标签： Africa

A high-profile Ghanaian social media creator, known publicly as Abu Trica and legally named Frederick Kumi, has been transferred into U.S. custody to stand trial on allegations that he led a transnational romance fraud ring that stole more than $8 million from vulnerable elderly American citizens. Kumi has formally pleaded not guilty to all criminal charges brought against him.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. allege that Kumi leveraged artificial intelligence technology to build convincing fake digital personas, which he then used to connect with potential targets on major social media platforms and popular dating websites. Over time, prosecutors claim he gained the trust of his victims before coercing them into sending large sums of money. If convicted on the two core charges—conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering—Kumi faces a maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars.

The extradition, which was completed on a Delta Airlines flight Thursday, has sparked significant political and legal controversy in Ghana. Kumi’s defense attorney, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, told reporters that he appeared in a Ghanaian court on Thursday to file a formal challenge to the extradition, only to discover that authorities had already removed Kumi from the country hours before the court could issue a ruling. Barker-Vormawor has accused the Ghanaian government of bypassing required judicial oversight, arguing that the rushed extradition raises serious unresolved constitutional questions about the separation of powers in the West African nation. As of Monday, the Ghanaian government has not issued any public response to these allegations.

Long before his arrest, Kumi drew public suspicion for his habit of showcasing extravagant wealth to his more than 100,000 Instagram followers. He regularly posted photos of high-end luxury vehicles, stacks of cash, and upscale properties, which led many observers to question the legitimacy of his income sources—a question that U.S. authorities have now formally answered with fraud charges.

According to the prosecution’s narrative, the scam followed a well-documented pattern: Kumi and his co-conspirators would initiate frequent, emotionally intimate conversations with victims through online platforms, gradually building romantic connection. Once trust was established, the group would request money or high-value goods under false pretenses—often claiming the funds were needed for emergency medical care, travel costs to visit the victim, or to secure a fake high-return investment opportunity. All funds and valuables were routed to third-party accounts controlled by co-conspirators, after which Kumi allegedly split the illicit proceeds between his network of partners in both the U.S. and Ghana.

A native of the southern Ghanaian town of Swedru, Kumi was first taken into custody last year during a coordinated operation carried out jointly by Ghanaian and U.S. law enforcement. There remains a minor discrepancy over Kumi’s age: his legal team says he is 28, while U.S. prosecutors list his age as 31.

The prosecution of Kumi’s case is being carried out under the U.S. Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act, a federal law designed to increase penalties and priority for crimes targeting older adults. This extradition is the latest in a series of coordinated law enforcement actions by U.S. authorities cracking down on cross-border fraud networks based in West Africa that target elderly U.S. citizens. Just last week, another extradited Ghanaian fraudster, Joseph Kwadwo Badu Boateng—better known by his online alias Dada Joe Remix—pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to running romance and inheritance fraud schemes that stole from American victims. In December of last year, a U.S. court sentenced Nigerian fraud ringleader Oluwaseun Adekoya to 20 years in prison for his role in running a nationwide bank fraud and money laundering conspiracy that laundered more than $2 million in stolen funds.

DAKAR, Senegal – Migrants deported from the United States and detained in an Equatorial Guinean hotel are sounding an urgent alarm: authorities have placed at least one suspected Ebola patient under quarantine in the same facility, according to statements from the detainees and the legal team representing them, released publicly Thursday.

The isolated facility, a hotel located on a lush tropical island off Equatorial Guinea’s mainland coast, is owned by the country’s long-ruling, powerful president Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. It currently holds 17 migrants originating from a range of African nations including Angola, Mauritania and Ethiopia, placed there under a little-known, non-transparent third-country deportation agreement struck with the former Trump administration.

Details of the dangerous co-location emerged from both a formal statement released by an international coalition of human rights lawyers and on-the-record interviews with two of the detained migrants, who spoke only on condition of anonymity over fears of violent retaliation from Equatorial Guinean authorities. According to their accounts, last week medical personnel wearing full hazmat suits brought a man suspected of carrying the Ebola virus to the hotel and quarantined him on a floor directly below the section where migrants are being held.

An ongoing rare Ebola outbreak is currently ravaging the central African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the outbreak was first declared in May and has already claimed more than 600 lives to date. While a small number of confirmed cases have been recorded in neighboring Uganda, Equatorial Guinea – which shares no border with Congo and sits roughly 1,885 kilometers away from the outbreak’s epicenter – has not reported any confirmed or even suspected Ebola cases of its own until this reported incident.

