UN News Centre - Africa

The second round of a vaccination campaign to protect more than 2.8 million children from polio is underway in South Sudan, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday.

Despite a successful presidential election and other noteworthy progress, the Central African Republic (CAR) continues to be plagued by violence and volatility, the UN peacekeeping chief told the Security Council on Tuesday. 

Six hundred thousand doses of lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine from the UN-partnered COVAX initiative have arrived in Ghana: a historic first for the international partnership to provide equitable innoculations for all.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has provided further information on the deadly convoy attack in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Monday in which Italy’s Ambassador to the country, his bodyguard, and a WFP driver were killed. 

Increased “brinkmanship, pressure tactics, and tests of strength” are threatening progress in Somalia, the country’s UN envoy told the Security Council on Monday, warning that they must be resolved “through dialogue and compromise”. 

The Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a World Food Programme (WFP) staff member, together with an Italian embassy official, were killed on Monday during an attack on a UN convoy in the east of the country, the agency has said. 

In Zambia, where the climate crisis is making it increasingly difficult to earn a living, goat-rearing is being seen as a possible route to a better livelihood, and economic resilience.

The UN chief expressed grave concern on Friday over an outbreak of violence in the Somali capital of Mogadishu. 

Extreme violence and attacks involving thousands of fighters at a time have engulfed more than three-quarters of South Sudan, UN human Rights Council-appointed investigators said on Friday, warning that the bloodshed faced by civilians are “the worst recorded” since the country’s civil war began in December 2013.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), on Friday, highlighted the dire situation of some three million displaced children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who face brutal militia violence and extreme hunger. 

The United Nations Secretary-General has strongly condemned Wednesday’s attack on a boarding school in north-central Nigeria in which one student was killed and several students, as well as relatives and staff, abducted. 

Poor rainfall, flooding and desert locusts are contributing to extreme food insecurity in Somalia, threating 2.6 million people, the UN agriculture agency said in a new analysis released on Wednesday.  

The United Nations Secretary-General and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission called on Somali leaders, on Tuesday, to resume dialogue to resolve outstanding differences concerning elections in the country. 

Behind each case brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC), lie countless personal stories of horror, trauma and, sometimes, hope. “Life after conflict”, a photo-led series published by the ICC, shows the devastating impact that war crimes have on people’s lives.

An urgent appeal for $222.6 million was made on Tuesday by the UN refugee agency and partners to assist more than 315,000 Burundian refugees this year. 

Atrocities committed by armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have become part of a systematic pattern to disrupt lives, instill fear and create havoc, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Tuesday, expressing alarm over the ongoing situation. 

The UN Secretary-General has underlined his concern for Africa’s Sahel region, where deteriorating security and violence are aggravating an already difficult humanitarian situation that is unfolding amid the COVID-19 pandemic and climate emergency. 

Pregnant women are amongst the tens of thousands of people in need of assistance in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, where fighting between the Government and regional forces of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) have been ongoing since November 2020. Hiwot* is one of them.

Guinean health authorities have declared an outbreak of Ebola in a rural community in the south of the country, with at least seven people infected, two of whom died, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed on Sunday.  

 Secretary-General António Guterres condemned  on Saturday, a “complex attack” against the UN mission in the West African country of Mali