NEWS - The African Mirror

Jul

20

2026

Nigerian troops thwart mass abduction of 46 schoolgirls in Borno

NEWS

IN the small, dangerous hours before dawn on Sunday, gunmen from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) crept toward the perimeter of the Federal Government Girls College (FGGC) in Monguno, Borno State, carrying with them the unmistakable intent to stage one of the deadliest mass abductions the North East has witnessed since the world learned the name Chibok. They did not succeed. But they did not leave without taking lives. At about 1:30 a.m. on 19 July 2026, troops of Operation HADIN KAI (OPHK), reinforced by personnel of the Nigeria Police Mobile Force (MOPOL), intercepted the terrorists as they…

Jul

20

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Morocco deployed Pegasus spyware against journalists despite years of denial

NEWS

MOROCCO'S government has spent years insisting, in venue after venue, that it has never purchased or used Pegasus, the notorious phone-hacking tool built by Israel's NSO Group. That denial has now been directly contradicted from inside the kingdom's own security establishment. According to OCCRP, a former Moroccan intelligence officer has come forward with a detailed account of how the country's domestic spy agency acquired Pegasus, tested it, and turned it against journalists, activists and, eventually, foreign officials - testimony that several independent sources and leaked documents have corroborated. OCCRP reports that the whistleblower, using the pseudonym "Safir" to protect his…

Jul

20

2026

By ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT

Elba, Babatope, Cheung bet on African muscle: inside the deal to take West African action cinema global

NEWS

AFRICA'S action-film ambitions have acquired a new industrial architecture. Idris Elba's production label 22Summers has entered a strategic partnership with Nigerian production and distribution powerhouse Nile Media Entertainment Group, led by Moses Babatope, and the UK-based genre specialist Action Xtreme, run by Chee Keong Cheung, to build a slate of high-energy action films originating from West Africa. The announcement, made this week, is being read across the continent's creative industries as more than a production deal - it is being framed as an infrastructure play for a genre Africa has never owned. The mechanics of the arrangement matter as much…

Jul

20

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Phosa delivers Dakar reckoning: SA’s democratic “Miracle” needs renewal, Africa must write its own digital-age chapter

NEWS

SPEAKING at the Institut Supérieur de Management (ISM) here on Nelson Mandela Day, ANC veteran and businessman Dr Mathews Phosa used the occasion of an honorary doctorate to deliver a pointed assessment of South Africa's thirty-year democratic experiment, arguing that the country's constitutional achievements have been steadily eroded by corruption, weakened institutions and the loss of skilled administrators from the public service. Phosa's address, delivered under the theme “Nelson Mandela Day: Renewing Africa's Promise,” moved beyond commemoration to issue a direct challenge to the continent's political class: political liberation, he argued, was only ever the opening chapter of a longer…

Jul

18

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

20 small coffins: Uganda bans school trips after bus horror kills 21 on Kapchorwa’s killer hill

NEWS

THEY set off from Kampala's Ndejje suburb carrying the unguarded excitement that only children on a school outing can hold - pupils of King David Junior School, chattering about the roaring cascades of Sipi Falls, eastern Uganda's postcard waterfall carved into the foothills of Mount Elgon. By Thursday night, twenty of them would never chatter again. The bus, registration UA 108BQ, had spent the day carrying its young passengers on the kind of educational tour that has become a rite of passage for Ugandan schoolchildren - a day meant to widen young minds beyond the classroom. Instead, descending Chekwatit Hill…

Jul

18

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Nigerian socialite’s vault empties: how Aisha Achimugu lost N8.9 billion fortune to the state

NEWS

IN the end, it was not the oil blocks, nor the $1.8 billion offshore deal, nor even the seven-day birthday spectacle on the Caribbean island of Grenada that undid Aisha Achimugu. It was 136 bank accounts, a safe full of jewellery, and an Assets Declaration Form on which she chose not to tell the truth. On Thursday, 16 July 2026, Justice Jude Onwugbuzie of the Federal Capital Territory High Court sitting in Apo, Abuja, delivered the final word in a case that has become a parable of Nigeria's contemporary elite: a final forfeiture order stripping the once-untouchable oil and gas…

Jul

18

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

‘If I had one more chance, I would have told her to come home’

NEWS

A grandmother's voice cracked and then fell silent. It was the only sound that could carry the weight of what Velile Khumalo (76), a retired Bulawayo primary school teacher, was trying to say about her daughter and two granddaughters, murdered thousands of kilometres away in a quiet English town. “If I had one more chance to talk to her, I would advise her to leave everything and come home,” Khumalo said in an interview with journalist Mthokozisi Ncube of B-Metro, one of the first to sit with the family since the killings. It is a sentence that a mother should…

Jul

18

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Soweto sextortion arrest: Hawks snare syndicate kingpin linked to teenager’s suicide

NEWS

A Soweto man accused of masterminding a sprawling international sextortion and money-laundering syndicate appeared in the Protea Glen Magistrate's Court this week, a day after Hawks commercial crime investigators cornered him in Orlando West, in an arrest that has laid bare the lethal reach of South Africa's fastest-growing cybercrime industry. Ifeel Simango, 30, was arrested on Wednesday morning on a J50 warrant by the Serious Commercial Crime Investigation unit of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, popularly known as the Hawks, following what investigators describe as a meticulous probe opened at Protea police station. He was formally charged with extortion…

Jul

17

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Rwanda buys the world’s biggest stage: inside Kigali’s £20m Aston Villa gambit

NEWS

ASTON Villa Football Club has confirmed that Visit Rwanda, the tourism arm of the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), will become its Principal Partner, Official Tourism Partner and Official Coffee Provider from the 2026/27 season, in what the Premier League club has called the most important sponsorship agreement in its history. The Rwandan flag-carrier brand will now sit on the front of the shirts worn by Villa's men's, women's and academy teams, replacing the gambling operator Betano, whose logo is being stripped from Premier League shirt-fronts league-wide under a self-imposed betting-sponsorship ban that takes effect this season. The three-year deal, negotiated…

Jul

17

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

NIGERIA: Ex Attorney General forfeits 48 multibillion-naira properties to the state

NEWS

FOR eight years, Abubakar Malami held the most powerful legal office in Africa's largest democracy. As Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice under President Muhammadu Buhari, he was the man who decided which corruption files moved and which quietly died, who instructed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on which “persons of interest” to pursue, and who stood before the world as the guarantor of Nigeria's promise to recover stolen wealth. On Wednesday, the machinery he once commanded turned on him. Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the final forfeiture of 48 properties…