Mubende, Uganda CNN — Joseph Singiringabo has lost almost everything and everyone he held dear to Ebola. In a few short weeks, the 78-year-old lost his wife, his son, and a newborn
CNN
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Nigerian chef Hilda Effiong Bassey has become a national sensation after cooking nonstop for 100 hours, in an attempt to set a world record.
The chef, known on social media as Hilda Baci, started cooking on Thursday and continued until Monday – creating more than 55 recipes and over 100 meals designed to showcase the best of Nigerian cuisine in the marathon kitchen session.
The Guinness world record committee still has to confirm that all their criteria have been met and whether Bassey will become the record holder.
The record to beat – 87 hours and 45 minutes – was set in 2019 by Indian chef Lata Tondon who posted a message of support to Bassey during her attempt.
Bassey told CNN that she was motivated to attempt the record because she wants to put Nigerian food on the map.
“Nigerian cuisine is the best out there,” she said. “The more recipes are propagated, the more people will be willing to try it. Nigerian food is such comfort food,” she added.
Despite the lack of sleep throughout her cooking spree in Lagos, Bassey remained in high spirits and could be spotted dancing and waving at her fans who turned out in droves to support her.
One man, Uduak Obong, told CNN he took a bus journey through the night, traveling hundreds of kilometers to arrive at the venue in Lagos.
“I drove 12 hours to be right here to support my sister, my friend. She’s just amazing,” he said.
Enioluwa Adeoluwa, a media personality, who also doubled as MC for the cookathon, told CNN: “When a Nigerian is doing something we all come out to show support… We are super excited. She’s doing such an amazing job.”
“She’s opening the door to the African food market and showing all the youth out here that if you can dream it, you can achieve it,” actor and Nollywood star Damilola Ogunsi said.
Celebrities including musician Tiwa Savage and local politicians visited Bassey during the cooking challenge.
Bassey told CNN that she nearly gave up on the first day, but after surpassing the previous record, she decided to aim for 100 hours.
“The first day was the most difficult. I was ready to give up 6 hours in. I feel like a miracle happened and somehow I got to this. The support has been incredible,” she said.
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CNN
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A toddler has died after a boat ferrying more than 30 villagers across the Shire River in Malawi’s Nsanje district was attacked by a hippo, causing it to overturn, authorities said.
A police spokesperson, Agnes Zalakoma, said the incident happened early Monday and 23 of the boat’s 37 passengers were missing and feared dead in the water, which is infested with crocodiles and hippos.
“Well-wishers managed to rescue 13 people while 23 others went missing and the dead body of the toddler has been found,” Zalakoma said in a statement Monday, adding that the deceased child was only one-year-old.
Rescuers are continuing searching for the missing persons, Zalakoma’s statement added.
Zalakoma told CNN Tuesday that it was dangerous to cross the river and accidents are common.
“It is too dangerous because it (the river) is too shallow and in this river there are crocodiles that most of the time attack people and also hippopotamus that cause incidents like the one we’re dealing with,” Zalakoma said.
According to a lawmaker for the Nsanje district, Gladys Ganda, the villagers were crossing the Shire River to get to their farms at the Malawian border with Mozambique when their boat was hit by a hippo.
Hippos are one of the world’s most dangerous animals, and they can snap a canoe in half with their strong jaws, according to National Geographic.
They are found naturally in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, especially in east and southern Africa.
Hippo attacks are also common in sub-Saharan Africa. In December, a two-year-old Ugandan boy was attacked by a hippo which swallowed half of his body before spitting him out, Uganda’s police said.
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By Larissa Makiesa.
Leaders from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are convening on Thursday to explore the next steps regarding the potential withdrawal of troops from the area.
According to News24, diplomatic channels with Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, remain open amidst a public dispute between Ramaphosa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
In response to Ramaphosa on Wednesday night, Kagame took to Twitter, accusing him of “misrepresentation” and “even falsehoods” in his remarks concerning the deaths of South African soldiers in the eastern DRC.
Kagame concluded his message by stating:
“Should South Africa opt for confrontation, Rwanda will address the issue in that manner any time.”
On Thursday morning, presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya expressed on X: “Our commitment to advocate for peace remains unwavering. We will uphold our dedication to Africa’s Agenda 2063!!!!!“Mbeki remarked: “It’s important to recognize that a section of the population in eastern DRC speaks Rwandan. A significant aspect of the issue in the Congo is that… there has been a denial that Banyamulenge are indeed Congolese.”
