Africa starts 2020 battling extremism, Ebola and hunger

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FILE - In this Friday, Oct, 11, 2019 file photo, children play underneath Jacaranda trees lining a street in the capital Harare, Zimbabwe. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)

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FILE - In this Tuesday, March 12, 2019 file photo, officials from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) pray next to an offering of fruit, bread rolls, and a plastic container of Ethiopian Injera, a fermented sourdough flatbread, placed next to incense sticks, at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff killing all 157 on board, near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

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FILE - In this March 14, 2019 file photo, relatives of crash victims mourn at the scene where an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 passenger jet crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 157 on board, near Bishoftu, in Ethiopia. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

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FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2019 file photo, people flee as security forces aim their weapons during a deadly attack by extremists at a luxury hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi, File)

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FILE - In this Wednesday, May, 1, 2019 file photo, widespread destruction caused by Cyclone Kenneth, which arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai, is seen from the air after it struck Ibo island north of Pemba city in Mozambique. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)

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FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019 file photo, Kenyan security forces aim their weapons up at buildings as they run through a hotel complex during an attack by extremists in Nairobi, Kenya. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

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FILE - In this Friday, March 22, 2019 file photo, children scrape through for remaining rice inside a pot at a center for those displaced after Cyclone Idai hit coastal Mozambique, in Beira, Mozambique. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)

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FILE - In this Monday, April, 29, 2019 file photo, a woman shows one of her feet after walking in the mud near a site where two houses were crushed by the collapse of a massive, sprawling dumpsite following rains from Cyclone Kenneth, in Pemba city on the northeastern coast of Mozambique. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)

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FILE - In this Saturday, May 11, 2019 file photo, President Cyril Ramaphosa applauds as confetti is launched at the end of the election results ceremony at the Independent Electoral Commission Results Center in Pretoria, South Africa. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

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FILE - In this Sunday, May 12, 2019 file photo, a supporter of the African National Congress (ANC) party wears beads in the party colors, and another wears a t-shirt of President Cyril Ramaphosa, right, during an election victory rally in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

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FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 11, 2019 file photo, a photograph of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is seen along with past Nobel Peace Prize winners, in their own “garden” at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (Lise Aserud/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)

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FILE - In this Thursday Jan. 24, 2019 file photo, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, right, receives the presidential sash from outgoing president Joseph Kabila after being sworn in in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

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FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2019 file photo, a portrait of former president Robert Mugabe stands outside the room where his body lies in state inside his official residence in the capital Harare, Zimbabwe. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

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FILE - In this July 13, 2019 file photo, health workers wearing protective suits tend to an Ebola victim kept in an isolation cube in Beni, Congo. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

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FILE - In this Sunday, July 14, 2019 file photo, Red Cross workers carry the remains of 16-month-old Muhindo Kakinire from the morgue into a truck as health workers disinfect the area in Beni, Congo. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

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FILE - In this Saturday, Feb. 23, 2019 file photo, Nigerians line up to cast their votes in the presidential election at the Narayi primary school in Kaduna, Nigeria. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

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FILE - In this Sunday, July 14, 2019 file photo, an Ebola victim is put to rest at the Muslim cemetery in Beni, Congo. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

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FILE - In this Feb. 16, 2019 fie photo, Nigerians engage in heated but friendly arguments about the postponement of the election, over beers at a street-side bar in the predominantly-Christian neighborhood of Sabon Gari in Kano, northern Nigeria. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 - and look to influence events on the continent in 2020. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

By ANDREW MELDRUM

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A tragic airline crash with far-reaching consequences, cataclysmic cyclones that may be a harbinger of the future, the death of an African icon and a new leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize. These African stories captured the world’s attention in 2019 — and look to influence events on the continent in 2020.

The battles against extremist violence and Ebola will also continue to be major campaigns in Africa in the coming year.

The crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa in March killed all 157 passengers and crew. The disaster, which claimed the lives of a large number of U.N. officials, involved a Boeing 737 Max jet and came just five months after a similar crash in Indonesia of the same aircraft.