Despite that lack of prior risk, the two deportees told the Associated Press that an English-speaking doctor explicitly informed them the man being brought into the hotel was a suspected Ebola case and that they should take precautions. No further information about the patient’s status or risk mitigation steps for detainees was provided after that initial warning.

The legal coalition’s statement echoed the detainees’ accounts, confirming that the group had received “disturbing reports from multiple detained individuals that a person with a suspected case of Ebola was recently brought under quarantine into the same hotel complex where they are being held.” One detainee added that a second suspected Ebola patient, a woman, was transported to the same quarantine floor of the hotel this past Sunday, also identified by arriving medical staff as a potential Ebola case.

The Associated Press has reviewed video footage that appears to show medical workers clad in full protective biohazard gear transporting individuals into the hotel, which previously functioned as an isolation and quarantine center for COVID-19 patients during the height of the global pandemic.

“Things are getting worse every day,” one anonymous detainee shared in an interview. “It’s very confusing, no one is coming to talk to us. No one is informing us of anything. The hygiene is unimaginable.” Beyond the lack of information, neither masks, disinfectant spray, nor other basic protective supplies to reduce the risk of viral exposure have been provided to the 17 detainees, and no public health safety measures have been communicated to them, according to both legal representatives and the detainees themselves.

The detentions in Equatorial Guinea are part of a broader, largely secretive immigration policy enacted by the Trump administration, which entered into undisclosed third-country deportation agreements with nearly 24 nations. Under these deals, thousands of people deemed to be in the U.S. illegally are deported to countries that are not their countries of origin, as part of a sweeping crackdown designed to deter future unauthorized immigration. Immigration advocates and lawyers note that this policy acts as a legal loophole, allowing the U.S. to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries even when their asylum claims would otherwise qualify for protection.

Equatorial Guinea is one of at least eight African nations that have signed onto these third-country deportation agreements with the U.S. After a $7.5 million deal was struck between the two governments, Obiang repurposed a family-owned hotel on Bioko Island, near the capital of Malabo, into an immigration detention facility for deported migrants. Legal representatives confirm that 13 men and 4 women are currently being held at the site, and all of them had received formal orders from U.S. immigration judges that should have prevented their removal to their home countries.

Earlier this month, the same coalition of international rights lawyers filed a formal legal complaint against Equatorial Guinea before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the continent’s top human rights oversight body. The complaint accuses the central African nation of forcibly deporting U.S.-deposited migrants back to their home countries, a move that violates core international human rights protections for asylum seekers.

In Thursday’s updated statement, the legal coalition added that they have also received repeated reports that multiple detainees with pre-existing serious medical conditions are being denied access to adequate medical care while in government custody.

Rich in oil reserves, Equatorial Guinea is counted among the wealthiest countries in Africa by per capita GDP, but it is also widely criticized for systemic rampant corruption and routine human rights violations, according to assessments from U.S. government officials. Independent political opposition and critical public discourse are virtually non-existent in the country, where the Obiang regime has been repeatedly accused by human rights organizations and the U.S. State Department of arbitrary detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing of political dissidents and activists who speak out against the government.

Notably, U.S. companies are the largest foreign investors in Equatorial Guinea’s oil sector, and the country’s military receives funding for training and equipment from the U.S. government.

MBABANE, Eswatini – The southern African kingdom of Eswatini has welcomed a fourth cohort of deportees transferred from the United States under a bilateral third-country hosting agreement, with 11 new arrivals entering the country this week, the Eswatini government confirmed in an official statement released Thursday.

Acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli stated that the majority of this latest group hail from other African nations, and will remain in Eswatini on a temporary basis while the government upholds their fundamental human rights. “The government reaffirms that, during their temporary stay in the Kingdom, the fundamental rights of the third-country nationals will be respected and protected in accordance with the laws of the Kingdom of Eswatini and the Kingdom’s international obligations,” Mdluli noted in the statement.

Mdluli also added that Eswatini has put in place layered security protocols to protect both the nation’s territorial integrity and the safety of its permanent residents for the duration of the deportees’ stay. Multiple officials familiar with the arrangement have confirmed that the 11 new arrivals will be temporarily housed at Matsapha Maximum Security Prison.

