Africa Daily

Africa Daily is on the road in Africa… first stop: South Africa. And Alan has arrived just in time for Mandela day – a celebration of the former president’s birth. When Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994, he was a hero in his own country, and an inspiration across the world. But 28 years after the fall of apartheid, some, particularly those who are...

After 18 months of recording the podcast in his spare room, Alan Kasujja is on the road with Africa Daily… and his first stop is Johannesburg. Alan wants to hear from people, out and about, and - as luck would have it – he’s arrived just in time for a special day: Nelson Mandela’s birthday, when the legacy of the former President and anti-apartheid hero is celebrated. As South Africa’s new Preside...

The National Football League – NFL – touched down in Ghana recently, with their event called “NFL Africa: The Touchdown”. At present, the NFL says there are over 100 players of African descent in the league. But what’s a sport known as America’s game, which only has professional teams in the United States doing on the continent? The American football league was in Accra scouting young African tale...

Mali and Ivory Coast have been locked in a dispute since the beginning of the week when news broke of the arrest of 49 Ivorian soldiers at the airport in Mali’s capital Bamako. Mali accused the soldiers of being illegally in their country, calling them mercenaries. Ivory coast insisted the soldiers were part of a UN peacekeeping mission, which has been in Mali since 2013. The mandate for the UN mi...

Casamance has seen a long-running conflict between the Senegalese government and rebel groups, which want independence. This unrest in Senegal's coastal region of Casamance has been ongoing since 1982. The last attempt at a peace deal was in 2004 and in 2014 the leader of the rebel movement declared a unilateral ceasefire. But some fighting keeps happening in the area. Casamance is separated from...

Over the past few years, people in South Africa have been questioning the role corruption has played in their country's recent fortunes. In June, the Zondo commission - an inquiry named after it's chairperson Chief Justice Raymond Zondo - reported widespread corruption during the presidency of Jacob Zuma. It found that ANC leaders, including former and current government ministers, allegedly parti...

Coconuts. Such a versatile product. You can eat them, you can drink its fresh sweet juice. You can even use it on your skin and hair. But as Alan has been finding out they can also be made into coco-peat and they can produce energy. So a very handy crop. And this is why Nigeria, despite growing plenty of them, last month, the country launched a coconut planting initiative in the southwestern town...

A decades-long civil war has killed thousands and displaced millions in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Neighbouring countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have also been sucked into the conflict. DR Congo accuses Kigali of sponsoring the M23 rebels, which have recently escalated the conflict after a period of calm. Rwanda denies this, but President Kagame recently ack...

Earlier this year, Ons Jabeur, from Tunisia, became the first Arab woman and African woman to win a WTA 1000 title - a major title in the women’s game. Now at number two in the world, she is the highest ever ranked African player. She’s been in great form and is playing her first ever semi final at a grand slam – and not the least at Wimbledon - widely regarded as the most prestigious tennis tourn...

For many years people in South Africa have been dealing with rolling blackouts. But in recent days the outages have increased to six hours per day, causing unprecedented disruption. The state-owned power company Eskom has blamed the most recent ‘load shedding’ on striking workers. On Tuesday afternoon they reached an agreement with unions that could ease the supply issues, but warned that things c...

Across the continent, Covid-19 cases rose by 36% on average last week. Those figures might have sounded scary a couple of years ago. But the World Health Organization expects Covid related deaths to drop by 94% this year. Many countries have dropped restrictions related to the pandemic. In Botswana though, a mask mandate remains in place. The US Centre for Disease Control raised concern about the...

In June 2022, the US Supreme court overturned “Roe v Wade”, a landmark case which legalised abortion in 1973. It came after a young woman challenged the criminal abortion laws in Texas. Her case was heard on appeal in the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy was protected by the US constitution. But now nearly 50 years later, America’s most senior legal...

