Category: Africa
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The RSF-appointed governor of Sudan’s Kordofan region has resigned and says he will defect. Why an armed group appoints governors at all, what a defection signals, and why Kordofan is the region that controls movement between the two halves of the war.
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The DRC outbreak recorded its highest weekly toll to date — 567 cases and 296 deaths — with cumulative figures at 5,290 and 2,516. Why the weekly number matters more than the total, what one imported case in France demonstrated, and the malaria complication.
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At least 22 people were killed in Kebbe, Sokoto State, and almost nobody outside Nigeria reported it. What the word “bandits” conceals, the conditions driving violence in the north-west, and why an attack that recurs stops counting as news.
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Militias loyal to a former state president entered Baidoa, challenging army battalions loyal to the federal president. Why this is not an al-Shabaab story, why army units have personal loyalties, and who benefits when Somali factions fight each other.
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The world’s oldest serving president went to Europe for a brief stay two months ago and has not come back. Why a long absence is a governance question rather than a health rumour, and what is actually observable from outside.
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The UN says 36 aid workers and contractors have been killed in South Sudan this year, past last year’s total with four months still to run. Who those people actually are, what the figure can and cannot tell you, and why prosecutions almost never follow.
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Depot explosions in populated areas happen with grim regularity, from Libya to Chad to Russia. Why munitions sit inside cities, what a “sympathetic detonation” is, why the danger continues after the fire is out, and what the standards actually require.
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An ammunition depot exploded on Friday evening south of Misrata, throwing rockets and shells into homes and farmland. Sixteen people were injured. Residents protested the next day — not about the blast, but about where the depot was.
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DR Congo has reported 5,290 Bundibugyo Ebola cases and 2,516 deaths. Contact-tracing coverage has slipped to 82.9 per cent — the figure that predicts the next fortnight — while enrolment begins in the first treatment trial for this species.
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Somali pirates have hijacked a second ship in four days, a suspected Iranian shadow fleet tanker off Yemen. Why piracy collapsed after 2011, why sanctioned vessels have none of the protections that ended it, and where the navies went.