Somali Islamist rebels warned they would bring the "flames of war" to Nairobi after Kenyan forces mounted a cross-border land and air assault.
Two Swedish journalists charged with terrorism in Ethiopia after being arrested in a battle between state troops and rebels will go on trial today.
Kenya isn’t a lush country. Rain falls steadily and often heavily in Mombasa, Nairobi and Kisumu, the three main cities and the best known to tourists
Locals call them pimps or snitches. They wear plain clothes, drive unmarked cars and are as numerous as scorpions in the Libyan desert.
The residents of Misrata in Libya have been under siege from government forces for seven weeks.
Ugandan police have arrested the country’s two main opposition leaders after they attempted to lead a protest over rising prices.
A million Chinese people, from engineers to chefs, are leading a trade boom in Africa. <b>Xan Rice</b> hears how their lives changed after they moved.
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/ 11 February 2011
Ugandan police say the killing of activist David Kato was not related to his campaign for gay rights.
Nearly 99% of Southern Sudanese voters chose secession in last month’s independence referendum, clearing the way for Sudan to split in two.
Gabriel Nderitu’s collapsible two-seater propeller plane has been built using instructions downloaded from Wikipedia.
The referendum was put on the table only at the end of a two-decade civil war, in which an estimated two million people lost their lives.
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/ 20 December 2010
Ivorian after troops loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo sealed off the routes around a hotel housing his foe, Alassane Ouattara.
The Vatican’s view of issues such as abortion, homosexuality and female priests looks increasingly at odds with modern secular realities.
The UN has accused Rwanda of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide, during years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front has won much credit for rebuilding the country after the 1994 genocide, but political violence and suppression continue.
One is 78 years old and desperately trying to salvage his legacy. The other is 85 and past caring:Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, and his predecessor.
Ugandan police have discovered a suicide vest and explosives laced with ball bearings in a
discotheque in the capital, Kampala.
Observers say landslide victory by ruling party was achieved by threats, writes <b>Xan Rice</b>.
Many Ethiopians agree that political prisoner Birtukan Mideksa’s treatment has cast a shadow over elections due in May.
A small firm in Ethiopia is recycling old tyres and turning them into funky fashion that’s gone global, reports Xan Rice.
Abdulmutallab remained a humble, if solitary young man who shunned material possessions and craved knowledge.
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/ 20 November 2009
Western Sahara’s most prominent human rights activist has gone on a hunger strike at an airport in the Canary Islands.
The giraffe population of Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve has declined up to 95% because of increased human settlement around the unfenced park.
Up to 650 000 people in Darfur have been left without access to full healthcare, writes Xan Rice.
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/ 10 January 2009
Victor Matioli’s organic pumpkins are plump, his coriander aromatic and his spinach "very soft, sweet and tasty".
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/ 28 September 2008
More than 350 000 small-scale farmers in Africa and Central America will soon begin selling produce to the UN.
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/ 2 September 2008
The spouses of Kenya’s vice-president and prime minister will be paid R44 800 a month for showcasing the "nation’s family values.
There are many ways of measuring Omar Bongo’s rule. You could count the monuments: the Omar Bongo Triumphal Boulevard, the Senate Palace Omar Bongo and the university, football stadium, gymnasium and military hospital that all bear his name.
Grace Githuthwa heard the attackers before she saw them. They were singing war songs, running from two sides towards the church compound where she and 200 others were sheltering from outbursts of ethnic violence. She grabbed her four children and ran inside the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church.
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/ 17 September 2007
Daniel Hailu promised to marry his girlfriend after the millennium. And now she eagerly awaits the arrival of her wedding ring. "She is so relieved that 1999 is nearly over," said Hailu, a 29-year-old television salesperson. Hailu is not living in a time warp, but rather in Ethiopia where, thanks to a quirk of history, the country’s calendar lags more than seven years behind the Western version.
A mass free distribution of mosquito nets in Kenya that has nearly halved child deaths from malaria in high-risk areas has led the World Health Organisation to recommend for the first time that nets should be given away, rather than sold, in the developing world. In a project that is being hailed as a model for other African countries, Kenya’s ministry of health has distributed 13,5-million insecticide-treated nets across the country since 2003.
Fatma Ahmed Chande was cold. It was 3am and raining. The 25-year-old Tanzanian woman was kneeling on the taxiway at Nairobi’s international airport. Headlights from a convoy of police vehicles punched holes in the darkness. She saw a group of blindfolded men being led towards a plane. She recognised some of the shackled women and children who followed them.