UN News Centre - Africa

Hundreds of tons of fresh and edible vegetables which are typically dumped because they do not meet the aesthetic requirements for export are ending up on the plates of hungry Kenyan students thanks to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).

The COVID-19 disease has added to longstanding challenges in Mozambique which have threatened the southern African country’s most vulnerable people. In this blog, the UN Resident Coordinator Myrta Kaulard, with IOM Chief of Mission, Laura Tomm-Bonde, and Samuel Chakwera, UNHCR Resident Representative, explain how the United Nations is supporting national efforts to protect the people of Mozambique from multiple threats

An estimated 3.3 million people in Burkina Faso are facing acute food insecurity, two United Nations agencies warned on Friday.  

With elections slated for November delayed due to COVID-19, Somalia is at a critical juncture, the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council on Thursday, pressing federal and state leaders to agree on voting modalities, and bolster the capacity of forces which are meant to assume full control of national security, next year.

School closures implemented to protect students from COVID-19, are hurting them in other ways, while the long-term impact of this disruption to education could create a “lost generation” in Africa, two UN agencies said on Thursday. 

The UN on Thursday called for the “constitutional and democratic order” to be restored as soon as possible across Mali, following the military coup, and reiterated a call to respect the rule of law, and refrain from violence.

The devastating oil spill off the east coast of Mauritius has highlighted the need for global adoption of international legislation that govern the seas and protect small island states and their vulnerable marine ecosystems against ship pollution, UN trade body UNCTAD has stated. 

UN agencies have called for search and rescue to be stepped up in the central Mediterranean, in the wake of a tragic shipwreck that claimed the lives of 45 migrants and refugees, including five children. 

The United Nations continues to monitor the ongoing situation in Mali, where soldiers arrested the President and several members of his cabinet in a military coup on Tuesday. 

UN-led efforts to address serious rights violations in Libya, received a boost on Wednesday with the appointment of three independent investigators to document abuses in the war-torn country.    

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the immediate restoration of constitutional order and the rule of law in Mali, after mutinying troops arrested the country’s leader and other senior officials on Tuesday.

Mounting violence in Burkina Faso has forced more than one million people to flee their homes: 453,000 so far this year alone, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported on Tuesday, citing government figures.

The UN in Somalia has strongly condemned a terrorist attack that took place on Sunday at the Elite Hotel in the capital Mogadishu, which reportedly killed at least 16 people and left many others injured.     

From banking, to food delivery, and taxi bookings, Uganda is rapidly becoming accustomed to many of the online tools that are commonplace in developed economies, and which don’t rely on face-to-face interactions. The UN is supporting this shift, as a way to help developing economies recover from the global economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millions of lives could be lost to hunger in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), amid escalating conflict and worsening COVID-19 transmission, the UN emergency food relief agency has warned, urging the international community to step up support for the African nation.

In the remote Lamu region, on the northeast coast of Kenya, quality healthcare is hard to come by. Every month, medical staff from Safari Doctors, an NGO founded by Umra Omar, set sail on a boat filled with medicines, to provide free basic medicines to hundreds of marginalized inhabitants in several coastal villages.

The UN official working to end rape during wartime is urging authorities in Somalia to scrap a proposed law that allows for child marriage, among other “very disturbing provisions”.

Recent clashes in Sudan’s Western Darfur region has driven more than 2,500 people across the border into neighbouring Chad, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has reported.

Two UN agencies are calling for greater action to dismantle smuggling and trafficking networks following the deaths of 27 migrants off the coast of Mauritania, northwest Africa.

 new “surge team” of leading UN health experts is on its way to South Africa to ramp up the COVID-19 response there, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.