Author: eradmin

Posted on

Uganda Extends Vaccination Campaign to Bars, Theaters

Uganda is scaling up coronavirus vaccinations with the arrival of another 1.6 million doses from the United States. But with many Ugandans still reluctant to get the shot, the Ministry of Health has taken the unusual move of reaching out to people at bars and entertainment venues.

This week, nurses dressed in white pitched white tents at two bars in Kampala to offer protection from the coronavirus. Some patrons, who appeared tipsy, said they had come to encourage others to get the vaccine.

The Ministry of Health says many people are avoiding hospitals and clinics, so it has partnered with beverage companies to set up the unusual vaccination sites.

Jackline Tahakanizibwa, spokesperson for Uganda Breweries Limited, said, “Many of our people out there resonate with certain places … our bars, our distributors, our patrons. We are trying to create locations that are convenient for them, where they feel comfortable going.”

Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the Ministry of Health spokesperson, says the ministry had to be creative to get past some people’s hesitancy toward vaccines, caused by misplaced fear of side effects or misinformation.

So the ministry will use “any readily accessible and available place in the city. It doesn’t matter the location,” Ainebyoona said.

Uganda has so far received more than 5 million doses of vaccines from abroad. This includes 1.64 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 647,000 doses of the Moderna product from the U.S. government.

Pride Onyango, a rugby player who was getting his first vaccine at the Kyadondo rugby grounds, known for its beer-loving revelers, said he became scared after someone he knew died despite getting the vaccine.

“Sometime back, we had a scenario here,” Onyango said. “One of our assistant club managers died after vaccine. We realized that he had pneumonia and typhoid. Those were the things that killed him.”

Bars are officially closed in Uganda, and in a speech Wednesday night, President Yoweri Museveni said they would remain closed until a targeted number of people have been vaccinated.

Some bars continue to operate on the sly, while some roadside locations are selling beer along with dishes of chicken and beef.

Since that is the case, the Ministry of Health is taking advantage of the opportunity to get more of the population inoculated.

Source: Voice of America

Posted on

Coronavirus Vaccine Inequity a Focus at UN General Assembly

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni are set to address the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

Access to COVID-19 vaccines has been one of the major topics of the annual meeting in New York and is likely to be one of the most discussed again Thursday as leaders from African nations make up a large portion of the day’s list of speakers.

While some countries such as the United States have had vaccine doses widely available to their populations for months, other countries have struggled to access COVID-19 vaccine supplies.

The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 4% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Ramaphosa was among a group of leaders who participated in a virtual summit Wednesday convened by U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss boosting efforts to vaccinate people all over the world. Biden announced the United States was buying another 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to distribute to other countries.

“Of the around 6 billion vaccine doses administered worldwide, only 2% of these have been administered in Africa, a continent of more than 1.2 billion people,” Ramaphosa said. “This is unjust and immoral.”

Other speakers Thursday include Iraq’s President Barham Salih, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

The coronavirus pandemic has prompted a number of world leaders to pre-record their remarks instead of traveling to New York to speak in person. About half of Thursday’s speeches were recorded in advance.

Source: Voice of America

Posted on

Cameroon: Rebels Use Smuggled Anti-Tank Rockets to Kill 28 People

Cameroon’s military says separatist fighters have, for the first time, used anti-tank rockets smuggled from Nigeria to attack army convoys.

The military reported rebel rocket attacks on a military convoy in the western village of Bammssing in the past week have killed at least 15 troops and 13 civilians, and destroyed several armored vehicles.

Cameroon Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Wednesday from a military base in Bamenda, an English-speaking western town, that President Paul Biya wants a change of military strategy in handling the separatist crisis.

Without providing details on strategic changes, Assomo said Biya wants his military to immediately stop the attacks on government troops by separatists equipped with increasingly sophisticated weapons. He added that military intelligence indicates fighters are benefiting from outside human and material support.

The military said rebels attacked government troops with anti-tank rockets four times this week in western villages, including Sabga.

Assomo said troops have been adequately equipped and deployed to separatist hot spots in English-speaking western regions, especially on the border with Nigeria, suspected to be the origin of the anti-tank rockets.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon’s minister of employment and vocational training, said English-speaking civilians should help government troops by reporting those suspected of smuggling separatist weapons from neighboring Nigeria.

“We need the support of our population,” he said. “Please, denounce them. Decry it [killing]. The kind of arms they [separatists] are using is an indication that there is a kind of support they [fighters] are receiving from abroad.”

In August, Cameroon and Nigeria said Cameroon separatists, called the Ambazonia Defense Forces, and Indigenous People of Biafra, a group that wants a breakaway state in southeast Nigeria, were partnering to create an alliance.

Prince Ekosso, president of the opposition United Socialist Democratic Party, said Biya should call for a cease-fire to spare the lives of troops, civilians and separatists.

“It is time to end the war [crisis],” he said. “Everybody in the [English-speaking western regions] is bleeding in his or her heart and the whole country is bleeding. It is not helping us, it will not help us.”

Separatists have congratulated fighters on social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp for using anti-tank rocket launchers to kill Cameroon troops. Videos circulating online appear to show separatist fighters asking for more anti-tank rocket launchers to fight the Cameroon military.

Cameroon has previously said that separatists use porous borders to import weapons through Nigeria.

Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities met in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, August 26 to 28 and agreed to jointly fight armed separatists in both countries. They also promised to stop arms trafficking in the two countries.

Source: Voice of America

Posted on

Covid-19: Africa’s cases near 8.18 mln – Africa CDC

ADDIS ABABA— The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 8,177,919 as of Wednesday noon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the African Union, said the death toll from the pandemic across the continent stands at 207,132.

Some 7,534,544 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease so far, it was noted.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia are among the countries with the most cases in the continent, according to the agency.

