International

The eastern DR Congo city of Goma was eerily deserted after nearly 400,000 of its inhabitants fled following warnings that nearby Mount Nyiragongo volcano may erupt again. The authorities geared up for a major humanitarian effort, centred on Sake, around 25 kilometres west of the city, where tens of thousands of people are gathered. Located on the shore of Lake Kivu in the shadow of Africa's most active volcano, the city has lived in fear since Nyiragongo roared back into life last weekend. The strato-volcano spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. Scientists have since recorded hundreds of aftershocks. They warn of a potentially catastrophic scenario -- a "limnic eruption" that could smother the area with suffocating carbon dioxide. A report on an emergency meeting early Friday said 80,000 households -- around 400,000 inhabitants -- had emptied on Thursday following a "preventative" evacuation order. Most people have headed for Sake or the Rwandan border in the northeast, while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Late Friday, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said those fleeing needed "urgent, global support". Aid efforts are being organised to provide drinking water, food and other supplies, and workers are helping to reunite children who became separated from their families. Nearly 10,000 people are taking refuge in Bukavu on the southern bank of Lake Kivu, according to governor Theo Ngwabidje, many of them in host families. Several days of aftershocks, some of them equivalent to small earthquakes, yielded to a quieter night Thursday, and tremors eased both in numbers and intensity, an AFP journalist said. But late Friday afternoon black smoke could be seen rising from the crater on the horizon, causing worry. General Constant Ndima, the military governor of North Kivu province, ordered the evacuation of districts that potentially applies to nearly 400,000 out of Goma's 600,000 residents, according to an estimate by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. The wider Goma area has a population of around two million. The authorities arranged transport towards Sake, but the roads became choked with cars, trucks, buses and people seeking safety on foot. Many spent the night in the open or slept in schools or churches. Evacuee Eugene Kubugoo said the water was giving children diarrhoea, adding: "We don't have anything to eat or any place to sleep." Tens of thousands had fled Goma last Saturday night but many returned when the eruption ended the following day. Friday's report, issued after experts carried out a risk assessment at the volcano's summit, said "seismicity and ground deformation continues to indicate the presence of magma under the Goma area, with an extension under Lake Kivu." People should remain vigilant and listen to news bulletins, as the situation "may change quickly", it warned. Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is of an eruption under the lake. This could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are currently dissolved in the water's depths. The gas would rise to the surface of the lake, forming an invisible cloud that would linger at ground level and displace oxygen, asphyxiating life. In 1986, one of these so-called limnic eruptions killed more than 1,700 people and thousands of cattle at Lake Nyos in western Cameroon. On Friday, almost all of the shops and banks in central Goma were closed, and just a handful of people and some motorcycle taxis were on the usually bustling streets. In the poorer districts in the north of the city, a handful of stores were open and there were more people, including children who gambolled near a water truck. "I will stay in the city. I know that I'm in imminent danger but I don't have a choice," said Aline Uramahoro, who has a beer store. "I will leave when the volcano starts spitting." Nearly 3,500 metres high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed around 100 lives and the deadliest eruption on record killed more than 600 people in 1977. Herman Paluku, who gave his age as 94, said he had seen them all -- and insisted he wouldn't budge this time. "There is a small hill near here which means that the lava does not reach us. And that's what protects us a bit," he said in Swahili, his hands sweeping the air. "I can never leave here, in this situation. I can't."

President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday France would invest in boosting the production of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa, to help close a gap in the availability of the shots between African and Western nations. Speaking at a joint news conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria, Macron said Africa made up around 20% of the world’s need for vaccines but only 1% of vaccine production. “How do we boost the production of vaccines on the African continent?” he said. ”On this, we will this afternoon have an investment strategy to help these industrials produce more, and quite quickly.” He said France already had a partnership with South Africa’s Biovac Institute. Later yesterday, Macron opened another one with South African pharmaceutical company Aspen. “We need to vaccinate as quickly as possible the maximum number of people...all over the world,” Macron said. “It is our moral duty; it is also in everyone’s interests.”