“Though they speak Rwandan, these individuals are Congolese, and it is the duty of any administration in Kinshasa to care for this demographic just like any other; yet we must recall the events during the BaHutu era.”
“The BaHutu held the view that these individuals were outsiders. It’s akin to South Africans asserting: ‘There are Tswana-speaking individuals here in the North West, and suddenly the rest of the nation declares that they are not South Africans; they should relocate to Botswana.’ What transpired in the Congo… that’s the reason for the rise of the Mai-Mai in the Eastern Congo.
“The Mai-Mai specifically targeted the Banyamulenge to expel them from the Congo into Rwanda. Nevertheless, it is imperative for the central Congo government to tend to this population, which is Congolese and Rwandan speaking.”
READ | Rwanda responds following Pretoria’s war warning
Mbeki added that the second issue lies in the fact that the government’s administrative presence in Kinshasa does not extend into the east.
“Thus, you encounter a region of the nation that experiences minimal governance from the Kinshasa administration. Given the country’s vastness, there’s a weak governmental influence in the east, allowing alternative forces to arise and assume control.
When considering the M23, it’s impossible for the Congolese government to overlook its implications. Unless you declare: ‘We, the Congolese administration, will safeguard the Banyamulenge as we view them as Congolese citizens.’ Failing to make that assertion and permitting others to act as they please towards the Banyamulenge will ensure the persistence of the M23. They will procure weapons for self-defense.
Mbeki noted that this issue was addressed in discussions with President Joseph Kabila.
“It’s your duty to care for those individuals in the east.”
Furthermore, he elaborated that post the Sun City talks, there were talks regarding the appropriate integration of various nations into the Congolese government.
“However, that initiative faltered at some point…”
Mbeki added that Kagame and Kabila recognized, “You must manage your interactions in a specific manner since part of the dilemma involves individuals who perpetrated genocide in Rwanda fleeing to Eastern Congo, leading Rwanda to argue, ‘The very individuals you’re harboring there are those who intend to harm us—they have already done so and wish to repeat it.’ So, how do you navigate this relationship?”
Mbeki stated that the leaders reached an accord on how to engage with one another because “the (Rwanda and the DRC) cannot be separated.”
He mentioned that a pact was ultimately ratified.
“I believe it disintegrated along the way, yet these processes are essential. The Congolese government must take control of the eastern regions of Congo.
“Moreover, we need a framework among the DRC, Uganda, and Rwanda to manage their interactions. I believe that’s essential to addressing the challenges in Eastern Congo.”
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By Adrian B. Wilson.
Flooding has compelled nearly a quarter of a million people to escape their residences after the Shabelle River in central Somalia overflowed, inundating the town of Beledweyne, even as the nation grapples with its most severe drought in forty years, according to government reports.
Aid organizations and researchers have cautioned that climate change is a significant factor intensifying humanitarian crises, while those affected bear minimal responsibility for CO2 emissions.
Seasonal rainfall in Somalia and upstream in the Ethiopian highlands instigated flash floods that swept away homes, crops, and livestock, abruptly shutting down schools and hospitals in Beledweyne, the capital of the Hiraan region, local inhabitants reported.
“At once, the entire city was submerged. Beledweyne became akin to an ocean,” remarked shopkeeper Ahmed Nur, whose store was washed away.
“Only the rooftops of the houses were visible. We utilized small boats and tractors to rescue individuals,” he recounted.
Nur has been staying with relatives on the outskirts of the city, which just weeks prior had been rejoicing over the end of the devastating drought.
“Rain arrived, and we were delighted. People planted their crops,” he shared.
The drought, along with violence and a rise in food prices caused by the conflict in Ukraine, resulted in the deaths of approximately 43,000 individuals last year, according to United Nations statistics.
Since the middle of March, the floods have impacted over 460,000 nationally and claimed 22 lives, as per the U.N. humanitarian office (OCHA).
The Somali Disaster Management Agency reported that the floods in Beledweyne alone have displaced more than 245,000 individuals.
“Recovery from six consecutive seasons of inadequate rainfall will require time,” OCHA stated in a report dated May 14.