South Africa has recorded the most COVID-19 cases in Africa with 2,886,331 cases, while northern African country Morocco reported 922,222 cases as of Wednesday noon, it was noted.

In terms of the caseload, southern Africa is the most affected region, followed by the northern and eastern parts of the continent, while central Africa is the least affected region in the continent, according to the Africa CDC.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Posted on

Somalia Court Convicts Foreigners for Membership in al-Shabab

A military court in Somalia has convicted two foreign extremists for fighting alongside terrorist group al-Shabab.

The court in Mogadishu sentenced Darren Anthony Byrnes from Britain and Ahmad Mustakim bin Abdul Hamid from Malaysia to 15 years in jail for being members of al-Shabab and entering the country illegally.

They are the first foreign extremists in Somalia to be convicted for al-Shabab membership, court officials said.

Prosecutors said Abdul Hamid and Byrnes came to Somalia to support al-Shabab and “destroy” and “shed blood.”

A lawyer for the two, Mohamed Warsame Mohamed, said the men denied being members of al-Shabab and claimed to have come to Somalia to visit relatives and friends.

He said he would file an appeal if Abdul Hamid and Byrnes chose to do so.

No witnesses supporting the Somali government’s case testified in court, Mohamed said. Instead, he said, the government relied on accounts by people who gave testimonies in absentia and an alleged confession of al-Shabab membership by the defendants.

Abdul Hamid and Byrnes admit they have been to areas controlled by al-Shabab, he said, but they deny becoming members of the militant group.

“In my opinion, relying on documents is insufficient to give them a 15-year jail term,” Mohamed told VOA Somali.

Abdul Hamid traveled from Yemen and entered the country in 2009. The court said he fought for al-Shabab in at least four clashes. He also allegedly offered the group first aid and health services.

Byrnes entered Somalia through Kenya in 2010 and allegedly worked with Bilal al-Berjawi, a known al-Shabab and al-Qaida operative from Britain who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2012 outside Mogadishu, according to court documents.

Byrnes had fought alongside al-Shabab in Mogadishu before the militants were dislodged from the capital in August 2011. At the time, Byrnes was also involved in an al-Shabab plot to attack France, the court said.

Authorities in Somalia’s Puntland region arrested the men in April 2019 as they tried to leave for Yemen on a boat, officials said.

Brigadier General Abdullahi Bule Kamay, the lead prosecutor of the case, said the men came to Somalia to kill people.

“One of them came from one of the developed countries in the world. … If he is spreading Islam, why did he not do that in the U.K.?” Kamay asked. “He came to Somalia to shed blood.”

Kamay described the Malaysian as an “aggressor” who came to Somalia to “destroy.”

Al-Shabab has several hundred foreign fighters from around the world, experts believe. Most of the foreign extremists are from East Africa, but some are from as far away as Britain, the United States and Asia. One of the group’s main commanders is Jehad Serwan Mostafa, the highest-ranking American jihadist fighting overseas.

Source: Voice of America

Posted on

Hissene Habre’s Victims Inch Closer to Justice, Reparations

Former Chadian president Hissene Habre was ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars to victims of human rights abuses after his conviction by a special court in 2017. But by the time he died in August, Habre’s victims had still not received a dime.

The African Union-backed court tried Chad’s ex-ruler Hissene Habre in Senegal and found him guilty of crimes he committed in the 1980s — a first for the continent.

On September 15, a team of AU lawyers arrived in Chad to meet with victims’ advocates, lawyers and government officials, to begin the process of establishing a trust fund for Habre’s victims.

Habre oversaw the killing and torture of tens of thousands of people during his rule as Chad’s president from 1982 to 1990. When he was convicted, the African Union was ordered to raise about $150 million that would be allocated to more than 7,000 of Habre’s victims.

The money was supposed to come from Habre’s assets, as well as from outside contributions. But the victims still haven’t been paid.

Their plight gained renewed attention in August when Habre died just five years into his life sentence.

Jacqueline Moudeina is the lead counsel for Habre’s victims. She says the African Union has not made much progress. They have yet to furnish their headquarters and hire an executive secretary, among many other tasks.

“There’s still a lot left to do,” she says. “They waited four years; and they don’t know how many more years they’ll have to wait.” If it were up to her, they would have done it all in one week.

One important task is raising money. Maadjitonke Trahohgra, the director general of Chad’s Ministry of Justice, says the Chadian government will contribute money toward the trust fund, but he doesn’t know how much.

He says many of the victims have already passed away, but the fund will provide relief for those who survived.

Clement Abaifouta is one of the surviving victims tortured for four years during Habre’s rule. He witnessed the deaths of many fellow prisoners and in some cases, was forced to dig their graves.

Now 63, he serves as president of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissene Habre regime, an organization advocating for victims and their families.

He says now that the African Union has come to expedite the process, victims are satisfied and they hope the process will go faster than expected.

Experts from the African Union plan to return to Chad in the coming weeks to continue setting up the trust fund.

Source: Voice of America

Posted on

Algeria closes airspace to Moroccan planes

ALGIERS— The Algerian presidency said the country has closed its airspace to all Moroccan civil and military aircraft amid an escalating diplomatic row, the official APS news agency reported.

The decision was made after Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune chaired a meeting of the High Security Council on Wednesday, which dealt with the “developments at the borders with the Kingdom of Morocco,” APS quoted the Algerian presidency as saying in a statement.

The council decided to “immediately close” the Algerian airspace to “all Moroccan civilian and military aircrafts as well as those with Moroccan registration numbers,” according to APS.

Algeria cut diplomatic relations with Morocco in August citing what it described as the latter’s “hostile” policies.

Morocco later expressed regret over Algeria’s “completely unjustified” decision to sever diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK