Kenyan police stepped up their investigation on Saturday into a fire at a boarding school that killed 17 boys, as the president announced three days of national mourning.

Detectives said DNA testing was due to begin to identify the remains of the children who died in the blaze.

Vice-president Rigathi Gachagua said on Friday that 70 youngsters were still unaccounted for after the fire broke out at Hillside Endarasha academy in Nyeri county, central Kenya, at about midnight on Thursday.

The flames engulfed a dormitory at the primary school, where more than 150 boys were sleeping.

The cause of the inferno is not yet known, but homicide investigators and forensic experts were at the school on Saturday, while media were barred from the site.

The bodies of victims, which police had said were burnt beyond recognition, were still in the dormitory, now a blackened shell with its corrugated iron roof completely collapsed.

Kenya’s chief homicide detective, Martin Nyuguto, said at the scene: “Today we want to begin the process of DNA testing.”

President William Ruto declared three days of national mourning starting from Monday to honour the victims of what he described as an “unfathomable tragedy”. He said on Friday that 17 children had lost their lives, while 14 had sustained injuries and were being treated in hospital.

“I pledge that the difficult questions that have been asked such as how this tragedy occurred and why the response was not timely will be answered; fully, frankly, and without fear or favour. All relevant persons and bodies will be held to account,” Ruto said in a statement.

Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports indicated that the dorm was “overcrowded, in violation of safety standards”.

The blaze has highlighted the issue of school safety in Kenya, after numerous similar disasters over the years.

In a statement from the Vatican on Saturday, Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” at the loss of young life and expressed his “spiritual closeness to all who are suffering the effects of this calamity, especially the injured and the families who grieve”.

On Friday, tensions were running high among families gathered at the school, anxious for news of their missing children.

Many broke down after officials took them to see the bodies in the destroyed dorm. “Please look for my kid. He can’t be dead. I want my child,” one woman cried.

The Kenya Red Cross said it was on the ground assisting a multiagency response team and providing psychosocial support to traumatised pupils and families.

Muchai Kihara, 56, said he was lucky to find his 12-year-old son Stephen Gachingi alive after rushing to the school at about 1am on Friday. Kihara said: “I cannot begin to imagine what he went through. I am happy he is alive but he had some injuries at the back of his head and the smoke had affected his eyes.”

“I just want him to be counselled now to see if his life will return to normal,” Kihara added, as he sat with his son on a bench beside a white Red Cross tent where families are being counselled.

There have been many school fires in Kenya and across east Africa in recent years.

In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Kibera in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

In 2001, 67 pupils were killed in an arson attack on their dormitory at a secondary school in the town of Machakos to the south-east of Nairobi. Two pupils were charged with murder, and the headteacher and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.

In 1994, 40 schoolchildren were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that tore through a girls’ school in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania.

In 2022, a blaze ravaged a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Eleven pupils died after they were trapped inside their shared bedroom because the building had been burglar-proofed, government ministers said at the time.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

Peacekeepers should be deployed to Sudan immediately and an existing international arms embargo should be expanded to protect civilians from “harrowing” rights abuses committed by the warring parties in the country’s civil war, UN experts said on Friday.

Sudan’s army (SAF) and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces [RSF], have raped and attacked civilians, used torture and made arbitrary arrests, according to a UN-mandated fact-finding mission based on 182 interviews with survivors, relatives and witnesses. The violations “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”, its report said.

The independent experts said they had also found evidence of “indiscriminate” airstrikes and shelling against civilian targets including schools, hospitals and facilities for water and electricity supply.

“The gravity of our findings and failure of the warring parties to protect civilians underscores the need for urgent and immediate intervention,” the UN fact-finding mission’s chair, Mohamed Chande Othman, told reporters.

The mission also called for the expansion of an existing UN arms embargo which applies only to the western region of Darfur, where thousands of ethnic killings have been reported.

“It is imperative that an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians be deployed without delay,” Othman said, adding that there were different options including a UN-mandated force or a regional one backed by the African Union.

The latest claims come on top of previous allegations that the RSF and its allies have been responsible for series of massacres and ethnic cleansing in West Darfur and Al Jazirah state leading to the deaths of between 10,000 and 15,000 people.

Mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said unnamed support groups had received reports of more than 400 rapes in the first year of the war, but the real number was probably much higher. “The rare brutality of this war will have a devastating and long-lasting psychological impact on children,” she said.

The fact-finding team said it had tried to contact Sudanese government authorities on multiple occasions as part of its work, but received no answer. It said the RSF had asked to cooperate with the mission, without elaborating.

The Guardian has approached the Sudanese embassy in London for comment.

