Africa Live this week: 15-21 May 2023

EPACopyright: EPA

South Africa is bracing for a grim winter, after the state-owned power company Eskom announced a high likelihood of prolonged power outages.

“With the winter season upon us, our power system will be even more constrained…weather forecasters are anticipating a much colder winter and these challenges will result in high electricity demand”, said Eskom chairperson Mpho Makwana on Thursday.

The country is currently experiencing "stage 6" load shedding, where consumers go without electricity for up to 12 hours a day. With "stage 8" load shedding expected this winter, consumers will have up to 16 hours of no electricity every single day.

Stage 8 power cuts would require up to 8,000MW to be shed from the national grid. This is likely to cause more businesses to shut down, further job losses and a high possibility of civil unrest.

Even though officials insist that the risk of a blackout is low, many South Africans are worried that the worst case scenario is very likely.

BBCCopyright: BBC

Eleven Burundian women have left for Saudi Arabia to work as domestic workers, in a government-backed scheme to curb illegal migration.

In the past, hundreds of Burundian women have been trafficked by cartels to work in housekeeping jobs in Arab countries - with some saying they endured extreme domestic violence.

“I am extremely happy... after almost four years of joblessness,” 22-year-old Aline Niyokwizera from southern Burundi told the BBC at Bujumbura's airport on Wednesday.

Jean Bosco Bizuru from a local recruitment agency said they had trained the women in the housekeeping jobs they will be doing in Saudi Arabia.

Burundi has a high rate unemployment among young people, who make up more than half the country’s population. Epimeni Bapfinda, an official in the foreign affairs ministry, said more than 75,000 jobs for Burundians will be available in Saudi Arabia.

Yet in recent years several other nations, including Uganda and Ethiopia, have banned the recruitment of maids to work in Saudi Arabia because of numerous accusations of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of Saudi employers.

Air strikes have pounded parts of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, as further fighting erupted near a military camp in the south of the city.

The army has used air power and heavy artillery to try to drive back the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from residential areas of Khartoum and its adjoining cities of Bahri and Omdurman.

The Sudanese Doctors' Syndicate accused the RSF of attacking three ambulances and arresting their drivers and a doctor in Khartoum.

The union said it had documented attacks on 20 hospitals.

More on Sudan:

• Why this accountant took up arms in Darfur
• A simple guide to what's going in Sudan

Police in western Kenya have arrested a self-proclaimed preacher who recently said he wanted to meet President William Ruto to deliver a prophetic message.

Joseph Chenge of Jerusalem Mowar Church was arrested on Wednesday evening alongside 11 members of his church in Ruri village, Homa Bay county.

Homa Bay criminal investigations officer Abed Kavoo said they were holding Mr Chenge in suspicion of promoting questionable religious teachings.

Mr Kavoo said preliminary investigations had revealed that the cleric was detaining sick people at his church in the guise of praying for them. Five patients were rescued from the preacher's church, local media reported.

Police said Chenge's church operations were illegal, as it was not registered. The preacher and the arrested members of his church are due to appear in court on Thursday.

On Sunday, Mr Chenge told journalists that something unfortunate may happen to the country if he failed to meet President Ruto within 21 days.

The arrest of the preacher comes amid crackdown on suspicious churches in Kenya, following the death of more than 200 in a doomsday cult in coastal Kilifi county.

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

The runner-up in the February presidential elections in Nigeria has criticised US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call to President-elect Bola Tinubu as “demoralising”.

Atiku Abubakar said the call was an “acknowledgement of a fraudulent election”.

Mr Blinken on Tuesday said he had spoken to Mr Tinubu to “emphasize his continued commitment to further strengthen the US-Nigeria relationship with the incoming administration”.

He noted that the relations built on shared interests and people ties “should continue to strengthen under President-elect Tinubu’s tenure”.

But Mr Abubakar, who is a former Nigerian vice-president, said he was “in disbelief” over the call, which he said was a contradiction of US’s publicly stated position on the election.

He said it was “inconceivable” that the US, which was well briefed on the “sham election” was giving legitimacy to it.

Petitions contesting the victory of Mr Tinubu were filed in March by several presidential candidates Mr Abubakar and Peter Obi, who was placed third in the 25 February polls.

The appeals court tribunal must decide on the petitions within 180 days from the date of filing. The cases may end up in the Supreme Court for a conclusive verdict.

Mr Tinubu is due for inauguration on 29 May.

Sudanese army/FacebookCopyright: Sudanese army/Facebook

The Sudanese army has published a video showing its leader, Lt-Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, walking among cheering soldiers at an unknown location in the capital, Khartoum.

The rare 23-second video published on Wednesday shows Gen Burhan armed with a rifle and a pistol. He is seen clad in a military outfit, shaking hands with cheering soldiers.

