King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima are making a three-day state visit to Kenya starting Tuesday. Numerous young people are opposing this, as they believe the visit legitimizes President William Ruto's repressive policies.
Read the full reportage story here, on the De Volkskrant website.
The violence-torn Democratic Republic of Congo has entered a new phase now that the rebel group M23 has captured the city of Goma. But what is the new future promised by M23 worth?
For this report, we crossed into DRC via Rwanda; it’s the only way to get into the city, that is now under control of the rebels. Read the full reportage story here (with pictures by Sven Torfinn van Enckevort), on the De Volkskrant website.
The UN peacekeeping mission Monusco is raising the alarm about the situation in the Congolese city of Goma. Since it was captured this week by the rebel group M23, backed by Rwanda, fears of a regional war are growing.
Read the initial piece for De Volkskrant, watch the interview for Nieuwsuur (News Hour), read the Spanish version at El País or check out the follow up story we made for The Guardian.
A dispute with Algeria, announced departures from Senegal, Chad, and Ivory Coast: diplomatic friction between France and its former colonies on the African continent is mounting rapidly. Forced by anti-French sentiment, the French are seeking new allies in Anglophone Africa.\
Read the whole analysis story, a coproduction with France Correspondent Eline Huisman, on the website of De Volkskrant.
A must for the international art scene? Visiting Ghana, and especially its capital, Accra, where the art scene is flourishing. Thanks to returning artists who spent their youth elsewhere. But: "Not all Ghanaians are waiting for them."
Read the whole reportage story here, on the website of De Volkskrant.
Ghana is developing into the AI epicentre of Africa. Because those who train AI specialists themselves can also set their own goals. Such as developing a drug against malaria using artificial intelligence. But does the new president, who will be elected on Saturday, also believe in the AI revolution?
Read our reportage (with pictures by Swedish photographer Fredrik Lerneryd) by clicking here.
Every week, around 15 million discarded garments come from the West to Ghana. An increasingly smaller portion of these T-shirts and dresses are still suitable for wearing or recycling. ‘Because you in the West are buying more and more cheap clothes, we are left with more and more waste.’
The Dakar Biennial is the most important art event on the African continent. Artists from African countries and the African diaspora exhibit their work throughout the Senegalese capital.
Read the whole reportage story here, on the website of De Volkskrant.
Sudan’s lone caretaker protects ancient treasures from looting, write FT correspondents Andres Schipani and David Pilling, as the war creeps closer to an archaeological site with more pyramids than the whole of Egypt. “All the objects that have been stolen are unique pieces,” expert Amani Gashi said. “All the archeological sites are now at risk due to the war.”
Read the full story, with my Sudan pictures, here.
Fun news: my story about Kilkilu Ana, a comedy evening in Juba has been nominated for a Gouden Freelancer Award by Bureau Wibaut! The prize is sponsored by the Dutch NVJ. Find a short interview I did with Vera Spaans on their website. The award ceremony is held in Amsterdam’s Volkshotel on November 1st.
After hundreds of kilometers of vast arid flats, Ethiopian migrants encounter a point where the Djiboutian desert meets the sea. On the other side, just 30 kilometres away, the mountains of Yemen pop up. This is the Bab-el-Mandab, Arabic for the ‘Gate of Tears’, where the African continent almost meets the Arabian Peninsula.
An unknown number of migrants die in these waters; IOM doctor Youssouf Moussa (white kufi, 4rd picture) showed me pictures of drowned women and children, swollen by the sea and eaten by the fish. He and his team buried the bodies in makeshift graves on the beach, under piles of black stones.
Last year, over 123,000 people came into Djibouti, to make the dangerous journey into war-torn Yemen; many want to reach Saudi Arabia to work there. But for all the optimistic migrants who traveled with smugglers to the coast, we also met large groups of disillusioned migrants turning back.
Suicidal, traumatised people, who as “failed migrants” fear to go home empty handed. In Yemen, women have been raped by smugglers, men were tortured. Videos of the beatings were sent to relatives in Ethiopia, so they would pay ransom for their loved ones to be released.
Those who still made it through, told us how the smugglers dropped them at the Saudi border, where they “had to run like Usain Bolt” while the border police used them as “target practice”.
The South African government is in talks with Elon Musk and hopes the world's richest man will significantly increase investment in his native country. Musk wants to roll out his Starlink satellite internet service in South Africa, but not everyone is eager for Musk and his company to arrive.
Read the whole analysis piece here, on the website of De Volkskrant.
Illustration: Rhonald Blommestijn
A few phone snaps from our recent trip to South Sudan:
With escalating wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the still ongoing civil war in Sudan has gone largely ignored by the international community. For over a year, fighting has devastated the African country, since fighting erupted between two rival generals who couldn’t reach an agreement about power sharing.
11 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Although many are displaced within their home country, many have also fled violence and hunger (famine was declared in parts of Sudan earlier this month) to neighbouring countries.
Over 700 thousand people have now fled Sudan into refugee camps in northeastern South Sudan, where they still face food and water shortages and live in makeshift homes in the mud. UN organization @worldfoodprogramme said they will scale down their food distribution in the four camps we visited, as they lack funding.
“I’d Rather die by a bomb or bullet in my homeland than in a camp in South Sudan”, said one refugee who wants to go back to his homeland. But for now, most people are stuck in the camps; the area surrounding the camps is flooding, making access routes impassable (we arrived on a small plane, that can’t even fly out to Maban on most days because of the rains).
To read our story, with pictures by Guy Peterson, tap/click on this Volkskrant link.
