Christian Methodist Episcopal Church elects second woman and African bishops
United StatesRNS The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church has elected its second woman bishop and received its first episcopal address from a woman during its quadrennial General Conference. “I think when you elect the first you have to be really careful that they just don’t become a token and so I was really excited,” said Bishop […]
In Kenya, faith groups work to resettle youth returning from al-Shabaab
Nairobi, Kenya RNS In Kenya’s coastal region, interfaith efforts to slow down or end youth recruitment into the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab are gaining progress, with some recruits abandoning the extremist group’s training grounds in southern Somalia to return home. The group – al-Qaeda’s affiliate in East Africa – had stepped up secret recruitments in […]
As climate change threatens Kenyan tea, millions of workers seen at risk
Nairobi, KenyaThomson Reuters Foundation Climate change is set to ravage tea production in Kenya, the biggest global supplier of black tea, threatening the livelihoods of millions of plantation workers, a report by British charity Christian Aid warned on Monday. The report looked at how shifting temperatures and rainfall patterns in tea-growing regions in Kenya, India, […]
Returning locusts in East Africa threaten food security, church leaders warn
In 2020, huge swarms of Biblical proportions struck the region, destroying food crops and animal pastures, and pushed hunger and economic hardship to new levels. And as though that is not enough, the United Nations warned in January, 2021, that a new invasion has started spreading in East Africa. “We are concerned about their impact […]
More than 40,000 people forcefully evicted in East Africa during coronavirus crisis
Nairobi, KenyaThomson Reuters Foundation More than 40,000 people across East Africa have been forcibly evicted from their homes since March, putting them at risk of contracting the new coronavirus, said charities on Wednesday, calling for a moratorium on all evictions during the pandemic. The Norwegian Refugee Council found that communities already displaced by violence, droughts […]
Somalia races to save livelihoods as new locust generation spawns
Nairobi, KenyaThomson Reuters Foundation Somalia is deploying surveillance teams and specialised vehicles to prevent desert locust swarms ravaging crops and pastures, and destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, United Nations and government officials said on Monday. The worst outbreak in a generation has seen hungry swarms – some the size of cities […]
Church leaders in eastern Africa call for urgent action on devastating locust invasion
Church leaders in eastern Africa are calling for increased action against desert locusts which have terrorised the region since January this year. Like scenes from the Book of Exodus, huge swarms of the insects have descended on the region, destroying farmlands and animal pastures. The outbreak is affecting seven East African countries, where such a […]
Smart drones to be tested in battle against East African locust swarms
Nairobi, KenyaThomson Reuters Foundation The United Nations is to test drones equipped with mapping sensors and atomisers to spray pesticides in parts of east Africa battling an invasion of desert locusts that are ravaging crops and exacerbating a hunger crisis. Hundreds of millions of the voracious insects have swept across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya in […]
Act now to avert disaster in drought-hit East Africa, aid agencies say
Nairobi, KenyaThomson Reuters Foundation East Africa could suffer a repeat of a 2011 famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people unless foreign donors stump up funds to help drought-hit communities in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia now, aid agencies warned on Thursday. More than 15 million people across the Horn of Africa are struggling to […]
WOW!: BOAT MADE OF FLIP-FLOPS FLIES FLAG FOR CLEANER AFRICAN SEAS
WESLEY LANGAT, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on the voyage of the ‘Flipflopi’…