2018

BRAND SOUTH AFRICA A South African chef was named the best female chef in the world for 2017 at The Best Chef Awards in Poland. Chantel Dartnell, owner of the acclaimed Restaurant Mosaic in Tshwane, has twice been named South African…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE A live performance of an aria from an Italian opera isn’t a common sound in the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria. So, when news spread of an appearance by professional soprano Omo Bello at the Musical Society of…

DEFENCEWEB Piracy across the world dropped in 2017 as officials reported a total of 180 attacks against ships to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). This is the lowest annual number of incidents since 1995, when 188 incidents…

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Yetnebersh Nigussie’s first battle for disability rights was in law school, when she successfully pushed university administrators to provide Braille textbooks for blind students such as herself. Not long after,…

VOICE OF AMERICA Somalia’s government has launched a digital counterextremism center that aims to dissuade young Somalis from supporting militant groups such as al-Shabaab and ISIS. The Somali Ministry of Information said the center…

REUTERS By rewarding whistleblowers, boosting prosecutions and challenging beliefs in black magic, Nigeria is ramping up its crusade against human trafficking. The effort is backed by millions of pounds of British aid, anti-slavery and…

REUTERS Up to 6,000 Africans who fought for ISIS in Iraq and Syria could return home, the African Union’s top security official warned, calling on countries to prepare for the threat. Smail Chergui, the AU’s commissioner for peace and…

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Morocco launched its first observation satellite, which will be used for military activities, border and coastline surveillance, and monitoring desertification. The Mohammed VI-A satellite was launched from…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS Patrick Awuah left Ghana in the 1980s with “$50 in his pocket” after receiving a scholarship in the United States. But after a career with Microsoft, he returned to Ghana and has now won the Wise Prize, worth…

BBC NEWS AT BBC.CO.UK/NEWS A 709-carat diamond discovered by a Sierra Leonean pastor sold for $6.5 million at auction in December 2017. Called “the peace diamond,” it is the 14th-largest diamond ever found and the biggest found in…