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In Burundi, an influx of Congolese individuals continues as they seek refuge from the advancing M23.
In May, Burundi held a presidential election which was won by Evariste Ndayishimiye, candidate of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy - Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) party.
Ndayishimiye was hurriedly sworn in after the untimely death of president Pierre Nkurunziza in June.
Rights violations continue
The Council encouraged donor countries which had suspended aid to Burundi to continue dialogue towards resumption of development assistance.
A report by a UN watchdog in September said human rights violations were still being committed in Burundi, including sexual violence and murder.
The country was plunged into a crisis in April 2015 when Ndayishimiye’s predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a controversial third term, which he ultimately won in July 2015.
His candidature, which was opposed by the opposition and civil society groups, resulted in a wave of protests, violence and even a failed coup in May 2015.
Hundreds of people were killed and over 300,000 fled to neighboring countries.
The Ministry of Health has registered 14 new cases of Covid-19 pushing the country's tally to 679.
These are out of the 2,321 samples tested on Wednesday from border points of entry and the community.
Six out of the new cases are from truck drivers who arrived from Elegu and Mutukula border points with one who arrived through Lamwo District.
The other eight are from alerts and contact to previously confirmed cases.
Also, 30 truck drivers from Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and Eritrea were handed back to their respective countries of origin upon testing positive for the virus.
Belgium is a small country in northwest Europe that joined Europes race for colonies in the late 19th century. Many European countries wanted to colonize distant parts of the world in order to exploit the resources and civilize the inhabitants of these less-developed countries. Belgium gained independence in 1830. Then, King Leopold II came to power in 1865 and believed that colonies would greatly enhance Belgiums wealth and prestige.
Leopolds cruel, greedy activities in the current Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi continue to affect the welfare of these countries today.
European adventurers experienced great difficulty in exploring and colonizing the Congo River Basin, due to the regions tropical climate, disease, and the resistance of the natives. In the 1870s, Leopold II created an organization called the International African Association. This sham was supposedly a scientific and philanthropic organization which would greatly improve the lives of native Africans by converting them to Christianity, ending the slave trade, and introducing European health and educational systems.
King Leopold sent the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to the region. Stanley successfully made treaties with native tribes, set up military posts, and forced most Muslim slave traders out of the region.
He acquired millions of square kilometers of central African land for Belgium. However, most of Belgiums government leaders and citizens did not want to spend the exorbitant amount of money that would be needed to maintain distant colonies. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, other European countries did not want the Congo River region.
King Leopold II insisted that he would maintain this region as a free-trade zone, and he was given personal control of the region, which was nearly eighty times larger than Belgium. He named the region the Congo Free State.
Leopold promised that he would develop his private property to improve the lives of the native Africans. He quickly disregarded all of his Berlin
There are now more than over 60,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.
According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when.
Lesotho is the country holding out as of May 12.
We shall keep updating this list largely sourced from the John Hopkins University tallies, Africa CDC and from official government data.
SUGGESTED READING: Africa’s COVID-19 deaths pass 1,000 mark
Major African stats: May 12 at 7:00 GMT:
\t
\t\tConfirmed cases = 66,319
\t\tNumber of deaths = 2,344
\t\tRecoveries = 23,143
\t\tInfected countries = 53
\t\tVirus-free countries = 1 (Lesotho)
Countries in alphabetical order
\t\tAlgeria – 5,891
\t\tAngola – 45
\t\tBenin – 319
\t\tBotswana – 24
\t\tBurkina Faso – 760
\t\tBurundi – 15
\t\tCameroon – 2,689
\t\tCape Verde – 260
\t\tCentral African Republic – 143
\t\tChad – 322
\t\tComoros – 11
\t\tCongo-Brazzaville – 333
\t\tDR Congo – 1,024
\t\tDjibouti – 1,227
\t\tEgypt – 9,746
\t\tEquatorial Guinea – 439
\t\tEritrea – 39
\t\tEswatini – 175
\t\tEthiopia – 250
\t\tGabon – 802
\t\t(The) Gambia – 22
\t\tGhana – 4,700
\t\tGuinea – 2,146
\t\tGuinea-Bissau – 761
\t\tIvory Coast – 1,730
\t\tKenya – 700
\t\tLesotho – 0
\t\tLiberia – 211
\t\tLibya – 64
\t\tMadagascar – 186
\t\tMalawi – 57
\t\tMali – 712
\t\tMauritania – 8
\t\tMauritius – 332
\t\tMorocco – 6,281
\t\tMozambique – 103
\t\tNamibia – 16
\t\tNiger – 832
\t\tNigeria- 4,641
\t\tRwanda – 285
\t\tSao Tome and Principe – 208
\t\tSenegal – 1,886
\t\tSeychelles – 11
\t\tSierra Leone – 338
\t\tSomalia – 1,089
\t\tSouth Africa – 10,652
\t\tSouth Sudan – 156
\t\tSudan – 1,526
\t\tTanzania – 509
\t\tTogo – 181
\t\tTunisia – 1,032
\t\tUganda – 121
\t\tZambia – 267
\t\tZimbabwe – 36
SUGGESTED READING: rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa II
READ MORE – Burundi sacks WHO officials ahead of May 20 polls
February 2020: Tunisia expels UN envoy
\tTunisia on Friday expelled its own ambassador at the United Nations, faulting him for not doing adequate consultation on a Security Council resolution he helped draft responding to the U.S. Middle East peace initiative.
