Tag: africa

British Couple Killed To Make Witchcraft Potions in South Africa

A suspect who confessed to the killing of a British couple and to selling their body parts for use in witchraft (muti) has been released by South African authorities.

Anthony and Gillian Dinnis, both in their 70s and originally from Kent, England, disappeared without a trace from their farm in KwaZulu-Natal’s Mooi River area on 30 August last year.

After their disappearance, their children began receiving strange text messages demanding money for their release.

The couple’s gardener soon became a suspect. He later admitted to being one of three men who kidnapped the couple, before killing and dismembering them. Their body parts were then sold, or planned to be sold, by the suspects.

Despite the confession, and being refused bail, the suspect was released on 13 June this year. The National Prosecuting Authority has said there is “insufficient evidence” to proceed with the prosecution.

Keep reading

Malawi vice president killed in plane crash along with 9 other passengers

Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima has been killed in a plane crash along with nine other passengers, the country’s President Lazarus Chakwera announced Tuesday.

The aircraft went missing after it failed to land at the Mzuzu International Airport, about 380 km (240 miles) to the north of the capital Lilongwe. The wreckage of the plane has been located, Chakwera said in an address to the nation.

“The search and rescue operation I ordered to find the missing plane that carried our vice president and nine others has been completed. The plane has been found. And I am deeply saddened and sorry to inform you that it has turned out to be a terrible tragedy,” Chakwera said.

The Malawian leader disclosed that the aircraft was found “completely destroyed” near a hill in the Chikangawa Forest in northern Malawi, adding that “words cannot describe how heartbreaking this is.”

Keep reading

Ugandan human rights lawyer’s arrest exposes use of national ID for surveillance

A Ugandan human rights lawyer’s recent arrest highlights the country’s surveillance and government control via the use of the national identification card.

First introduced by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) nearly a decade ago, Uganda’s national ID card was initially touted as a solution to streamline administrative processes and bolster citizen services.

However, Nick Opiyo, one of Uganda’s human rights lawyers, believes that there was an ulterior motive for his December 2020 imprisonment as he became ensnared in this surveillance dragnet, enduring arbitrary detention and harassment for his endeavors to expose state-backed human rights transgressions, a Bloomberg feature uncovers. His plight spotlights the impact of state surveillance on dissent and freedom of expression.

In fact, a 2023 study by the African Center for Media Excellence (ACME) concludes that the implementation of biometric and digital identity (BDI) programs in Uganda has given room for surveillance and intrusion on journalism and media in the region, unveiling that journalists in the country have become targets due to the mass collection of data under the government’s biometric and digital ID programs and its ability to engage in communications surveillance.

The expansion of Uganda’s surveillance apparatus hasn’t gone unnoticed by the global community.

Presently, in the country, possessing a NIRA-issued ID card isn’t just advantageous but essential for accessing fundamental services and participating in societal affairs.

Keep reading

Moderna Stops mRNA COVID Biologics Plant Construction in Kenya

Moderna, Inc. announced recently that it has suspended its efforts to build a $200–$500 million mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) biologics manufacturing facility in Kenya while it determines projected future demand for mRNA biologics in Africa. Company officials concluded that, since the end of the COVID pandemic,  interest in COVID-19 biologics in Kenya and Africa has declined and is insufficient to support the viability of the proposed mRNA biologics manufacturing plant. Moderna confirmed that it has not received any orders for its Spikevax mRNA COVID biologic from Africa since 2022 and that previous orders for the product have been cancelled.1

Vaccine Plant in Kenya Would Have Supplied Vaccines and Drugs to African Countries

In 2021, Moderna announced that they were partnering with the Government of Kenya to build a state-of-the-art mRNA COVID biologics plant in Kenya to produce up to 500 million doses of Spikevax each year. The company expected the new facility to initiate drug substance and drug product manufacturing for Kenya and other countries in Africa. In addition, Moderna stressed that the facility would have had the capacity to quickly respond to public health emergencies in Africa.2

According to Moderna, orders for Spikevax that were cancelled resulted in over $1 billion in lost revenue for the company. Although Moderna was a major player during the COVID-19 pandemic distributing its mRNA COVID biologic globally, it has remained a relatively a small biotechnology company with Spikevax being the only pharmaceutical product approved for distribution and use in the U.S. and other countries. Since the decline in the overall demand for COVID shots, Moderna’s revenue from sales of Spikevax is projected to decline to $4 billion this year compared to $18.4 billion in 2022 and $6.7 billion in 2023. The company has also experienced a drop in its share price by more than 75 percent during the past two years.3

The company said that the cost savings from suspending construction of its Kenyan manufacturing facility will allow them to focus on other products.