Boeing was inundated with questions about the safety of its plane. After initially claiming that it was safe, the company was forced to ground the plane after many countries refused to let it fly in their airspace. In December Boeing announced that it would suspend production of the jet.

The air crash was a trial for Ethiopia’s reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who later in the year won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for achieving peace with neighboring Eritrea. But Abiy is challenged by often violent ethnic rivalries in his country and elections set for May 2020 will be crucial, analysts say.

Cyclone Idai ripped into Mozambique in March, killing more than 1,300 people, making it “one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere,” according to the U.N. A month later Cyclone Kenneth roared into northern Mozambique, killing more than 50 people.

This was the first time in recorded history that Mozambique had two major cyclones, prompting some to worry that the country, with a 1,000-mile Indian Ocean coastline, may be prone to more storms as a result of climate change.

Across Mozambique more than 2.5 million people remain in urgent need of assistance, according to the U.N. Mozambique also starts 2020 troubled by ongoing attacks on vehicles in the country’s central area and by Islamic extremist attacks in the country’s north.

Extremist violence continues to vex Africa from the east to the west.

2019 began with extremist violence. In Kenya in January, insurgents launched an assault on a luxury hotel and shopping complex in Nairobi that killed at least 14 people.

The year came to an end with extremist attacks across the continent.

A bomb in Somalia killed 78 people, including many university students, in the capital, Mogadishu, on Dec. 28, the deadliest attack in years. Somalia’s al-Shabab, allied to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the bombing.

In Nigeria extremists linked to the Islamic State group circulated a video showing 11 hostages, most of them Christians, being executed. They were thought to be killed on Christmas Day. The extremist group, which calls itself the Islamic State West Africa Province, said the captives were executed as revenge for the killing of Islamic State group leaders in Iraq and Syria in October.

In northern Burkina Faso, jihadists killed 35 civilians, most of them women, and ensuing clashes with security forces left 80 jihadists dead, the West African nation’s president announced Dec. 24. That attack came weeks after an attack on a convoy carrying employees of a Canadian mining company in which at least 37 civilians were killed in the country’s east. Both attacks were by groups numbering close to 100, indicating the presence of relatively large, well-organized extremist groups.

“The startling deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso has been a major development in 2019,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House, the British think tank. ”There’s been a dramatic spike in extremist attacks.”

Frequent attacks in Burkina Faso’s north and east already have displaced more than a half million people, according to the United Nations. While Burkina Faso’s military has received training from both former colonizer France and the United States, it starts 2020 with little progress in halting the surge in extremist violence.

Congo starts the year waging a different kind of war — a campaign against Ebola, which has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018. The medical effort to control the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has been severely hampered since the start by the presence of several armed groups in eastern Congo, the epicenter of the epidemic. It was hoped that new vaccines would help control the outbreak more quickly, but the violence has hampered those efforts.

Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, elected in 2019, said in November that he was optimistic that the Ebola outbreak would be ended before 2020, but the epidemic continues throughout eastern Congo.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, re-elected in 2019, said in a New Year’s statement that the need to boost his country’s ailing economy and create jobs is his biggest challenge for 2020. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, also re-elected, has said that his government has controlled the rebellion by Boko Haram extremists, but violence continues to plague the country’s northeast.

Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler, Robert Mugabe, died at age 95 in September. Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who fought to end white-minority rule in Rhodesia and then ruled independent Zimbabwe from 1980 until 2017, left a mixed legacy of liberation, repression and economic ruin.

Zimbabwe begins the new year with severe economic problems including inflation estimated at more than 300% and widespread hunger. In an emergency appeal at the end of December, the U.N.'s World Food Program said that even though the southern African country had suffered a drought, Zimbabwe’s food shortages are a “man-made” disaster, laying the blame squarely with President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government.

The once-prosperous country staggered to 2020 with power shortages lasting up to 19 hours per day and large parts of the capital, Harare, a city of some 2 million people, going without running water.