The rains are replenishing water supplies and allowing vegetation to regrow; however, significantly more rainfall is necessary to effectively mitigate the effects of the recent drought, OCHA mentioned in a report.
After enduring consecutive disasters, at least one resident of Beledweyne, Halima Abdullahi, expressed her exhaustion, making her one of the 216 million individuals the World Bank predicts may be forced to relocate within their own country by 2050 due to climate pressure.
“We will migrate to distant villages,” said the mother of two children. “Beledweyne no longer exists.”
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CNN
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Rescuers have recovered six more bodies from a river in southern Malawi days after a boat carrying about 37 people was capsized by a hippo on Monday.
Police spokesperson Agnes Zalakoma said the bodies were recovered Wednesday from the Shire River in Malawi’s Nsanje district, bringing the death toll to seven.
Thirteen people were earlier rescued but 17 are still unaccounted for and on Monday, the body of a one-year-old toddler was pulled out of the river, which Zalakoma said was infested with crocodiles and hippos.
Those found dead were aged between 17 and 51, she added.
A lawmaker for the Nsanje district, Gladys Ganda, said the villagers were crossing the Shire River to get to their farms at the Malawian border with Mozambique when the boat they were traveling in was struck by the hippo.
Police spokeswoman Zalakoma earlier told CNN that accidents are common on the river.
“It is too dangerous because it (the Shire River) is too shallow and in this river, there are crocodiles that most of the time attack people and also hippopotamus that cause incidents like the one we’re dealing with,” she said.
She added that rescuers are continuing the search for those missing.
The area has seen previous tragic boat accidents. In January, a canoe carrying 15 people capsized in the Shire River after hitting a tree trunk, leaving one person dead and six others missing and feared dead, Zalakoma told CNN.
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London
CNN
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When Africa needs medicines, all too often the continent must look abroad.
African nations consume about 25% of vaccines produced globally, but import nearly 99% of their supply, according to the African Union Development Agency. For packaged medicines, only 36% of demand is produced locally, and just 3% is supplied by regional trade, according to the World Economic Forum.
Of the roughly 600 manufacturers of packaged medicines operating on the continent, South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare is one of the largest, with more than 9,000 employees in over 50 countries. CEO Stephen Saad discussed the future of the pharmaceutical sector in Africa, and what lessons Aspen Pharmacare has learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, with CNN’s Eleni Giokos.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
During the pandemic, we’ve seen a spotlight on the inequalities that exist on the continent in the pharmaceutical sector. Aspen has had a very strong commercial presence across Africa and now you’re moving up the value chain. Certainly Covid has catalyzed a lot of work that you’re doing. Tell me what you’re up to.
Saad: You mentioned inequalities. [Covid] really sparked the world’s attention to say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem right.’ We were very proud to be able to deliver vaccines to the continent in the quantities that we did, but the reality of Covid was that Africa didn’t get vaccinated. But what we’ve learned — whether it was Aids or multi-drug-resistant TB — is that we have to be strong regionally. We have really doubled down and instead of saying, ‘Look we’ve lost the Covid vaccine volumes and so we’re closing up,’ we’ve actually put [in] even more capacity. We’re committed to one person one vaccine in Africa and we’re working very hard towards that process.
If I had to ask you to describe what the pharmaceutical sector looks like right now in Africa, what would your answer be?
The answer is simple. When Covid came and Africa needed vaccines, over 90% of the vaccines were supplied by India — and that wasn’t great. At the end of the day, you can’t ask politicians from other countries to supply someone else before them. I don’t think anybody wants Africans to suffer, but the reality is when the borders close, whether it was Europe or India, they looked after their own population first. If it hadn’t been for Aspen, there would have been no vaccines made in Africa for the continent.
There’s a lot of money going into it now, there’s a lot of investment, there are many initiatives — many of them government-driven. We, off our own bat, have decided that we want to be a source not just of vaccines but biologicals — we would really like to be assisting in oncology, diabetes. We’ve got a lot that we would like to do across the continent to make sure we get access, because there are so many diseases that are just so under-serviced.
The World Trade Organization has done a lot on the policy front for Africa. The Continental Free Trade Area will hopefully make it a lot easier for cross-border trade in the pharmaceutical space. What challenges do you face?
There are numerous challenges. We have facilities in Accra [Ghana], Dar-es-Salaam [Tanzania], Nairobi [Kenya] … It is not always easy to get registrations approved. You decide not to put medicine in Kenya, for example, because of the cost of registration and the time taken. Whereas if it was already registered, we’d be exporting manufacturing into one of those territories.
