Author: Jideofor Elumogo

Authorities in Sierra Leone on Thursday started a nationwide rollout of the single-dose Ebola vaccine, the first such campaign in West Africa where a deadly outbreak 10 years ago resulted in the death of thousands.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak – the deadliest in history – was primarily in West Africa but affected Sierra Leone the most, with nearly 4,000 deaths out of the more than 11,000 recorded globally. The country also lost 7% of its healthcare workforce to the outbreak.

Cynthia Reffell, a health worker in the country, said that the people who are most exposed to the disease will be the first to benefit from the vaccination campaign.

“We are targeting healthcare workers and front-line workers like the police, military officers and traditional healers,” she said.

“We are dealing with the Ebola vaccine on the preventive side because if one person is affected every other person will be affected.”

The nationwide vaccine campaign, implemented by the government in partnership with the global vaccine alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency, will target 20,000 frontline workers across the country, officials said.

To ensure the campaign’s success, authorities and health officials have called on the country’s traditional healers to get communities on board.

“As they have informed us about the vaccine, it is our responsibility as stakeholders, as well as traditional healers, to encourage the communities and traditional healers, to take the vaccines which are not harmful”, said Darlington Coker, a traditional healer.

There had been no approved vaccine at the time of the 2014 outbreak that recorded up to 28,000 cases, starting in Guinea before spreading across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the other two countries affected the most.

Three years have passed since the last case was recorded in Guinea, although officials have spoken of remaining threats in endemic regions.

At least five people were killed and three seriously injured in protests across Mozambique, including in Maputo, Nampula, and Zambezia, according to police. Orlando Mudumane, spokesman for the Police General Command, said clashes erupted between police and protesters armed with stones, knives, and machetes.

The demonstrations were reportedly called by Venancio Mondlane, a defeated presidential candidate, who accused the October 9 election results of being fraudulent and declared himself the winner.

From South Africa, where he sought refuge, Mondlane urged a week-long nationwide protest from December 4 to 11, aiming to block roads, railways, ports, and airports to “restore the truth about the elections.”

Outgoing President Filipe Nyusi warned that the unrest could disrupt public sector salary payments, particularly for teachers and nurses, due to Mozambique’s lack of external financial support.

In Matola, protests intensified after a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by a plainclothes police officer. Residents blocked access to the Beleluane Industrial Park, home to Mozal, a major aluminum exporter, forcing the company to halt truck operations temporarily.

Six bodies have been pulled from an abandoned mine in Stilfontein in South Africa.

The number of miners still trapped underground is still unknown.

One local source said there were around 4,000 trapped, but police say the figure is likely to be in the hundreds.

The new head of the U.N. humanitarian aid agency says it will be “ruthless” when prioritizing how to spend money, a nod to challenges in fundraising for civilians in war zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.

Tom Fletcher, a longtime British diplomat who took up the U.N. post last month, said his agency is asking for less money in 2025 than this year. He said it wants to show “we will focus and target the resources we have,” even as crises become more intense and long-lasting.

His agency, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, on Wednesday issued its global appeal for 2025, seeking $47 billion to help 190 million people in 32 countries — though it estimates 305 million worldwide need help.

“The world is on fire, and this is how we put it out,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

The office and many other aid groups, including the International Red Cross, have seen donations shrink in recent years for longtime trouble spots like Syria, South Sudan, the Middle East and Congo and newer ones like Ukraine and Sudan. Aid access has been difficult in some places, especially Sudan and Gaza.

The office’s appeal for $50 billion for this year was only 43% fulfilled as of last month. One consequence of that shortfall was a 80% reduction in food aid for Syria, which has seen a sudden escalation in fighting recently.

Such funds go to U.N. agencies and more than 1,500 partner organizations.

The biggest asks for 2025 are for Syria — a total of $8.7 billion for needs both within the country and for neighbours that have taken in Syrian refugees — as well as Sudan at a total of $6 billion, the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” at $4 billion, Ukraine at about $3.3 billion and Congo at nearly $3.2 billion.

Fletcher said his office needs to be “ruthless” in choosing to reach people most in need.

“I choose that word carefully, because it’s a judgement call — that ruthlessness — about prioritizing where the funding goes and where we can have the greatest impact,” he said. “It’s a recognition that we have struggled in previous years to raise the money we need.”

In response to questions about how much President-elect Donald Trump of the United States — the U.N.’s biggest single donor — will spend on humanitarian aid, Fletcher said he expects to spend “a lot of time” in Washington over the next few months to talk with the new administration.

“America is very much on our minds at the moment,” he said, acknowledging some governments “will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort” laid out in the new report.

This year has been the deadliest on record for humanitarians and U.N. staff, largely due to the Middle East conflict triggered by Palestinian militants’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel.

A flu-like disease that has killed dozens of people over two weeks is being investigated in southwestern Congo, local authorities said.

The deaths were recorded between Nov. 10 and Nov. 25 in the Panzi health zone of Kwango province. Provincial health minister Apollinaire Yumba told reporters over the weekend that symptoms include fever, headache, cough, and anaemia.