The official TAP news agency quoted the Tunisian president’s office as saying Moncef Baati was accused of “absence of coordination and consultation” with the foreign ministry and with representatives of Arab and Islamic countries at the United Nations.
DRC expels EU envoy
\tLast month, the Democratic Republic of Congo took a decision to expel the European Union ambassador, Bart Ouvry as a reaction to the renewal of EU sanctions against Congolese officials including the ruling coalition’s candidate in a presidential election.
’‘
READ MORE: DRC gives EU quit notice, nationwide protest over excluded cities
Burundi vs U.N. Human Rights office
\tBurundi’s government has taken several actions against the United Nations office in its country, including asking that ‘all international staff are redployed’ and that the office closes ‘within two months’ from December 2018.
SUGGESTED READING: Burundi clashes with AU over arrest warrant against ex-President
\tWhile the affected diplomats face the consequences of leaving the country hastily, and could end up on blacklists for those particular countries, relations between the governments and international institutions like the United Nations often continue.
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza has died of heart failure, the government said on Tuesday in a post from its official Twitter account.
\"The Government of the Republic of Burundi announces with great sadness the unexpected death of His Excellency Pierre Nkurunziza, President of the Republic of Burundi... following heart failure on June 8, 2020,\" the post said.
An evangelical who believed he was chosen by God to rule the east African nation, Nkurunziza came to power in 2005, when he was selected by parliament.
His death comes on the heels of elections on May 20 in which his hand-picked successor, Evariste Ndayishimiye, secured a seven-year term as president - a result confirmed by the constitutional court last Thursday.
A statement from Burundi's presidency on Tuesday said Nkurunziza was hospitalised over the weekend and that his health \"abruptly changed\" on Monday.
Out of Africa’s 47 countries, 15 of them are landlocked. This means that about a third of the continent is made up of countries that have no access to the ocean or sea.
The landlocked countries in Africa are: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
A country’s level of access to water can have an enormous impact on its economy. It is not a coincidence that Africa, the continent with the largest number of landlocked countries, is also the poorest continent. Of Africa’s 15 landlocked countries, 13 of them are ranked “low” or “least developed” on the Human Development Index (HDI), a statistic that takes into account factors such as life expectancy, education, and income per capita. The six countries ranked least developed on the HDI are all landlocked African countries.
So how does a country’s access to water affect its economy? Here are just a few factors:
High Transit Costs: Because of decreased access to trade, landlocked countries are often cut off from selling and purchasing goods, leading to higher fuel prices. It is also difficult for them to build infrastructure that would allow easy border passage. As a result, landlocked nations can’t benefit from tourism to the extent that coastal states can, which can be an increased detriment to their economies. But the lack of access to easy transit in and out of the country can have even worse effects; in times of natural disaster or violent regional conflict, it is much more difficult for residents of landlocked nations to escape.
Burundi’s Constitutional Court has ruled that President-elect Evariste Ndayishimiye must be sworn in as soon as possible, following the death of Pierre Nkurunziza.
A court ruling issued Friday and obtained by VOA’s Central Africa service said, “It is necessary to proceed as soon as possible to the swearing in of elected president Evariste Ndayishimiye.\"
Nkurunziza died Tuesday at age 55 at a Burundian hospital where he had been taken two days earlier.
Nkurunziza served three terms as Burundi’s president, taking over at end of a brutal civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people.
Ndayishimiye, a retired general who Nkurunziza picked as his successor, won the May 2020 presidential election, and his term of office was originally set to begin on August 20th.
Agathon Rwasa, Burundi's opposition leader and deputy speaker of Parliament has filed a petition at the country's constitutional court disputing the win of the ruling CNDD-FDD party's Evariste Ndayishimiye.
Mr Ndayishimiye won the May 20 presidential election with 68 per cent of the vote against Mr Rwasa's 24 per cent.
\"If the constitutional court rules in their favour I will move to the African Court because all the results that were announced by the electoral commission were wrong,\" said Mr Rwasa.
The country's Catholic Church deployed 2,716 observers countrywide, and has also expressed misgivings on the election process and its outcome.
However the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Pierre Claver Kazihise, said that members of the Catholic church observer mission weren't well educated and informed about the electoral process.