It’s not so much a tariff issue or a trade issue, this is really a regulatory issue, where your medicine is required to be registered in a specific country in a specific way. For example, you can register a product across Europe [via] a central regulatory body. I think that is something that Africa should also consider.
Even though you say you’re doing good, you still have to make money. How do you balance out all of these factors?
There is this [misconception] that for you to supply cost-affordably means that it’s not very profitable. So much is about economies of scale. I remember when we did ARVs [antiretrovirals, used to treat HIV] and we were desperately trying to cut the price by nearly 90%. We got some fantastic pricing from everyone, but we still made a loss. The decision we made was, let’s go for it. At worst we would have a pretty expensive social investment project, but we backed ourselves that with increased volumes we would be able to reduce pricing. That’s what happened — the volumes came in, the prices, the technologies, and it became affordable. So sometimes you just have to go in and do it. I can’t tell you it was an exact science, but I do believe there’s a balance to be had.
I do think the world acknowledges that there are people that can pay and there are people that can’t pay. To deny people that can’t pay simply because they don’t have money is not a model that’s sustainable.
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Cotonou, Benin
CNN
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Standing on the stony ground in the bustling Fifa Park car lot, Rokeeb Yaya is haggling over the price of a dark red car. It is one of a couple hundred vehicles, parked in long lines stretching out across the vast lot – some shiny and new-looking, others dented and dusty.
The car Yaya has his eye on, a 2008 US-built Ford Escape, is on sale for around $4,000. It’s relatively affordable – US cars are cheaper than most other brands in the lot – and he wants to upgrade from his motorbike to a car. He is not interested in the history of the vehicle, he said, only that he can afford it.
But how this Ford ended up here – in one of the biggest car lots in the port city of Cotonou – helps tell a bigger story about how many of the West’s gas-guzzling cars are starting second lives in West Africa.
The 14-year old Ford arrived in Benin from the United States last year, after being sold at an auto auction.
Car records reviewed by CNN show it had three previous owners in Virginia and Maryland, and has logged over 252,000 miles on the road. It had one previous recall for its power steering, but unlike some of the other cars on the lot, it arrived in a relatively sound condition – it hadn’t been in any reported accidents.
This aging SUV is just one of millions of used cars that arrive every year in West Africa from wealthy countries such as Japan, South Korea, European countries and, increasingly, the US. Many of these end up in Benin, one of Africa’s top importers of used vehicles.
The stream of used cars heading to West African ports is only expected to increase with the West’s shift to electric vehicles. As wealthy countries set aggressive goals to move consumers towards electric vehicles to cut planet-warming pollution, gas-powered cars won’t necessarily go away.
Instead, many will be shipped thousands of miles away to developing countries like Benin, where populations are growing, along with demand for used cars.
Experts say the effect will be to divert climate and environmental problems to countries that are the most vulnerable to the climate crisis, undermining their own attempts to cut planet-warming pollution.
Exploding demand
The global market for used light-duty vehicles grew nearly 20% from 2015 to 2019, when more than 4.8 million were exported. There was a slight dip in exports in 2020 when the Covid pandemic started, but numbers are now “growing quite rapidly,” United Nations Environment Programme official Rob de Jong told CNN.
The US exports about 18% of the world’s used vehicles, according to UNEP data. These travel all over the globe, including to the Middle East and Central America, but many go to Nigeria, Benin and Ghana.
Some of these are salvaged cars that have been in accidents, were flooded, or are just too old – which get auctioned off for parts. Others are whole used cars that US car dealers are looking to offload.
“A lot of them are going to be two- to five-year-old Hyundais, Toyotas, sedans,” said Dmitriy Shibarshin, marketing director for West Coast Shipping, a company that specializes in shipping cars internationally. “It’s mostly the economy cars that get shipped there.”
Shibarshin’s company and others are “like FedEx” for cars, he said. His company usually specializes in higher-end vehicles, but also ships cheaper cars.
In major African countries like Kenya and Nigeria, more than 90% of the cars and trucks are used vehicles from overseas. In Kenya, where de Jong is based, the vehicle fleet has doubled every eight years; streets that used to be devoid of cars are now jammed with traffic, he said.