In 2018 Nigeria were crowned champions of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s biggest football competition, for the ninth time. And they have only been to the tournament 11 times. With the 12th edition getting underway in Morocco from July 2, after it was postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic, the defending champions start their quest for a tenth title. Nigeria go into the tournamen...

Hope has been a midwife in Cameroon’s anglophone region for 27 years. Recently, she worked with a mother to quadruplets and sadly, only two of the babies survived. Providing care to the mother and babies was made even more difficult by the ongoing security crisis. The region has seen years of violence between separatist militants and government forces. For people living there, it has made every as...

For more than 20 years she’s been co-chair of the world’s largest private foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which works with projects aiming to fight poverty, inequality and infectious diseases. For years the foundation has poured billions of dollars into global health, education for girls among many others. And at a recent gathering in Kigali, The Bill and Melinda Gates foundatio...

Police in South Africa are examining how 21 teenagers died at a drinking tavern in the city of East London. The youngest to have died on Saturday night was just 13 years old. The minimum drinking age in South Africa is 18, so they should not have been in the spot. There were no visible injuries on the bodies of the victims, so police have said that a crush is unlikely. There have been reports that...

An investigation by BBC Africa Eye has found young people living with disabilities being trafficked from Tanzania to Nairobi. They found that they are then being forced to beg on the streets to bring in cash for the traffickers. Njeri Mwangi travelled to Tanzania and met parents who were tricked into letting their children move away, with the promise of a better life. And she joined Kenyan police...

This week you may have been hearing about a big meeting in Rwanda, as the heads of the 54 Commonwealth nations gather in Kigali. But for many, the Commonwealth, with its roots in the British Empire, feels like an outdated organisation – despite representing 2.5 billion people. The last member to join it was Rwanda, this year’s host. So what are the main issues arising? For Africa Daily, Alan Kasuj...

There’s been a noticeable change in the images of Africa we are now seeing on our screens. These pictures are so different from the ones the media has often shown of the continent. Gone are the children looking desolate and hungry with extended bellies, surrounded by flies, now it’s the images of rich, beautiful and increasingly famous people, living their best lives for the world to see. This is...

In much of the world, social media platforms are the number one source of information for young people. So it’s disturbing that several reports have been released showing that Kenya’s social media space is being flooded with misinformation, fake reports and distorted truths – all aimed at misleading voters ahead of the general elections this August. The latest includes findings by the Mozilla Foun...

"I ask: where are my father's bones? My brother's bones?" In April 1972, Hutu rebels in the south of Burundi launched an assault on the Tutsi led government. Their aim was to overthrow the administration of then president Michel Micombero. In the ensuing chaos, at least a thousand people, including government officials, were brutally murdered. But the country’s army quickly contained the insurgenc...

“Here in our culture when you don’t see the body of someone, for the woman you can’t go back to sleep on the bed. You have to stay on the floor all the time. So this is what the family has gone through. For them that tooth is the body of their father”. Patrice Lumumba is a national hero in his native Democratic Republic of Congo. He became the country’s first prime minister at the age of just 35,...

For several decades, the Maasai community in Loliondo in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro district have been involved in a land dispute with the government. Thousands of Maasai have lived for years on the fertile 1,500 square km piece of land – using its abundant water sources for their livestock. But the authorities no longer want the Maasai living there, as they say land and wildlife is being put at risk b...

Budget airline Ryanair recently introduced a policy that forced South African travellers to the UK to do a test in the Afrikaans language. This, it said, was aimed at proving the passengers’ nationality, in an effort to weed out those using counterfeit passports. The quiz contained questions such as ‘what is South Africa's international dialling code?’, ‘what is its capital city?’ and ‘who is the...

Fans say it’s the future of virtual money; experts say it's tamper-proof; billionaires have been made. But cryptocurrency has also led millionaires to lose everything – while Kenya’s ICT minister says last year Kenyans lost more than $120 million to crypto scams. When Bitcoin was first launched in 2009, one bitcoin was worth 0. By mid-April last year, the value of one bitcoin peaked at $60,000 US....