The eastern DR Congo city of Goma was eerily deserted yesterday after nearly 400,000 of its inhabitants fled following warnings that nearby Mount Nyiragongo volcano may erupt again. The authorities geared for a major humanitarian effort, centred on Sake, around 25 kilometres west of the city, where tens of thousands of people are gathered. Located on the shore of Lake Kivu in the shadow of Africa’s most active volcano, the city has lived in fear since Nyiragongo roared back into life at the weekend. The strato-volcano spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. Scientists monitoring the volcano have since recorded hundreds of aftershocks. They warn of a potentially catastrophic scenario — a “limnic eruption” that could smother the area with suffocating carbon dioxide. A report on an emergency meeting early yesterday said 80,000 households — equivalent to around 400,000 inhabitants — had emptied on Thursday following a “preventative” evacuation order. Most people have headed for Sake and for the Rwandan border in the northeast, while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Aid efforts are being organised to provide drinking water, food and other supplies, and workers are helping to reunite children who became separated from their families. Nearly 10,000 people are taking refuge in Bukavu on the southern bank of Lake Kivu, according to governor Theo Ngwabidje, many of them in host families. Several days of aftershocks, some of them equivalent to small earthquakes, yielded to a quieter night Thursday, and tremors eased both in numbers and intensity, an AFP journalist said. But late yesterday afternoon black smoke could be seen rising from the crater on the horizon, causing some to worry. General Constant Ndima, the military governor of North Kivu province, ordered the evacuation of districts that potentially applies to nearly 400,000 out of Goma’s 600,000 residents, according to an estimate by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. The wider Goma area has a population of around 2mn people. The authorities arranged transport towards Sake, but the roads became choked with cars, trucks, buses and people seeking safety on foot. Many people spent the night in the open or slept in schools or churches. “We have a problem with the water here, the children are not used to it and are starting to get diarrhoea,” said evacuee Eugene Kubugoo.

The risk of further eruptions from volcano Nyiragongo led DR Congo authorities to order the evacuation of parts of the city of Goma Thursday, causing an immediate exodus of tens of thousands of people. ‘Current data on seismicity and the deformation of the ground indicate the presence of magma under the urban area of Goma, with an extension under Lake Kivu,’ the local military governor General Constant Ndima said in a broadcast public address. ‘Right now we can't rule out an eruption on land or under the lake, which could happen very soon and without warning,’ he added. ‘The situation can change rapidly, and is being constantly monitored.’ Ndima said there were also supplementary risks associated with the interaction between magma and water in Lake Kivu. There were several potential problems linked to this, he explained, among them the ‘destabilisation of the volume of gas dissolved in Lake Kivu and the emission of potentially dangerous gases at the surface’. He said evacuation is necessary and should be done calmly and without rushing. Authorities have arranged transport towards Sake, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) west of Goma, in each of the ten districts of the city affected, Ndima said. ‘People should take the bare minimum with them, to make sure everyone has a chance to get on,’ he added. - Thousands homeless – The announcement was followed by the immediate departure of tens of thousands of people towards the southwest, in the direction of the Rwandan border, an AFP correspondent said. The United Nations says 32 people have died and at least 5,000 are feared to be homeless after the volcano erupted on Saturday. The UN humanitarian affairs office OCHA said 24 of the victims were burned alive by lava, adding that 40 adults have been reported missing. By the time the eruption ended on Sunday the volcano had spewed out two rivers of molten rock, one of which came to halt on the edge of Goma after obliterating villages in its wake. Goma, a lakeshore city of 1.5 million people, lies around a dozen kilometres (eight miles) from the volcano. Local volcanologists have recorded hundreds of aftershocks since Nyiragongo roared back into life, including 119 on Monday alone. A so-called strato-volcano nearly 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed around 100 lives.    

West African officials were on Tuesday heading for Mali, plunged into crisis after the military detained the president, prime minister and defence minister in what international bodies called an "attempted coup". President Bah Ndaw, Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and defence minister Souleymane Doucoure were taken to a military base in Kati outside the capital Bamako on Monday, hours after two members of the military lost their positions in a government reshuffle. The detentions come after the military in August ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Ndaw and Ouane were tasked with overseeing an 18-month transition back to civilian rule. Bamako was calm on Tuesday morning, with streets almost empty and people staying at home. Ndaw and Ouane were still detained in Kati, according to Nohoum Togo, a spokesman for the M5-Rfp opposition coalition, and a source in Kati. Reuters could not independently verify their whereabouts. A delegation from the main regional decision-making body ECOWAS will visit Bamako on Tuesday, ECOWAS, the United Nations, African Union, European Union and several European countries said in a joint statement. It did not give further details. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said late on Monday he was "deeply concerned" by the detention of Mali's leaders and called for calm and their unconditional release. The U.S. State Department also issued a statement calling for their release. Ndaw and Ouane appear to have moved against the military's control over a number of key positions. Two sources told Reuters the military were reacting to the cabinet reshuffle, although their ultimate goal was unclear. The situation could exacerbate instability in the West African country where militant groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State control large areas of the desert north and stage frequent attacks on the army and civilians. Mali has been in turmoil since an earlier coup in 2012 triggered an ethnic Tuareg rebellion in the north, which was then hijacked by al Qaeda-linked militants. French forces intervened to drive back the militants in 2013 but they have since regrouped and expanded their reach to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

A dozen clandestine miners died when a makeshift gold mine collapsed in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, UN radio Okapi reported Monday. The accident took place around midday Saturday near Bondo in Lower Uele province, the report quoted regional deputy Eddy Pascal Sinango as saying. It was the latest in a series of mine accidents that have killed around 50 people so far this year, Okapi added, quoting local Radio Tele Uele (RTU). "Seventeen people entered a gold shaft in a quarry that was closed by mine officials since last January," Okapi said in reference to the latest disaster. A landslide killed 10 immediately, while six others were injured, two of whom died after being taken to hospital, it added. Okapi quoted RTU as saying that a similar accident occurred later Saturday around 55 kilometres from Bondo. One miner died in that accident after he returned into a shaft to retrieve his pump after it began to rain. RTU said that around 20 landslides have occurred in the area since January.

