Month: July 2024

Kampala, Uganda — Soldiers and police sealed off the headquarters of Uganda’s biggest opposition party on Monday in what a police spokesperson called a precautionary move ahead of anti-government protests planned for Tuesday despite a ban.

In posts on social media platform X, National Unity Platform party chief Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, said security personnel had surrounded NUP headquarters in the capital Kampala, barring anyone from entering or exiting.

Wine said several NUP leaders had been “violently arrested” and also showed pictures of military personnel at the premises alongside parked army trucks.

“The military and police have raided and surrounded the National Unity Platform offices …” he said. “The cowardly regime is so afraid of the people because they know how much they have wronged them!”

Police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke did not immediately respond when sought for comment about the reported arrests.

Wine, 42, a pop star turned politician, has in recent years emerged as the biggest challenger to veteran President Yoweri Museveni, 79, who has led the East African nation since 1986.

Ugandan youth who have spearheaded recent protests are planning to march to parliament on Tuesday in defiance of a ban on the demonstration, which is intended to denounce alleged widespread corruption and human rights abuses under Museveni’s long-time rule.

Wine said his party was not organizing Tuesday’s protests, but it supported them.

Rusoke said security forces had taken precautionary steps against what he called NUP “mobilization for the protest.”

“We have been monitoring (this). Their activities raised a red flag and we took precaution measures,” he said.

Protests are constitutionally legal in Uganda but organizers must secure permits in advance from police, which are only rarely granted.

Opposition leaders and rights activists say embezzlement and misuse of government funds are widespread in Uganda and have long accused Museveni of failing to prosecute corrupt top-level officials who are politically loyal or related to him.

Museveni has repeatedly denied tolerating corruption and says whenever there is sufficient evidence, culprits are prosecuted, for example lawmakers and even ministers.

Museveni on Monday directed the Criminal Investigations Directorate “to arrest and prosecute all government officials linked to ghost civil servants on the payroll,” his government announced on X.

In a speech on Saturday, he warned Ugandan youth against the planned protests, alleging they were sponsored by foreigners.

“Some elements, some of them from the opposition, are always working with the foreigners to foment chaos in Uganda – riots, illegal demonstrations, illegal and inconsiderate processions, etc. These people … should check themselves or we shall have no alternative but to check them,” he said.
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Monrovia, Liberia — Severe flooding in Liberia has led a group of senators to propose relocating the capital city away from overcrowded and poorly managed Monrovia, a suggestion met with a mixture of enthusiasm and hesitancy in the West African country.

Flash floods triggered by torrential rains between the end of June and early July left nearly 50,000 Liberians in urgent need, the national disaster management agency said.

The flood-prone capital was particularly badly hit, owing in part to overpopulation, a poor sewage system, and a lack of building regulation.

Meeting to discuss the persistent flooding problem, a senate joint committee in early July suggested establishing a new city to replace Monrovia.

“It’s a good idea because our current capital city is a mess,” said Chris Kpewudu, a young motorbike driver in the capital.

“There is garbage all over the city and also when it rains, there is flooding everywhere, but with a new city, it will be well laid out and our capital city could look like, or more than, Abuja,” he added.

Nigeria’s Abuja is one of a handful of planned capital cities on the African continent.

Tanzania’s capital Dodoma and Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast were also established as administrative capitals towards the end of the 20th century, with all three cities occupying geographically central positions in their respective countries.

Monrovia is home to 1.5 million people and lies on the Atlantic coast of Liberia, one of the poorest countries in the world.

The city is the economic, political, and cultural hub of the country, with the Freeport of Monrovia providing a gateway for Liberian exports including iron ore, rubber, and timber to reach the United States and Europe.

But the city’s poorly functioning infrastructure can barely keep up with its ever-expanding population.

The Ministry of Public Works told AFP it was carefully reviewing the proposal, adding that the the plan did not yet include an exact location for the move, and that any decision would come down to economic viability.

“Having a new city is capital-intensive,” said T. T. Benjamin Myers, the ministry’s communications director.

“As a country, our national budget is still around $600 million… so having a new city will require a lot of technical, financial, and economic factors to be seriously considered,” he added.

‘Not a quick fix’

The proposal to replace the capital is not a new one in Africa’s oldest republic.

In 2012, then-president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf suggested relocating Monrovia to a new city called Zekepa in the center of the country.

“We were all enthusiastic and looking forward to that,” Marayah Fyneah, the national program officer of the Liberian Women’s Legislative Caucus, told AFP.

“But unfortunately, we did not even see a plan to show what the city would look like,” she added.

Fyneah said she was skeptical that a new Liberian capital would ever materialize in her lifetime, given the failure of the previous attempt.

Some residents interviewed by AFP were also hesitant and said the government should first prioritize improving infrastructure and tackling poverty before searching for a new capital.

“Our lawmakers are forgetting the issues that we have on hand as a country. Even the city of Monrovia is poorly managed in terms of sanitation and a lot more,” said one commentator, the journalist Princess Elexa VanjahKollie.

Experts have also warned of the extensive urban planning needed to create a viable new capital.

“To establish a new city is not a quick fix,” Christopher Wallace, an economics lecturer at the University of Liberia, told AFP.

