Tanzania’s main opposition party has called on its affiliated MPs to avoid parliamentary meetings and committee work because of the spread of the coronavirus, which has claimed several of its members. Party for Democracy and Development (Chadema) leader Freeman Mbowe, who has been sharply critical of President John Magufuli’s response…
Ethiopian officials announced new measures to control the COVID-19 outbreak on Monday, as the country’s ministry of health confirmed a new case and a number of African governments enacted more strict controls amid a rising case count. All large gatherings or events are forbidden for the next two weeks, and…
People in parts of Tanzania and neighboring Kenya experienced a light earthquake late Friday in a border region near the Indian Ocean coast. The magnitude-4.9 earthquake struck at 9:37 p.m. local time, about 19 kilometers from the mountain village of Maramba, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The…
In October 2018, it was the impending storm Leslie that forced a decision to rescue 10 crew members and abandon the MV Alta, a Tanzanian-flagged ship with disabled engines floating adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. On Sunday, it was the unusually powerful Storm Dennis that finally forced the “ghost ship”…
The confusion over cases of Ebola in Tanzania still isn’t resolved, and the World Health Organization says it’s not getting the information it needs from the East African nation nearly two weeks after it first heard of a suspected case in Dar es Salaam. That’s according to a WHO statement…
Can soap operas change how people view climate change and motivate them to act? It’s possible, according to expert Robert Walker, who makes the case in a new blog post for the Wilson Institute’s Environmental Change and Security Program in the United States. Walker is president of the Population Institute…
Tragedy has come to the U Dream Global team, which was inching closer toward completion of an experimental flight journey across the African continent as part of its “Cape to Cairo Challenge” when a crash occurred Saturday in Tanzania. The accident happened in the inland Tabora region of the southern…
Amnesty International has joined the Committee to Protect Journalists and other advocacy groups in calling on the Tanzanian government to fully investigate what happened to missing freelance journalist Azory Gwanda – gone since November 2017, and now reported dead this week by the foreign minister. Palamagamba Kabudi told the BBC…
An Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) court will hold a hearing Thursday on Sierra Leone’s ban that prevents pregnant girls from attending school with their peers or sitting for their exams. Joining in the legal case on behalf of the affected girls is Amnesty International, which received permission…
Population trends continue to put a number of African nations at the top of countries seeing the biggest increases by 2050, according to “The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights” report released Monday by the United Nations. Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Egypt all are among the…
At least one person has died following a moderate earthquake that struck Thursday in the Lake Rukwa region of southwestern Tanzania. The 5.5-magnitude quake, centered beneath the lake itself, hit at 12:15 p.m. local time and affected the Katavi, Mbeya, Rukwa and Songwe regions. The fatality occurred south of the…
American football player Haloti Ngata decided he was going out in style, so he announced his retirement from the National Football League from atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania on Monday. Ngota, a defensive tackle who played 13 seasons in the NFL including a 2012 Super Bowl win with the Baltimore…
A leading English-language newspaper in Tanzania has been shut down for a week after a story on the country’s currency angered government officials, who accused The Citizen of publishing fake news. The Kiswahili site for The Citizen remained functional, with an explanation of what happened. “The closing of The Citizen…
The Chinese government distanced itself on Wednesday from the illegal wildlife trafficking of one of its citizens, who was sentenced this week in a Tanzanian court to 15 years in prison for smuggling almost two tons of elephant-tusk ivory. The trafficking involved ivory from at least 430 elephants. The 2015…
Rebeca Gyumi of Tanzania was honored Tuesday for her human rights work, during an awards ceremony for the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. Gyumi is the founder and executive director of the Msichana Initiative, a Tanzanian organization with a mission to empower girls through education and…