AFRICA PULSE

Nelly Shukuru, 51, hold the scarf she had planned on using to hang herself after spending three years displaced in the Lushagala camp in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Years of war in Congo have created a dire mental health crisis. But little support is available

Years of conflict in eastern Congo have created a dire mental health crisis. Aid groups say the number of people seeking care has spiked as fighting intensifies.

Women and villagers wait to receive food donations from the United Nations World Food Program in Damasak, northeastern Nigeria, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Chinedu Asadu)

They fled their homes to escape Boko Haram. Now Nigeria is resettling them back despite their fears

The sun rises near Kariba dam in Siavonga, Zambia, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

Drought is parching the world’s largest man-made lake, stripping Zambia of its electricity

A ferry leaves Goma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, for Bukavu on lake Kivu. (AP Photo/Justin Kabumba)

With roads often blocked by rebels in Congo, boats — the only alternative — have become death traps

Patients at Bamako's Point G psychiatric ward act out scenes at the psychiatric ward of the Point G hospital in Bamako, Mali, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Moustapha Diallo)

Mali’s traditional theater gives psychiatric patients the stage

In Congo, after mpox, families face stigmatization

Clarisse Ishimwe proudly carries her child who has just been cured of mpox at site for displaced people, near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since her returned from the health center, she has been faced with another problem: the stigmatization of people who have caught mpox.

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Mothers rely on breast milk donors for the survival of sick newborns

Kush, a cheap synthetic drug, is ravaging Sierra Leone’s youth

Ghana firm tackles missed business with mobile internet

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A farmer harvests avocados at a plantation in Kayanza province, Burundi, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

How farmers in Burundi banded together to get fair prices for avocados

Farmers in a remote part of Burundi know to look for a truck parked by a highway when they want to sell their avocados.

This photo released by Easy Solar shows a large solar panels installation on a rooftop of an office building in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Tuesday Aug. 13, 2024. (Muctarr Bah Mohamed/Easy Solar via AP)

Solar power companies are growing fast in Africa, where 600 million still lack electricity

Companies that bring solar power to some of the poorest homes in Central and West Africa are said to be among the fastest growing on a continent whose governments have long struggled to address some of the world’s worst infrastructure and the complications of climate change.

Maodo Faye, radio presenter at Sud FM, presents the afternoon Wolof program from the Sud FM studio in Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Annie Risemberg)

In Senegal, the bastion of the region’s Francophonie, French is giving way to local languages

For decades Senegal, a former French colony in West Africa, has been touted as the bastion of the French language in the region.

Sifa Kunguja, a 40-year-old sex worker, sits home after recovering from mpox, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Kamituga, eastern Congo. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Sex workers find themselves at the center of Congo’s mpox outbreak

Sex workers are among those hardest-hit by the mpox outbreak in eastern Congo’s Kamituga town. An estimated 40,000 sex workers reside there.

This photo taken Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, shows a sign on Sandton Drive in Johannesburg's financial district of Sandton, the road at the center of a controversy after city officials proposed renaming it after a Palestinian militant who was involved in hijacking two planes more than 50 years ago. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

Johannesburg considers naming a street after a Palestinian woman who hijacked a plane

Officials in South Africa’s biggest city of Johannesburg have proposed renaming a major street after a Palestinian woman who was involved in the hijacking of a plane more than 50 years ago.

Visitors attend an exhibition of model ships made by the Madagascar company Le Village and on display at the Homo Faber 2024 show in Venice, Italy, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024.(AP Photo/Luigi Costantini)

Model makers in Madagascar are bringing history’s long-lost ships back to life

A French trading ship that sank in the 17th century with treasure onboard is being brought back to life in a workshop in Madagascar with every stroke of Rafah Ralahy’s small wood sander.

Moustapha Sabally displays a photo of his son who is a doctor in America on his mobile phone in the village of Kwinella, Gambia, on July 27, 2024. ( AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

Money Gambians send home from Europe is a lifeline for their families but the sacrifices take a toll

The money that many young Gambian men who left as migrants seeking jobs in Europe send back home every month is a lifeline for their families.

Religious leaders and Ethiopians celebrate Meskel, meaning the Cross in Amharic, is an annual religious holiday among Orthodox in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo)

Thousands gather in Ethiopia’s capital to celebrate a religious festival. Many are thinking of peace

Thousands of Ethiopians have gathered in the capital city to celebrate an annual religious festival distinguished by the lighting of bonfires according to the beliefs of the local Orthodox Christian faithful.

