NEWS - The African Mirror

Jul

08

2026

Ghanaian extradited in U.S. romance scam pleads guilty, agrees to repay $4.4m — now awaits prison term

NEWS

JOSEPH Kwadwo Badu Boateng, a Ghanaian national arrested in Accra and extradited to the United States, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and agreed to repay approximately $4.4 million in restitution as he waits to learn how long he will spend in a U.S. prison. Boateng - who used the nom de plume “Dada Joe Remix” - admitted in a federal plea agreement filed in Tucson that he and co‑conspirators ran a decade‑long romance and inheritance fraud targeting elderly Americans from 2013 through March 2023. Prosecutors say the group cultivated romantic contact through online dating sites and…

Jul

07

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Museveni declares war on hawking, a livelihood for millions of Ugandans

NEWS

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni used his national address at the weekend to announce what amounts to a blanket ban on street hawking across Uganda, telling citizens that vendors must now operate only from registered shops, markets or supermarkets - a move that threatens the livelihoods of an informal workforce numbered in the hundreds of thousands, many of them women and young people with no other route into the economy. The announcement came packaged as a response to concerns raised by the Inter-Religious Council over what Museveni called the “Trade Order,” but its practical effect is to formalise, nationally, a policy of…

Jul

07

2026

By The African Mirror

Tanzania bans political rallies ahead of commemorations of stolen election drenched in blood

NEWS

Eleven days before nationwide protests demanding accountability for one of the deadliest episodes of state violence in Tanzania's post-independence history, President Samia Suluhu Hassan's government has torn up its own reform record and outlawed every political rally in the country - a decision that opposition leaders, lawyers and press freedom advocates say confirms what many had long suspected: that Tanzania's brief democratic opening was never more than a pause. Home Affairs Minister Patrobas Katambi announced the blanket suspension in Parliament, instructing Police Inspector General Camillus Wambura to withhold rally permits from every political party “until further notice.” The government has…

Jul

07

2026

By BONFACE ORUCHO, BIRD STORY AGENCY

Nigeria joins Africa’s race to bring Formula 1 back to the continent

NEWS

NIGERIA has officially entered Africa's race to host a Formula 1 Grand Prix, adding fresh momentum to a continental campaign that has gathered pace over the past year as governments compete to return the championship to African soil after a 33-year absence. The move widens a field that already includes South Africa, Morocco, Rwanda, and Zanzibar, turning what was once viewed as a South African ambition into a continent-wide contest to secure Formula 1's only missing regional destination. Nigeria's National Sports Commission recently confirmed, in late June, that it will submit an official bid to host a Formula 1 Grand…

Jul

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Museveni breaks his silence – and backs Muhoozi’s crackdown to the Hilt

NEWS

PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni used a special address to the nation to place his full authority behind a months-long campaign of abductions, incommunicado detentions and media closures carried out by his son, Chief of Defence Forces General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, telling Ugandans that the crackdown was not a regression but “a consolidation of our long fight” for order and discipline. It was Museveni's most direct public defence yet of a period that rights groups, opposition figures and Uganda's own Human Rights Commission have described as one of the most repressive in the country's recent history - and it leaves no ambiguity about…

Jul

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

SOUTH AFRICA/NIGERIA: Facts, fury and a fraying friendship

NEWS

NIGERIA has issued its most severe rebuke yet of South Africa's handling of the safety of foreign nationals, warning that “all options remain on the table” after two of its citizens were killed within hours of each other on 28 June - one of them, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs alleges, during a “gruesome interrogation” by Tshwane Metro Police officers. The language of Sunday's statement, signed by ministry spokesperson Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, is unusually blunt for a bilateral relationship built on solidarity dating back to the anti-apartheid struggle. It accuses named South African law-enforcement units of a pattern of extrajudicial…

Jul

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Elba’s $1-million bet: why Africa’s creators just got a powerful new ally

NEWS

IDRIS Elba has spent much of the last decade talking about Africa's creative potential. This week, in Johannesburg, he put a figure on it. At Google's first Africa Cloud Summit, the actor's Elba Hope Foundation and the tech giant announced a $1-million initiative that will give roughly 100,000 African content creators free access to Google's Gemini AI assistant and other digital tools, alongside training in AI-powered storytelling. The programme will run first in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone - a deliberate list. Nigeria and South Africa are the continent's two largest and most established creator economies; Ghana…

Jul

06

2026

By The African Mirror

EMPD officer arrested over R14.9 m Killarney stones heist

NEWS

AN Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD) officer was arrested at the weekend in connection with the alleged theft of precious stones worth R14.9 million from a Killarney apartment in 2023, in the latest arrest to flow directly from testimony before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry. Gauteng police swooped in Benoni, in an operation involving the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), the Tactical Response Team and the Gauteng Response Team. The arrest follows explosive evidence given last month by an anonymous Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) inspector, known only as Witness K, who told the commission she and suspended EMPD deputy…

Jul

06

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

Unbowed, unrepentant: Days after bail, Matembe turns her fire back on Museveni

NEWS

MIRIA Matembe, it seems, started exactly where she left off. Four days after security operatives dragged her from a friend's house to Mbuya, a day after a magistrate remanded her to Luzira Prison, and mere hours after that same court granted her bail with an explicit instruction to avoid “utterances similar to those complained of in the charge,” the 73-year-old former Ethics and Integrity minister issued one of the most direct challenges any Ugandan public figure has put to President Yoweri Museveni in years - not to his policies, but to the basic question of whether he is still the…

Jul

04

2026

By OWN CORRESPONDENT

A body, two names and a diplomatic brawl: Accra and Pretoria trade fire over a dead Ghanaian

NEWS

There is a particular kind of African tragedy that plays out not in a courtroom or a coroner's office, but on the letterhead of a foreign ministry. This week it was Ghana's turn to write that letter - and South Africa's turn to send one back, sharper and angrier, essentially telling Accra to get its facts straight before it gets its diplomats involved. The row erupted after Ghana's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, with what it called "profound shock and sadness," that a 40-year-old Ghanaian national, Bashiru Isak, had been shot dead on Monday, 30 June, in Cape Town's Khayelitsha…