The annual World Drug Report was released Tuesday, and it points to continued Tramadol use and trafficking across central and western Africa as one of the most significant international problems. “We need to raise the alarm about addiction to Tramadol, rates of which are soaring in parts of Africa,” said the…
With all of the attention paid to United States President Donald Trump’s tirades on trade during the weekend G7 meeting in Canada, it might go unnoticed that a number of African heads of state were in Quebec too – and they were focused on environment and climate in a G7…
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a body that counts half of all African nations among its 57 members, plans an extraordinary summit on Friday in Istanbul following the call of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to address the Israeli-Palestinian crisis in Gaza. The OIC has condemned the United States…
Asfawossen Asrat is professor of geology, School of Earth Sciences at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. Nelson Torto is executive director at The African Academy of Sciences in Nairobi, Kenya. What they have in common – along with 10 other scientists from the Global South – is a concern over…
There’s been much speculation on when and how Moïse Katumbi, the exiled Congolese political leader who announced a presidential run in March, will return to the country. Katumbi, the candidate of the “Together for Change” coalition challenging Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila, has said he will return home…
United States President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement has been met with a flurry of diplomatic responses, including concerns expressed by the African Union. Moussa Faki Mahamat, chairperson of the AU Commission, released a statement Wednesday in support of the July 2015 agreement, known…
This week Egyptian photojournalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid will be awarded the 2018 UNESCO-Guillermo Cano Press Freedom Prize during World Press Freedom Day, hosted this year by Ghana. As with the many recipients before him, he won’t see the conference sessions or attend the gala dinner in Accra. The Egyptian, known…
If you ask most tourists what defines Southwest Florida, a top United States vacation destination, they’ll likely point to the seashells of Sanibel Island or the tony Naples community. They come for the beaches and the golf courses, they stay for the winter or, for thousands of them, they come…
Zimbabwe has launched its first-ever landmine clearance strategy, designed to deal with a problem that has plagued the southern African nation since the Ian Smith era and the 1970s fight for liberation. The National Mine Action Strategy describes goals of a plan that will run through 2025, seeking to remove…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times
In an annual update to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein noted a list of concerns among African nations – and also a few bright spots. The human rights chief noted The Gambia’s announcement of a death penalty moratorium last…
Environmental champion Youba Sokona’s resignation is effective April 30, so as of Sunday the Malian scholar will no longer serve in his leadership role at the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI). At first glance, it may seem hardly newsworthy and entirely forgivable to not know who Sokona and the AREI…
As part of the global effort to combat climate change, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has issued its first annual Airborne Dust Bulletin to better understand how dust and sand storms impact humans – and how humans contribute too. “Every year, an estimated 2,000 million tons of dust is emitted into…
Laureen is the editor of Africa Times
”Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” On March 3, in a prescient last Twitter message sent by United Nations expert Zaida Catalan before she disappeared in the Kasai region of Democratic Republic of Congo, Catalan passed along this ancient proverb often attributed to…
South African President Jacob Zuma welcomed participants to the United Nations World Water Day summit in Durban on Wednesday, to begin a three-day conference on global water resources. The meeting served as launch for the 2017 World Water Development Report, with its emphasis on waste water resources and their recapture….
The Aid & Development Africa Summit beings Tuesday in Nairobi, with the event featuring more than 70 speakers whose expertise includes health, humanitarian aid and resilience, and finance. Among those speakers is Ronald Rwakigumba of Mercy Corps, who serves as the Uganda country coordinator for the Agri-Fin Mobile Program, designed to…