The deputy provincial governor, Rémy Saki, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that between 67 and 143 people had died.

”A team of epidemiological experts is expected in the region to take samples and identify the problem,” he added.

Yumba advised the population to exercise caution and refrain from contact with dead bodies to avoid contamination. He called on national and international partners to send medical supplies to deal with the health crisis.

Congo is already plagued by the mpox epidemic, with more than 47,000 suspected cases and over 1,000 suspected deaths from the disease in the Central African country, according to the World Health Organization.

WHO is aware of the unidentified disease and has a team on the ground working with local health services to collect samples, according to an organization employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media.

Syrian Kurds fled Tel Rifaat in northern Aleppo Governorate in large numbers on Tuesday after Turkish-backed rebels seized it from rival U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities. Four new towns have been captured by Syrian insurgents, bringing them closer to Hama according to activists.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces largely withdrew and called for a humanitarian corridor to allow people to leave safely in convoys toward Aleppo and later to Kurdish-led northeast regions.

Some of the Kurdish families who fled were from Afrin and had already been displaced after the Turkish incursion into northern Syria in 2018.

“It is the second time that we flee because of Turkish artilleries, planes, and their filthy gangsters,” said Walid Hasso, another displaced man from Tal Rafaat.

Sheikhmus Ahmad, co-chair of the office for displaced and refugees in northeast Syria, said that over 20,000 displaced families from Aleppo had been registered, but that thousands of other Kurdish families remain stuck there and its surrounding areas.

Thousands of Syrian insurgents took over most of Aleppo last week, establishing positions in the country’s largest city and controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province. They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists.

President Joe Biden arrived in Angola on Monday for his long-awaited first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa .

Thousands of people lined the streets as Biden entered Angola’s capital, Luanda.

Biden first stopped in the Atlantic Ocean island nation of Cape Verde for a brief, closed-door meeting with Prime Minister Ulisses Correia e Silva. In Angola, Biden plans to meet with Angolan President João Lourenço, visit the National Slavery Museum and travel to the port city of Lobito for a look at the rail project.

His visit comes with weeks left in his presidency, as Republican Donald Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20.

Biden promised to visit Africa last year after reviving the U.S.-Africa Summit in December 2022. The trip was pushed back to 2024 and delayed again this October because of Hurricane Milton, reinforcing a sentiment among Africans that their continent is still low priority for Washington.

The last U.S. president to visit sub-Saharan Africa was Barack Obama in 2015. Biden did attend a United Nations climate summit in Egypt in North Africa in 2022.

“I just kind of push back on the premise that this is some Johnny-come-lately trip at the very end,” national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on board Air Force One on the way to Angola, noting that top administration officials had visited Africa, including Vice President Kamala Harris. “This is something he (Biden) has been focused on since he became president of the United States.”

A new strategy

Critical minerals are a key field for U.S.-China competition and China has a stranglehold on Africa’s critical minerals.

The U.S. has for years built relations in Africa through trade, security and humanitarian aid. The 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) railway upgrade is a different move and has shades of China’s Belt and Road foreign infrastructure strategy that has surged ahead.

The Biden administration has called the corridor one of the president’s signature initiatives, yet Lobito’s future and any change in the way the United States engages with a continent of 1.4 billion that’s leaning heavily toward China depends on the incoming administration of President-elect Trump.

“President Biden is no longer the story,” said Mvemba Dizolele, the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “Even African leaders are focused on Donald Trump.”

A fit for Trump’s vision?

The U.S. has committed $3 billion to the Lobito Corridor and related projects, administration officials said, alongside financing from the European Union, the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations, a Western-led private consortium and African banks.

“A lot is riding on this in terms of its success and its replicability,” said Tom Sheehy, a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan federal research institution.

He called it one of the flagships for the G7’s new Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which was driven by Biden and aims to reach other developing nations as a response to China’s Belt and Road.

Many are optimistic that the Lobito project, which isn’t due for completion until well after Biden has left office, will survive a change of administration and be given a chance. It goes some way to blunting China, which has bipartisan backing and is high on Trump’s to-do list.

“As long as they keep labeling Lobito one of the main anti-China tools in Africa, there is a certain likelihood that it’s going to keep being funded,” said Christian-Géraud Neema, who analyzes China-Africa relations.

Kirby said the Biden administration hoped Trump and his team saw the value in Lobito but “we are still in office. We still have 50 days. This is a key major development not just for the United States and our foreign policy goals in Africa, but for Africans.”

The Lobito Corridor will be an upgrade and extension of a railway line from the copper and cobalt mines of northern Zambia and southern Congo to Angola’s Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito, a route west for Africa’s critical minerals. It also ultimately aims to extend from Zambia and Congo to Africa’s east coast through Tanzania and be a coast-to-coast rail link.

While Biden’s administration called it a “game-changer” for U.S. investment in Africa, it’s little more than a starting point for the U.S. and its partners with China dominant in the mining in Zambia and Congo. Congo has more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, most of which is heading to China to reinforce its critical mineral supply chain that the U.S. and Europe have to rely on.

