Africa
Flooding in Tanzania has killed 155 people as heavy rains continue in Eastern Africa
Flooding in Tanzania caused by weeks of heavy rain has killed 155 people and affected more than 200,000 others, the prime minister said Thursday.
That is more than double the number of deaths reported two weeks ago as the amount of rainfall increases, especially in the coastal region and the capital, Dar es Salaam.
Flooding wreaks havoc across East Africa. Burundi is especially hard-hit
Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa told parliament that the El Niño climate pattern has worsened the ongoing rainy season, causing the flooding and destroying roads, bridges and railways. Flooded schools have been closed and emergency services have rescued people marooned by the flood waters.
Majaliwa warned those living in low-lying areas to move to higher ground and urged district officials to ensure that provisions meant for those whose homes were washed away go to those in need of the supplies. He said more than 51,000 households have been affected by the rains.
Extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry
The East African region is experiencing heavy rains, with flooding also reported in neighboring Burundi and Kenya.
In Kenya, 35 people were reported dead as of Monday, and the number was expected to increase as flooding continues across the country.
In the Mathare slum in the capital, Nairobi, at least four bodies were retrieved from flooded houses on Wednesday. Local media reported that more bodies were retrieved from the Mathare River.
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Kenyan President William Ruto chaired a multi-agency flood response meeting on Thursday and directed the National Youth Service to provide land for people in flood-affected areas.
Flooding wreaks havoc across East Africa. Burundi is especially hard-hit
Deadly floods are wreaking havoc in many parts of East Africa that face torrential rainfall, with the poor nation of Burundi calling for international help to deal with the aftermath.
Lake Tanganyika's rising waters have invaded the port of Bujumbura, Burundi's economic capital, disrupting business there and elsewhere in the country that relies heavily on donor support to run government programs.
"We are issuing this statement to ask our development partners to combine efforts with the state of Burundi to help all people affected by these disasters," Interior Minister Martin Niteretse said April 17. "We need that support."
Niteretse spoke in Bujumbura alongside Violet Kenyana Kakyomya, the U.N. resident coordinator in Burundi.
Between September and April 7, some 203,944 people were affected by flooding, with 19,250 homes and 209 classrooms destroyed during that time. The number of people internally displaced by flooding rose by 25%, reaching over 98,000 people, according to Kakyomya.
Burundi is one of the world's poorest countries, with 80% of its 13 million people employed in agriculture, according to the World Bank.
Flooding there has created surreal scenes like game rangers entering the waterlogged Rusizi National Park in a canoe. The Boulevard du Japon, a major highway in Bujumbura, has been completely flooded in recent days.
Climate experts say flooding events in Burundi and elsewhere in the region are part of extreme conditions linked to the El Niño weather phenomenon.
"It must be said directly that these floods are associated with climate changes that affect Burundi like other countries in the region," said Jean Marie Sabushimike, a geographer and disaster management expert who teaches at the University of Burundi.
While climate change is the trigger, the impact of the flooding is exacerbated by poor land-use planning "that does not take into account areas at very high risk of flooding," he said.
The rising waters of Lake Tanganyika have caused the Kanyosha river to overflow, damaging homes and other property in Bujumbura. Some in the city have been unable to return to their homes — or leave.
Joachim Ntirampeba, resident of the village of Gatumba near the Congo border, said that while he had witnessed many flooding events over the years, this time "it's terrible."
He said it's "the first time" he's seen such heavy flooding.
Meanwhile, in Kenya 35 people have died since mid-March in flooding events that have affected more than 100,000 people, according to the U.N., which cites Red Cross figures in the most recent update.
Flooding has been reported in residential areas in Nairobi, the capital, as rivers broke their banks Sunday night.
The Kenyan government agency in charge of roads warned Nairobi residents to avoid flooded highways, including one to the coastal city of Mombasa. Those who live by the Nairobi river are being urged to move to higher ground.
Flooding and mudslides have also been reported in western Kenya. In the northern region, a passenger bus was swept away by floodwaters on a bridge earlier in April, with disaster avoided after 51 passengers were rescued.
Kenya's meteorology department predicts that rainfall will peak this week.
Extreme drought in southern Africa leaves millions hungry
Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe.
