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Russia's ambassador to Sudan, Mirgayas Shirinskiy, was found dead in the swimming pool at his home in Khartoum on Wednesday, the Sudanese police said.

The ambassador, who was known to have suffered from high blood pressure, is believed to have died of natural causes, a spokesman for the police told Reuters.

Sudan's foreign ministry expressed its condolences to Russia in a statement, hailing Shirinskiy's diplomatic efforts.

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Rita Akana

24.Aug.2017

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Voting is underway in Angola, where Jose Eduardo dos Santos's 38-year reign is coming to an end. His MPLA party, however, is expected to stay in power under new leader Joao Lourenco.

Angolans are heading to the polls in a parliamentary election that will also determine the country's next president. Five political parties and one coalition are vying for 220 parliamentary seats.

Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been in power for 38 years, his Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party has ruled the southwestern African country since independence from Portugal in 1975. Dos Santos is seen as authoritarian, with many now hoping for political change amid an economic downturn triggered by a decline in Angola's most prized asset - crude oil.

Lourenco: Economic 'mission'

His successor in the MPLA party, Joao Lourenco, has called it his "mission" to revive the country's economy, which has hit the floor since oil prices fell in 2014.

"If I succeed, I would like to be recognized in history as the man of Angola's economic miracle." He will have his work cut out, with inflation standing at 40 percent and annual.

GDP growth in 2016 reaching a meager 1 percent.

Lourenco, aged 63, is a long-standing member of the MPLA, which fought in the struggle against former colonial power Portugal.

Under dos Santos, Angola has seen the end of civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 2002, but critics point out that corruption and poverty remain widespread, with few benefiting from Angola's wealth of oil reserves prior to the drastic fall in oil prices.

Dissent is also routinely quashed, as rights groups like Amnesty International point out. They demand an end to repression and restrictions on civil rights.

DW

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Rita Akana

23.Aug.2017

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Rescue workers have unearthed 499 dead bodies since last week's devastating landslide near the Sierra Leone capital Freetown, the city's chief coroner told Reuters on Sunday.

One of Africa's worst flooding-related disasters in years occurred when the side of Mount Sugar Loaf collapsed on Monday after heavy rain, burying parts of Regent town and overwhelming relief efforts in one of the world's poorest countries.

Authorities this week buried 461 bodies in quickly-dug graves in the nearby Waterloo cemetery, near the site of a mass burial for victims of the Ebola crisis that killed 4,000 people in the former British colony between 2014 and 2016.

Thirty-eight more bodies were found on Sunday, said chief coroner Seneh Dumbuya, bringing the official death toll to 499. They were being sent for immediate burial, he said.

The Red Cross said on Friday that over 600 are still missing. 

An increasingly desperate search continued on Sunday on the steep hillside under the wet red mud, as the likelihood of finding survivors was all but extinguished.

Authorities said they were concentrating on digging up bodies to stop fluids from contaminated corpses getting into the water supply and spreading disease.

"We are doing all we can to ensure cholera does not break out," said Samuel Turay, an official at the health ministry.

The threat of deadly landslides is growing in west and central Africa as rainfall, deforestation and urban populations rise, experts say.

On Thursday, a landslide in remote eastern Congo crushed the mud houses of a lake-side fishing village, potentially killing over 200 people, a local official told Reuters. 

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Rita Akana

21.Aug.2017

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An accident has beenreported on the  highway  linking Yaounde and Bafoussam today, Sunday 20.08.2017.The accident, involving a Toyoto Hiace a bus , is said to have claimed dozens of lives at the spot.The acident occured at a small locality called Nkometou.

This acccident comes barely a night after the Muyuka tragedy in which  a nineteen-seater bus and a cargo truck crashed at Mile 29, Ekona. Eye witness account hold that, the heavily-loaded cargo truck from the nation’s industrial hub, Douala, collided with a nineteen-seater bus transporting members of the Buea-based “wana wa wonja” choir, from Muyuka to Buea. As reports hold it, upon descending the sloppy Mile 29 hill, the cargo truck, cripplingly loaded with beverages and other consumer goods, experienced a brake malfunction which delivered the truck into the unwelcoming arms of the nineteen-seater bus whose members, this reporter gathered, were from a night vigil. Even though it is yet unclear how many passengers boarded the bus, the corpses recovered from the accident scene were nineteen while the driver of the cargo equally lost his life bringing the death toll to twenty.

 

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Rita Akana

20.Aug.2017

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Amos Fofung in Buea

20.Aug.2017

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Tragic accident this morning at mile 2,9 on the highway to Muyuka from Buea. A truck which had a brake failure crushed a 30 seater bus. All the 20 persons who were on board are reported dead.

This incident is the latest in a wave of deadly car accidents in Cameroon.An investigation is underway. 

Road accidents are common place in Cameroon. Sometimes they are caused by high speed; uncalculated overtaking; and bad roads, full of potholes.

Cameroon is currently bathed in a sensitization campaign on how to use roads in order to reduce accidents.

Most people in Cameroon drive without passing through a driving school.  

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Rita Akana

18.Aug.2017

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