The report, based on interviews with survivors, witnesses and other sources now in Chad, Kenya and Uganda, emerged after two weeks of inconclusive US-brokered peace efforts in Geneva. The talks were attended by the RSF but not the SAF.

There was minimal progress towards a cessation of hostilities during the talks, thought there was an announcement of a mechanism called Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan, which aims to expand access to humanitarian routes.

Observers have been issuing warnings in recent weeks about the deteriorating hunger situation in Sudan.

Maximo Torero, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization, a UN agency, said on Thursday: “The conflict continues to drive a rapid deterioration of food security, with about 26% more people estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity during the June to September lead period compared to June last year, reaching 25.6 million people classified in crisis or worse.”

The war began in April last year, pitting the national army led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – also known as Hemedti.

The fighting began in the capital, Khartoum, but has since spread to 14 of the country’s 18 states. Thousands of people have been killed, 8 million have been displaced internally, and a further 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

The first donation of mpox vaccines arrived in Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, but officials say millions more doses will be needed.

The announcement came amid warnings that the geographical spread of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, was increasing, and swift action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.

Almost 100,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine were delivered to the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, as part of a European Union donation programme, with another 100,000 expected on Saturday.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the regional health authority, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), emphasised the need to curb the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries.

“The outbreak is really moving [fast],” said Kaseya. “We really need to stop it really quickly.”

Almost 25,000 cases of mpox have been reported across Africa this year, with 5,549 confirmed by testing, and 643 deaths, according to Africa CDC. Cases are up 104% compared with last year.

The DRC still accounts for the majority of cases, but Kaseya said numbers were rising elsewhere. He said he was “really concerned” by a reported case of mpox in a seven-year-old child in Guinea, which potentially represents the first case of the new clade Ib variant detected in west Africa. Sequencing tests are still in progress.

Clade Ib is a mutated form of the virus, newly detected in eastern DRC, which appears to be spreading via close contact between people and driving the large jump in case numbers.

The outbreak, which has spread to nearby countries, has been declared a public health emergency by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and African health officials. A response plan is estimated to require almost $600m (£455m) over the next six months, officials said.

About 380,000 doses of mpox vaccines have been pledged by western partners including the EU and US, according to Africa CDC. However, they said 3m doses would be needed to end outbreaks of the virus in the country.

Vaccination programmes are expected to focus on contacts of suspected cases as well as healthcare and frontline workers in areas with active transmission.

However, the programme is unlikely to get under way until October at the earliest, with local healthcare and logistical workers still being trained on how to store and administer the vaccine. A large public information campaign is also being rolled out to improve awareness of mpox and tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Most cases in the DRC are among children. Regulators are assessing information submitted by Bavarian Nordic that could see the vaccine authorised for 12 to 17-year-olds by the end of the month, but approval for younger children will take longer.

There are concerns about the affordability of vaccines for a wider programme, with the WHO putting the cost at $50 to $75 a dose.

“Most vaccines cost around £1 or less,” said Dr Andrew Hill, of Liverpool University. “If there are large orders for millions of vaccine doses for Africa, Bavarian Nordic should lower their prices. Otherwise, they should allow a generic company to mass produce their vaccine for a low price.”

A Bavarian Nordic spokesperson said: “While we are proud that our mpox vaccine has arrived to help people in Africa, it remains a concern for Bavarian Nordic that artificial prices are being mentioned, as there exists no published dose price range. And we have not started to discuss prices with relevant organisations.”

The company had previously suggested it would be open to a tiered pricing model, in which countries with fewer resources or those able to place larger, longer-term orders paid less.

Within the DRC, clade Ib was reported in Kinshasa for the first time this week. In a case report about one patient, Dr Eddy Lusamaki, of the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, wrote that it suggested the variant was spreading across the country.

Lusamaki said: “Its presence in Kinshasa, the capital city, with multiple international connections by air traffic and multiple exchanges with Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, illustrated the need for improved surveillance strategies to control the spread of the disease.”

Cases of the clade Ib variant were also reported in Thailand and Sweden last month.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

Algeria goes to the polls on Saturday in a presidential election being held in the context of what rights groups have called “a steady erosion of human rights” under the president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who is expected to win a second five-year term.

As many as 24 million people are eligible to vote in the north African country in a process moved forward by three months.

The change in the election schedule is expected to favour the president as his opponents, Youssef Aouchiche of the Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and Abdellah Hassan Cherif of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), have had less time to campaign. More than two dozen other candidates that signified their intention to run were disqualified or forced to resign.