“You want to consider the economic activities that would make the economy vibrant in that area, and you must have done zoning to have a clear layout of what such a city will look like,” he added.
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In Malawi, according to the U.N.’s most recent numbers, over 15% of children under the age of 18 are orphans, due in part to the high prevalence of deaths from HIV and AIDS among caregivers. The Zoe Foundation is trying to give these at-risk children a future. Reporting from Ndodani village in Lilongwe, Malawi, Chimwemwe Padatha has more.
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Port Sudan, Sudan — Sudan’s de facto leader, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, received an Iranian ambassador Sunday and sent his own to Tehran, the government said, cementing a rapprochement after an eight-year rupture.

Sudan and Iran agreed last October to resume diplomatic relations, as the army-aligned government scrambled for allies during its war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

The Sudanese government, loyal to the army in its 15-month fight against the RSF, announced in a statement that Burhan had received Tehran’s new ambassador Hassan Shah Hosseini in Port Sudan. 

The Red Sea city has become Sudan’s de facto seat of government since Khartoum became wracked by fighting. 

This is “the beginning of a new phase in the course of bilateral relations between the two countries,” foreign ministry undersecretary Hussein al-Amin said as Burhan sent off Sudan’s new ambassador to Iran, Abdelaziz Hassan Saleh. 

Sudan broke off relations with Iran in 2016 in a show of solidarity with Saudi Arabia, after the kingdom’s embassy in Tehran was attacked following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. 

Several Saudi allies in the region also cut ties with Iran at the time. 

In March 2023, however, Riyadh and Tehran announced the restoration of their relations following an agreement brokered by China. 

Iran has since moved to cement or restore relations with neighboring Arab countries.  

Since Sudan’s war began in April 2023, several foreign powers have supported rival forces.  

In December, Sudan expelled diplomats from the United Arab Emirates on allegations that the Gulf state was funneling weapons to the RSF. 

The UAE has denied taking sides in the conflict. 

Egypt and Turkey have backed the army. 

The United States in February voiced concern at reported arms shipments by Washington’s foe Iran to Sudan’s military. 

Around that time, the army recovered some territory after months of defeats at the hands of the RSF. 

Sudan has also recently drawn closer to Russia, which experts say has reconsidered its previous relationship with the RSF, with which it had links through the mercenary Wagner group. 

Sudan under former strongman Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled in 2019, developed close relations with Iran’s clerical state. 

The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates placing the death toll as high as 150,000, according to the U.S. envoy to Sudan, Tom Perriello. 

It has also created the world’s worst displacement crisis — with more than 11 million uprooted, according to the United Nations — and brought the country to the brink of famine. 
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Dakar — It was only when 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy Lassou Samb prepared to sit his end-of-year exams that his lack of any legal documentation finally caught up with him.

Like many young people in the West African country, Samb was never registered at birth, an oversight with potentially profound consequences for his education.

Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese pupils are sitting exams until Wednesday to mark the end of their school year.

But Samb almost did not take the test needed to move onto the next grade because he lacked the required birth certificate.

Every year, the exam period highlights a major failure to register births, not just in Senegal but across Africa.

Of the more than 300,000 students registered for the end of elementary school exams, almost 70,000 had no civil status documents, the examinations department said.

The issue has potentially serious consequences ranging from the protection of rights, access to public services and government policy planning.

Samb, one of six children born in a village in central Senegal, was the only one in his family not to be registered.

“Our (school) director often calls me into his office to remind me that I haven’t brought my birth certificate yet, but I don’t know what to tell him,” he said.

Samb “was born with a fractured hand at a time when things were hard for us,” said his father Malick, a factory worker.

“The priority then was to treat him.”

Like previous administrations, Senegal’s new government this year ignored the rule requiring a birth certificate for exams and allowed children to sit them without.

Unregistered children

“There is no question of sacrificing these children twice,” said Moussa Bala Fofana, Minister for Local and Regional Authorities. 

“Firstly by not declaring them at birth, and secondly by preventing them from sitting their exams because they have no papers, even though they have nothing to do with it,” he said.

While 98 percent of births are registered in Europe, the number stands at just 44 percent in Africa, according to a 2024 WHO report.

More than half of the world’s unregistered children live in Africa, totaling around 91 million, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said in 2022.

Birth registration is a critical first step in access to healthcare, education and justice, and is also an essential tool in government planning for public health and development.

But long distances to registry offices, a lack of knowledge, local customs and, in some countries, discriminatory practices and fees can prevent parents from registering a birth, UNICEF said.

Some parents neglect or ignore the importance of birth certificates even though they have up to a year to register their child free of charge, said Aliou Ousmane Sall, Director of Senegal’s national civil status agency.

After this deadline, a court has to authorize the registration and parents must pay a fee of 4,000 CFA francs ($7).

Fraud

Obtaining a birth certificate can take several years due to the difficulty of accessing the necessary services, obsolete equipment and poorly trained officials.

“For most of our African countries, we had to make a transition from the colonial state to the post-colonial state,” said Oumar Ba, president of the country’s mayors’ association.

“As a result, many measures were not taken in time. Our states inherited a civil registry that was not well structured,” he added. 

The shortfalls are conducive to fraud, with concerns about identification number trafficking widespread in Senegal.

Seydina Aidara, 23, said he was about to sit his final high school exams when he discovered that his civil registration number had been stolen, preventing him from taking the test.

For Lassou Samb, a birth certificate would later allow him to get an identity card, passport or driving license.

But his father said that despite his efforts, he had not been able to complete the registration process.

The government has launched a plan to modernize and digitize the civil registry in a bid to improve access and minimize fraud.

Nineteen million records have already been digitized, said Sall, of the national civil status agency.

“With this program, the problems will soon be over,” he said.
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