Egypt has been certified malaria-free by the World Health Organization (WHO) – an achievement hailed by the UN public health agency as “truly historic”. “Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Egyptian authorities launched their first efforts […]

Losing a deputy just two years after being elected on a joint ticket could be seen as a big blow for a president, but not this time in Kenya. As soon as Rigathi Gachagua was seen to be undermining William Ruto, he moved swiftly to remove his second-in-command. He had seen for himself how a […]

A British national has told the BBC that he and several Turkish citizens were abducted in the Kenyan capital Nairobi by masked men on Friday, with four of the Turkish citizens still missing. Necdet Seyitoğlu, who lived in the UK for 18 years before moving to Kenya two years ago, said he was released after […]

Water from a polluted river in Ghana was so thick and discoloured that an artist was able to use it as paint to depict the environmental devastation caused by the illegal gold mining that has spread like wildfire in the resource-rich West African state. Mercury is increasingly being used to extract gold by miners digging […]

Children as young as 10 can soon be jailed once again in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility. Australian states and territories have been under pressure to raise it, from 10 to 14, in line with other developed countries and UN advice. Last year the NT became […]