Namibian minister sacked after being accused of rape
This week, we start in South Africa, where a doctor is speaking out about financial abuse in relationships. Next, we travel to Lesotho, where an LGBTQ activist was killed in a suspected homophobic attack. Finally, we stop in Namibia where the agriculture minister has been sacked after being accused of rape.
But first, in Uganda, communities have traditionally supported each other during burials by contributing money, sharing meals, and helping dig graves. Now, a burial society called Mwezike, which means “bury yourselves”, is organising this long-standing practice into a more structured support system for families dealing with loss.
We take a closer look in our latest article, read an excerpt here👇🏽.
On a sun-drenched February afternoon, mourners gathered beneath crisp white tents and makeshift tarpaulin shades for the final day of a three-day vigil. The occasion: the burial of 43-year-old Judith Bigambe, who had succumbed after a long battle with HIV/AIDS. She was Judith Kusemererwa Atwooki’s maternal aunt, a Busingye village resident in Kamwenge District.
The send-off, held on February 23, 2025, was striking not only for its scale but for the air of surprise it stirred among those who had come to pay their respects.
From the first evening, it was clear this would not be an ordinary village funeral. Guests were seated with care; the mood, unusually light. “You could see the amusement in everyone’s face,” one guest said, noting the well-organised nature of the event.
And then came the food.
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Kenya outlawed the sharing of indigenous seeds; an unlikely village choir is fighting back
It is a sunny midday in Makongo Village, on the outskirts of Nakuru City, 159 kilometres northwest of Kenya’s Capital, Nairobi. Residents and livestock seek shelter under trees from the relentless heat. The parched ground, cracked and dust-blown by occasional whirlwinds, bears witness to a land starved of rain.
Music blares through the air from one homestead, audible over a hundred metres away. This is the home of Francis Ngiri, a 60-year-old agroecologist, farmer, and songwriter. He is the brainchild behind Eden Indigenous Seed Farm Choir, a group dedicated to raising awareness about endangered indigenous seeds.
Ngiri hosts weekly rehearsals at his home. As he ushers us in, we find him seated with two of his choir members, Lucia Wambui, 81, and Rose Wanjiru, 54, in an unroofed, raft-walled meeting hall where the group practises. The idea for the choir was born in 2024, Ngiri explains, after he realised that many indigenous seeds were either disappearing or already extinct.
My friend, Chriton Atuhwera was killed in Kenya’s Kakuma camp for being gay. Don’t “humanize” him
There was no way my friend, Chriton Atuhwera could have known when he walked into the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya in January 2020 that a little over a year later, he would be a victim of a homophobic arson attack.
There was no way he would have known that this attack would claim his life and that the very place he had come for refuge would in the end kill him instead.
Yet this is exactly what happened. On March 15, 2021, my friend, Chriton, with whom I lived with for a year, was in Kakuma’s Block 13, which is a section of the camp housing mostly LGBTQ+ persons, when it was attacked by homophobes.
Unknown individuals threw a petrol firebomb into the shelter, injuring Chriton, and another gay man, Jordan Ayesigye, both of whom suffered second-degree burns.
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Why do women earn less than men? The usual suspects – occupation, hours, experience – explain some of it. But a powerful, often overlooked reason is simply this: where women work. The companies that hire them play a huge role in shaping their lifetime earnings.
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Reporter’s Notebook: Meet the trans Africans hit by US aid cuts
It was a hot Tuesday morning and we were sweating as we filmed a mobile clinic that set up shop in a township in the Namibian capital Windhoek to deliver HIV prevention and sexual health services to some of the city’s most vulnerable people.
“Some people might not know that using flavoured condoms for sexual activity like penetration could cause yeast infection for the lady or for their partners,” said Beatrix Akuake, who comes to marginalised neighbourhoods like this one on behalf of Namibia’s Planned Parenthood Association.
“I didn’t know that,” I acknowledged, remembering the shame I used to feel asking questions about safe sex as a gay teenager in school and thinking that after 32 years in this world, several of them covering sexual health as a journalist, I could still use a lesson or two.