“I don't want to lose a single drop,” she said.
Her relief at the handout — paid for by the United States government as her southern African country deals with a severe drought — was tempered when aid workers gently broke the news that this would be their last visit.
Ncube and her 7-month-old son she carried on her back were among 2,000 people who received rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas and other supplies in the Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. The food distribution is part of a program funded by American aid agency USAID and rolled out by the United Nations' World Food Programme.
They're aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023. It has scorched the crops that tens of millions of people grow themselves and rely on to survive, helped by what should be the rainy season.
They can rely on their crops and the weather less and less.
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The drought in Zimbabwe, neighboring Zambia and Malawi has reached crisis levels. Zambia and Malawi have declared national disasters. Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same. The drought has reached Botswana and Angola to the west, and Mozambique and Madagascar to the east.
A year ago, much of this region was drenched by deadly tropical storms and floods. It is in the midst of a vicious weather cycle: too much rain, then not enough. It's a story of the climate extremes that scientists say are becoming more frequent and more damaging, especially for the world's most vulnerable people.
In Mangwe, the young and the old lined up for food, some with donkey carts to carry home whatever they might get, others with wheelbarrows. Those waiting their turn sat on the dusty ground. Nearby, a goat tried its luck with a nibble on a thorny, scraggly bush.
Ncube, 39, would normally be harvesting her crops now — food for her, her two children and a niece she also looks after. Maybe there would even be a little extra to sell.
The driest February in Zimbabwe in her lifetime, according to the World Food Programme’s seasonal monitor, put an end to that.
“We have nothing in the fields, not a single grain," she said. “Everything has been burnt (by the drought).”
The United Nations Children's Fund says there are “overlapping crises” of extreme weather in eastern and southern Africa, with both regions lurching between storms and floods and heat and drought in the past year.
In southern Africa, an estimated 9 million people, half of them children, need help in Malawi. More than 6 million in Zambia, 3 million of them children, are impacted by the drought, UNICEF said. That's nearly half of Malawi's population and 30% of Zambia's.
“Distressingly, extreme weather is expected to be the norm in eastern and southern Africa in the years to come," said Eva Kadilli, UNICEF’s regional director.
Gunmen kidnap 300 students in northwest Nigeria
While human-made climate change has spurred more erratic weather globally, there is something else parching southern Africa this year.
El Niño, the naturally occurring climatic phenomenon that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years, has varied effects on the world's weather. In southern Africa, it means below-average rainfall, sometimes drought, and is being blamed for the current situation.
The impact is more severe for those in Mangwe, where it's notoriously arid. People grow the cereal grain sorghum and pearl millet, crops that are drought resistant and offer a chance at harvests, but even they failed to withstand the conditions this year.
Francesca Erdelmann, the World Food Programme's country director for Zimbabwe, said last year's harvest was bad, but this season is even worse. "This is not a normal circumstance,” she said.
The first few months of the year are traditionally the “lean months” when households run short as they wait for the new harvest. However, there is little hope for replenishment this year.
Joseph Nleya, a 77-year-old traditional leader in Mangwe, said he doesn't remember it being this hot, this dry, this desperate. "Dams have no water, riverbeds are dry and boreholes are few. We were relying on wild fruits, but they have also dried up,” he said.
People are illegally crossing into Botswana to search for food and "hunger is turning otherwise hard-working people into criminals,” he added.
Multiple aid agencies warned last year of the impending disaster.
Since then, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has said that 1 million of the 2.2 million hectares of his country's staple corn crop have been destroyed. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has appealed for $200 million in humanitarian assistance.
The 2.7 million struggling in rural Zimbabwe is not even the full picture. A nationwide crop assessment is underway and authorities are dreading the results, with the number needing help likely to skyrocket, said the WFP's Erdelmann.
With this year’s harvest a write-off, millions in Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar won’t be able to feed themselves well into 2025. USAID's Famine Early Warning System estimated that 20 million people would require food relief in southern Africa in the first few months of 2024.
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Many won't get that help, as aid agencies also have limited resources amid a global hunger crisis and a cut in humanitarian funding by governments.