"The fighter - Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces - among his soldiers at the field," the video’s headline reads.

This is the first video of its kind since the ongoing armed conflict began on 15 April between the army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). However, in the early days of the fighting, Gen Burhan was seen together with other military leaders commanding soldiers from inside an unknown building in Khartoum.

Both the army chief and his rival RSF commander Gen Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedti, have sought to boost the morale of their respective battling forces.

Hemedti also made a similar appearance at an unknown location in Khartoum. He also recently denied in an audio message that he was killed.

The fighting, which is underpinned by a power struggle between Gen Burhan and Hemedti, has entered its second month, in which more than 800 people have been killed and thousands of others wounded.

AFPCopyright: AFP

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a $3bn (£2.4bn) bailout programme aimed at alleviating the country’s economic crisis.

Ghana’s Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah told the BBC the three-year extended credit facility was approved on Wednesday, in Washington DC.

The West African nation has been battling its worst economic crisis in a generation marred with inflation, debt burden and the depreciation of the local currency – the cedi - against the US dollar.

It is expected that $600m, the first batch of the loan will be remitted to Ghana as soon as possible.

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

Scientists in Canada and the United States have published research which challenges the traditional theory about the origins of modern humans in Africa.

Looking at genetic data, researchers from McGill University and the University of California, Davis suggest there were multiple populations living in different parts of Africa, migrating from one region to another and mixing with each other over hundreds of thousands of years.

This view runs counter to the theory that Homo Sapiens emerged from a single ancestral population in East or Southern Africa.

“At different times, people who embraced the classic model of a single origin for Homo Sapiens suggested that humans first emerged in either East or Southern Africa,” said Brenna Henn, a population geneticist at the University of California, Davis and co-lead author of the research.

“But it has been difficult to reconcile these theories with the limited fossil and archaeological records of human occupation from sites as far afield as Morocco, Ethiopia, and South Africa which show that Homo Sapiens were to be found living across the continent as far back as at least 300,000 years ago,” she said.

A nine-year-old girl fell to her death in Zimbabwe while running away from traditional Nyau dancers who were performing at a school in Mabvuku, a suburb east of the capital, Harare.

In a statement on Wednesday, police said the child died on Monday and investigations into her death were in progress.

The Nyau dancers, also known as zvigure or izitandari in Shona, often scare children with their cryptic dances and costumes.

Apart from their fascinating dances, the dancers are associated with many myths among adults, but to young children they are more like monsters, local media say.

Nyau dancers belong to the Chewa community in north-western Zimbabwe. The ethnic group is also found in Malawi and Zambia.

The dancers assist in passing down the culture and history of the Chewa people.

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

The head of Kenya’s standards regulator and 26 other government officials have been suspended over the release of 1,000 tonnes of expired sugar into the market.

A statement by the head of public service, Felix Koskei, said 20,000 bags of sugar imported into the country in 2018 and condemned by the regulator had been “irregularly diverted and unprocedurally released”.

The Kenya Bureau of Standards had then declared the sugar as unfit for human consumption and was set for destruction through conversion to industrial ethanol.

The conversion was to be undertaken jointly by regulatory agencies.

They were required to source for a distiller through an open and competitive tendering process and pay all the necessary taxes and fees.

“It is manifest that some officers in the relevant agencies abdicated their responsibilities, at the risk of public harm,” Mr Koskei said.

The suspension comes at a time when Kenyans have been hit by one of the biggest rise in prices of sugar in years amid shortage.

Rescue teams in Malawi have recovered six more bodies of people who went missing after their boat was hit by a hippo and capsized on the Shire River in the southern Nsanje region on Monday.

A police spokesperson in Nsanje area, Agnes Zalakoma, said the bodies were recovered on Wednesday from different sites along the river, state-owned MBC TV reported

"The search is still in progress," Ms Zalakoma said.

Following the accident, 14 people were rescued and about 20 others were reported missing.

A body of an infant, who was among the passengers, was recovered earlier.

The boat was packed with 37 villagers who were crossing the river to work in their fields on the Mozambican side.

Read more here:

• Malawi hippo in deadly attack on packed river boat

Kenya presidency/TwitterCopyright: Kenya presidency/Twitter

Kenyan President William Ruto has once again called out the two warring Sudanese generals, urging them to stop the fighting that has entered its second month.

Intense battles in the capital Khartoum and its sister cities of Bahri and Omdurman have raged despite Saudi and US-brokered talks between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Jeddah, aimed at securing humanitarian access and a ceasefire.

“These generals are bombing everything, roads, hospitals, bridges, and destroying the airport using military hardware bought with African money. We need to tell those generals to stop the nonsense,” President Ruto said on Wednesday during the Pan-African Parliament Summit in South Africa.

