NEWS - The African Mirror

Jul

15

2026

‘This is a fire’: WHO declares DRC Ebola outbreak the fastest-growing in history

NEWS

THE World Health Organisation has issued one of its starkest warnings in recent memory: the Ebola outbreak tearing through the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is now the fastest-growing in the history of the disease, and four out of every five new infections are emerging from chains of transmission nobody can trace. Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday after returning from Bunia, in the heart of the outbreak zone in Ituri Province, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, confirmed that the outbreak has now recorded close to 2,000 confirmed cases and more than 700…

Jul

15

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Nigeria: Fake Presidential Agency’s ‘DG’ arrested after dodging court five times

NEWS

THE self-styled Director-General of the non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), Adeniyi Adeyemi, was arrested on Tuesday, moments after Justice Mohammed Umar of the Federal High Court in Abuja issued a bench warrant for his arrest, capping months of legal cat-and-mouse in one of Nigeria's more audacious impersonation scandals. Adeyemi was due before Justice Umar in Maitama, Abuja, to take his plea on an eight-count charge of forgery, fraud and impersonation marked FHC/ABJ/CR/562/2025. He did not show up. His lawyer, Genesis Francis, announced an appearance on his behalf, but that was not enough to save the fictitious council's founder…

Jul

15

2026

By The African Mirror

Dakar will crown a freedom fighter: Senegal to honour Mathews Phosa as Africa interrogates Mandela’s legacy amid a fracturing world order

NEWS

ON July 18, the day the world pauses to mark what would have been Nelson Mandela's birthday, Senegal will do something no African capital has done for a South African liberation veteran in recent memory: it will place a doctoral cap on the head of Dr Mathews Phosa, the former Premier of Mpumalanga, ex-Treasurer-General of the African National Congress, and one of the last men standing from the room in which South Africa's constitutional settlement was written. The honour will be conferred at a conference titled "Mandela Day in Dakar," running from July 18 to 19 at the Institut Supérieur…

Jul

14

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

UK triple-murder fugitive appears in Jhb court as extradition process opens

NEWS

NDODANA Mkhanyisi Tshuma, the 45-year-old British citizen of Zimbabwean heritage wanted by United Kingdom authorities for the alleged murders of his wife and two young daughters, appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court on Monday for the first time since his arrest, as South African police confirmed the opening of formal extradition proceedings against him. Tshuma, dressed in a long ski jacket with his hands kept in the pockets and blue jeans, stood before the court on two separate matters: an extradition application lodged by UK authorities, and a domestic charge of possessing an illegal firearm. The matter was postponed to…

Jul

14

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA man held in Bangkok as 17.5kg heroin bust exposes a widening Africa-linked trafficking pipeline

NEWS

A South African national has been arrested at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport after Thai customs officers discovered more than 17.5 kilograms of heroin concealed inside commercially packaged coffee, green tea and dietary supplements, in a bust that Thai authorities say forms part of a wider, multinational trafficking investigation. The man was intercepted while transiting from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, en route via Addis Ababa to Ivato International Airport in Madagascar, according to Thailand's Customs Department. Officers at the transfer baggage terminal flagged the luggage after an X-ray screening irregularity and pulled it aside for detailed inspection, where they found…

Jul

14

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

The great Wole Soyinka turns 92: The establishment still flinches

NEWS

Let it be known that Africa's most gloriously unmanageable literary giant has turned 92, and - in a plot twist nobody saw coming - the Nigerian presidency sent flowers. Well, not literal flowers. A birthday message. Same difference, really, when the recipient is a man who has spent seven decades treating power the way a mongoose treats a cobra: circling it, taunting it, and occasionally biting it in front of witnesses. President Bola Tinubu’s tribute to Professor Wole Soyinka was, by the standards of Nigerian political correspondence, a model of restraint. It thanked the Nobel laureate for his contributions to…

Jul

13

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Rescued after 56 days in captivity: Nigeria scores a rare win in its war on mass abductions

NEWS

FOR 56 days, a classroom's worth of children and their teachers existed only as a rumour: alive, somewhere, in the bush country outside Ogbomoso, held by an armed group that had already shown it was willing to kill. On Friday, that silence broke. Nigerian troops, police and the Department of State Services (DSS) stormed the gang's hideout in Oriire community, Oyo State, freeing every pupil and teacher still in captivity, arresting eight of their captors and killing several more, according to a Presidency statement issued by presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga. For President Bola Tinubu, under mounting pressure over a kidnapping…

Jul

13

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Brussels names Abu Dhabi: Europe’s Sudan resolution breaks a two-year diplomatic silence

NEWS

THE European Parliament has for the first time formally named the United Arab Emirates as a state fuelling Sudan's civil war, adopting a resolution on 8 July that links the Gulf federation directly to atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in North Kordofan. The move breaks a pattern of diplomatic evasion that has, since fighting broke out in April 2023, allowed one of the war's most consequential external backers to escape formal censure. The resolution comes as residents of El Obeid, the North Kordofan state capital besieged by the RSF, continue to endure near-daily drone strikes on the…

Jul

13

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Africa bets on its own stories: US$1 billion film fund names its storyteller-in-chief

NEWS

FOR a generation of African filmmakers who have had to chase financing from Los Angeles, London and Paris to tell their own stories, the ground just shifted decisively in their favour. Afreximbank, through its impact investment arm, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), has named One Street Studios as Co-General Partner of the Pan-African Film Fund - a vehicle designed to mobilise up to US$1 billion for the continent's film, television and immersive media industries. The announcement, made in Cairo on 8 July 2026, is more than a financial transaction. It is a statement of intent: that African…

Jul

10

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Zimbabwean wanted for triple murder in the Britain arrested in Johannesburg

NEWS

The internation manhunt for a 45-year-old British IT executive wanted for the killing of his wife and two young daughters inside their four-bedroom Bedfordshire mansion ended on a cold winter's night in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ndodana Mkhanyisi Tshuma, also known as Mark Tshuma, was arrested in Kensington, Johannesburg in a joint operation by the SA Police Service and Interpol. Tshuma is a senior IT manager reported to earn roughly £100,000 a year and formerly the head of Development and Support at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) until 2024. Detectives say he boarded a flight out…