As the WFP officials made their last visit to Mangwe, Ncube was already calculating how long the food might last her. She said she hoped it would be long enough to avert her greatest fear: that her youngest child would slip into malnutrition even before his first birthday.
As conflict worsens in eastern Congo, 2 armed groups pledge to respect civilians
Under a crystal chandelier in a hall where the first Geneva Convention was signed in the mid-19th century, representatives of two armed groups in Congo signed solemn pledges this week to both their violence-wracked country and the wider world: We will do better to respect and protect civilians.
With several Western diplomats looking on, the envoys made commitments that their forces will work to end sexual violence, food insecurity and conditions of famine and to ensure greater access to health care in the parts of increasingly violent eastern Congo that they operate in and control.
The ceremony Tuesday at City Hall in Geneva, a Swiss city that's known for an internationalist bent and as home to the international Red Cross, is the culmination of years of work by the humanitarian group Geneva Call, which works to protect civilians in conflict zones.
Congo, Africa's second-largest country, has seen a recent upsurge in insecurity in its mineral-rich east, an area that has been wracked by conflict for decades. More than 120 armed groups are fighting for land and power and, in some cases, protecting their communities. However, M23, the largest and best-known group, allegedly linked to neighboring Rwanda, has not engaged with Geneva Call.
President Felix Tshisekedi, who started his second five-year term in January, had made quelling violence in the eastern parts of the Central African country a priority in his first term — but has struggled to deliver results.
In Geneva, two armed groups that are loosely aligned with the government against M23 inked separate “Deeds of Commitment” on the rules they've vowed to respect. Geneva Call was quick to say these are not formal agreements and don’t “legitimize” the armed groups.
One of the two, CMC-FDP (the French language acronym for Collective of Movements for Change/Self-Defense Force of Congolese People), has worked with Geneva Call for five years and taken steps such as releasing 35 children who were formerly in the group and rehabilitating schools and health centers.
“We are here as representatives of a patriotic resistance group in the Democratic Republic of Congo and we're here in Geneva to reiterate our commitment to respect international humanitarian law and human rights.” said Jimmy Didace Butsitsi, an assistant to the group's president, Christophe Mulumba.
The larger of the two groups is NDC-R/Guidon (Nduma Defense of Renewed Congo/Guidon), which has about 5,000 fighters. It has released over 20 hostages, undergone training in humanitarian law, and handed over 53 “perpetrators” of sexual or gender-based violence in its ranks to authorities as part of its work with the Geneva group.
“Before all these training courses that we’ve taken, we could let ourselves do whatever we wanted,” said group spokesman Marcellin Shenkuku N’Kuba, who was accompanied in Geneva by Jérémie N'Kuba, the group's political chairman. "Now, we feel — we can see — there's a change on the ground, and so we can’t let ourselves do whatever we want anymore.”
Shenkuku N'Kuba acknowledged that respecting the commitments “isn't easy” and said he's “not a prophet” but that the group will endeavor to adhere to them now that the pledges have been made.
He said his group was also motivated out of a desire to debunk preconceived notions that people around the world might have about resistance groups, and "show our desire and to influence others also to adhere to the philosophy of respect for human rights ... despite the circumstances our country is going through for the moment.”
Alain Délétroz, Geneva Call's director-general, said the idea behind such commitments is “to encourage other groups to follow the examples of these bigger groups.”
The humanitarian group was born in 2000 out of an effort to ban landmines, and it has shepherded nearly 120 such pledges from armed groups in countries, including Iraq, Myanmar and Syria, on issues like child protection, sexual violence and gender discrimination.
Geneva Call will keep tabs on any signs that the two groups might be violating their commitments, and would first raise any issues with their leaders confidentially. If troubles persisted, the aid group could go so far as to “repudiate” the deeds — but that has never happened in any other country.
The ceremony took place in the City Hall's “Alabama Room," under a painting that commemorates a meeting of bearded and mustachioed envoys from Europe and the United States who signed the first Geneva convention on aid to war-wounded in 1864.
Bus plunges off bridge in South Africa killing 45 people
A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
The only survivor of the crash was an 8-year-old child, who was receiving medical attention, according to authorities in the northern province of Limpopo. They said the child was seriously injured.
