Day: May 30, 2021

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WHO Calls for 20 Million COVID Vaccine Doses for Africa

The World Health Organization is asking for 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine for African countries to administer second doses to those who have received their first shot.

After three weeks of declining rates of COVID-19 infections in Africa, the World Health Organization is reporting an increase in cases. It says its latest figures of more than 4.7 million cases, including 128,000 deaths indicate a 17% rise over the previous week.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti says she is concerned, but that it is too soon to tell whether Africa is on the cusp of a third wave.

“While it is too soon to say if Africa is seeing a resurgence, however, we are seeing increases in a number of countries, we are monitoring the situation very closely. And we see that we are balancing on a knife’s edge,” she said. “So this makes the rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines all the more important.”

Moeti says South Africa accounts for nearly one-third of the 65,000 new cases reported by WHO. She says she fears new variants of the virus circulating in South Africa may be spreading into neighboring countries. She notes Namibia and Zambia are among 11 African countries experiencing more cases.

So far, 28 million COVID-19 doses of different vaccines have been administered in Africa, a continent of 1.4 billion people. Moeti says Africa needs at least 20 million second doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine by mid-July to give everyone who has received the first dose full immunity.

“Africa needs vaccines now. Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope,” she said. “Another 200 million doses are needed so that the continent can vaccinate 10% of its population by September this year.”

Moeti appeals to countries that have vaccinated their high-risk groups to share their excess doses with Africa. She notes France is the first country to donate tens of thousands of doses to Africa from its domestic supply.

WHO says the European Union has pledged more than 100 million doses for low-income countries and the United States has promised to share 80 million doses with lower-income countries. Other wealthy countries have said they will follow suit.

Source: Voice of America

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Bomb Kills 2 CAR Police Officers, 3 Russian Paramilitaries

A military convoy struck a roadside bomb in the northwest of the conflict-wracked Central African Republic, leaving two police officers and three Russian paramilitaries dead, the government said Sunday.

Tensions have been high in the country of 4.7 million since a December presidential election, although a recent surge in violence is just the latest in a civil war that has lasted since the ouster of President Francois Bozize in 2013.

“Three Russian allies and two Central African police officers were killed,” government spokesman Ange Maxime Kazagui told AFP, while U.N. sources said the attack Thursday also wounded five members of the Central African security forces.

They said the convoy was blown up on the road between Berberati and Bouar, more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the capital Bangui.

A Russian helicopter was sent to the scene to recover the victims’ bodies and the wounded, the sources said.

Moscow, which wields significant influence in the poor African nation, has since 2018 maintained a large contingent of “instructors” to train the Central African army.

They were joined in December by hundreds more Russian paramilitaries, along with Rwandan troops, who were key in helping President Faustin Archange Touadera’s army to thwart a rebellion.

Bangui referred to the Russian “military” in a bilateral defense accord, before Moscow corrected it by referring to them as “instructors.”

Numerous witnesses and NGOs say the instructors are in fact paramilitaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy private military company that is actively participating in the fight against CAR rebels, alongside Rwandan special forces and U.N. peacekeepers.

On Friday, the U.N. said 11 people were killed in less than a month by mines in the country, mainly in the northwest where some of the last bastions of rebel groups are located.

The presence of roadside bombs and mines is a rather new phenomenon in the country, despite years of conflict.

Most of the territory of the perennially unstable former French colony is divided among numerous armed bands.

Source: Voice of America

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Gunmen Abduct Students From School in North-Central Nigeria

An armed gang abducted students from an Islamic school in the north-central Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, police and state government officials said.

Armed groups carrying out kidnapping for ransom are blamed for a series of raids on schools and universities in northern Nigeria in recent months, abducting more than 700 students for ransom since December.

A spokesman for Niger’s state police said in a statement that gunmen on motorcycles attacked the town of Tegina, in the Rafi local government area of the state, around 3 p.m. (1400 GMT) Sunday.

He said the attackers were “shooting indiscriminately and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of children at Salihu Tanko Islamic school.”

The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told Reuters in a phone interview that he witnessed the attack.

“I personally saw between 20 and 25 motorcycles with heavily armed people. They entered the school and went away with about 150 or more of the students,” said Tegina, who lives about 150 meters from the school.

Tegina said there are around 300 pupils between the ages of 7 and 15. He said pupils live at home and only attend classes at the site.

Most students kidnapped in recent months have been taken from boarding schools.

One person was shot dead during the attack and a second person was seriously injured, the state governor’s spokeswoman said.

She said 11 of the children taken were released by the gunmen because they were “too small and couldn’t walk.” A group of bus passengers were also abducted, she said.

Sunday’s attack in Niger state took place the day after the release of the remaining 14 students of a group abducted last month from a university in neighboring Kaduna state.

Source: Voice of America

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Ethiopians Protest US Sanctions Over Brutal Tigray War

Thousands of Ethiopians gathered in the nation’s capital Sunday to protest outside pressure on the government over its brutal war in Tigray.

Protesters at the rally in Addis Ababa carried banners that criticized the United States and others in the international community who are voicing concern over atrocities in Tigray, where Ethiopian forces are hunting down the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders. Troops from neighboring Eritrea are fighting in Tigray on the side of Ethiopian government forces, in defiance of international calls for their withdrawal.