Keep reading

Mastercard’s Controversial Digital ID Rollout in Africa

One wouldn’t have pegged Mastercard for that corporation that is “driving sustainable social impact” and caring about remote communities around the world struggling to meet basic needs.

Nevertheless, here we are – or at least that’s how the global payment services behemoth advertises its push to proliferate the use of a scheme called Community Pass.

The purpose of Community Pass is to enable a  digital ID and wallet that’s contained in a “smart card.” Launched four years ago, the program – which Mastercard says, in addition to being based on digital ID, is interoperable, and works offline – targets “underserved communities” and currently has 3.5 million users, with plans of growing that number to 30 million by 2027.

According to a map on Mastercard’s site, this program is now being either piloted or has been rolled out in India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Mauritania, while the latest announcement is the partnership with the African Development Bank Group in an initiative dubbed, Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE).

Keep reading

U.S. Wanted ICC to Go After ‘Black People’ in Africa, Not White People: Ret. U.S. Army Colonel

Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in an interview published Friday that the U.S. response to the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense head, show the blatant hypocrisy in Washington.

Wilkerson told the “Dialogue Works” podcast that he was there when Powell, the former secretary of state, used Washington’s power to “direct the court at Africa, at black people like Charles Taylor.”

(Taylor, the former president of Liberia who led the National Patriotic Front of Liberia.)

“We didn’t want the court coming after white people. We wanted it going after black people,” he said.

Keep reading

Congo’s Polish Spy Scandal Is Worth Paying Attention To After The Recent Failed Coup Attempt

While all eyes are on Ukraine and Gaza, the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues deteriorating, and it’s quickly becoming a New Cold War battleground after the latest security deal with Russia in early March preceded mid-May’s failed coup attempt that involved three Americans.

The Associated Press reported that “Poland’s president seeks release of Polish traveler sentenced to life in Congo”, which drew attention to a spy scandal from February. 52-year-old traveler Mariusz Majewski was detained on charges that he “approached the front line with Mobondo militiamen, moved along the front line without authorization, and took photos of sensitive and strategic places and secretly observed military activities.” That preceded mid-May’s failed coup attempt that involved three Americans.

For background, Polish President Andrzej Duda was in neighboring Rwanda in mid-February, where he scandalously declared that “If Rwanda is ever in danger, we will also support it”, thus prompting furious protests from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that’s unofficially at war with Rwanda. This phase of the DRC’s three-decade-long conflict was explained here and here in November 2022, with the first presenting a general overview and the second delving into the roles of France and Rwanda.

To oversimplify this very complex conflict, the mineral-rich east has long been a focal point of global attention due to its resources being indispensable for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR), namely electric vehicles, computers, and modern-day gadgets. French-backed Uganda conventionally intervened in the DRC with Kinshasa’s approval to fight against Rwandan-backed M23 rebels prior to withdrawing in December once the M23-DRC dimension of this country’s long-running conflict further intensified.

France demanded in late April that Rwanda dump the M23 and pull its troops out of the country, which was shortly thereafter followed by the US calling on Rwanda to punish those of its servicemen that it claims joined the rebels in an attack around that time in the east. For what it’s worth, Rwanda has always denied both accusations, but almost all non-Rwandan observers agree that they’re true. Interestingly, the EU inked a green energy deal with Rwanda in February, so ties between those two aren’t that bad.

Al Jazeera criticized their agreement though by drawing attention to how Rwanda exports more than it mines, which is proof that it’s extracting 4IR-relevant mineral resources from the DRC via its M23 proxies, who in early May took control of “the coltan capital of the world” in the eastern town of Rubaya. Just two weeks later, the DRC foiled the earlier mentioned coup attempt that involved three Americans. While the exact goals of that putsch were unclear, they certainly had something to do with the 4IR.

The DRC under incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi, who won re-election last December in a landslide, has been actively working to renegotiate mineral agreements with its key partners like China due to claims of the previous government reaching completely lopsided arrangements for corrupt reasons. Chinese companies, for example, recently pledged to invest $7 billion into a slew of infrastructure projects in order to resolve their dispute from last year.