There is a tremendous appetite for these used vehicles. “You have a very young population that’s getting richer and richer by the day,” said Etop Ipke, the CEO of Autochek Africa, an online marketplace for cars. “The first thing they want to do, as they can afford things, is some mobility,” he said.
But, unlike in the US, few prospective buyers have access to credit, so new cars are often out of reach.
“That is fundamentally the reason why we’re not able to improve the quality” of cars sold, Ipke said. “It’s not like people want to drive used cars; it’s an affordability issue.”
Experts say demand for used cars could explode further as the take up of electric cars in the West increases the supply of used cars to African countries. Nearly one in five vehicles sold globally this year will be electric, according to the International Energy Agency, compared to less than 5% in 2020. China, Europe and the US are leading the EV market, the agency said.
In states like New York and Florida, where consumers are buying more EVs, dealers are increasingly looking overseas as a place to sell their older gas-powered models, according to Matt Trapp, a regional vice president at the huge auto auction company Manheim.
Those states also have robust port operations, making them an ideal place to ship used cars to Africa. “It’s setting up a really complementary dynamic,” Trapp told CNN.
“I’m not surprised to see how robust the export game is becoming,” Trapp said. “We’re going to see this dynamic more and more. When [auto dealers] see demand in other markets, they will find a way to move the metal there.”
From UNEP’s perspective, not all gas-powered cars are concerning – it’s the older ones, which tend to pollute more and be less safe, De Jong said. There’s evidence that the increasing demand in Africa for vehicles is actually resulting in more old and salvaged cars being shipped to the continent recently than there were 20 years ago.
“What we see at the moment is a wide variety of used vehicles being exported from the global north to the global south,” de Jong said. “Not only is the number increasing, but the quality is decreasing.”
In one section of Fifa Park, CNN finds a 16-year-old Dodge Charger, worn by age.
“We just sold it for 3 million XOF [around $4,500],” its seller, who did not wish to be named, said of the vehicle that arrived in Benin from the US two years ago.
Parked across from the Charger is a 24-year-old Ford Winstar that was shipped to Benin from the US last year. It’s a cheaper alternative for low-income car buyers who cannot afford newer models.
Car dealer Abdul Koura said that US and Canadian cars are very desirable to importers, who often bring in cars that have been in accidents, he told CNN.
“They repair these cars and resell them to make a profit,” said Koura, whose space at Cotonou’s Fifa park includes more than 30 used vehicles imported from Canada.
Victor Ojoh, a Nigerian car dealer who frequents Fifa Park, told CNN that it’s often possible to tell the origin of a car by what’s wrong with it.
“The cars that smoke are mostly from the US,” said Ojoh. “The cars from Canada are mostly flooded cars that start developing electrical faults.”
Some imported vehicles are missing their catalytic converters, an exhaust emission control devices which filter toxic gasses. Catalytic converters contain valuable metals including platinum and can fetch up to $100 on the black market. Some of the cars are shipped without catalytic converters or have them removed by dealers upon arrival, Ojo said.
Millions of cars shipped to Africa and Asia from the US, Europe and Japan are “polluting or unsafe,” according to UNEP. “Often with faulty or missing components, they belch out toxic fumes, increasing air pollution and hindering efforts to fight climate change.”
Regulations aimed at reducing pollution and increasing the safety of imported cars into West Africa have tended to be weak. But attempts have been made recently to tighten them up.
In 2020, Benin and 14 other members of the Economic Community of West African States bloc agreed a set of vehicle emissions regulations in the region, including an age limit of 10 years for used vehicles and limits on the amount of carbon pollution cars are allowed to produce.
But it’s unclear how strictly they are being enforced.
UNEP officials, including de Jong, have also had conversations with US and EU officials about putting in new regulations that would crack down on shipping very old or junk cars to developing nations. Those conversations are in early stages and have yet to result in any commitments.
Still, de Jong said climate change and global emissions have made the conversation around used cars “a different ballgame.” Increased shipments of older and more polluting cars are just as much of a problem for developed nations as they are for the developing countries where they are being driven, he added.
“Today with climate change, it doesn’t really matter where the emissions are taking place,” de Jong said. “Whether in Washington, DC, or Lagos, it makes no difference.”
Ipke doesn’t think that it is inevitable that Africa will accept all the old gas-powered cars the West no longer wants. He hopes that the transition to electric vehicles will come to the African continent as well, although that will require significant improvements to the charging infrastructure.
