November 10, 2022

As of 8 November 2022, the worst flooding in years affected 5.9 million people in 20 countries in West and Central Africa. Heavy rains and floods continued to take a significant toll on human life, property, farmlands, and livestock, killing 1,132 people, injuring 4,005, and displacing 1.8 million. Nigeria, Chad, Niger, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Liberia, etc, have been severely impacted by torrential rains and floods. Some 458,000 houses were totally or partially destroyed in the region. In the Gulf of Guinea, Benin was severely affected with rains and floods

UNITED NATIONS— The UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR) is helping national authorities in preventing and reducing violence at the community level, a UN spokeswoman said.   The mission, known by its French acronym as MINUSCA, is also helping to organize the Bangui Court of Appeal’s second criminal session of the year, said Stephanie Tremblay, an associate spokeswoman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.   MINUSCA says that preparations for the next phase of a program to reduce violence at the community level are under way. The program offers people, including young people, an alternative to violence through

ACCRA— Twitter has fired nearly all its staff in Ghana, which was home to its only office in Africa.   The firm “is re-organising its operations as a result of a need to reduce costs,” read Twitter’s email.   The layoffs were part of a global staff cull introduced by new boss Elon Musk.   Last year, Twitter announced it was opening its first Africa office in Ghana in a bid to “be more immersed in the rich and vibrant communities that drive the conversations taking place every day across the African continent”, it said in an April 2021 statement.

Mali’s army and jihadist groups have carried out massacres and hundreds of human rights violations, the U.N. said in a report that details previously undocumented abuses against civilians. The U.N. Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) report, seen by AFP on Thursday, catalogues 375 rights violations in the country between July and September, attributing 163 to jihadist groups and 162 to the Malian army. It added 33 were carried out by militias, and 17 by armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement in northern Mali. The report details for the first time several abuses that had been impossible to report on