punishment. Traoré has publicly defended this forced conscription policy, arguing that “individual freedoms [are] not superior to national freedom” and that “a nation is not built on indiscipline and disorder.”

Since the military government took power, counter-insurgency operations have increasingly targeted civilian communities in response to attacks by JNIM, al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate and the largest active jihadist group in the country. For ordinary Burkinabé, this has created an untenable catch-22: civilians told HRW they feel “caught between a rock and a hard place,” threatened with execution by JNIM for suspected collaboration with the state, and targeted by government forces for alleged ties to insurgents. For its part, JNIM has carried out widespread campaigns of violence and intimidation to control local communities, deliberately targeting civilians who refuse to submit to the group’s authority. In one high-profile 2024 attack, JNIM fighters shot dead at least 133 people and injured more than 200 in less than two hours, according to the report.

In line with its findings, HRW is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open an immediate preliminary investigation into all alleged crimes committed by all parties to the conflict since September 2022. The organization is also urging international partners and donor countries to impose targeted sanctions on senior Burkinabé officials and suspend all military cooperation with the Traoré government.

Despite his authoritarian rule and the allegations of mass atrocities, 38-year-old Traoré has built a large popular following across the African continent, buoyed by his vocal pan-Africanist politics and sharp criticism of Western neocolonial influence. Like neighboring Mali and Niger, both of which are also controlled by military juntas, Burkina Faso has cut most security cooperation with Western nations — particularly former colonial power France — since Traoré took power, and has turned to Russia for military support. Even with this new partnership, the ongoing insurgency and civilian death toll have continued to rise with no sign of abating.

A sequence of devastating blasts at a Burundian military ammunition storage facility has left at least 13 people dead and 57 others injured, according to official updates from the Burundian army. The incident, which unfolded on Tuesday evening in the Musaga suburb of Bujumbura — the East African nation’s most populous urban center — was triggered by an electrical malfunction, army spokespersons confirmed.

The force of the consecutive explosions was powerful enough to hurl shrapnel and wreckage more than five kilometers (three miles) from the blast site, leaving a wide trail of destruction across surrounding residential areas. Along with the human casualties, the blasts destroyed military infrastructure and equipment, while dozens of civilian homes and private vehicles sustained severe damage.

The affected military logistics depot sits in a heavily populated residential zone, positioned adjacent to both a separate military base and Mpimba Central Prison, one of the city’s main correctional facilities. One inmate at the prison was killed when a blast fragment struck the facility, and multiple other detainees were left injured, according to accounts shared with the BBC. In another residential neighborhood in northeast Bujumbura, Gisandema, a bomb fragment destroyed a private home and killed a domestic worker employed at the property. Local witnesses have shared additional accounts of two civilian fatalities near the depot, including a young woman who was killed by shrapnel as she fled the area with a crowd of other residents.

Thick plumes of dark smoke billowed over the city of more than 1 million residents, triggering widespread panic across local communities. Multiple residents reported that blasts continued intermittently from roughly 18:15 local time (16:15 GMT) through midnight, forcing hundreds of families to abandon their homes to seek safe shelter elsewhere. One resident who spoke to the BBC recalled sustaining a foot injury from falling shattered glass during the incident, while other local residents say they are waiting for official confirmation that the area is safe before they can return to rebuild their daily routines.

Burundian military officials have extended formal condolences to the families of those killed and shared sympathy with people injured in the blasts. They have called on local residents to remain calm, and urged anyone encountering unexploded ordnance to report it immediately to authorities. Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye also released a public message of condolence via the social platform X, confirming that national authorities are mobilizing to support affected communities.

Early informal accounts from witnesses and security sources had varied on the death toll, with some sources initially reporting higher casualty numbers, before the army released its official, updated count.

Deep in the pre-dawn darkness of Nairobi’s dense informal settlement of Mathare, Agnes Mbesa reaches up to flick on a single bare bulb suspended from her corrugated tin roof. Just a few years ago, the mother of three would have relied on a dim, smoke-choked kerosene lamp to navigate her small home. Today, electricity not only illuminates her living space but powers the small neighborhood shop she runs from her front veranda, transforming her ability to earn a living.

“Before we had power, we had to shut down the shop as soon as dusk fell — it was just too dark to work,” Mbesa explained. “Now customers stop by even late into the evening, and I can bring in extra income that I never could before.”

Hundreds of kilometers away in the lakeside village of Sori, in western Kenya, fisherman Samuel Oketch shares this story of transformation. When a community solar mini-grid was installed to serve his remote settlement, Oketch invested in a electric freezer to store his daily catch. Previously, he was forced to sell all his fish immediately at cut-rate prices to middlemen who controlled cold storage. Today, his catch can be preserved and transported to higher-value markets in larger nearby towns, cutting out exploitative brokers and boosting his household income.