Some success in Africa

Lobito was made possible by some American diplomatic success in Angola that led to a Western consortium winning the bid for the project in 2022 ahead of Chinese competition, a surprise given Angola’s long and strong ties with Beijing. China financed a previous redevelopment of the railway.

The Biden administration accelerated American outreach to Angola, turning around what was an antagonistic relationship three decades ago when the U.S. armed anti-government rebels in Angola’s civil war. U.S.-Angola trade was $1.77 billion last year, while the U.S. has a stronger stake in regional security through a strategic presence on the Atlantic Ocean, and Lourenço’s role mediating in a conflict in eastern Congo.

In Angola, Biden will announce new developments on health, agribusiness, security cooperation as well as the Lobito Corridor, White House officials said.

The visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president to Angola, will “highlight that remarkable evolution of the U.S.-Angola relationship,” said Frances Brown, a special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council.

It will also draw attention to a perennial challenge for America’s value-based diplomacy in Africa. International rights groups have used Biden’s trip to criticize the Lourenço government’s authoritarian shift. Political opponents have been imprisoned and allegedly tortured, while security and other laws have been passed in Angola that severely restrict freedoms, throwing some scrutiny on Washington’s new African partnership.

With two-thirds of the votes counted from last week’s presidential election, Vice President Ne-tumbo Nandi-Ndait-wah is on track to become the country’s first-ever female president.

But it hasn’t been an easy election. A series of logistical challenges delayed the voting process, with some voters waiting for up to 12 hours to cast their ballots. Technical problems, including a shortage of ballot papers, caused chaos at many polling stations.

Meanwhile, the opposition is crying foul. Pan-du-leni Itula, leader of the Independent Patriots for Change party, is trailing behind.

This election is not just a battle for power; it’s a defining moment for Namibia. Whether with the continuation of SWAPO’s reign or a new chapter of opposition leadership. And with it, a woman may take the country’s highest office for the first time in its history.

A law prohibiting abortion services for women raped by their husbands and girls under the age of 18 is unconstitutional, Zimbabwe’s High Court has ruled.

In his ruling handed down on Nov. 22 and made public this week, Judge Maxwell Takuva said since Zimbabwe’s laws already criminalize marital rape and sex with a minor, victims should be allowed to abort if they become pregnant.

The ruling is significant, given Zimbabwe’s restrictive abortion laws that often lead women and girls into illegal and unsafe backstreet abortions that in many cases turn fatal.

Abortion is allowed in very few circumstances in Zimbabwe, including such as if the pregnancy endangers the life of a woman, or if there is a risk of a physical or mental defect “of such a nature that (the child) will permanently be seriously handicapped.” Women can also access legal abortion services in cases of unlawful sex such as incest.

Zimbabwe criminalized sex with any person below 18 in September following an earlier constitutional court ruling ordering parliament to raise the legal age of consent for sex to 18 from 16. But the highly restrictive Termination of Pregnancy Act still denied abortion services for girls under 18yrs.

“There is no doubt that it is torture, cruel and degrading treatment for a child to carry another child, for a child to give birth to another child or for a child to be forced to illegally abort because of cruel circumstances,” said the judge.

The government did not mount any opposition to the case, which was brought by a women’s rights group, although the ruling must still be approved by the Constitutional Court to become effective.

The judge said providing access to safe and legal abortion services for underage girls “is significant in light of the massive instances of teenage pregnancies in Zimbabwe, and consequently illegal teen abortions and teenage mortalities.”

The country of 15 million people records about 77,000 unsafe abortions annually, but many others go unreported. Many girls and women die from abortion complications each year, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.

Teen pregnancies are rife in the southern African country because of lax enforcement of laws, cultural and religious practices and widespread poverty that also make it difficult for girls and women to access contraceptives and clinics.

Almost one of every four girls falls pregnant between the ages of 10 and 19, according to figures by the government and UNICEF. One of every three girls is wed before age 18 in the deeply conservative southern African country where girls are usually culturally forced to marry men responsible for their unplanned pregnancies.

At least 10 people have been killed and an unknown number of others kidnapped in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by extremist rebels linked to the Islamic State group, a military spokesman said on Monday.

Rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an IS affiliate in the region, attacked the Batangi-Mbau area in North Kivu province on Sunday night, according to spokesman Mak Hazukay. Several houses were set on fire during the attack, he added.

“We call on the population to be vigilant and we assure them that we will drive the enemy out of our territory ,” Hazukay said.

Eastern DRC has been plagued by armed violence for decades, as more than 120 groups fight for power, land and valuable mineral resources , while others try to defend their communities. Some armed groups have been accused of massacres.

The violence has forced nearly 7 million people to flee their homes.

In recent years, attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces have intensified and spread to Goma, the main city in eastern DRC, and to neighboring Ituri province. Rights groups and the United Nations have accused the ADF of killing hundreds of people and abducting others, including many children.

Earlier this month, the ADF killed at least 13 people in another North Kivu village .