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The Limpopo provincial government said the bus veered off the Mmamatlakala bridge and plunged 50 meters (164 feet) into a ravine before busting into flames.
Search operations were ongoing, the provincial government said, but many bodies were burned beyond recognition and still trapped inside the vehicle.
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Authorities said they believe the bus was traveling from the neighboring country of Botswana to the town of Moria, which hosts a popular Easter pilgrimage. They said it appeared that the driver lost control and was one of the dead.
Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga was in Limpopo province for a road safety campaign and changed plans to visit the crash scene, the national Department of Transport said. She said there was an investigation underway into the cause of the crash and offered her condolences to the families of the victims.
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The South African government often warns of the danger of road accidents during the Easter holidays, which is a particularly busy and dangerous time for road travel. More than 200 people died in road crashes during the Easter weekend last year.
The Zionist Christian Church has its headquarters in Moria and its Easter pilgrimage attracts hundreds of thousands of people from across South Africa and neighboring countries. This year is the first time the Easter pilgrimage to Moria is set to go ahead since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gunmen kidnap 300 students in northwest Nigeria
Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s northwest, riddled with Islamic extremists and armed gangs.
It has been more than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in the remote town of Kuriga in Kaduna state only to be kidnapped by gunmen. She was still in shock Saturday.
Authorities said at least 100 children aged 12 or younger were among the abductees in the state known for violent killings lawlessness and dangerous roads where people get regularly snatched.
“We don’t know what to do, but we believe in God,” Hamza told The Associated Press during a visit to the town.
The mass kidnapping in Kuriga was the third in northern Nigeria since last week; a group of gunmen abducted 15 children from a school in another northwestern state, Sokoto, before dawn Saturday, and a few days earlier 200 people, mostly women and children displaced by conflict, were kidnapped in northeastern Borno State.
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The kidnappings are a stark reminder of the security crisis plaguing Africa’s most populous country.
No group claimed responsibility for any of the recent abductions. But Islamic extremists waging an insurgency in the northeast are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping in Borno. Locals blame the school abductions on herders who are in conflict with the settled communities.
It's not the first time for a student kidnapping in Nigeria to shock the world. In 2014, Islamic extremists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from Borno’s Chibok, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign. A decade later, at least 1,400 Nigerian students have so far been abducted from their schools in similar circumstances. Some are still held captive, including nearly 100 of the Chibok girls.
Recalling Thursday’s kidnapping, Nura Ahmad, a teacher, told the AP that students were just settling into their classrooms at the government primary and secondary school when gunmen “came in dozens, riding on bikes and shooting sporadically.”
The LEA Primary and Secondary School, one of the few educational facilities in this area, sits by the road just at the entrance of the town, tucked in the middle of forests and savannah. Even with its decaying roof and wrecked walls, it gave parents hope for a better future for their children.
“They surrounded the school and blocked all passages … and roads” to prevent help from coming before kidnapping the children in less than five minutes, Ahmad said.
Fourteen-year-old Abdullahi Usman braved gunshots to escape the captors.
“Those who refused to move fast were either forced on the motorcycles or threatened by gunshots fired into the air,” Abdullahi said. “The bandits were shouting: Go! Go! Go!” he said.
Nigerian police and soldiers headed into the forests Friday to search for the missing children, but combing the wooded expanses of northwestern Nigeria could take weeks, observers said.
“Since this happened, my brain has been muddled,” said Shehu Lawal, the father of a 13-year-old boy who is among those abducted.
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“My child didn’t even eat breakfast before leaving. His mother fainted (upon hearing the news)," he said.
Some villagers like Lawan Yaro, whose five grandchildren are among the abducted, say their hopes are already fading.
People are used to the region's insecurity, "but it has never been in this manner,” he said.
“We are crying, looking for help from the government and God, but it is the gunmen that will decide to bring the children back,” Yaro said. “God will help us."
But schools are not the only targets.
More than 3,500 people have been abducted across Nigeria in the last year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Some were even kidnapped from their homes in the capital of Abuja. Last year, President Bola Tinubu took office after he successfully campaigned on the promise to tighten security and stop the kidnappings.
