UN News Centre - Africa

The United Nations-African Union (AU) partnership has yielded “significant results”, including at the country level, the UN chief told the Security Council on Friday. 

A new network in Africa aims to combat the “infodemic” of misinformation online surrounding COVID-19 and other health emergencies on the continent, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday. 

The 20,000 foreign fighters now in Libya represent “a serious crisis” and “a shocking violation of Libyan sovereignty”, UN Acting Special Representative Stephanie Williams said on Wednesday, during the latest meeting under the country’s political dialogue forum. 

The UN on Wednesday announced that agreement has been reached with the Ethiopian Government to allow “unimpeded, sustained and secure access” for humanitarian supplies to reach those in need across areas now under its control in Tigray.

Child trafficking is rising in Mali, along with forced labour and forced recruitment by armed groups, due to conflict, insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday. 

A Rwandan entrepreneur is pioneering the use of innovative farming technology that, he believes, is set to play a major role in feeding the growing population in his country, amid increasing pressure on arable land.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has launched an appeal for $147 million to support as many as 100,000 people fleeing Ethiopia’s Tigray region into neighbouring Sudan, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Monday.

The United Nations has strongly condemned an attack, on Saturday, against civilians in Nigeria’s restive Borno state, and underlined the need to bring the perpetrators to justice. 

Hunger is on the rise in southern Madagascar due to consecutive years of drought,  affecting half the region’s population, or 1.5 million people, and forcing most families to eat insects, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Friday. 

A group of UN independent human rights experts have called on Egyptian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release activists arrested, apparently in retaliation, for discussing human rights issues with foreign ambassadors. 

A young mother has been talking about how she was shunned by her community in Uganda when she returned home after being abducted and forced to fight for rebels as a child soldier.

Two senior UN officials welcomed on Tuesday the war crimes conviction and life sentencing of an armed combatant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). 

The Desert Locust crisis which struck the greater Horn of Africa region earlier this year threatening food supplies for millions, could re-escalate as recent strong winds carried mature swarmlets from southern Somalia into eastern and northeastern Kenya, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.

The “broad political consensus” reached in September that ended a two-year stalemate in Somalia must be “preserved and indeed deepened”, the country’s UN envoy told the Security Council on Monday. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has welcomed the African Union’s (AU) appointment of three high-level envoys to help resolve the conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, calling it an "initiative for peace.”

The COVID-19 crisis was impacting Africa “well before the pandemic spread across the continent”, the UN chief said on Friday, marking Africa Industrialization Day, arriving at a point when many economies were expanding and “poverty was in decline”.   

In a briefing to journalists on Thursday, a senior UN humanitarian official in Sudan recounted moving testimony from refugees who are crossing the border from Ethiopia in their thousands, fleeing fighting in Tigray province.

Following years of political instability and conflict, Libya is making substantial progress on the path to peace, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council on Thursday. 

Senior UN officials have conducted a two-day mission to southeastern Sudan, where some 30,000 Ethiopians have found refuge after fleeing ongoing fighting between national and regional forces in Tigray province, the world body reported on Wednesday. 

Over 1,000 people have been killed and more than 400 abducted in the past six months in intercommunal violence in South Sudan, amid fears that tensions may worsen with the onset of the dry season, the UN envoy for the country has said.