Africa

There apparently has been a military coup in Sudan

5:46am October 25, 2021

Officials in Khartoum say soldiers arrested the prime minister and other leaders. The U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa says Washington is "deeply alarmed" by reports of a military takeover.

News brief: Sudan coup reports, COVID vaccines for kids, Charlottesville rally

5:42am October 25, 2021

Sudan's prime minister is detained in an apparent coup. FDA advisers review vaccine data for children ages 5 to 11. Some organizers of the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., are going on trial.

World News

Poachers killed African elephants for their tusks. So elephants stopped growing them

6:18pm October 22, 2021

During the Mozambican civil war, both sides financed their efforts by poaching elephants for ivory. Now, scientists say that drove some elephants to evolve tusklessness.

World News

The civil war in Ethiopia is intensifying

4:54pm October 20, 2021

by Eyder Peralta

Fighting between government forces and Tigrayan rebels is escalating in Ethiopia's north. The government is bombing targets in the rebel capital and there's a bloody battle over two strategic towns.

Members of a team at the Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines lab in Cape Town, South Africa. The World Health Organization has enlisted the company to replicate Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine.

Moderna won't share its vaccine recipe. WHO has hired an African startup to crack it

1:53pm October 20, 2021

by Nurith Aizenman

It's the first step in an audacious plan to solve vaccine inequity by setting up the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines across low-resource countries,

Scientists in South Africa are working to reverse engineer the Moderna COVID vaccine

4:43pm October 19, 2021

by Nurith Aizenman

A consortium in South Africa wants to teach manufacturers in poor countries to make Moderna's COVID vaccine. But Moderna won't share its process. So the scientists are trying to reverse engineer it.

President Biden told Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta that the U.S. would donate 17 million COVID vaccine doses to the African Union. The U.S. is also working to boost production on the continent.

The world needs more COVID vaccines, so the U.S. is helping finance overseas plants

5:07pm October 18, 2021

by Franco Ordoñez

The Biden administration has been criticized for hoarding COVID vaccines when millions of people around the world are unvaccinated. Now they're looking at how to help finance plants overseas.

Omar Mohamed, left, and his brother, Hassan. In the graphic memoir he coauthored, When Stars Are Scattered, Mohamed shares what their life was like in the refugee camps in Kenya — and their journey to resettlement in the U.S.

A refugee at 4, he felt like a lost star. Now his voice shines in a graphic memoir

7:00am October 16, 2021

by Jacky Habib

When Stars Are Scattered is the story of Omar Mohamed's years at a refugee camp in Kenya. He cared for his brother and found the courage to dream big. The book was a National Book Awards finalist.

A Tigray People's Liberation Front fighter poses in Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, Ethiopia, on June 30, 2021.

World News

Social media misinformation stokes a worsening civil war in Ethiopia

11:39am October 15, 2021

In Ethiopia, old ethnic tensions are being incited in new ways. And that means the bloody civil war may be entering an even more destructive phase.

Queue Listen Now

The vial of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The White House says Thursday that the U.S. will commit 17 million additional doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the African Union.

United States commits another 17 million COVID vaccine doses to the African Union

7:23pm October 14, 2021

by Jonathan Franklin

The U.S. donation from its domestic supplies comes on top of the 50 million doses previously donated to Africa, which world health officials say is 500 million doses short of its goal.