The flaming, red-glowing lava pouring out of a volcano that erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday appears to have halted after reaching the suburbs of the city of Goma, according to an AFP correspondent at the scene. Thousands of people fled when Mount Nyiragongo erupted during the night sending the still-unstable molten rock on a path to the eastern city. Officials said the lava had reached Goma city airport -- located on the outskirts of the metropolis on the shores of Lake Kivu -- although residents said it had stopped at the edge of the facility. Around a dozen earth tremors were felt in Goma in the early morning. "People are beginning to return to their homes. The situation seems to have calmed down for the moment," one resident said. "But people are still scared. The authorities still haven't made any official announcement so far this morning," he added. The last time Nyiragongo erupted was January 17, 2002, killing more than a hundred people and covering almost all of the eastern part of Goma with lava, including half of the airport's landing strip. During that eruption, the victims were mostly sick or elderly abandoned to their fate in the northern districts of the city with some looting also taking place. Meanwhile, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi said he would "interrupt his stay in Europe to return home this Sunday to supervise the coordination of aid". By early Sunday at least 3,000 people had arrived in neighbouring Rwanda, according to the country's national broadcaster. The Rwanda Broadcast Agency tweeted photos of those arriving in Rubavu district, adding they would be "accommodated in schools and places of worship that have been made ready". The first departures from Goma city came even before the official confirmation that Mount Nyiragongo had erupted at around 7 pm Saturday, spewing red fumes into the night sky. The Virunga Park official said Sunday "the flow is also descending on the town. It has now reached the airport", adding the lava was likely to reach the shores of Lake Kivu. "The eruption of Nyiragongo is similar to the eruption in 2002," he said, asking all residents near the airport to "evacuate without delay". At this stage, he said, "the other districts of the city were not in danger" as the lava was unlikely to reach those areas. Power was already cut in large parts of the city when hundreds of residents began leaving their homes. Some headed out of the southern end of the city towards the nearby border post with Rwanda, while others headed west towards Sake, in the neighbouring Congolese region of Masisi. Resident Richard Bahati said he was incredibly worried about the eruption: "I lived through this volcano problem in 2002. "The volcano had devastated all our homes and all our possessions. That's why I'm scared again this time." Late Sunday electricity was cut off in a large part of the city, with thousands of people -- encumbered with mattresses, food and parcels -- heading towards the Rwandan border. "There are a lot of people on the road, a lot of cars, it's an escape," one man with his family in his car told AFP. "It is moving at a snail's pace, on three or four lanes," he said, adding: "There are children, women, old people who are on foot and the rain is coming. It's complicated." Goma is home to a large contingent of peacekeepers and staff of MONUSCO, the UN mission in the country, as well as the base of many NGOs and international organisations. Several planes, belonging to Monusco and private companies, took off in the evening, according to an airport source, with a local adding they had also seen the unusual nighttime activity. In a May 10 report, the Goma Vulcanology Observatory warned that seismic activity around the volcano had increased and warranted careful monitoring. The last time Nyiragongo erupted was January 17, 2002, killing more than a hundred people and covering almost all of the eastern part of Goma with lava, including half of the airport's landing strip. During that eruption, the victims were mostly sick or elderly abandoned to their fate in the northern districts of the city with some looting also taking place.

Nigeria’s top-ranking army commander Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru was laid to rest in the capital Abuja yesterday, a day after he and 10 other officers died when their plane crashed in bad weather. It was the third military air disaster this year and the army posted videos on social networks of the service attended by political and military leaders at the national mosque. Army chief of staff Attahiru was only appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari last January in a shakeup of the senior command to better fight surging violence and a more than decade-long militant insurgency. But the president, who offered his condolences just hours after the crash in the northern state of Kaduna, did not attend the funeral, an absence widely criticised on social media. Attahiru died as news emerged that Nigeria’s Boko Haram militant leader Abubakar Shekau had himself been seriously wounded or possibly killed after clashes with a rival Islamic State-allied faction. The aircraft went down trying to land at the Kaduna International Airport “due to inclement weather”, the armed forces said. Nigeria’s military has been battling an insurgency in the northeast since 2009, a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 and displaced around 2mn more.  Attahiru had once been in charge of leading the frontline offensive against Boko Haram’s commander Shekau in the northeast in 2017.  Local intelligence sources said Shekau had been seriously wounded Wednesday when rival militants attacked his stronghold in the northeastern state of Borno. Sources said Shekau was wounded when he shot himself to try to evade capture by militants from the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).One intelligence source said Shekau had already died from his wounds in Nainawa village on Thursday, though that was not confirmed by authorities. A villager said he had seen a body driven into Nainawa on Thursday in a convoy of some 20 Boko Haram vehicles. Neither ISWAP nor Boko Haram have reported Shekau dead, but analysts said his loss would be a huge blow to his faction and potentially allow ISWAP to consolidate territorial control in Nigeria’s northeast.

