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Suicide bombers strike Maiduguri hospital and markets as insurgency defies Tinubu’s security gains

Suicide bombers strike Maiduguri hospital and markets as insurgency defies Tinubu’s security gains

SUICIDE bombers struck the entrance to the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, the Post Office market and the Monday Market on the evening of 16 March 2026, killing and wounding scores of civilians in the most devastating jihadist assault on Borno State's capital in years. Hours earlier, Boko Haram fighters had attempted to overrun a military base in Maiduguri's Ajilari Cross suburb, less than four kilometres from the city's international airport, before being repelled by security forces. Sirajo Abdullahi, head of operations for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Maiduguri, confirmed multiple simultaneous explosions across the city. Borno State…
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Africa’s ports and airports reap war gains as Middle East routes collapse

Africa’s ports and airports reap war gains as Middle East routes collapse

THE US-Israel war on Iran has crippled key Middle East trade arteries, thrusting African ports and airports into unaccustomed prominence as global shipping and aviation scramble for alternatives. US and Israeli airstrikes on 28 February targeted Iranian military and nuclear sites, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and sparking Iranian missile and drone retaliation across the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz — conduit for 20% of global daily oil — is shut to commercial traffic. Insurance firms halted coverage, freight surcharges soared, and crude prices spiked toward multi-year highs. Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi airports suspended operations amid strikes and airspace…
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Digital upgrades are enhancing African police forces

Digital upgrades are enhancing African police forces

INCIDENTS such as assaults, robberies, bullying, gender-based violence and public disorder are now often detected on platforms like WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook and X before victims file formal reports or officers arrive at the scene. Policing on the continent is gradually shifting from paper files and walk-in complaints toward digital technology that captures and processes incidents in real time. Countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia are experimenting with new digital tools, including putting up smart police stations, automated traffic enforcement and networked police databases. An Ethiopian governance and development policy analyst, Jiregna Tadese, described the country’s latest project as a milestone…
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A nation building its own future: DRC’s $8.7 billion digital revolution

A nation building its own future: DRC’s $8.7 billion digital revolution

THERE is a version of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that the world rarely sees: not the haunted forests of the east, not the artisanal mining pits of the Katanga plateau, but a nation of 100 million people with a government that has chosen to bet on bandwidth, artificial intelligence, and the ingenuity of its own youth. That bet was formalised this week with the launch of the DRC's National Digital Transformation Plan 2026–2030, a sweeping $8.7 billion initiative that sets out to connect 30 million Congolese to the internet, train a quarter of a million young people in…
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GHANA: Six ex-ministers in corruption crosshairs, finance chief fights extradition from US detention

GHANA: Six ex-ministers in corruption crosshairs, finance chief fights extradition from US detention

GHANA’S accountability reckoning entered a defining new chapter this week as the Mahama administration confirmed that no fewer than six former ministers who served under ex-President Nana Akufo-Addo are under active investigation for financial misconduct, procurement irregularities, and causing losses to the state. The disclosures, made publicly on 14 March 2026 by Minister of State for Government Communications Felix Kwakye Ofosu, set the stage for what could become the most consequential anti-corruption prosecution drive in Ghana's post-independence history. Kwakye Ofosu, speaking on TV3 Ghana, confirmed that the investigations are being led by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and…
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A vote in name only: Sassou N’Guesso’s Congo and the theatre of elections

A vote in name only: Sassou N’Guesso’s Congo and the theatre of elections

WHEN the polls closed in the Republic of Congo on Sunday, and the last voter departed polling stations largely emptied by civic despair, the formal machinery of what passes for democracy in Brazzaville ground into motion. Ballot boxes were sealed. Tallies began. Officials spoke of the process. But across the oil-rich Central African nation, most citizens had already arrived at their own verdict — long before any official count. President Denis Sassou N’Guesso, 82 years old and in his fifth consecutive bid for the presidency, is expected to be returned to power by a margin that will raise no eyebrows…
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Cops, killers and coffins: The police murder scandal South Africa cannot look away from

Cops, killers and coffins: The police murder scandal South Africa cannot look away from

SHE wore her uniform to the funerals. She was, sources say, always the first officer at the scene. And the insurance money - more than R10 million of it, prosecutors allege - kept flowing. The story of Rachel Raesetsa Shokane-Kutumela, a former South African Police Service sergeant from Limpopo who allegedly ran a decade-long, eleven-person family murder syndicate, would be extraordinary in any era. But it lands in the public domain at a moment when South Africans are already raw - reeling from week after week of testimony at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, where retired Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli…
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Into exile: Bobi Wine flees Uganda after stolen elections, two months on the run

Into exile: Bobi Wine flees Uganda after stolen elections, two months on the run

ROBERT Kyagulanyi Ssentamu - known to Uganda and to the world as Bobi Wine - is gone. Eight weeks after evading soldiers who raided his home on the outskirts of Kampala, the leader of Uganda's National Unity Platform (NUP) confirmed at the weekend that he has left the country he spent two months hiding in plain sight within, protected, as he put it, by the very people whose stolen votes brought him here. In a public statement addressed to "Fellow Ugandans and friends of Uganda," Kyagulanyi said he is making a "brief exit" to engage with international allies before returning…
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Somalia’s fight for survival is Africa’s fight for the future

Somalia’s fight for survival is Africa’s fight for the future

THE numbers are not abstract. By 2060, Somalia could lose up to 13.5 percent of its GDP — not to war, not to corruption, not to the old, familiar enemies of state failure - but to climate change. Droughts that arrive too soon and linger too long. Floods that swallow homes and harvests in hours. Displacement that empties villages before governments have time to respond. This is the warning embedded in the World Bank Group's new Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) for Somalia, released this week in Nairobi. It is a document written in the language of economics, but…
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Ghanaian conman pleads guilty to $10 million love fraud that preyed on lonely Americans

Ghanaian conman pleads guilty to $10 million love fraud that preyed on lonely Americans

A 40-year-old Ghanaian national has pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to stealing more than $10 million from American victims through an elaborate web of fake online romances - in what prosecutors describe as one of the most brazen cyber-fraud operations to emerge from West Africa in recent years. Derrick Van Yeboah - known to his victims simply as "Van" - entered the guilty plea before US District Judge Arun Subramanian on Thursday, admitting to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He now faces a maximum of 20 years in a US federal prison. The case lays bare the…
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