Henri Lema poses for a photograph outside his house in Nazareth village Southern Cameroon, Wednesday Aug. 21, 2024. Indigenous people have lived in harmony with the forests of central Africa for hundreds of years. But the government of Cameroon is trying to integrate them into mainstream society as mining and logging activities rapidly encroach. (AP Photos/Angel Ngwe)

Lack of birth certificates puts Cameroon’s Indigenous people on the brink of statelessness

Indigenous people have lived in harmony with the forests of central Africa for hundreds of years. But the government of Cameroon is trying to integrate them into mainstream society as mining and logging activities rapidly encroach.

Emile Miango, 2, who has mpox, lies in the hospital, on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, in Kamituga, South Kivu province, which is the epicenter of the world’s latest outbreak of the disease in eastern Congo. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

A gold mining town in Congo has become an mpox hot spot as a new strain spreads

Congo’s South Kivu province is at the epicenter of the world’s latest mpox outbreak, in what the World Health Organization has called a global health emergency.

The sun sets behind a baobab tree, known as the tree of life, in Mudzi, Zimbabwe, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Ufumeli)

An ancient African tree is providing a new ‘superfood’ but local harvesters are barely surviving

The baobab tree is known as the “tree of life” and its fruit is feeding a growing global market for natural food and beauty products.

Idowu Bello, 56, prepares a meal in her kitchen in Ibadan, Nigeria, Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

Fortified bouillon cubes are seen as a way to curb malnutrition in Africa

In Nigeria and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, many households have limited access to nutrient-rich foods due to rising costs and the impact of climate change on agriculture and food systems.

FILE - Body bags are laid out at the scene where dozens of bodies, believed to be followers of extremist evangelical leader Paul Mackenzie, have been found in shallow graves in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, in southern Kenya on April 24, 2023. (AP Photo/File)

The church was named Good News. Hundreds of members died in a cult massacre that haunts survivors

In one of the deadliest cult-related massacres ever, more than 430 bodies have been recovered since police raided Good News International Church in a forest in Kenya.

Texas Kadri Moro, the Executive Director of Arise for Justice International, protests with placards nailed on a cross on the street of Accra, Ghana, Thursday Sept 12, 2024. Texas Kadiri Moro is an unusual figure amid the LGBTQ+ rights activists in the coastal West African nation of Ghana. He is heterosexual, married to a woman and a father of six. He is a teacher. And he is a practising Muslim. (AP Photo/ Misper Apawu)

Meet the straight ally who is protesting Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ bill

Texas Kadiri Moro is an unusual figure amid the LGBTQ+ rights activists in the coastal West African nation of Ghana.

Optometry students carry out an eye test for a patient, outside the Phelophepa eye clinic carriage, in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, South Africa, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

How a traveling ‘health train’ has become an essential source of free care in South Africa

For the past 30 years — ever since the country’s break with apartheid — the train has carried doctors, nurses and optometrists on an annual journey.

A health worker carries medication to be giving to a man suffering for mpox at the Kamituga General Hospital in South Kivu Congo, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

The first 100,000 doses of mpox vaccine reach Congo. But it’s a fraction of what is needed

Authorities in Congo say the first batch of mpox vaccine has arrived in Congo’s capital, three weeks after the World Health Organization declared mpox outbreaks in 12 African countries a global emergency.

Abdullahi Mohamud, a herder, looks after his camels near a water point in Lekiji Village, Laikipia County, Kenya, on Friday, July 26, 2024. A recent yearslong drought in Kenya killed millions of livestock and has forced Kenya's Maasai and other herders to look beyond cattle. (AP Photo/Desmond Tiro)

Drought forces Kenya’s Maasai and other cattle herders to consider fish and camels

The blood, milk and meat of cattle have long been the staple foods for Maasai pastoralists in Kenya, perhaps the country’s most recognizable community.

Mapule Radebe holds her baby Minehle at Nkosi's Haven, a home that assists women with HIV, in Johannesburg, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

In South Africa’s richest area, mother-to-baby HIV transmission is a concern despite free prevention

It’s a worrying question for health officials in one of the richest and most developed areas of the African continent: Why are babies being born with HIV when free medication is available to prevent mother-to-child transmission?

Aminata "Myamy TheAyGirl" Thiam, 31years - Old, poses for a photographs in Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024. Aminata Thiam is Senegal's first female beatmaker. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)

In Senegal’s thriving hip-hop scene, this beatmaker insists women have a seat at the table

Aminata Thiam is one of Senegal’s few female beatmakers. Known by her stage name Myamy, she teaches women how to make beats, a type of music production that originated in the U.S. hip-hop scene and that has gained popularity in Senegal thanks to the proliferation of beatmaking computer software.