Keep reading

The real reason why U.S. and French troops have been in Niger for Years

In case there was any confusion over what NATO really stands for, the military alliance’s general secretary cleared things up with a bold tweet.

The U.S. military will pull all of its troops and assets out of Niger by mid-September, the Pentagon has announced, after days of talks with the country’s military junta finalized a timeline.

The Hill reports that a group of military leaders executed a coup in Niger last year, forming a military junta government that has geopolitically aligned with Russia. Talks of leaving Niger have lasted several weeks, with the timeline “finalized Sunday after four days of high-intensity negotiations,” according to The Hill, which adds:

“About 1,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in the country, for the purpose of counterterrorism operations against ISIS and al Qaeda-affiliated groups.”

That’s a big fat lie put out there by The Hill, a corporate media outlet based in Washington, D.C. But to be fair, the outlet did add this to its story:

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine told The Washington Post last week. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us.”

But even this leaves a distorted view of the reality of why Americans and French are in Niger. The full story would be too harsh for the American masses to process but I’m going to give it to you because I know my audience can handle it.

Keep reading

American & Foreigners Reportedly In Custody After Deadly Coup Attempt, Shootout In Congo 

Military leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DR Congo) said they have put down an attempted coup in a dramatic Sunday incident which included a large shootout erupting in the capital of Kinshasa.

At least three men have been reported killed, with two being police officers which engaged a team of armed attackers. The third deceased is said to be one of the gunman. A government spokesman has stated “The armed men attacked the Kinshasa residence of Vital Kamerhe, a federal legislator and a candidate for speaker of the National Assembly of DR Congo, but were stopped by his guards.”

“The Honorable Vital Kamerhe and his family are safe and sound,” the spokesman announced on X. The attempted assassination failed, with the “situation under control” – according to the military, but the whole murky incident is raising eyebrows in the West as the army says it has detained some suspects who hold US and Canadian passports.

The army has further said most of those behind the attempted coup were mostly foreigners and also identified Congolese citizens based abroad, according to initial reports. “There is no link between these people and the local army or members of security forces in Kinshasa,” an Al Jazeera correspondent has said based on official sources.

However, some initial conflicting reports indicated Congolese soldiers may have been involved, but there’s a widely circulating video to have emerged showing opposition leader Christian Malanga apparently taking credit. Malanga says in the video, “Felix, you’re out. We are coming for you” – in reference to President Felix Tshisekedi. The ‘rebels’ are said to be part of the Malanga-aligned “New Zaire Movement”.

Throughout the day there’s been a heavy military presence patrolling streets around the scene of the attack in the aftermath. The US Embassy in the capital has issued an emergency security alert to all Americans to maintain caution and vigilance on “reports of gunfire”. Various embassies, including Japan, are warning their nationals not to go outside of their homes or to shelter in place.

Keep reading

Reuters Revealed The Reason Why Niger Asked American Troops To Leave The Country

All the media hype about the reasons why this happened (ex: “Russian influence”) and the expected consequences (ex: “an upsurge in terrorism”) distract from the fact that this was entirely avoidable and only occurred because the US inexplicitly disrespected Niger despite having lost its leverage over it last summer.

Reuters cited an unnamed US official to report on Thursday that Russian troops are based in the same Nigerien military facility as American ones, which Secretary of Defense Austin later confirmed. Other outlets reported the same citing their own sources, and it’s unclear whether the same individual spoke to them too. In any case, what’s most interesting about their report is the remainder of what they said was revealed to them about the larger context within which this latest development is taking place.

According to them, “Niger’s move to ask for the removal of U.S. troops came after a meeting in Niamey in mid-March, when senior U.S. officials raised concerns including the expected arrival of Russia forces and reports of Iran seeking raw materials in the country, including uranium. While the U.S. message to Nigerien officials was not an ultimatum, the official said, it was made clear U.S. forces could not be on a base with Russian forces. ‘They did not take that well,’ the official said.”

In other words, the American military delegation arrogantly told their hosts that they don’t want Russian troops in close proximity to theirs, which prompted them to subsequently request their withdrawal. Niger wanted to cut the costs and time required for receiving Russian advisors, hence why it sought to base them in a separate hanger at the same facility as US troops outside the capital instead of building a new base. This pragmatic move was within Niger’s sovereign rights as a UN-recognized state.

Keep reading