Mount Nyiragongo in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, erupted yesterday, sending panicked residents of the nearby city of Goma fleeing, although a volcanologist said the city did not appear to be in danger. People grabbed mattresses and other belongings and fled towards the frontier with neighbouring Rwanda as a red glow filled the sky above the city. Dario Tedesco, a volcanologist in the lakeside city of around 2mn, told Reuters Goma did not appear to be at risk, and lava appeared to be flowing east in the direction of the Rwandan border. Earlier he had said he thought lava might hit Goma, but he later said this was not the case. “I can see high lava fountains,” Tedesco told Reuters. A United Nations source said a reconnaissance flight by a UN helicopter appeared to show the lava was not flowing toward Goma or any major population centres. Nyiragongo last erupted in 2002, killing 250 people and making 120,000 people homeless after the lava flowed into Goma. “The government is closely monitoring the situation in Goma,” Congo’s government spokesman, Patrick Muyaya, said on Twitter. “The local authorities are currently evaluating the situation with the volcanological observatory in Goma...The population is encouraged to remain calm.” Volcano watchers have been worried that the volcanic activity observed in the last five years at Nyiragongo mirrors that in the years preceding eruptions in 1977 and 2002. Volcanologists at the Goma Volcano Observatory (OVG), which monitors Nyiragongo, have struggled to make basic checks since the World Bank cut funding amid embezzlement allegations.

* India's vaccine export freeze hits supplies to Africa * Africa's inoculation push already far behind rest of world * Leaving continent unvaccinated puts world at risk, experts say After a stressful year working as a doctor at Kenya's largest public hospital in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ngala Mwendwa got his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March and breathed a sigh of relief. The Indian-manufactured shot was supplied by COVAX, a global vaccine initiative that's been a lifeline for poor African nations. But with India now engulfed in its own crisis, Mwendwa has no idea when he will get his second dose. ‘It's just the way we are disadvantaged as a third world country,’ he told Reuters after a shift in Kenyatta National Hospital's paediatric intensive care ward. ‘It's scary.’ Before it was hit by the world's highest numbers of daily infections, India had been vital to global vaccination efforts. Its Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's biggest producer of the AstraZeneca vaccine, was the cornerstone of COVAX's supply chain. But sources told Reuters this week that India's vaccine exports, halted in March, are unlikely to resume until at least October as it diverts shots for domestic use. SII subsequently said it would restart exports by year's end. Between February and May, Africa received just 18.2 million of the 66 million doses expected through COVAX. The GAVI Vaccine Alliance hopes deliveries can resume in the third quarter of this year. That's left millions of Africans, who have received a first dose of AstraZeneca, in limbo. ‘The anxiety and stress is definitely there,’ said Mwendwa, who lost his mentor - a surgeon - and several friends to the pandemic last year. ‘Back to square one.’ Africa's dilemma highlights the vast inequality between rich nations, who were able to corner vaccine supplies early on, and poor countries dependent upon COVAX and donations. To date, some 1.53 billion doses have been administered globally, but only around 1% of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Most of Africa's 1.3 billion people have had no access to vaccines at all. The United States, meanwhile, has lifted its mask mandate, and this week France and Austria resumed serving customers at cafes, restaurants and beer gardens. ‘As people living in richer countries hit the reset button this summer and their lives start to look normal, in Africa our lives will stay on hold,’ Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO's Regional Director for Africa, said on Thursday. ‘This is unjust.’ ‘A PERFECT STORM’ The Indian export freeze now risks further deepening the chasm between rich and poor by undermining the meagre progress African nations had made in recent months. According to the WHO, eight African countries have used 100% of the doses they received via COVAX, effectively halting their inoculation drives since those shots made up the bulk of their supplies. Others are running low. Of COVAX doses already administered in Africa, around 80% were first doses of AstraZeneca's two-shot vaccine. Most countries have either already reached the 12-week interval recommended between doses or will do so by mid-June. A minimum of 20 million doses are needed to deliver second doses by the end of June, with 5 million needed in July. A deal with Johnson & Johnson to supply Africa with 400 million vaccine doses beginning in the third quarter of this year and running through 2022 should help. China has also donated doses of its two leading vaccines to African governments. And this week US President Joe Biden said his government would send millions of unused vaccine doses abroad by the end of June, though Reuters reported on Thursday it is considering prioritising countries within its own hemisphere. Africa, luckily, has so far avoided outbreaks on the scale seen in the United States, parts of Europe and now India. But as long as vaccination rates are low, it remains vulnerable, said OB Sisay, senior Covid-19 advisor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a London-based think tank. ‘We have a perfect storm. If we do not get further vaccines coming onto the continent and increase the rate at which we are vaccinating people, we could see a more virulent strain taking over on the continent,’ he said. That is not just a problem for Africa, if new mutations prove resistant to current vaccines, say experts like Tolbert Nyenswah, senior research associate of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ‘Everybody is at risk globally once Africa and other parts of the world are left behind,’ he said.  

