NEWS - The African Mirror

Mar

03

2026

Africa pays the price of someone else’s war

NEWS

THE missiles striking Iran have not landed on African soil. But their shockwaves are moving fast - through fuel queues in Nairobi, cancelled flights out of Addis Ababa, and the quiet repositioning of US military assets across the Horn. For a continent that had no vote in this conflict and no seat at the table where it was decided, Africa is absorbing consequences that are immediate, structural and deepening. The most direct hit is economic, and it lands hardest on ordinary people. Oil prices have spiked sharply in the wake of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. For import-dependent African economies -…

Mar

02

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENTS

Africa scrambles to protect its citizens as Middle East crisis deepens

NEWS

ACROSS the African continent, governments are racing to account for tens of thousands of their citizens caught in the catastrophic fallout from a US-Israeli military assault on Iran - a conflict that has turned the Gulf's gleaming cities of Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Manama into active war zones, grounding flights, severing communications, and plunging families from Johannesburg to Kampala to Lagos into anguish. The crisis began in the early hours of Saturday, 28 February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched a coordinated series of airstrikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,…

Mar

02

2026

By The African Mirror

63 deported from Ireland land to South Africa amid controversy on both sides

NEWS

THE chartered flight touched down at OR Tambo International Airport just after 4 am on Sunday morning, Irish time. On board were 63 people - 28 men, 26 women, and nine children - who had all, in the eyes of the Irish state, exhausted every legal avenue available to them. They were South African nationals, removed under deportation orders, and they arrived back in a country roiling with its own debates about who belongs, who is welcome, and on what terms. It was the second charter removal flight from Ireland this year, and the eighth since such operations resumed in…

Mar

03

2026

By ANNIE ZULU, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Young Zambian engineers are embracing AI to create local solutions

NEWS

20-YEAR-OLD software engineering student, Innocent Mugwadi, presents a slideshow in front of a classroom before his fellow classmates at the Information and Communications University (ICU) in Lusaka. "The reason why I built this project is to solve one specific problem, which is trying to build AI systems whilst understanding the mathematical aspect of it," he said. Mugwadi, currently in his second year at the private university, said his passion for programming began at a young age when he taught himself how to build games and systems while still in Grade 9. His invention, called Tensor, is a system designed to…

Mar

02

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

He came home in a coffin: From Zambia’s dreams to a Canadian massacre and back to African soil

NEWS

HE left with his parents, full of hope — a bright-eyed Zambian boy with soccer medals, a laptop, and a wooden toy truck he had crafted himself as a gentle hint that his father needed a tow hitch. He was twelve years old, embarking on a new life in Canada. Three years later, on Sunday, March 1, 2026, Abel Mwansa Jr. came home — in a casket draped with the quiet grief of two nations — to be buried in the red earth of Zambia's Copperbelt. His remains touched down at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka before being flown…

Feb

28

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Kenya’s passport scandal: Warlords, a Zimbabwean fraudster, and accusations of a plot to steal 2027 elections

NEWS

WHAT began as a single line in a US Treasury sanctions notice has erupted into the most serious governance and national security crisis of President William Ruto's administration. A leaked government document, now circulating widely on Kenyan social media, contains the names of dozens of foreign nationals - among them associates of a genocide-accused Sudanese warlord, and a Zimbabwean businessman convicted of fraud - who were allegedly issued Kenyan passports on the direct orders of State House. The scandal has fused two previously separate controversies into one combustible story: the sale of Kenya's sovereign travel documents to sanctioned foreign actors,…

Feb

28

2026

By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Africa’s youth lead the world in mental resilience – and the reasons may surprise you

NEWS

THE world is in the grip of a youth mental health crisis. In the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Japan, and across the wealthiest corners of the globe, young adults are struggling at rates that would have seemed unthinkable a generation ago. Nearly half of all 18-to-34-year-olds in high-income countries now experience mental health challenges of clinical significance. Billions of dollars in treatment spending have not moved the needle. Yet in Africa - a continent often defined in global discourse by its challenges - something quietly remarkable is happening. The data shows that African youth are, by a significant margin, the…

Feb

28

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

South Sudan edges toward humanitarian catastrophe as displacement crisis deepens

NEWS

SOUTH Sudan is facing one of the world's most severe humanitarian emergencies, with over 1.3 million Sudanese war refugees pouring across its borders and nearly 10 million of its own citizens requiring aid, the UN's migration agency has warned - even as renewed political violence threatens to collapse what little relief infrastructure remains. The International Organisation for Migration reported that displacement within South Sudan has accelerated sharply in recent weeks, with more than 250,000 people uprooted in just the past two months. The figures place South Sudan among the most displacement-affected countries globally, yet the crisis has drawn little international…

Feb

28

2026

By AMBROSE KOLAWOLE DADA and JANELLE VERMAAK-GRIESSEL

Prophets and profits: the art of the sell in Shepherd Bushiri’s YouTube sermons

NEWS

IN a widely viewed YouTube sermon called 3 Types of Keys, a preacher, dressed in a sky blue Italian suit, holds a microphone and speaks with great assurance about spiritual matters. Prophet Shepherd Bushiri is telling his audience that their financial struggles are not accidental. He warns that business, marriage or social standing can easily crumble if believers don’t pay their tithes to the church every month – 10% of their earnings. This message is not presented as advice, but as divine instruction. Bushiri is one of the most influential and controversial Pentecostal prophets to emerge from southern Africa in…

Feb

27

2026

By The African Mirror

Refugee crisis in Burundi reaching breaking point as DRC arrivals continue

NEWS

BURUNDI is confronting one of its most acute humanitarian crises in years, squeezed between two simultaneous population movements that are stretching its reception infrastructure to the breaking point - and an international funding response that has so far covered only a fraction of what is needed. The numbers tell a stark story. In just three months, more than 90,000 Congolese refugees have flooded across the border as fighting intensifies in eastern DRC, the majority now packed into the Busuma refugee site, which is hosting over 66,000 people. Cholera circulates through the overcrowded settlement. Nearly 10,000 more remain stranded in transit…