“In terms of where Africa goes, the transition shouldn’t necessarily be from used cars to brand new combustion engines, it should be from used cars to EVs,” Ipke said. “I think the continent has to be prepared for EVs, used or brand new, because that’s the direction the world is taking.”
For Yaya, however, this all seems a long way off. What brought him to Fifa Park, and to the old Ford SUV, was a lack of other options.
“I can only purchase what my money can afford,” he said.
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CNN
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For years, Alli Nansolo grappled with whether to cut his son’s dreadlocks or not. Although it is not a legal requirement in Malawi, an unwritten policy enforced across government schools meant his son was being denied admission because of his hair.
Nansolo’s could not pay for private education for his son Ishmael from his modest dressmaking income and cutting his hair, an important symbol of their Rastafari religion, was inconceivable to him.
“Rastafari is a spiritual way of life. Keeping dreadlocks is like we are committing ourselves to a vow before the most high creator that we will serve him in our life without denying his laws or commandments,” Nansolo told CNN.
The 48-year-old makes between 200,000 to 300,000 Malawian Kwacha (around $194 to $291) monthly, while his wife Empress supplements the family’s income by selling secondhand clothes.
“I felt oppressed,” Nansolo said as he recalled the staff of a state-run secondary school in Zomba, southern Malawi. refusing to register Ishmael because of his hair.
Nansolo said he contacted an officer at the Ministry of Education who advised him to cut his son’s hair so that he could go to school.
Nansolo found himself caught up in the discriminatory policies of Malawian public schools and decided to take legal action against the Ministry of Education, along with a group of parents.
“I went to the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi to ask for help. The association accepted and we went to court in November 2017,” he said.
For three years, Ishmael, then 15, would remain out of school as the court case dragged on.
Then, in 2020, the Malawi High Court placed an interim order compelling public schools to enroll Ishmael and other Rastafari children until a final ruling was reached.
It was a legal victory that marked a significant milestone for the estimated 15,000 Rastafarian community in Malawi, according to Nansolo, who is also a community elder.
However, the temporary relief did not address the broader issue of discrimination that around 1,200 affected students face, their lawyer Chikondi Chijozi told CNN.
“We saw a number of Rastafari children being admitted into government schools but there were still reported cases of children of [the] Rastafari community being denied admission into government schools, and their parents were forced to take the court injunction to the school to compel them to admit them,” Chijozi said.
‘Free’ at last, but challenges remain
After a six-year legal challenge, the Malawian High Court delivered a landmark ruling on May 8.
The court ruled that it was unlawful to require learners, including Rastafarian kids, to cut their hair before they are enrolled into public schools.
The ruling came into immediate effect but the government has until June 30 to issue a nationwide statement mandating acceptance of all dreadlocked children into school.
Chijoki told CNN: “We got a judgment from the court which essentially upheld the rights of the Rastafari children and abolished the policy that requires all learners, including Rastafari children, to cut off their dreadlocks for them to be admitted into government schools.”
Nansolo expressed his community’s jubilation that their children could now finally continue their education.
“The judgment means that we are now free because most of us in [the] Rastafarian community don’t earn much, so we couldn’t manage to send our children to private schools,” Nansolo said.
“We are happy seeing that our children will now be going to public schools without being sent back or denied their right to education.”
CNN has contacted the education ministry for comment on the ruling.
Despite this victory, Malawi’s Rastafarian community still faces numerous challenges. Unemployment, poverty, and corporate discrimination persistently plague the community. Data on the community is hard to come by but the US State Department says around 5.6 percent of Malawi’s nearly 21 million population is formed of other religions including Hindus, Baha’is, Rastafarians, Jews, and Sikhs.
“Most of us rely on business to survive. Lack of jobs is a big challenge for the Rastafarian community because those in offices are reluctant to employ Rastas,” Nansolo said.
“The corporate world feels that being Rastafari is associated with criminality, but we are not like that.”
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CNN
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Before music streaming was popular, Nigerian group P-Square was already among the pioneers of the sound now dubbed Afrobeats.
Twin brothers Paul and Peter Okoye have experienced both highs and lows since their 2003 debut, including six studio albums and collaborations with some of the biggest names in the industry, such as Rick Ross, T.I., Akon, and Tiwa Savage.