Malawi yesterday destroyed 19,610 doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines that expired 18 days after arriving, despite assurances from the African Union (AU) and World Health Organisation (WHO) that the vaccines were safe until mid-July. A batch of 102,000 vaccines arrived on March 26, under an initiative by the AU and WHO, and they expired on April 13, leaving less than three weeks for them to be used. Malawi managed to deploy about 80% of them by that time. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), part of the AU, told a news conference late last month that the shots could be used until July 13, based on a further analysis conducted by manufacturers the Serum Institute of India (SII).  He and the WHO also urged African countries not to waste vaccines donated to them. However, the Malawian government said it would not give expired vaccines to its citizens. “We are destroying (them) because, as government policy...no expired vaccine has ever been used,” said Health Minister Khumbize Chaponda, at Kamuzu Central Hospital in the administrative capital Lilongwe. She then threw the shots, which were wrapped in red plastic bags, into an incinerator, causing a cloud of dark smoke to billow from its chimney. “On behalf of the government I assure all Malawians that no one will be given an expired Covid vaccine,” she said. A CDC Africa official declined to comment. SII did not immediately respond to a request for comment. India’s drug regulator in March allowed the SII-produced AstraZeneca vaccine to be used for up to nine months from its manufacture date, as opposed to the earlier six months. South Sudan has set aside 59,000 doses supplied by the AU and is not using them because of the same expiration issue. Malawi’s health ministry said the country had administered 335,232 vaccine doses as of May 18, and recorded 34,231 Covid infections and 1,153 deaths. African countries have struggled to secure enough Covid-19 vaccines to roll out mass immunisation. Many rely on handouts from global vaccine scheme Covax, which is co-led by the WHO and partners including the Gavi vaccines alliance.

Algeria's protest movement, which shook the country by ousting its veteran president in 2019, faces a critical test for its survival on Friday, with police poised to confront any who take to the streets. The movement, known as Hirak, is leaderless and unorganised, but after a year-long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic it revived in February, bringing out demonstrators every Friday since then to demand wholesale political change. Though the protests are now much smaller than at their peak, many of the thousands who still regularly march each week appear ready to brave a harsher government approach. "We will not stop marching. We will remain peaceful," said a well-known Hirak figure, Samir Belarbi, adding he did not trust the authorities to make necessary changes except under pressure. Protesters want the entire elite that has ruled since independence in 1962 to be replaced, an end to corruption and the army's withdrawal from politics. Since Hirak began two years ago, then flooding the capital with hundreds of thousands of protesters, the ruling authorities have attempted to sidestep its biggest demands while letting street rallies continue. That policy now seems to be at an end, with the Interior Ministry saying this month protests would require an official permit naming the organisers as well as a start and end time. "Life needs to go back to normal," said an official Algerian source when asked by Reuters if security forces would prevent any further protests, without elaborating. Last Friday, the only Friday since the Interior Ministry proclamation, came during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, so only a very small number of protesters gathered in central Algiers - and were quickly dispersed. It means this coming Friday may represent a first real test of whether the security forces are prepared to stamp out a major protest and whether the demonstrators are able to keep their movement on the streets. Though the Algerian authorities - popularly known as the "pouvoir" - had tolerated protests, publicly praising Hirak as a movement of national renewal, they also cracked down with arrests, prompting criticism from international rights groups. During last Friday's small protests, police escalated their response, detaining dozens of activists as well as journalists, though most were later released. "The past Friday's brutal repression showed the nature of a regime that refuses deep political changes," said Belarbi, who was detained for several months earlier in the protests. The crackdown comes ahead of parliament elections in June. The vote will be the third since the start of the protests - and like the others will be boycotted by Hirak supporters. In December 2019 Abdelmadjid Tebboune was elected president in a vote that officially had 40% turnout. In November a referendum approving changes to the constitution that he proposed as a conciliatory gesture to Hirak had turnout of only 25%. "It is no longer time for marching but for working and putting Algeria's economy back on track," said the official, adding that the collapse in oil revenue and impact of the pandemic meant Algeria had no space to focus on anything else. That government response has angered protesters. "It is a dialogue of the deaf between Hirak and the pouvoir," said Mezouan Said, an activist. "We want them to leave and they just tell us to vote. They have to go. They must go," he said.

