NEWS - The African Mirror

Feb

24

2026

U.S.-Cameroon deportation deal leaves migrants detained, abused, with nowhere to turn

NEWS

THE United States has quietly deported 17 non-Cameroonian nationals to Cameroon under a covert bilateral agreement, where authorities immediately detained them without legal basis, and journalists who attempted to interview them were themselves arrested and abused, according to Human Rights Watch. The deportees - nationals of Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe - were transferred to Cameroon in January and February in what amounts to a third-country deportation scheme that experts say circumvents both U.S. court orders and binding international law. Among those deported were asylum seekers and at least one…

Feb

24

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

From Sandhurst to a jail cell: The Mugabe son’s spectacular fall from grace

NEWS

THERE is something almost Shakespearean about the image: the son of one of Africa's most feared and powerful rulers, a man who grew up insulated by obscene privilege in one of Johannesburg's most exclusive suburbs, now confined to a jail cell, waiting for a date on a court calendar. Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe appeared before the Alexandra Magistrate's Court this week alongside Tobias Mugabe Matonhodze - not a Mugabe by blood, but the family's gardener - and both were remanded in custody until March 3, when they may apply for bail. The charges are serious - attempted murder, defeating the ends…

Feb

23

2026

By The African Mirror

Nigerian national sentenced to 8 years in the USA for $8.1m tax fraud scheme

NEWS

A Nigerian national was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in federal prison for orchestrating a years-long scheme that used phishing attacks and malware to steal taxpayer data from Massachusetts tax preparation firms and file more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns. Matthew A. Akande, 37, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston. In addition to the prison term, Akande was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $1,393,230 in restitution. Prosecutors say Akande and his co-conspirators filed fraudulent returns seeking more than $8.1 million in refunds over roughly five years, from June 2016 to…

Feb

23

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SA: Cops arrest 27 suspects for R100-million education fraud

NEWS

IN one of the most significant anti-corruption operations in South Africa’s history, elite Hawks investigators have arrested 27 suspects - including high-ranking government officials - in a dramatic, multi-provincial crackdown on a brazen scheme that allegedly looted more than R100 million from the province's Department of Basic Education, robbing thousands of schoolchildren of desperately needed resources. In coordinated pre-dawn raids on Sunday, 22 February 2026, heavily armed Hawks operatives fanned out across four provinces simultaneously, executing arrest warrants against 41 identified suspects in what authorities described as a "decisive takedown" of an organised criminal network that had burrowed deep into…

Feb

23

2026

By The African Mirror

How one refugee’s path to Paris exposes the systemic barriers facing displaced scholars

NEWS

WHEN Faniel, a 29-year-old Eritrean refugee, received confirmation of his Sciences Po scholarship last year, the achievement was remarkable not because of his 90 percent engineering degree or his language qualifications, but because he had managed to clear a bureaucratic obstacle course that stops most refugees in their tracks before they even begin. His case, coordinated across UNHCR offices in Yemen, Djibouti and France alongside the University Agency of the Francophonie, required exit facilitation from a conflict zone, a cross-border transfer to Aden, emergency travel documentation, an intermediate stop in Djibouti, and French governmental intervention on visa issuance. All of…

Feb

23

2026

By The African Mirror

African governments confront Moscow over citizens dying in Russia’s war

NEWS

WHEN Kenya's Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Korir Sing'Oei, sat down with Russian Ambassador Vsevolod Tkachenko in Nairobi recently, the agenda was framed in the careful language of bilateral diplomacy. But the substance was anything but routine. Sing'Oei told the ambassador directly that the Kenyan government had "grave concern" about its nationals caught up in the Russia-Ukraine war, and demanded "unimpeded consular access" to citizens trapped on the front lines, along with "clear, transparent protocols" for the repatriation of prisoners of war and the remains of the dead. "Our priority remains the safety and dignity of every Kenyan abroad," Sing'Oei…

Feb

21

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Migrants in Libya tortured, enslaved and sold in systematic abuse network, UN reports

NEWS

MIGRANTS, asylum-seekers and refugees in Libya are being rounded up at gunpoint, trafficked by criminal networks with ties to government authorities, and subjected to slavery, torture and sexual violence on an industrial scale, the United Nations said Wednesday in a damning new report. The findings, released jointly by the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Support Mission in Libya, document two years of abuse stretching from January 2024 to December 2025, and paint a picture of a country where the exploitation of vulnerable people has become, in the UN's own words, "business as usual." "There are no words to…

Feb

21

2026

By The African Mirror

Africa’s biggest cybercrime bust: 651 arrested, $4.3 million recovered in continental crackdown

NEWS

A sweeping international law enforcement operation spanning 16 African nations has dismantled some of the continent's most prolific online fraud networks, netting 651 arrests and recovering more than $4.3 million in an eight-week blitz that exposed scams responsible for over $45 million in financial losses. Operation Red Card 2.0, coordinated by INTERPOL and running from December 8, 2025, through January 30, 2026, struck at the heart of criminal syndicates running high-yield investment scams, mobile money fraud and predatory fake loan applications — schemes that investigators say have devastated vulnerable populations across Africa and beyond. The scale of the operation was…

Feb

21

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Epstein’s Africa connections: A palace in Marrakesh and a trail across a continent

NEWS

IN the final days before his arrest, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was attempting to purchase one of North Africa's most opulent properties - a gilded Moroccan palace - even as American authorities were closing in on him. The financial manoeuvring behind that doomed transaction, now revealed in documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice, offers a window into a web of African connections that stretched from the Atlas Mountains to the East African coast. The Morocco Deal Reuters reports that Charles Schwab wired approximately $27.7 million on behalf of Epstein to a realtor in Morocco in the ten days…

Feb

20

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SUDAN: How the military, paramilitary cornered food supply chains — and why that helps explain the conflict

NEWS

THE two armed factions devastating Sudan built sprawling business empires in the country's food and agricultural sectors before their war broke out in April 2023, according to new research that argues economic rivalry over those assets was a significant driver of the conflict now threatening to become the world's largest hunger crisis. Writing in The Conversation, researchers from CGIAR — the global agricultural research network — describe how both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) systematically embedded themselves in key agricultural industries, from livestock exports to wheat milling to horticulture, in the years preceding…