Experts say it is easy to smuggle in arms, used in kidnappings, over Nigeria’s poorly policed borders. More than half of its 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) border with Niger, for instance, stretches across the northwest. Though mostly covered in woodland savannah, the region also has vast ungoverned and unoccupied forests where organized gangs hide and keep their kidnap victims.
In 2022, lawmakers passed a bill to penalize ransom payments, but Nigerian kidnappers are known for their brutality, forcing many families to succumb to their demands.
Nigeria's military continues to conduct air raids and special military operations in the region as well as respond to pockets of crisis across the country but is fatigued by the 14-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast. Armed gangs also keep on multiplying in the region where many are poor and often work with extremists, seeking to expand their operations.
The military previously said that sometimes kidnap victims were used as “human shields” to prevent aerial bombardments of the forests where their captors hide.
The gangs are “adapting their strategies and further entrenching themselves in the northwest through extortion,” said James Barnett, a researcher specializing in West Africa at the U.S.-based Hudson Institute.
“Their mentality is that they should be allowed free rein to do what they please in the northwest and that if the state challenges them, directly or indirectly, they will have to respond and show their strength,” Barnett said.
More than a dozen checkpoints and military trucks now dot the dangerous 55-mile (89 kilometers) road running from Kuriga town to the city of Kaduna. But the soldiers are likely to be redeployed elsewhere soon, depending on security needs.
People in Kuriga can only hope their children are returned unharmed and the safety they now feel with the presence of military personnel endures.
Hamza, the mother whose five children were kidnapped, hopes the government will arrest the kidnappers and return the students. “The gunmen don’t allow us to have peace."
Algeria inaugurates Africa's largest mosque after years of political delays and cost overruns
Algeria inaugurated a gigantic mosque on its Mediterranean coastline Sunday after years of political upheaval transformed the project from a symbol of state-sponsored strength and religiosity to one of delays and cost overruns.
Built by a Chinese construction firm throughout the 2010s, the Great Mosque of Algiers features the world's tallest minaret, measuring at 869 feet (265 meters). The third largest mosque in the world and largest outside Islam's holiest cities, its prayer room accommodates 120,000 people. Its modernist design contains Arab and North African flourishes to honor Algerian tradition and culture as well as a helicopter landing pad and a library that can house up to 1 million books.
The inauguration would guide Muslims “toward goodness and moderation,” said Ali Mohamed Salabi, the General Secretary of world union of Muslim Ulemas.
Propagating a moderate brand of Islam has been a key priority in Algeria since government forces subdued an Islamist-led rebellion throughout the 1990s when a bloody civil war swept the country.
Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune inaugurated the mosque, fulfilling his promise to open it with great pomp and circumstance. The event, however, was mainly ceremonial. The mosque has been open to international tourists and state visitors to Algeria for roughly five years. An earlier ceremony was delayed.
The timing allows the mosque to officially open to the public in time to host nightly prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next month.
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Beyond its gigantic dimensions, the mosque is also known for the delays and controversy that characterized the seven years it was under construction, including the choice of site, which experts warned was seismically risky. The state denied that in a news release Sunday posted on APS, the state news agency website. Throughout the delays and cost overruns, the project never stopped feeding Algerians’ anger, with many saying they’d rather have four hospitals built throughout the country.
The project’s official cost was $898 million.
The mosque was originally a project of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who designed it to be the largest in Africa. He wanted it to be his legacy and called “Abdelaziz Bouteflika Mosque” much like Mosque Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco. That mosque, named after the former King of Morocco — Algeria's neighbor and regional rival — was once marketed as Africa's largest.
But the protests that swept Algeria in 2019 and led him to resign after 20 years in power prohibited Bouteflika's from realizing his plans, naming the mosque after himself or inaugurating it in February 2019 as scheduled.
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The mosque — along with a major national highway and a million new housing units — each were marred by suspicions of corruption during the Bouteflika era, with suspected kickbacks to contractors then paid to state officials.
Rape and sexual violence in Sudan's ongoing conflict may amount to war crimes, a new UN report says
The U.N. human rights office said in a new report Friday that scores of people, including children, have been subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence in the ongoinng conflict in Sudan, assaults that may amount to war crimes.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April when clashes erupted in the capital, Khartoum, between rival Sudanese forces — the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and a paramilitary faction known as the Rapid Support Forces, under the command of Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting quickly spread across the African country, especially urban areas but also the restive western Darfur region, and has so far killed at least 12,000 people and sent over 8 million fleeing their homes, the report said.
