NEWS - The African Mirror

Apr

13

2026

Africa’s moment beyond the horizon

NEWS

ON the same day that NASA's Artemis II capsule, Integrity, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean - completing humanity's first crewed journey to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972 - a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was climbing through the Florida night sky carrying something of equal consequence for a continent long told that space was not its domain. Aboard that rocket was ClimCam: a compact, AI-powered climate observation payload built collectively by three African nations, now en route to a permanent berth on the International Space Station. It is a coincidence of timing that carries the weight of symbolism.…

Apr

13

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

The Sahrawi people’s shrinking map of freedom

NEWS

IN the Tindouf refugee camps of southwestern Algeria, where temperatures exceed 50 degrees Celsius and sandstorms last for days, approximately 173,000 Sahrawi people have been waiting for fifty years. Waiting for a referendum. Waiting for a return. Waiting for a world that promised them self-determination and has spent five decades renegotiating that promise away. On Friday, Mali became the latest African country to pull the rug from beneath its feet. Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop, standing alongside his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita in Bamako, announced that Mali no longer recognises the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic - the government-in-exile proclaimed by…

Apr

13

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Steel, speed and sovereignty: Africa’s rail revolution is here

NEWS

FOR most of Africa's post-independence history, a simple, brutal fact has governed the movement of wealth across the continent: minerals worth billions in the ground are worth a fraction of their potential when trapped by roads that crumble, ports that congest, and borders that bottleneck. A tonne of copper mined in Zambia's Copperbelt could spend six weeks crawling toward the sea, bleeding value at every pothole and checkpoint. That calculation is changing. Rapidly. Decisively. And at a scale that would have seemed improbable a decade ago. $6bn+Lobito Corridortotal invested$1.4bnTAZARA RehabCCECC concession$5bnZambia–Lobito Rail830km greenfield$2bn+Lion's Den–KafueZim–Zambia MOU Across the southern and central…

Apr

11

2026

By The African Mirror

Guns, shells and a R10bn windfall: South Africa’s arms trade triples in a year

NEWS

SOUTH Africa's defence industry recorded its most explosive export performance in at least a decade in 2025, shipping R10.1 billion ($590 million) worth of weapons, munitions and military equipment to 42 countries — nearly triple the R3.6 billion ($210 million) exported the year before. The figures, presented to Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Defence by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), confirm that Africa's only significant arms-exporting nation has planted itself firmly among the world's top 20 arms exporters. The surge is extraordinary in its scale and breadth. In a single calendar year, a country with the continent's largest…

Apr

11

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Drones at a wedding: Sudan’s forgotten war crosses another uncrossable line

NEWS

THERE are no soldiers at a wedding. There are no military targets between a bride and her guests, no strategic assets tucked inside a celebration of life in the town of Kutum, in Sudan's North Darfur state. There is only music, family, and the terrible vulnerability of civilians who believed, for a few hours, that joy was still possible in a country at war. On Thursday, a drone strike ended that belief for at least 30 of them. Women. Children. Gone. UN Secretary-General spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric condemned the attack in a press briefing, calling drone strikes against civilians and civilian…

Apr

11

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

From Legon to the lunar horizon: how Ghana wrote its name in the cosmos

NEWS

THERE is a version of history that is written in fire and steel - in rocket plumes and re-entry plasma, in the roar of a Space Launch System at dawn. And then there is another kind of history, quieter and more intimate: the kind that lives in an exchange student’s notebook in a university classroom in Legon, Ghana, in 1999. Last week, both versions of history converged in the cold black of deep space, 252,756 miles from Earth, when Christina Koch became the first woman in human history to journey beyond low Earth orbit and swing around the Moon. She…

Apr

10

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA court clears way for extradition of 8 Nigerians to USA over $17m fraud

NEWS

THE Western Cape High Court has shut down the last major legal obstacle standing between eight Nigerian men and extradition proceedings to the United States, dismissing an appeal that sought to block their surrender to American authorities over an alleged international fraud scheme that netted its perpetrators at least $17 million - approximately R279 million at current exchange rates. The ruling, which followed appeals lodged by eight accused before two subsequently withdrew, clears the way for the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development to make a final determination on whether the men will face trial in the United States. All…

Apr

10

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA company which blew R2.6 m in two months – without doing the job – ordered to repay the money

NEWS

THE money was gone before a single learner set foot in a classroom. A total of R2,699,968.75 - disbursed by the National Skills Fund (NSF) in November 2018 to fund a year-long vocational training programme for 100 South Africans - had been completely exhausted by Rubicon Communications CC within two months of receipt. Not a cent remained for the skills development it was intended to finance. Now, more than seven years later, the law has caught up with Rubicon. The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has secured a signed Acknowledgement of Debt from the company and its Chief Executive Officer, Hangwani…

Apr

10

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

US pulls staff over concerns of security in Nigeria

NEWS

THE United States has begun pulling non-essential staff and dependents from its embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, issuing one of its starkest diplomatic signals in years that security in Africa's largest economy and most populous nation is deteriorating in ways Washington can no longer manage from behind compound walls. On 8 April 2026, the US Department of State authorised the voluntary departure of non-emergency government employees and their family members from the US Embassy in Abuja, citing what it described simply - and pointedly - as a 'deteriorating security situation.' The embassy will remain open, the State Department said, but with…

Apr

11

2026

By STAFF REPORTER

109,344 and counting: SA breaks deportation records as immigration crisis boils

NEWS

SOUTH Africa has deported more than 109,000 undocumented immigrants in the past two financial years, the Department of Home Affairs has confirmed, as the country confronts the most politically charged immigration crisis in its post-apartheid history. Home Affairs Minister Dr Leon Schreiber announced that inland deportations reached 109,344 by 31 March 2026 - a 46% cumulative surge since the formation of the Government of National Unity in June 2024. The figure excludes direct deportations carried out by the Border Management Authority (BMA) at the country's ports of entry, meaning the true scale of removals is considerably larger. "These numbers show…