The Trump administration launched the third-country deportation program as a core part of its broader immigration enforcement crackdown, with rights advocates reporting that thousands of migrants who cannot be directly returned to their home countries have been transferred to nearly 24 nations around the globe, most across the African continent. Alongside Eswatini, countries including the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have accepted groups of third-country deportees under these often-unpublicized bilateral deals.

Eswatini, a landlocked southern African nation of roughly 1.2 million people that shares borders with South Africa and Mozambique, first began accepting these U.S.-deported third-country nationals in 2025 when the bilateral agreement entered into force. To date, this newest group marks the fourth cohort of deportees received by the kingdom, making it one of the most active African participants in the Trump administration’s program.

To date, Eswatini has not publicly released the full terms of its agreement with the U.S. government, nor has it disclosed key details including the full nationalities of all deportees, their individual immigration legal statuses, or the exact length of time they are expected to remain in the kingdom. Only two previously transferred deportees have left Eswatini, returning to their home countries of Cambodia and Jamaica.

The deal has sparked significant pushback from both international human rights organizations and domestic Eswatini civic groups, with critics calling out the lack of transparency around the agreement and the absence of formal parliamentary oversight. Domestic civic groups have already launched legal action against Eswatini authorities, challenging the legality of detaining foreign deportees in prison without formal criminal charges. Eswatini officials have confirmed that the deportees can be held for up to 12 months before they are repatriated to their home countries.

Mzwandile Masuku, a prominent Eswatini human rights lawyer, argued that the ongoing transfers highlight deep gaps in institutional accountability within the kingdom. He warned that the untransparent practice could risk becoming normalized as a global immigration policy precedent if left unchallenged.

In response to criticism, the Eswatini government has defended its participation in the agreement, framing the arrangement as an expression of the kingdom’s humanitarian commitments while emphasizing that all activities under the deal adhere to Eswatini’s national sovereignty and domestic laws.

Associated Press reporter Michelle Gumede contributed reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Three years after deadly conflict erupted across Sudan, the African Union’s top mediator has doubled down on the bloc’s push to end the violence, following high-level talks with Sudan’s interim leadership in Khartoum.

Mohamed Belaiche, the AU Special Envoy for Sudan, made the commitment Wednesday during a face-to-face meeting with Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, chairman of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereign Council, in the country’s capital. Belaiche emphasized that the AU’s immediate priority is rolling back escalating hostilities and laying the groundwork for a sustainable ceasefire, which would create space to resolve the country’s deep-rooted crisis through an inclusive, all-party political dialogue.

Wednesday’s discussion, Belaiche noted, was part of a continuous series of consultations between the African Union and Sudanese stakeholders focused on tracking evolving political and security conditions across the nation. The two sides also covered two key procedural steps for the AU’s ongoing engagement: the reopening of the bloc’s liaison office in Khartoum, and logistics for an upcoming high-level AU delegation visit to the country scheduled for the near term.

Sudan has been trapped in full-scale conflict since mid-April 2023, when tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into open combat. The three-year conflict has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and triggered one of the world’s worst displacement crises, with millions of Sudanese forced to flee their homes both within the country and across international borders.

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which first emerged in mid-May this year, has already triggered a devastating dual crisis: a rapidly spreading public health emergency compounded by dangerous falsehoods that have turned communities against the medical teams working to save lives. BBC Verify, the fact-checking division of the British public broadcaster, has conducted an investigation into multiple violent incidents targeting frontline health workers, all traced back to widespread misinformation circulating in affected regions. As of the latest official updates, the outbreak has infected more than 1,700 people across the country and claimed at least 580 lives, with case counts continuing to climb as responders struggle to contain both the virus and the harmful rumors undermining their work. Misinformation around Ebola is not a new phenomenon in central Africa, but its current impact has been particularly severe: false claims that health workers are spreading the virus themselves, or that Ebola treatment is a dangerous hoax, have convinced segments of the local population to attack medical convoys, storm treatment centers, and threaten staff. These violent acts not only endanger the lives of frontline workers but also severely disrupt outbreak containment efforts, allowing the virus to spread further into unmonitored communities. BBC Verify’s ongoing analysis underscores how quickly misinformation can travel through informal social networks in remote regions, turning a public health challenge into a security crisis that complicates international and local response efforts.