LUANDA, Angola (AP) — Relatively low-key commemorations are taking place in Angola to mark the death of former longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died last week in Spain where his family is taking steps to prevent his body from being returned to the southern African country.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish prosecutors said Thursday they have decided to look into allegations by a daughter of a former president of Angola that a conspiracy has caused José Eduardo dos Santos to be in a coma in a Barcelona clinic.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe has opened an international conference to try to win international support for its campaign to be allowed to sell its stockpile of seized ivory.
If the southern African country is not permitted to sell off its 130 tons of ivory, estimated to be worth $600 million, officials warn it may quit the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Health authorities in Mozambique declared a polio outbreak Wednesday after confirming that a child in the country’s northeastern Tete province had been paralyzed by the disease.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe, Africa’s biggest tobacco grower and one of the world's top exporters of the nicotine leaf, has opened its selling season for the crop amid pledges to fight deforestation and child labor in response to pressure from rights groups, environmentalists and international buyers.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe has launched a new COVID-19 vaccination campaign that includes jabbing children aged 12 and above to rescue a drive faltering due to vaccine hesitancy and complacency.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — With declining cases of COVID-19, South Africa's president has announced that it is no longer mandatory to wear masks outdoors and vaccinated travelers entering the country are no longer required to produce a negative PCR tests.
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) — Cyclone Gombe has flooded large areas of northern and central Mozambique, killing 15 people, officials said Monday.
The dead include five members of the same family in the Angoche coastal area of Nampula province, Governor Mety Gondola said.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe’s government says it will stop paying salaries of staff who are unvaccinated against COVID-19, while ordering those who have received jabs to report for work at their offices “with immediate effect,” after more than a year of most government employees working from home, state media reported Tuesday.
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Even as southern African nations assess the devastation caused earlier this month by Cyclone Batsirai, a new tropical storm is approaching as the Indian Ocean region is confronted by an intense cyclone season.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) — Cyclone Batsirai is blamed for the deaths of 20 people in Madagascar and for making more than 55,000 people homeless victims after slamming into the island's eastern coast, officials said Monday.
MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Forecasts say Tropical Cyclone Batsirai is increasing in intensity and is expected to pass north of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius on Wednesday evening and make landfall in central Madagascar on Saturday afternoon.
MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) — Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi are counting the deaths and damage by tropical storm Ana and more than a week of heavy rains across southern Africa.
In central and northern Mozambique at least 11 people have died, including children and elderly, and several bridges and roads have been washed away, according to a statement from Mozambique’s disaster management authority.
BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) — Tropical storm Ana has caused widespread flooding, power outages and killed at least one person in Malawi, officials said Tuesday.
Cutting path of wet destruction across southern Africa, the storm has blown from the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, across Mozambique and into Malawi.
MUREHWA, Zimbabwe (AP) — Inside a sparsely furnished two-room home in rural Zimbabwe, a 3-month-old baby cries. His mother, Virginia Mavhunga, spends her days making trips to the well with a bucket on her head, selling fruits and vegetables at the roadside, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes — she has too much on her hands to offer her child, Tawananyasha, much comfort.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will lift travel restrictions on eight southern African countries that it imposed to try to blunt the spread of the COVID omicron variant, the White House announced Friday.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — As the omicron variant sweeps through South Africa, Dr. Unben Pillay is seeing dozens of sick patients a day. Yet he hasn’t had to send anyone to the hospital.
That’s one of the reasons why he, along with other doctors and medical experts, suspect that the omicron version really is causing milder COVID-19 than delta, even if it seems to be spreading faster.
DINOKENG GAME RESERVE, South Africa (AP) — Recent travel bans imposed on South Africa and neighboring countries in response to the discovery of the omicron variant in southern Africa have hammered the country's safari business, already hard hit by the pandemic.
As the omicron coronavirus variant spreads in southern Africa and pops up in countries all around the world, scientists are anxiously watching a battle play out that could determine the future of the pandemic.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The Botswana scientist who may well have discovered the omicron variant of the coronavirus says he has been on a “rollercoaster of emotions,” with the pride of accomplishment followed by dismay over the travel bans immediately slapped on southern African countries.
NEW YORK (AP) — The omicron variant of COVID-19, which had been undetected in the U.S. before the middle of this week, had been discovered in at least five states by the end of Thursday, showing yet again how mutations of the virus can circumnavigate the globe with speed and ease.
Federal health officials are requiring airlines to gather contact-tracing information on passengers heading to the U.S. who have been in southern Africa in the previous two weeks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that it issued the latest requirement “to prevent the importation and spread of a communicable disease of public health importance.”
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria has detected its first case of the omicron coronavirus variant in travelers who arrived from South Africa in the past week, the country’s national public health institute said Wednesday, correcting its earlier statement that it found the variant in samples taken in October.
GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization warned Monday that the global risk from the omicron variant is “very high” based on the early evidence, saying the mutated coronavirus could lead to surges with “severe consequences.”
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The World Health Organization on Sunday urged countries around the world not to impose flight bans on southern African nations due to concerns over the new omicron variant.
WHO's regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, called on countries to follow science and international health regulations in order to avoid using travel restrictions.
A new coronavirus variant identified in southern Africa is leading to a new round of travel restrictions just as many had finally begun to ease.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Golf, cricket and rugby became the first major sports to be affected by the new COVID-19 variant on Friday, prompting fears of renewed travel restrictions and disrupted events just as they were returning to normal nearly two years into the pandemic.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A batch of British and Irish golfers withdrew from the Joburg Open before Friday's second round after the U.K. government announced it was banning flights from South Africa to counter the spread of a new COVID-19 variant.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa have called for increased cooperation to bring peace to conflict-ridden regions in Africa, at the start of the Kenyan leader's two-day state visit to South Africa.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Southern African nations have sent envoys to the tiny kingdom of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, to engage with King Mswati III about the political and civil unrest that has engulfed the country in recent weeks.
SEKE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Yvonne Binda stands in front of a church congregation, all in pristine white robes, and tells them not to believe what they’ve heard about COVID-19 vaccines.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe is allowing bars to reopen for the first time in more than a year, but only fully vaccinated people will be allowed to take a swig from inside the premises.
The southern African country closed pubs and nightclubs in March 2020 as part of restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 and had ignored pleas by owners to ease the restrictions to rescue their collapsing businesses.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — For months, Acholo Jani was told to get a COVID-19 vaccination because it might save his life. He hesitated, fearful of potential side effects. But the moment he was told it would save his job, Jani got in line.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe is opening COVID-19 vaccinations to those aged 14 and older and is only permitting fully vaccinated people to eat in restaurants, to encourage more people to get shots, as a devastating wave of the disease recedes.