World News

A convicted internet fraudster has been placed under investigation in Nigeria for allegedly masterminding a “mega scam” from a maximum-security prison worth at least $1m (£773,000). Anti-corruption officials said Hope Olusegun Aroke used a “network of accomplices” for the fraud. He was arrested in 2012 and has been serving a 24-year sentence at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison. But a ...

Overly expensive insulin could be a thing of the past – and life-changing news – for millions of diabetics under a plan launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday to diversify production globally, just ahead of World Diabetes Day. Announcing the initiative in Geneva, the UN agency said that it had already had informal expressions of interest from pharmaceutical ...

Most of the West African migrants who fail to reach Europe eventually return to their own countries, but it can be a bitter homecoming. In Sierra Leone, returnees are often rejected by relatives and friends. They’re seen as failures, and many stole from their families to pay for their journey. Some readers will find this story disturbing Fatmata breaks into ...

A public inquiry into rising cases of sexual and gender-based violence in Nigeria has started in the capital, Abuja. It will gather victims’ accounts and suspected violators’ defenses. This is following a documentary by the BBC’s Africa Eye investigative unit, exposing sexual harassment and misconduct by lecturers at prestigious institutions in West Africa. The BBC sent undercover journalists posing as ...

Despite widespread popular support for gender equality, African women are still disadvantaged by persistent gender gaps in education, employment, control over key assets, and access to technology, an Afrobarometer has revealed. The analysis, released Monday, reports that although there were substantial cross-country differences, African societies were generally supportive of women’s equality in principle, report considerable success in achieving equality in ...

The Federal Government’s decision to shut the nation’s land borders against neighbouring countries will remain, despite any short-term losses, until they ratify Nigeria’s proposed anti-smuggling policy, according to Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor Godwin Emefiele. Emefiele, who held a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, yesterday, noted that since the closure, Nigerian rice and ...

Iran is winning the strategic struggle for influence in the Middle East against its rival, Saudi Arabia, according to a study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Iran’s regional rivals have spent billions of dollars on Western weaponry, much of it from the UK. Yet for a fraction of that cost, sanctions-bound Iran has been able to ...

The ambush, which also wounded 60 people, was the third deadly attack on the Semafo mining company in 15 months. Gunmen in Burkina Faso killed at least 37 people on Wednesday in an attack on a convoy carrying employees, suppliers and contractors of a Canadian mining company, one of the deadliest episodes in a recent tide of violence that has ...

Ninety-seven escapees at large after rainfall in Kogi state prison allows over 120 to escape, prison authority says. Nearly 100 inmates remain at large after torrential rains in central Nigeria allowed scores of protesters to escape, according to authorities. The “perimeter fence” of the facility in Kogi state was destroyed by rains and cells flooded, forcing inmates “to break out of custody ...

More than 100 elephants have died in two months in Botswana’s Chobe National Park due to drought, which has also affected wildlife in other countries in the region, the government said Tuesday. Several southern African countries are enduring one of the worst droughts in decades, caused by months of over-average temperatures and erratic rainfall. The drought has wilted grasslands and ...