“These small, quiet changes add up to everything,” Oketch said. “Electricity opens up choices we never had before. Now my wife can sell our fish directly, without being ripped off by the brokers who used to hold all the power with their freezers.”

The firsthand accounts from Mbesa and Oketch put a human face on a decades-long global push to expand energy access across Africa, where hundreds of millions of people still live without reliable power. Right now, more than 730 million people across the globe lack access to any electricity at all, and nearly 80% of that population lives in Africa. Widespread energy poverty holds back progress across every sector of development: it limits access to modern health care, stifles educational opportunity, blocks digital connectivity, and stunts the creation of small businesses and formal jobs.

To accelerate progress toward universal energy access, major international institutions and philanthropic organizations have announced billions in new financing for renewable energy projects across sub-Saharan Africa, unveiled in coordinated actions this March. The European Investment Bank committed more than $1.15 billion to support a range of projects, including utility-scale hydropower, wind and solar farms, and expansion of both national and community-level power grids.

“This funding represents Europe’s unwavering commitment to deliver cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable energy to hundreds of millions of people across Africa,” said European Investment Bank President Nadia Calviño.

The Rockefeller Foundation followed that announcement with a pledge of an additional $10 million in investment, made public during the Africa Energy Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The funding will be deployed in partnership with the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet to strengthen national electrification strategies and support policy reforms that expand private and community-led energy solutions across at least 15 African nations.

“African governments are leading the transformation of their own energy sectors, committing to national energy compacts and investing in homegrown solutions that meet their people’s needs,” said William Asiko, senior vice president at the Rockefeller Foundation.

These new investments fold into the broader Mission 300 initiative, led jointly by the World Bank and the African Development Bank. The ambitious campaign set a target to connect 300 million people across sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030, relying on a mix of national grid expansion and decentralized solutions like community mini-grids and household-level off-grid solar systems.

For most of sub-Saharan Africa, national power grids are often overstretched, unreliable, and do not reach many remote and low-income communities. That gap has turned decentralized mini-grids into a fast-growing and effective alternative. These small, community-managed systems, most often powered by solar or hybrid renewable sources, generate and distribute power locally, eliminating the need for costly large-scale transmission infrastructure to reach isolated areas.

Off-grid systems, by contrast, operate independently at the household level, with affordable stand-alone solar kits that give individual families access to power even when they are located far from any centralized infrastructure. These solutions have become critical for closing electricity gaps in the rural and informal settlement communities that are most often left behind by national grid expansion.

To hit the 2030 target, Mission 300 is providing tailored support to countries across the continent: governments in Malawi and Liberia receive technical assistance to refine their national energy plans, expand transmission networks, and improve the reliability and efficiency of power distribution. In Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Senegal, the initiative provides local currency financing and pooled procurement support to drive down costs and speed up project deployment.

Andrew Herscowitz, CEO of the Mission 300 Accelerator at RF Catalytic Capital, warned that scaling access to meet the 2030 goal will require sustained long-term financing and strengthened local implementation capacity, including improved impact monitoring and better aligned policy support to speed up new connections.

“Energy access is the foundational key that unlocks human potential and broad-based economic development,” Herscowitz noted.

Kenya, one of the early beneficiaries of Mission 300 funding, has already seen dramatic gains under the initiative. Since 2017, the country has received support from the World Bank, African Development Bank and partner organizations for its Last Mile Connectivity program, which targets households located near existing grid infrastructure — particularly those in rural areas and informal urban settlements — as the country works toward universal electricity access by 2030.

The results have been staggering: national rural electricity access jumped from less than 7% in 2010 to roughly 68% in 2023. Across eastern and southern Africa, where only 48% of the total population and just 26% of rural residents currently have access to power, World Bank programs aim to expand access across up to 20 countries over the next seven years through a portfolio of renewable energy projects.

Mbesa, the Mathare shopkeeper, received her grid connection in 2021 through the Last Mile Connectivity Project, which covered the standard $115 connection fee for eligible low-income households and small businesses located near existing transformers. In remote communities like Oketch’s village, which lies far beyond the reach of the national grid, the program has supported the deployment of off-grid solutions including solar mini-grids and stand-alone household systems.

For Mbesa, the tangible impact of that connection is impossible to overstate. The small bulb above her shop has extended her working hours, and the electricity has let her children study after dark instead of stopping when the sun goes down.

“Electricity changes everything,” she said. “Once you have it, life finally starts moving forward.”

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