Malawi on Wednesday destroyed nearly 17,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that had expired in mid-April, with the health minister blaming "propaganda" for many Malawians' reluctance to receive the jab. "The batch which had expired (has) been withdrawn from our system and has been destroyed," Health Minister Kumbize Kandodo said at the Kamuzu Central Hospital in the capital Lilongwe. The southern African country has so far received three batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine -- 300,000 doses under the Covax vaccine sharing facility, 50,000 from India and 102,000 from the African Union. Kandodo said the African Union batch had "two weeks of shelf life, and unfortunately, in those two weeks, we were not able to absorb everything, mostly due to the propaganda against the AstraZeneca vaccine." Austria this week became the third European country to drop AstraZeneca, after Norway and Denmark ditched the vaccine over rare cases of severe blood clots in people receiving the jab. Kandodo said Wednesday: "We tried to assure Malawians and give them the faith" but wound up with 16,910 unusable doses of AstraZeneca, incinerated in a brief ceremony at the hospital. Since Malawi launched its vaccination drive in March, it has inoculated 300,000 people of its target to reach 11 million, or 60 percent of the population, by the end of the year. "We don't want to lose any vaccine because we have a lot of people to vaccinate but... we have to remove all expired drugs from the system," Kandodo said.

The corruption trial of South Africa’s scandal-tainted Jacob Zuma was postponed once again yesterday, this time to May 26, as backers of the former president staged a boisterous show of support. Zuma faces 16 charges of fraud, graft and racketeering relating to a 1999 purchase of fighter jets, patrol boats and military gear from five European arms firms for 30bn rand, then the equivalent of nearly $5bn. The 79-year-old Zuma, who was president Thabo Mbeki’s deputy at the time, is accused of accepting bribes totalling 4mn rand from one of the firms, French defence giant Thales. The case has been postponed numerous times as Zuma, who has described the trial as a “political witch hunt”, lodged a string of motions to have the charges dropped. In the latest snag last month, all of Zuma’s lawyers quit without explanation. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) forced Zuma to resign in 2018 after a mounting series of scandals. Zuma struck a defiant note after yesterday’s postponement, telling supporters outside the courthouse: “If I were to reveal the things I know about other people, it would be a disaster.” Zuma was the feared intelligence chief of Nelson Mandela’s ANC during the party’s years in exile under apartheid, hunting down traitors and informers. Zuma also spent 10 years on Robben Island as a political prisoner. He has constantly played cat-and-mouse with the anti-corruption commission that he himself set up in early 2018 in an abortive bid to convince the country that he had nothing to hide. At yesterday’s brief hearing, nearly everyone rose as Zuma, dressed in a dark blue suit, entered the wood-panelled courtroom at the Pietermaritzburg High Court. In response, he clasped his hands in front of his chest. A man sitting in the public gallery chanted “Long live Jacob Zuma, long live!” Outside, dozens of supporters wearing military fatigues, some dancing, formed an honour guard as Zuma left the court building. Zuma said he was “ready for trial and waiting for the law to take its course”, while warning he would “fight if the laws are bent”. The state has lined up around 200 witnesses in the case, in which Thales is also in the dock. Patricia De Lille, who blew the whistle on the arms deal and is now public works minister, had been due to be the first witness yesterday. She spoke of “boxes and boxes of evidence,” telling journalists: “Finally this evidence will be disclosed by the state”. The opposition politician said she blew the whistle to help “root out the bad apples within the ANC, (but) the response...was vicious”. “We were vilified, ridiculed,” she said. Carl Niehaus, a fervent Zuma supporter and former spokesman for Mandela, said he was anxious for the trial to end because “our leader cannot be persecuted any further”. For his part, ANC lawmaker Supra Mahumapelo said Zuma, “at his advanced age...should be allowed to go into obscurity and we to move forward as a society.” Zuma’s successor Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to root out corruption.