The Kenyan leader, who has been tasked by a regional bloc, Igad, together with other heads, to help in reconciling Sudan's rival sides, said military capacity was for battling criminals and terrorists and not for fighting children and women.

Mr Ruto, however, blamed African states for lacking the capacity to stop the war in Sudan "because our own peace and security is funded by others".

Nearly 1,000 people have been killed and more than a million displaced in Sudan since battles between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads a paramilitary force, erupted in April.

The unrest has caused about 200,000 to flee into nearby countries and those still in Khartoum are struggling to survive.

Our proverb of the day:

Quote Message: Since they were in the same field, the corn's death was blamed on the cucumber." from An Eton language proverb sent by Pascal Mani in Yaoundé, Cameroon

Since they were in the same field, the corn's death was blamed on the cucumber."

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

That's all from the BBC Africa Live team for now. We'll be back on Wednesday morning with the latest news and views from around the continent.

A reminder of Wednesday's wise words:

Quote Message: You cannot partition the buttocks equally with one hand." from An Igbo proverb sent by Ifiala Inyang in Lagos, Nigeria.

You cannot partition the buttocks equally with one hand."

Click here to send us your African proverbs.

And we leave you with this photo of Nigerian actress Chika Ike at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Resident doctors in Nigeria have started a five-day warning strike after a two-week ultimatum.

The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (Nard) said this follows the government’s failure to meet its demands, including implementing agreements on salaries and welfare.

The government has warned that the strike is illegal and doctors who refuse to work will not get paid.

When BBC News visited a government teaching hospital in Lagos, resident doctors said no one is going to work for the next five days.

"We are fighting for the young doctors, we are fighting for the old ones who have served for many years and have nothing to show for it and we are also fighting for ourselves," a doctor said.

Although the government said there is a meeting with the doctors on Wednesday, the President of Nard, Dr Emeka Orji, told BBC News they have not been invited for any discussion.

Resident doctors are also calling for a withdrawal of a bill that parliament is pushing to stop recently graduated doctors from leaving the country until they have worked for five years.

The association wants the government to resolve the issues before President Muhammadu Buhari leaves office on 29 May.

Malawi authorities have raided the homes and businesses of refugees and asylum seekers operating in the capital, Lilongwe to force them to relocate to a camp some 40km (25 miles) north of the city.

Officers from the Malawi police and the department of immigration rounded up more than 300 refugees and asylum seekers mostly from Burundi and Ethiopia and are currently holding them jail, while waiting for their relocation to the Dzaleka refugee camp.

Malawian laws prohibit refugees and asylum seekers from staying outside a refugee camp.

Homeland Security Minister Ken Zikhale Ng’oma has in the past said there’s no reason for the refugees to leave their designated camp which he said "has facilities that meet international standards including primary and secondary schools, a health centre and a public market".

The refugees, however, disagree saying they prefer to live inside the city, away from the camp where there are better business opportunities and schools for their children.

In April last year, two refugees obtained a court order stopping the government from forcibly relocating them.

At the time, the Malawi high court ordered a hearing between the government and the refugees to amicably agree on a way forward.

No agreement was reached and the government continued to push for the relocation, leading to Wednesday's action.

National police spokesperson Peter Kalaya said the exercise had gone well.

The challenge that remains now is finding enough space for the refugees and asylum seekers at the already crowded camp.

The country’s sole refugee camp has capacity to hold just over 10,000 people, but is already home to more than 50,000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The agreement signed between warring parties in Sudan last week to protect civilians has “failed to silence the guns”, Patrick Youssef, regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has told the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme.

The deal was intended to allow safe passage for people leaving battle zones, protect relief workers and to prevent civilians being used as human shields, but according to Mr Youssef it has not brought about “tangible change”.

Mr Youssef added that allowing Khartoum airport to accept humanitarian aircraft to help Sudanese civilians would be an “immense game-changer”.

He said there were injured people in Darfur who had “no access to hospitals” and “basic services”.

Meanwhile, Kenya's President William Ruto has spoken out against the fighting in Sudan, telling the conflicting parties to "stop the nonsense".

Conflict between the military and the rival paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in Sudan on 15 April, which has so far led to the death of more than 800 civilians, according to the Sudanese doctor’s union.

You can listen to Focus on Africa here.

AFPCopyright: AFP

The charity, Save the Children, is warning that armed groups are occupying hospitals in Sudan and looting life-saving equipment.

The charity said earlier this week eight people who were on oxygen in a health facility in the capital Khartoum were driven out by militia fighters.

It also said three clinics for internally displaced people in the Darfur region were looted and emptied of supplies.

The United Nations is urgently seeking about $3bn (£2.4bn) to fund humanitarian operations in Sudan.

It's expecting more than a million people to flee the country as fighting rages between the army and rival militia forces.