Activists call move ‘absurd’, as Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of President Museveni, is accused of torture and abusing critics

Senior British government officials have congratulated the newly appointed head of the Ugandan army, a man accused of torture, in a move that has been called “absurd” and “disappointing”.

Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s new chief of defence forces and son of President Yoweri Museveni, received a congratulatory letter from Britain’s most senior military officer, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, at a meeting with the British high commissioner, Kate Airey , and the British defence attache.

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Urgent funding needed to help people return home as humanitarian crisis reaches critical levels, according to migration organisation

The number of African migrants stranded in Yemen , many of whom endure “horrifying and brutal” violence while trapped there, is reaching critical levels, according to international NGOs and civil society organisations based in the Arab state.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) put out a warning this week about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, leading a call for urgent funding to support the “safe and voluntary return of migrants to their countries of origin”.

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People living in Nairobi’s Mathare slum fear that if catastrophic flooding does not bring down their homes, the government will

Jane Kalekye trudges through the narrow muddy alley to her tin-roof house in Mathare, one of Kenya’s largest slums. Ever since the devastating floods that forced her out of her home last month, she and other residents who live by the rubbish-choked Mathare River, which runs through their area of Nairobi, have begun an anxious countdown.

It is only a matter of time before their homes are brought down, they say, either by another bout of flooding, or by the government’s ongoing demolition of houses along riverbanks prone to flooding.

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From beer rituals to (literally) electrifying punk shows, Karabo Mooki’s images capture the counterculture of one South African township

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With the world’s humanitarian system in crisis, many NGOs now recognise that local charities can deliver much more at far less cost

Before civil war engulfed her Ethiopian home region of Tigray in 2020, Tsega Girma was a prosperous trader who sold stationery and other goods. But when hungry children displaced by the conflict started appearing in the streets, she sold everything and used the proceeds to buy them food.

After that money dried up, Tsega appealed to Tigray’s diaspora for donations. At the height of the war, her Emahoy Tsega Girma Charity Foundation provided meals to 24,000 children a day.

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Researchers say more bodies of Herero and Nama people from early 20th century concentration camp could be in waters around port

The Namibian authorities are being urged to halt plans to extend a port on the Shark Island peninsula after the discovery of unmarked graves and artefacts relating to the Herero and Nama genocide.

Forensic Architecture , a non-profit research agency, said it had located sites of executions, forced labour, imprisonment and sexual violence that occurred when the island was used by the German empire as a concentration camp between 1905 and 1907.

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Martin Kanja, AKA Lord Spikeheart, covers everything from colonialism to his grandmother in music that mixes African culture with metal. He hopes to help more artists like him break through

As a teenager, Martin Kanja spent countless late nights listening to heavy metal on a local radio show. The furious riffs, shrieks, growls and distorted sounds drowned out his angst. “What drew me to the music was how it was so ‘physical’ – very present, very now – there was no space for negative thoughts or feelings,” says Kanja, who soon decided he too wanted to be a metal artist.

In 2010, when he was 19, he left his home town in Kenya’s midwestern city Nakuru for the capital, Nairobi, figuring it was his best bet for a foothold in the underground scene.

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Pierrette is beset with troubles, from a robbery to a house flood and more, but the neorealist drama comes with solidarity and surprising humour

The simple image of pushing a seam through a sewing machine becomes a profound life statement in Rosine Mbakam’s debut feature, which is focused on talented clothier Pierrette (played by the director’s cousin Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat) in the Cameroonian city Douala. It’s emblematic of the need to keep moving forward in daily life – and to come out the other side smiling, with stoicism and resilience. As one customer puts it: “I’m getting by. That’s life. When you fall down, you get up again.”

Pierrette is having, it has to be said, an especially rough day. A single mother also caring for an elderly parent (Marguerite Mbakop), she is already scraping for cash. Regularly bartered into submission by her clientele, she always holds her gaze bashfully downwards – either out of anger, or embarrassment at having to assert herself. When she takes a motorcycle taxi after work, robbers relieve her of all her savings, disastrously just as the new school year is beginning. Meanwhile her home is flooded, endangering the clothes she is preparing and leaving her wondering how she will escape this soggy calvary.

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Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno widely expected to win poll as observers voice doubts over electoral process

Chad goes to the polls on Monday in its first presidential election in three decades without Idriss Déby, the former president, in contention.

Ten men will be on the ballot, but Déby’s son, Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, who seized power at the head of a junta on the day rebels shot and killed his father in April 2021, is widely expected to win .

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