Thailand reported a new daily high of nearly 10,000 coronavirus cases yesterday, more than two-thirds of them in prisons, as the kingdom battles its third wave of the pandemic. The kingdom’s Covid-19 task force reported 9,635 new cases, 6,853 of which were among prisoners. Nearly half of 24,000 inmates tested at eight prisons, mainly in Bangkok and its suburbs, including several where prominent democracy activists have been detained, were found to have the virus. Until last month, the kingdom had kept coronavirus infections low, through draconian restrictions on people entering the country and swift action to isolate confirmed cases. But now it is struggling to contain a third wave that began in a Bangkok nightlife district and has seen total infections soar from around 30,000 in late March to over 111,000 yesterday. The high infection rates in prisons came to light last week when an activist at the forefront of Thailand’s democracy movement announced she had tested positive five days after being released from a Bangkok jail on bail. The Corrections Department has said it plans to test all of the country’s prisoners – more than 310,000 detainees held in 143 jails around the country. Justice Minister Somsak Thepsuthin said he may have to consider special probation for inmates if the prison clusters are not brought under control.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and retired archbishop Desmond Tutu was among South Africa’s first seniors to receive jabs yesterday as the country launched a massive immunisation drive for over-60s. The 89-year-old anti-apartheid icon and his wife Leah emerged from Cape Town’s Brooklyn Chest Hospital in wheelchairs after getting their shots. After much delay and on the cusp of a third wave of Covid-19 infections, South Africa finally rolled out the much anticipated campaign, which aims to vaccinate around five million people aged over 60 by the end of June. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize visited an elder care facility in the mining town of Krugersdorp, around 30 kilometres, west of Johannesburg where he looked on as nurses administered jabs. Despite being Africa’s worst virus-hit country, registering more than 1.6mn cases including 55,210 deaths, South Africa has vaccinated fewer than 480,000 people or just one % of its population, mainly healthcare workers. The drive started in February when South Africa became the first country in the world to administer inoculations by US pharma group Johnson & Johnson, but it has moved slowly. The government, which has been widely criticised for the sluggish pace of the campaign, says it has ordered enough doses to vaccinate at least 45 mn of the estimated 59mn population. “Five million senior citizens are targeted to be completed by the end of June, provided that the supply of vaccines flow as anticipated,” Mkhize said. He said the country expects to have received 4.5mn doses of Pfizer and 2mn J&J doses in the next six weeks, and that 16.5mn people should be vaccinated by October. South Africa and India are leading a global campaign to waive intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines so that any country can produce them, as poor lag behind in the vaccination race. Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa deplored the shortfall. “A situation in which the populations of advanced, rich countries are safely inoculated while millions in poorer countries die in the queue would be tantamount to vaccine apartheid,” he said. South Africa earlier this year purchased AstraZeneca vaccines, but then sold them to other African countries over fears that they would be less effective. Then, after it started inoculating healthcare workers with the J&J jabs, it had to pause for two weeks in mid-April to vet risks over blood clots that had been reported in the US. The “phase two” rollout is being conducted at 87 vaccination sites using the Pfizer formula. Mkhize said the vaccinations would start “fairly slowly” before being ramped up towards the end of the month “because we are starting off with a new vaccine we have never used before”. At a vaccination centre in Johannesburg’s district of Germiston, retiree Asha Naran, 61, was relieved to finally get a shot. “I’m very happy that we’re getting the vaccine and we’re moving forward... everywhere else they’re getting it. Our family in India already got it twice. So they’re quite ahead of us so we would like this thing to go faster,” she said after receiving her jab. After a brief lull, infections in South Africa climbed by as much as 46% between the last week of April and the first week of May. Some experts blame the jump in cases on the delayed jab campaign.

South Africa’s failure to tackle toxic levels of air pollution produced by burning coal is a violation its post-apartheid constitution, activists and a UN rights expert said in court yesterday. Campaigners are suing the South African government in the High Court, hoping to force tougher action against heavy polluters such as state power company Eskom and liquid fuel producer Sasol. The campaigners say tougher action is required to enforce a constitutional guarantee of the right to an environment not harmful to health. Environment Minister Barbara Creecy acknowledges that air pollution is a problem, but her submission to the court says the constitution does not require the ministry to impose stiffer rules. Using the constitution to try to force the minister’s hand violates the separation of powers, she argues. The ministry says that environmental concerns conflict with economic considerations: the need to generate power, nearly 90% of which comes from coal, but also jobs in a coal belt with high poverty rates. A spokesman for the Department of Environmental Affairs said he could not comment while the matter was before the court. The hearing is virtual, but a few dozen singing activists gathered outside the High Court in the capital Pretoria to protest against the coal industry, waving banners with slogans such as “coal kills” and “united against deadly air”. “We’re asking for accountability from government for its failure so far to...implement its own plan. We view the levels of unsafe air pollution as a public health crisis,” Tim Lloyd, lawyer for the Centre for Environmental Rights, told Reuters in a videocall. A 2012 South African government plan set goals to address air pollution in the Highveld. Representatives of Eskom and Sasol had yet to respond to requests for comment sent on Friday. Activist groups including Groundwork say there are “dangerous levels of air pollution” in the Highveld Priority Area, which comprises parts of Gauteng, the province in and around Johannesburg, and Mpumalanga, where coal is mined and burned to generate electricity. The activists’ submission to the court cites a South African Air Quality Management Systems report covering 2015 to 2018. The report shows that air quality at monitoring stations in the Highveld exceeded the lower of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) guideline for smaller particulate matter on most days and its guideline for bigger particulates on more than half of the days monitored.

The Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso has chosen a new government that includes his son as well as an opposition leader, according to a statement read on public television. The previous government resigned earlier this month in a procedural move after Sassou Nguesso, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, easily won a fifth term in a March election when his main opponent died of Covid-19 on polling day. The new government has 36 members including four ministers and eight women, the official statement said on Saturday night. The president’s son Denis Christel Sassou Nguesso will head up the newly-created ministry of international cooperation and public-private partnerships. Last July, the NGO Global Witness said US federal prosecutors were probing the 46-year-old over alleged embezzlement of several million dollars from the publicly-owned National Society of Petroleum of Congo. His 77-year-old father has headed authoritarian regimes in the central African country since 1979 – with a brief hiatus early in the 1990s – and constitutional changes could keep him in power until 2031. Sassou Nguesso’s son is one of 11 newcomers to the administration. Philosophy professor Honore Sayi, who had presided over Congo’s largest opposition group the Pan-African Union for Social Democracy, will be energy minister. Rigobert Roger Andely, a former banker from the same northern Cuvette region as the president, is once again taking the role of finance minister, a job he held from 2002 to 2005. Seven people were sacked, including Henri Djombo who had served as a minister since 1997 and Yvonne Adelaide Mougany who had been in the government since 2002. Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso, who was appointed on Wednesday after his predecessor submitted his government’s resignation on May 6, was told to put the new team to work “without delay”. Among the challenges the new government faces are making good on delayed payments for retirement pensions and scholarships for university students. Other economic challenges include dealing with public debt, which stood at 87% of the country’s GDP in 2020 before the pandemic, and re-starting negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has offered support to Chad’s new leader, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, promising continued collaboration during an official visit to the capital Abuja. Chad’s army has often played a key role in the decade-long fight against Boko Haram and more recently against the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) that operate in a region straddling both countries.  Deby, 37, came to power at the head of a military junta after the shock death last month of his father Idriss Deby Itno, who had led the country for 30 years.  “Nigerians know and appreciate the role Chad played in helping us to combat terrorism, and we will continue the collaboration,” Buhari said in a statement from his office, without giving further details. The 78-year-old former general also offered to assist Chad “to stabilise and return to constitutional order.” Deby died, according to the Chadian authorities, on April 19 after suffering mortal wounds fighting the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), a large armed group with a rear base in Libya. The new junta appointed a transitional civilian government and promised to hold elections within 18 months. “We will help in all ways we can,” Buhari said, “to ensure a smooth transition in 18 months, as you have promised your people.” The statement added that Deby “recommitted to democratic, free, fair polls in 18 months” and was ready to be “guided” by Nigeria.

The head of Ethiopia’s election board said yesterday it would be impossible to hold parliamentary elections as planned on June 5, due to mounting logistical issues, without giving a new date. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power three years ago, he promised to break from Ethiopia’s authoritarian past and hold the most democratic elections the country has ever seen. The elections had already been delayed from last August due to the coronavirus pandemic, and problems have only mounted since, with a conflict in the northern Tigray region and brutal ethnic violence in several areas. “The vote will not happen on June 5...we can’t tell you the date as the board has to examine the inputs it received from parties,” said election board chairwoman Birtukan Mideksa. She cited a plethora of logistical delays, such as finalising voter registration, training electoral staff, printing and distributing ballot papers. “Practically, it became impossible to deliver all these at the originally slated dates.” Mideksa said the new date would take into account the rainy season — which runs from about June to September. The nation of 110mn people was due to choose national and regional parliamentarians via the ballot box.  The MPs elect the prime minister, who is head of government, as well as the president — a largely ceremonial role. Even with the delay, numerous security crises are expected to make voting impossible in large swathes of the country. This includes the northern Tigray region, where Abiy launched a military operation in November last year that has turned into a grinding war, with massacres, brutal sexual violence and humanitarian misery. Birtukan said that some 36mn voters had registered so far, with no registration taking place at all in some areas which have seen ethnic violence, including in the country’s most populous regions, Oromia and Amhara.Abiy came to power in 2018, after years of protests by the two largest ethnic groups forced his predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn to step down. The country’s first ever Oromo premier sparked hope as he released dissidents from jail, apologised for state brutality and welcomed home exiled groups — part of a democratic rebirth meant to culminate in the most competitive elections in Ethiopia’s history.The ruling coalition that preceded Abiy claimed staggering majorities in the two previous elections, which observers said fell far short of international standards for fairness. A more open contest in 2005 saw big gains for the opposition but led to a lethal crackdown on protests over contested results. Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his reforms, which included ending a long conflict with neighbouring Eritrea over a border dispute. Abiy dismantled the ruling EPRDF coalition, forming his Prosperity Party, sidelining the powerful Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which had dominated national politics for decades. The TPLF increasingly defied his authority, holding their own regional elections despite the coronavirus delay. The feud erupted into violence when the prime minister sent troops into Tigray to oust the party which he accused of attacking federal military camps, but what was billed as a brief military campaign has turned into a grinding conflict with no nd in sight.