AFRICA

Dakar, Senegal | AFP |  One of the rising stars of traditional Senegalese wrestling, Moussa Diop has been driven off the beaches of Dakar, where he usually trains, and behind closed doors by the country’s coronavirus lockdown Diop, a fighter who “packs a punch”, is due to fight again in June …

Washington, United States | AFP | International financial institutions and African leaders warned on Friday the continent needs tens of billions of dollars in additional money to fight the coronavirus pandemic despite debt freezes and massive pledges of support. In a joint statement, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said …

Kano, Nigeria | AFP | Workers in the northern Nigerian city of Kano set out rows of new hospital beds inside two cavernous tents that have been hastily erected on the pitch of an empty football stadium. The facilities have been built to become an isolation centre for COVID-19 patients as …

Cairo, Egypt | AFP |  As governments in the Middle East isolate their populations to prevent the spread of coronavirus, attention is turning to the region’s jails, where detainees face a more punishing form of lockdown. “Because of the pandemic, confinement is an additional punishment for the prisoners,” said Kaddour Chouicha, …

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | AFP | The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention plans to distribute a million COVID-19 test kits from next week to help the continent tackle a glaring shortfall in testing, its director, John Nkengasong, said Thursday. “There is a big gap on the continent on testing,” …

                             KAMPALA, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Evidence Action – an international NGO with its Africa regional headquarters in Nairobi – has launched the COVID-19 Prevention Hygiene Project in 11 Ugandan districts to support rural communities in slowing the spread of COVID-19. This project …

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | An Extraordinary Summit of the East African Heads of State which had been purposely convened to discuss the ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been postponed on request by South Sudan. The summit which was to be held via video conferencing had been called …

Lilongwe, Malawi | AFP |  Malawi’s Supreme Court on Wednesday is to begin hearing an appeal by President Peter Mutharika against the re-run of an election in which he was returned to office last year. The Constitutional Court in February annulled the results of the May 2019 poll and ordered a …

Abuja, Nigeria | AFP |  African countries are seething over accounts that Africans are battling stigma and discrimination in China over the coronavirus pandemic, apparently linked to a cluster of cases in the Nigerian community in the southern city of Guangzhou. The African residents say they have suffered forced evictions, arbitrary …

Geneva, Switzerland | AFP | The World Health Organization said Tuesday it was extending its global emergency designation of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after fresh cases were detected. The announcement comes just a day after the vast central African country had been expected to announce that its outbreak was …