JA (Junior Achievement) Africa (www.JA-Africa.org), with support from the ExxonMobil Foundation, announces the launch of the 2026 ExxonMobil Foundation STEM Africa Program, an initiative designed to equip young Africans with critical science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) and artificial intelligence (AI) skills. The program builds on a successful partnership that has already reached more than 10,000 young people across Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Nigeria. The 2026 edition, dubbed STEM Africa 2.0, is an initiative that integrates AI learning pathways and aims to equip 4,000 additional students aged 14–17 with the skills needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital…
Author: Montage Africa
By Dominic Wabwireh with AP Hundreds of terrified residents fled northern neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince over the weekend, scattering along the road to Haiti’s main airport as relentless gang clashes pushed yet another wave of families from their homes. Sandra Saintus, standing among piles of hastily gathered belongings, blamed the authorities for abandoning citizens to armed groups. “The government of my country put me in this situation. I thank those thieves for forcing us to abandon our country,” she said, her anger echoing the frustration of many who feel trapped between state failure and gang rule. Nearby, Mikerlange Sidor described a mass exodus…
Dozens of Nigerian fishermen are feared dead after Chad’s military launched air strikes on Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad region, a local fishermen’s leader has told the BBC. Abubakar Gamandi Usman, chairman of Lake Chad Basin Fisheries Association of Nigeria, said several of the union’s members were missing and estimated more than 40 had died. No bodies have yet been recovered but Usman believes some fishermen were hit by the strikes, while others drowned after attempting to flee in overloaded boats. Authorities in Chad and Nigeria have not commented, but on Sunday Chad’s presidency said it had carried…
The King Baudouin Foundation awards €250,000 to Friendship Bench, a Zimbabwe-founded model partnering with governments and organisations to implement low-cost, fully integrated mental health care worldwide. The King Baudouin Foundation has awarded the 2025-2026 KBF Africa Prize to Friendship Bench, in recognition of its pioneering work to expand access to affordable, evidence-based mental health care and address the growing global mental health crisis. Across Africa, mental health remains critically underfunded and underserved. WHO estimates that around 150 million people in the region are affected by mental health conditions, with access to services severely limited and unevenly distributed. In Southern Africa,…
By Rédaction Africanews with AFP The leader of Sierra Leone’s opposition voiced alarm on Monday over alleged links between the west African country and international drug trafficking and organised crime networks. In an open letter to President Julius Maada Bio, Abdulai Kargbo, leader of the main opposition APC party, pointed to a multi-million-dollar seizure last week of drugs on a ship that had left Sierra Leon’s capital, Freetown. On Thursday, Spanish police said they had seized firearms and 30 tonnes of cocaine worth $700 million from a Comoros-flagged vessel in the Atlantic Ocean. The ship had departed from the Sierra…
By Rédaction Africanews with AFP The Nigerian military and the “bandit” gangs it is fighting killed around 100 civilians Sunday in one of the bloodiest single days of the country’s conflict against armed groups, sources across the country have told AFP. The Nigerian military killed at least 72 people, many of them civilians, in an airstrike on a crowded market in the northwestern state of Zamfara, a community leader told AFP, with some bodies “blown beyond recognition.” Amnesty International’s Nigeria chapter said _”at least 100 civilians” w_ere killed in the attack on the market, reportedly controlled by criminal gangs, while a…
By Rédaction Africanews with AP As Uganda’s 81-year-old president, Yoweri Museveni, is sworn in to a seventh consecutive term, specuation is already growing about who will replace him. His son, army chief General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has made no secret of his wish to take over, despite the improbability of an electoral win. Forty years. That’s how long Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been in power. The 81-year-old was sworn in Tuesday to extend his presidency over a further five-year term that may well be his last — although not necessarily the last for the Museveni family. The president’s son and presumptive…
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will legally challenge a report that has paved the way for parliament to consider impeachment proceedings against him over the theft of large sums of cash from his private farm. A Constitutional Court ruling last week found that parliament acted unconstitutionally when it voted against establishing an impeachment inquiry against Ramaphosa regarding the Phala Phala report in 2022. “I remain here and am not resigning,” Ramaphosa said on Monday, ending days of speculation over whether he would step down. The controversy stems from the so-called Phala Phala scandal, in which thousands of dollars…
Eighty million hectares of arable land. Less than ten percent currently cultivated. The Democratic Republic of Congo imports food it should be exporting. On the morning of 27 August, the DRC Investment Forum will dedicate a half-day to answering one question: how do you turn the world’s last great agricultural frontier into a working breadbasket? The Agriculture Half-Day is built around a recognition that the DRC’s farming gap is not geological. The soil is good. The water is abundant. The problem is logistical, financial, and structural. No cold chain. No processing facilities. No reliable power for irrigation or storage. Limited…
By Africanews with Joel Kouam, AP An international advocacy group Saturday condemned Niger’s suspension of nine French media outlets accused of “threatening public order and national security.” Reporters Without Borders called the charges “fabricated” in a post on X. It condemned a “coordinated strategy to repress press freedom” and called for the decision’s reversal. But the ban appeared popular with some Nigeriens. According to Hima Yayé Ismaël, an activist,some French broadcasters are participants in ‘the media war on Niger’ waged by ‘imperialists’, he told Africanews without specifying. “We are now truly seeing a significant number of pan-African media outlets that…