The report, which covers a period from the outbreak of the fighting up to Dec. 15, documents abuses in a country that has been largely inaccessible to aid groups and rights monitors recently, clouding the impact of a conflict that been overshadowed by wars in places like Gaza and Ukraine.
The report found that at least 118 people had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape — with many of the assaults committed by members of the paramilitary forces, in homes and on the streets.
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One woman, the U.N. said, “was held in a building and repeatedly gang-raped over a period of 35 days.”
The report also pointed to recruitment of child soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
“Some of these violations would amount to war crimes,” said U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk, calling for prompt, thorough and independent investigations into alleged rights abuses and violations.
The report is based on interview of more than 300 victims and witnesses, some conducted in neighboring Ethiopia and Chad where many Sudanese have fled, along with analysis of photographs, videos, and satellite imagery from the conflict areas.
The ravages of the war, beyond the period examined, are continuing, the U.N. said.
The U.N. cited video that emerged last week from the country's North Kordofan State showing men wearing Sudanese army uniforms carrying severed heads of members of the rival paramilitary faction.
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“For nearly a year now, accounts coming out of Sudan have been of death, suffering and despair, as the senseless conflict and human rights violations and abuses have persisted with no end in sight,” Türk said.
“The guns must be silenced, and civilians must be protected,” he added.
Speaking from Nairobi, Kenya, by videoconference to the U.N. briefing in Geneva on Friday, Seif Magango, a regional spokesman for the U.N. human rights office said that “the number of people displaced (in Sudan) has now crossed the 8 million mark, which should concern everyone.”
Earlier in February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters that there is no military solution to Sudan's conflict and urged the rival generals to start talking about ending the conflict. He stressed that continued fighting “will not bring any solution so we must stop this as soon as possible.”
Nigeria’s currency has fallen to a record low as inflation surges
Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation’s worst economic crises in years triggered by surging inflation, the result of monetary policies that have pushed the currency to an all-time low against the dollar. The situation has provoked anger and protests across the country.
The latest government statistics released Thursday showed the inflation rate in January rose to 29.9%, its highest since 1996, mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Nigeria's currency, the naira, further plummeted to 1,524 to $1 on Friday, reflecting a 230% loss of value in the last year.
“My family is now living one day at a time (and) trusting God,” said trader Idris Ahmed, whose sales at a clothing store in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja have declined from an average of $46 daily to $16.
The plummeting currency worsens an already bad situation, further eroding incomes and savings. It squeezes millions of Nigerians already struggling with hardship due to government reforms including the removal of gas subsidies that resulted in gas prices tripling.
A SNAPSHOT OF NIGERIA’S ECONOMYWith a population of more than 210 million people, Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous country but also the continent’s largest economy. Its gross domestic product is driven mainly by services such as information technology and banking, followed by manufacturing and processing businesses and then agriculture.
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The challenge is that the economy is far from sufficient for Nigeria’s booming population, relying heavily on imports to meet the daily needs of its citizens from cars to cutlery. So it is easily affected by external shocks such as the parallel foreign exchange market that determines the price of goods and services.
Nigeria's economy is heavily dependent on crude oil, its largest foreign exchange earner. When crude prices plunged in 2014, authorities used its scarce foreign reserves to try to stabilize the naira amid multiple exchange rates. The government also shut down the land borders to encourage local production and limited access to the dollar for importers of certain items.
The measures, however, further destabilized the naira by facilitating a booming parallel market for the dollar. Crude oil sales that boost foreign exchange earnings have also dropped because of chronic theft and pipeline vandalism.
MONETARY REFORMS POORLY IMPLEMENTEDShortly after taking the reins of power in May last year, President Bola Tinubu took bold steps to fix the ailing economy and attract investors. He announced the end of costly decadeslong gas subsidies, which the government said were no longer sustainable. Meanwhile, the country's multiple exchange rates were unified to allow market forces to determine the rate of the local naira against the dollar, which in effect devalued the currency.