28-year-old Milla Nemoudji, a woman who was divorced by her husband following years of physical abuse, is photographed in a village of Binmar, Chad, Friday, July 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Robert Bociaga)

Women in Chad defy discrimination and violence to assert their rights to own and control land

Many women in the central African nation of Chad are excluded from owning or having a say over the land they spend long hours working.

A boy guides cattle on a road in Abuja, Nigeria, Friday, Aug. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Olamikan Gbemiga)

Cows obstruct Nigeria’s capital as climate change and development leave herders with nowhere to go

As the population grows and development extends to rural areas where herders live and graze their cattle, they are now forced to move into the city center in search of pasture.

Olaribigbe Akeem, wearing protective gear, uses a sledgehammer to break a television set to vent his anger inside the Shadow Rage Room in Lagos, Nigeria, Sunday, July 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

How do you deal with stress? In Nigeria, swinging a sledgehammer in a ‘rage room’ helps

In Nigeria’s largest city, stressed-out residents are finding their reset button in a “rage room” where they pay to smash electronics and furniture with a sledgehammer.

Drivers of motorcycle taxis, known locally as boda-bodas, ride with passengers on a street of Kampala, Uganda, on July 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda )

In Uganda’s chaotic capital, boda-boda motorcycle taxis are a source of life and death

For tens of thousands of men in Uganda’s capital, driving a motorcycle taxi is a way to make a living.

Children suffering from mpox wait for a treatment at a clinic in Munigi, eastern Congo, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. Congo will receive the first vaccine doses to address its mpox outbreak next week from the United States, the country's health minister said Monday, days after the World Health Organization declared mpox outbreaks in Africa a global emergency. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Congo says it will receive its first mpox vaccines next week to address new global emergency

Congo’s health minister says the country will receive the first vaccine doses to address its mpox outbreak next week from the United States.

Donkeys pull a cart to collect household waste at the Badalabougou garbage dump site in Bamako, Mali, on July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Moustapha Diallo)

The trash in Mali’s capital is piling up. Donkey carts are coming to help

Hauling garbage in Mali’s capital, Bamako, can be grim. The city more than doubled its population in recent years and struggles to manage its waste.

Sarah Bagheni, in the Bulengo refugee camp in Goma, Congo, suspects she may be infected with Mpox after the World Health Organization had declared Thursday, Aug, 15, 2024, the increasing spread of mpox in Africa a global health emergency, warning the virus might ultimately spill across international borders. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

Congo’s humanitarian crisis helped mpox spiral again into a global health emergency

A humanitarian crisis in eastern Congo is contributing to mpox outbreaks there and elsewhere in Africa that have been deemed a global health emergency by the World Health Organization.

CORRECTS THE LOCATION TO BENTIU, NOT BANTIU - Patients and staff sit and walk around in the Doctors Without Borders-run hospital in Bentiu, South Sudan, Monday, June 24,2024. South Sudan's health system suffers, even though the relative peace gives many women easier access to care. The government allocates less than 2% of the national budget to the health ministry. Much of the health system is propped up by aid groups and the international community. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

She fought to become a midwife. Now she’s fighting to save mothers and their babies in South Sudan

Elizabeth Nyachiew was 16 when she watched her neighbor bleed to death during childbirth. She vowed to become a midwife to spare others from the same fate in South Sudan, a country with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates.

Coach Isabelle Sambou, 43 years old, rear, two-time Olympian and nine-time African wrestling champion, explains a move to a young woman during a wrestling training in Mlomp, southern Senegal, Wednesday, July 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Sylvain Cherkaoui)

Wrestling has been off-limits for women in Senegal. But one region is the exception

In Senegal, wrestling is a national sport. Professional wrestling draws thousands to stadiums and can be a catapult to international stardom.

Young boys perform prior to the launch of the circumcision season, known as Imbalu, at Kamu Village in Mbale, Eastern Uganda, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda)

A mass circumcision is marketed to tourists in a remote area of Uganda. Some are angrily objecting

The ritualized circumcision of thousands of boys, known as Imbalu, began Aug. 3 in a remote corner of Uganda and will continue until the end of 2024.

13 year-old Arusi Wegeneza plays a chess game at 'The Soga Chess Club' of the internally displaced persons camp in Kanyaruchinya, Democratic Republic of Congo, Monday, July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)

A chess club for kids thrives in a Congo refugee camp. It’s about more than the game

In the midst of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, a chess club for kids is thriving in a refugee camp in eastern Congo.