Yet the pair went their separate ways, breaking up P-Square in 2017 to pursue solo music careers behind their pseudonyms RudeBoy (Paul) and Mr. P. (Peter) – the latter also dipping his toes into acting in the 2018 drama, Genevieve Nnaji’s “Lionheart,” and more recently in the Netflix original “Shanty Town.”
Read more: ‘This is a dream’: Burna Boy, Afrobeats stars take center stage at NBA All-Star Game
“Anything you see that happens to a (music) group, it’s the same thing that happened to us,” Paul Okoye told CNN’s Larry Madowo during a recent interview in Lagos. “Irrespective of how people want to look at it, we felt the fans were disappointed,” he added. “We’re humans. It’s normal.”
Now, P-Square is back together and producing their first album in nine years, vowing a 2023 release date. After reuniting last August, they released the single “Jaiye (Ihe Geme)” to promote their “100 Cities World Tour,” starting with North America and continuing through Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa later this year.
Watch the video at the top of this page to hear more from Larry Madowo’s conversation with P-Square in their Lagos studio.
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Johannesburg
CNN
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The most wanted fugitive in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been arrested in Paarl, South Africa after decades on the run.
Fulgence Kayishema is accused of orchestrating the killing of more than 2,000 Tutsi refugees – women, men, children and the elderly – at Nyange Catholic Church during the genocide. He has been on the run since 2001.
He was captured Wednesday in a joint operation between the South African authorities and UN investigators.
When he was arrested, Kayishema initially denied his identity, according to a statement from the UN team. But by the end of the evening he told them: “I have been waiting a long time to be arrested.”
Investigators said he used multiple identities and forged documents to evade detection.
“The arrest was the culmination of an intense, thorough and rigorous investigation,” a senior official at the prosecutor’s office involved in the case told CNN.
“Family members and known associates were exhaustively investigated. That ultimately led to identifying the right location to search and finding the critical intelligence that was needed.”
“Fulgence Kayishema was a fugitive for more than 20 years. His arrest ensures that he will finally face justice for his alleged crimes,” said Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz of the United Nations’ International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT).
“Genocide is the most serious crime known to humankind. The international community has committed to ensure that its perpetrators will be prosecuted and punished. This arrest is a tangible demonstration that this commitment does not fade and that justice will be done, no matter how long it takes,” Brammertz said.
At the end of the genocide in July 1994, Kayishema fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo with his wife, children and brother-in-law. After relocating to other African countries, he moved to South Africa in 1999 and claimed asylum in Cape Town, using a false name.
According to prosecutors, since his arrival in South Africa he was able to rely on a tight support network including former Rwandan military members which went to extreme lengths to conceal his activities and whereabouts.
In recent years, the IRMCT prosecutor has complained about the lack of cooperation from South African authorities and there have been a series of near misses capturing Kayishema. A report describes a failure to arrest Kayishema three years ago.
But on Thursday, Brammertz lauded the cooperation and support of the South African government.
The events in Nyanga, Rwanda, were one of the most brutal of the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed over the period of 90 days.
The tribunal alleges that Kayishema directly participated in the “planning and execution of this massacre.” The indictment says he bought and distributed petrol to burn down the church while refugees were inside. Kayishema and others are also accused of using a bulldozer to collapse the church following the fire, while refugees were still inside.
The former priest at the church, Athanase Seromba, was convicted over the massacre in 2006 and sentenced to 15 years in prison, which was later increased to a life sentence on appeal.
Kayishema is due to be arraigned on Friday in a Cape Town court.
A reward of up to $5,000,000 was offered by the US War Crimes Rewards Program for information on Kayishema and the other fugitives wanted for perpetrating the Rwandan genocide.
With the arrest of Kayishema, the UN is still seeking three more prominent suspects.
In 2020, another fugitive was captured in a Paris suburb after more than 20 years on the run.
Félicien Kabuga, “one of the world’s most wanted fugitives,” who is alleged to have been a leading figure in the genocide, was arrested in a joint operation with French authorities.
The Rwandan genocide saw Hutu militias and civilians alike murder vast numbers of members of the Tutsi ethnic minority: men, women and children, many of whom had been their neighbors before the conflict began.
The killings finally came to an end 100 days later, when Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) troops, led by Paul Kagame, defeated the Hutu rebels and took control of the country.
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