But the protesters in Addis Ababa carried placards that read: “Ethiopian young people denounce the western intervention.” Others said Ethiopia’s sovereignty was at stake.

The U.S. said last week it has started restricting visas for government and military officials of Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are seen as undermining efforts to resolve the fighting in Tigray, home to an estimated 6 million of Ethiopia’s 110 million people. Besides the visa restrictions, Washington is imposing wide-ranging restrictions on economic and security assistance to Ethiopia.

Testifying on Capitol Hill last week, Robert Godec, the U.S. acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, said Ethiopia is now at a turning point and, unless it reverses course, could face further measures such as Magnitsky Act sanctions that can include asset freezes.

Atrocities including brutal gang-rapes, extrajudicial killings and forced evictions have been part of the violence in Tigray, according to victims, witnesses, local authorities and aid groups. Thousands of people are estimated to have died.

The Ethiopian government called U.S. actions “misguided” and “regrettable.”

“The Ethiopian government will not be deterred by this unfortunate decision of the U.S. administration,” said the statement tweeted by the ministry of foreign affairs.

“If such a resolve to meddle in our internal affairs and undermining the century-old bilateral ties continues unabated, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be forced to reassess its relations with the United States, which might have implications beyond our bilateral relationship,” said the statement.

The crisis began in November after Ethiopia accused former leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, of ordering an attack on an Ethiopian army base in the region.

Troops sent by Ethiopia’s leader, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, quickly ousted the TPLF from major cities and towns, but guerrilla fighting is still reported across Tigray.

More than 2 million people have been displaced by the war.

Source: Voice of America

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West African Leaders Suspend Mali From Regional Bloc Over Coup

West African leaders suspended Mali from their regional bloc Sunday over what they said amounted to a coup last week, Ghana’s foreign minister said after an emergency meeting to address the political crisis in Mali.

The 15-nation bloc, the Economic Community of West African States, “is worried about the security implications for West Africa because of the continued insecurity brought about by the political upheavals in that country,” Ghana Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said.

At the end of their summit, the heads of state of the ECOWAS member nations demanded that Malian authorities immediately release former transitional President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, who are being kept under house arrest.

In their statement, the leaders condemned the arrests by Mali’s military, which they said violated mediation steps agreed to last September, a month after a coup led by the same man who has now again taken power in Mali, Col. Assimi Goita.

ECOWAS also called for a new civilian prime minister to be nominated immediately and a new inclusive government to be formed as well as a transition of power leading to February 2022 elections. A monitoring mechanism will be put in place to assure this, they added.

In addition, the statement said, the head of the transition government, the vice president and the prime minister should not under any circumstances be candidates in the planned February 27 presidential election.

ECOWAS urged all international partners, including the African Union, the United Nations and the European Union, to continue to support the successful implementation of the transition in Mali.

The heads of state expressed “strong and deep concerns over the present crisis in Mali, which is coming halfway to the end of the agreed transition period, in the context of the security challenges related to incessant terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic with its dire socio-economic impacts,” the statement said.

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo opened the summit Sunday in Accra, saying ECOWAS must “remain resolute in supporting the people of Mali to find a peaceful solution, and restore democracy and stability in the country.”

Mali’s constitutional court on Friday named Goita as the West African nation’s government leader days after he seized power by deposing the president and prime minister and forced their resignations.

Their arrests last Monday by the military took place hours after a new cabinet was named that left out two major military leaders. The court said Friday that Goita would take the responsibilities of the interim president “to lead the transition process to its conclusion.”

The deposed interim president and prime minister had been appointed following the August 2020 coup led by Goita. That coup, against then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, led to mediations by ECOWAS and Nigeria’s former leader, Goodluck Jonathan. The transitional government was set up with Goita as transitional vice president. Elections were to be held in February and March 2022.

After taking power, Goita assured that the elections would still be held, though it wasn’t clear what part the military would play in the government.

The international community, including the African Union, has condemned the power grab. The U.N. Security Council has said the resignations of N’Daw and Ouane were coerced. The U.S. has already pulled its security force support and other bodies, including the EU and France, are threatening sanctions.

Goita has justified his actions by saying there was discord within the transitional government and that he wasn’t consulted, per the transitional charter, when the new cabinet was chosen.

Akufo-Addo said Sunday that ECOWAS was committed “to the peaceful transition in Mali, with the basic goal of restoring democratic government, and working for the stability of Mali and of our region.”

He acknowledged that a May 14 dissolution of the government by the transitional prime minister was worrying and the reappointment of the new, broad-based government on May 24 hours before the arrests “generated considerable tension between various groups, particularly the military, as the former ministers for defense and security were not reappointed.”

Goita attended the summit after being named transitional president by the court. Presidents Umaro Sissoco Embalo of Guinea Bissau, Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, Adama Barrow of The Gambia and Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria were also in attendance, along with presidents from Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo and Liberia.

The heads of state called for the immediate implementation of all the decisions made Sunday. Jonathan is expected to return to Mali within the week to “engage stakeholders on these decisions.”

Source: Voice of America