Somalia

As global plastic waste has increased many times over the past decade, Africa has gradually become the world's dumping ground for discarded plastic. To address the growing plastic waste problem, UN members will next week hold a three-day meeting on the earth's environmental problems. From Antananarivo to Dakar via Nairobi and Conakry, African cities are scarred by huge landfills where plastic waste is measured in thousands of tonnes. The landfill is foul-smelling and dangerous and emits smoke and…

Large parts of the country, stretching from southern Ethiopia to northern Kenya and Somalia, are in the grip of a severe drought that has left 13 million people hungry. Everywhere in these regions, where people support themselves mainly on agro-pastoral activities, the three rainy periods since the end of 2020 have been characterized by low rainfall, exacerbated by a grasshopper invasion that devastated the harvests between 2019 and 2021. "Hornet's population makes up only 4% of the global population,…

Two children were killed after a mine planted by the Russian Wagner group near the Libyan capital exploded on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Unity Government. The blast took place in the Ain Zera region, a civilian area where mercenaries had planted improvised explosives before leaving, according to the government's press center for the Burkan al-Ghadab (Vulcano of Rage). The children, identified as Maad and Zaida Aburas, died in the blast, officials said. There are still about 7,000…

In the wake of an attempt to oust Parliament, Libya's belligerent Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said that if he was replaced, it could trigger war in the North African country. Dbeibah spoke to Libyans late Monday, reiterating his insistence that he will only hand over power to an elected government. He drew up a seemingly unrealistic plan to hold elections in June. Already plagued by divisions between rival administrations in the East and the West, Libya has found itself with two rival prime…

MOGADISHU (AXADLE) Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) has completed the fourth round of a series of trainings to improve the safety and security of Somali journalists and media freedom with support from the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) in Baidoa, South West Somalia. The training program, which ran from July 2021 to February 2022, has benefited more than 90 local journalists in five regions of Somalia: Banadir, Hirshabelle, Puntland, Galmudug and South West State. Almost 40% of the…

NAIROBI (AXADLE) Germany is providing € 20 million in aid through the United Nations to alleviate the suffering of the ongoing severe drought in parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Following a historic drought, the UN estimates that around 13 million people are at risk of starvation. In Somalia, 1.4 million people are estimated to be displaced due to the current drought, and 7.7 million, half of the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance. There has been almost no rainfall in…

As France prepares to withdraw its forces from Mali, the way may be open for talks between the Malian government and al-Qaeda-linked militants, a process that could bring the West African nation closer to peace. Mali, a landlocked nation of 21 million people, has fought to curb a brutal uprising that erupted in 2012, before spreading to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and 2 million people displaced by the Sahel-wide conflict, in which Mali is…

MOGADISHU (AXADLE) Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and Somali Media Association (SOMA) deplore the brutal attack by the Turkish-trained Haramcad police force against journalists covering militant attacks in Mogadishu on Wednesday, February 16, 2022. Around 9am on Wednesday, a group of local journalists went to report car bombing and gunfire at several police stations and security checkpoints in Somalia's capital Mogadishu the night before. According to the journalists and the photos from the…

The growing inequality between vaccines around the world has affected the poorer countries the most, especially the African countries. In an attempt to bridge the gap, Germany's BioNTech, the developers of the first mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 together with Pfizer, announced plans to send mobile vaccine production units to Africa. "The question was, can we make the process compact enough to fit in a container," BioNTech CEO and co-founder Uğur Şahin told Agence France-Presse (AFP) when the company…

France and its allies in a European force announced on Thursday that they would begin withdrawing troops from Mali after nearly 10 years of fighting an extremist uprising. A statement signed by France and its African and European allies said that "several obstacles" from the ruling junta meant that the conditions were no longer in place to operate in Mali. The decision concerns both France's Barkhane force in the Sahel and the European force Takuba, which Paris had tried to create together with its…