Author: Amnewsworld

Fifteen feature-length movies are vying for the top prize in next month’s FESPACO festival, Africa’s top cinema event, the organisers announced Friday (Jan. 13). A total of 170 films are competing across 11 categories in the February 25-March 4 event, including short film, documentaries, TV series and animation, FESPACO said. Drama “Shimoni” by Kenyan filmmaker Angela Wamai tells the story of a Geoffrey, a teacher who’s recently started a new life after serving his prison sentence. As he leaves this place of confinement he is forced to move to a rural village he hates and face his nightmare in the…

A Moroccan imam accused of “inciting hatred and discrimination” has been deported by Belgium where he had taken refuge after being expelled by France last summer. Hassan Iquioussen, a preacher from northern France was flown back to Casablanca on Friday after the Moroccan consulate in Liege issued a pass on Thursday. Last July French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced his expulsion, accusing him of inciting hatred and discrimination and conveying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic. But he fled to French-speaking Belgium where he was later arrested. Iquioussen was imprisoned and then briefly placed under…

The Tanzanian opposition leader and former presidential candidate Tundu Lissu says he plans to return home this month from exile in Europe, after the government lifted a ban on political rallies. The ban, imposed by former president, John Magufuli in 2016, allowed only elected politicians to conduct rallies in their constituencies. Lissu, a former politician, left the country for treatment abroad after he was shot 16 times by an unknown gunmen in September 2017. He returned for a few months in 2020 to challenge Magufuli in a presidential election and took 13 percent of the votes, but his CHADEMA party…

Hundreds of people in the Tunisian capital have taken to the streets in demonstrations against President Kais Saied on the 12th anniversary of the fall of former dictator Ben Ali. Angry crowds protested against the deterioration of their living conditions, against a backdrop of increased political divisions. Supporters of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party called for Saied, who launched a dramatic power grab in July 2021, to step down. Ennahdha had dominated parliament until Saied sacked the government and froze parliament before appointing a new cabinet and ruling by decree. Another march, by the anti-Islamist opposition Free Destourian Party, took place…

Agyapong was born on 6 March 1962, in Kumasi, Capital of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. He was the son of Justice Kwadwo Agyei Agyepong, one of three prominent Ghanaian judges who was abducted and murdered during the early years of Ghana’s Provisional National Defense Council. (PNDC). He had his secondary school education at Mfantsipim School. He attended the Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast and obtained a BSc Degree in Civil Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. Kwabena Ayepong for a long period of time hosted sports Programmes on Ghana’s State Television Station owned by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. Agyapong worked for a long time with the Ghana…

The European Commission on Thursday (Jan. 05) banned imports of seafood caught in Cameroon’s waters, or caught by ships flagged there, and it labeled the central African country as “non-cooperating” in the fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The commission gave Cameroon a so-called “red card” and said EU member states would turn away seafood shipments from Cameroon even when it has catch certificates validated by the national authorities. Cameroon is one of four non-EU countries that are currently on the commission’s “red card” list, alongside St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Comoros and Cambodia. The country has in recent…

Edwin Chiloba, a notorious Kenyan LGBTQ activist, lifeless body was found by Kenyan officials stuffed in a metal box on Wednesday. Officers who opened the box found the decomposing body of a man, whom they described as wearing women’s clothes. Chiloba’s body was taken to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital to establish the cause of death. Nairobi based photographer, Jacktone Odhiambo, has been taken into custody after neighbors identified him as the culprit. Felix Kasanda, also known as Mama G, friend of the deceased decries the continued discrimination and violence the community faces in Kenya. “So many people have…

A French-Rwandan man sentenced in Paris in 2021 for complicity in genocide, has been released from prison pending his appeal. Claude Muhayimana was released from detention on 21 December and placed under judicial supervision pending his appeal. The former driver, who has appealed his conviction, was referred to the investigative division of the Paris Court of Appeal, which ruled on 30 November that the extension of his pre-trial detention did not appear to be “essential either for the needs of the proceedings pending the hearing, or as a security measure”. He was released from detention on 21 December and placed…

Ivorian citizens welcome the news of the presidential pardon of the 49 soldiers detained in Mali, formerly sentenced to 20 years in prison and death as “joy for everyone”. “We have to forgive both sides because we can’t accuse each other because the two countries have a really strong fraternal bond and the two populations are really almost the same. So we have to forgive, let it go and then move on. This is Africa after all,” reacts Noufo Ouattara, car electrician. “These soldiers were on a mission not for anyone but for the country and for other international organizations and…

Egypt’s Coptic Christians gathered on Friday night to attend Mass on Christmas Eve at Saint Stephen Coptic Orthodox Church praying for peace and prosperity for the coming year amid grave uncertainty about the nation’s economy. “ We wish to achieve economic stability in the country and that we can reap the fruits of all the efforts that we have been through by the end of the year. It is a tough beginning of the year but hopefully it is going to be a fruitful year for us and for the country,” shares Maged Mourad, Coptic Orthodox worshipper. Inflation in the…