Analysts say there were no adequate measures to contain the shocks that were bound to come as a result of reforms including the provision of a subsidized transportation system and an immediate increase in wages.
So the more than 200% increase in gas prices caused by the end of the gas subsidy started to have a knock-on effect on everything else, especially because locals rely heavily on gas-powered generators to light their households and run their businesses.
WHY IS THE NAIRA PLUMMETING IN VALUE?Under the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, policymakers tightly controlled the rate of the naira against the dollar, thereby forcing individuals and businesses in need of dollars to head to the black market, where the currency was trading at a much lower rate.
There was also a huge backlog of accumulated foreign exchange demand on the official market — estimated to be $7 billion — due in part to limited dollar flows as foreign investments into Nigeria and the country’s sale of crude oil have declined.
Authorities said a unified exchange rate would mean easier access to the dollar, thereby encouraging foreign investors and stabilizing the naira. But that has yet to happen because inflows have been poor. Instead, the naira has further weakened as it continues to depreciate against the dollar.
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WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING?CBN Gov. Olayemi Cardoso has said the bank has cleared $2.5 billion of the foreign exchange backlog out of the $7 billion that had been outstanding. The bank, however, found that $2.4 billion of that backlog were false claims that it would not clear, Cardoso said, leaving a balance of about $2.2 billion, which he said will be cleared “soon.”
Tinubu, meanwhile, has directed the release of food items such as cereals from government reserves among other palliatives to help cushion the effect of the hardship. The government has also said it plans to set up a commodity board to help regulate the soaring prices of goods and services.
On Thursday, the Nigerian leader met with state governors to deliberate on the economic crisis, part of which he blamed on the large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses.
"We must ensure that speculators, hoarders and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians,” Tinubu said.
By Friday morning, local media were reporting that stores were being sealed for hoarding and charging unfair prices.
HOW ARE NIGERIANS COPING WITH TOUGH TIMES?The situation is at its worst in conflict zones in northern Nigeria, where farming communities are no longer able to cultivate what they eat as they are forced to flee violence. Pockets of protests have broken out in past weeks but security forces have been quick to impede them, even making arrests in some cases.
In the economic hub of Lagos and other major cities, there are fewer cars and more legs on the roads as commuters are forced to trek to work. The prices of everything from food to household items increase daily.
“Even to eat now is a problem,” said Ahmed in Abuja. “But what can we do?”
37 people killed in disputed oil-rich African region of Abyei in fighting linked to spiritual leader
Thirty-seven people were killed over the weekend in fighting apparently tied to a land feud in the disputed oil-rich region of Abyei, an official said Sunday. The bloodshed came a week after 52 people died in a land dispute in the same region.
Information Minister Bolis Koch in Abyei, which is claimed by South Sudan and Sudan, said the fighting erupted in Rum-Ameer, Alal and Mijak counties with an attack by armed youth from South Sudan's Warrap state who were backed by fighters loyal to spiritual leader Gai Machiek from the country's Unity state.
Koch said the fighting left 19 people dead and 18 injured Saturday and claimed the lives of 18 more people Sunday, including four women and three children. He said 1,000 head of cattle also were stolen.
“The Abyei Special Administrative Area strongly condemns the terrorist attacks, the heinous killings of innocent civilians, the burning of local markets and residential areas,” Koch said in a statement.
Ethnic violence has been common in the region, where Twic Dinka tribal members from Warrap are contesting for land with Ngok Dinka people in Abyei's Aneet area, located at the border.
Although land is seen as the major driver of the conflict, officials allege the armed Twic young people are being incited by Machiek, an ethnic Neur spiritual leader who has been accused of formenting conflict. He also was blamed for the attack a week ago that killed 53 people, including two U.N. peacekeepers.
Machiek has denied any wrongdoing in interviews with local media.
Sudan and South Sudan have disagreed over control of the Abyei region since a 2005 peace deal ended decades of civil war between Sudan’s north and south. Abyei's status was unresolved after South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011, though it is under control of South Sudan.
The region’s majority Ngok Dinka people favor South Sudan, while the Misseriya nomads who come to Abyei to find pasture for their cattle favor Sudan. An African Union panel proposed a referendum for Abyei but there was disagreement over who could vote.