Tebboune announced in March that the election – traditionally held in December – was being rescheduled to “coincide with the end of the summer vacations and the start of the new school year” in the hope of increasing turnout. The move was greeted with scepticism: in the days that followed, the Arabic phrase Ma fhemna walou (we do not understand anything) trended on social media.

Turnout was below 40% in the 2019 election, when the president took power months after a popular uprising ousted Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had spent two decades in office.

Human rights groups say the rights violations under Bouteflika have continued under his successor.

“In recent years, Algeria has experienced a steady erosion of human rights through the authorities’ dissolution of political parties, civil society organisations and independent media outlets, alongside a spike in arbitrary arrests and prosecutions using trumped-up terrorism charges,” said Amjad Yamin, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and north Africa. “Alarmingly, this reality has remained bleak in the run-up to the elections.”

Eleven major opposition figures wrote in an open letter in July that “Algeria is in a more critical situation than before” and that the president had fostered an “authoritarian climate”.

In August, 60 political activists were arrested, mostly from the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) party. Last week, Fethi Ghares, a stalwart of the 2019 uprising and leader of the Democratic Social Movement party, banned last year, was detained along with his wife for “insulting the president”.

Some experts say the president’s legacy so far has offered little hope of better fortunes for the largest country in Africa if he wins a second term.

Owing to a windfall from energy deals signed as Europe sought substitutes for Russian gas, social spending has increased and fuel subsidy cuts have been deferred, said Andrew Farrand, the director for Middle East and north Africa (Mena) at the geopolitical risk consultancy Horizon Engage.

“But he [Tebboune] struggled to rein in inflation and failed to meet his own export growth targets … [and] failed to leverage Algeria’s newfound popularity to advance key foreign policy priorities,” said Farrand, who is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council thinktank.

Nevertheless, Tebboune is poised to win a second term in a country that has never had a peaceful transition of power. The predictability of the outcome is also in part because the president has deepened political patronage and established a strong rapport with the military.

“Every national institution of consequence has been co-opted and pressed into service as an arm of [his] campaign,” Farrand added.

The Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died at a Kenyan hospital after sustaining 80% burns to her body following an attack by her partner on Sunday.

The 33-year-old Cheptegei had been receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret city. A spokesperson, Owen Menach, confirmed her death on Thursday.

Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X: “We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei … following a vicious attack by her boyfriend. May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”

Trans Nzoia County police commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom had said on Monday that Cheptegei’s partner, Dickson Ndiema, bought a container of petrol, poured it on her and set her on fire. “The couple were heard quarrelling outside their house. During the altercation, the boyfriend was seen pouring a liquid on the woman before burning her,” Kosiom told the Standard newspaper in Kenya. “The suspect was also caught by the fire and sustained serious burns.” Ndiema was being treated at the same hospital as Cheptegei.

Cheptegei’s parents said their daughter bought land in Trans-Nzoia to be near the country’s many athletic training centres. A report filed by the local police chief states that the couple were heard fighting over the land where the house was built before the fire started.

Last month Cheptegei finished 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics and she was 14th in the event at last year’s world championships in Budapest. In 2022, she won the mountain race at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Thailand.

The Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died at a Kenyan hospital after sustaining 80% burns to her body following an attack by her partner on Sunday.

The 33-year-old Cheptegei had been receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret city. A spokesperson, Owen Menach, confirmed her death on Thursday.

Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X: “We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei … following a vicious attack by her boyfriend. May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”

Trans Nzoia County police commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom had said on Monday that Cheptegei’s partner, Dickson Ndiema, bought a container of petrol, poured it on her and set her on fire. “The couple were heard quarrelling outside their house. During the altercation, the boyfriend was seen pouring a liquid on the woman before burning her,” Kosiom told the Standard newspaper in Kenya. “The suspect was also caught by the fire and sustained serious burns.” Ndiema was being treated at the same hospital as Cheptegei.

Cheptegei’s parents said their daughter bought land in Trans-Nzoia to be near the country’s many athletic training centres. A report filed by the local police chief states that the couple were heard fighting over the land where the house was built before the fire started.

Last month Cheptegei finished 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics and she was 14th in the event at last year’s world championships in Budapest. In 2022, she won the mountain race at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Thailand.

The Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died at a Kenyan hospital after sustaining 80% burns to her body following an attack by her partner on Sunday.

The 33-year-old Cheptegei had been receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret city. A spokesperson, Owen Menach, confirmed her death on Thursday.

Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics Committee, said in a post on X: “We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei … following a vicious attack by her boyfriend. May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”

Trans Nzoia County police commander Jeremiah ole Kosiom had said on Monday that Cheptegei’s partner, Dickson Ndiema, bought a container of petrol, poured it on her and set her on fire. “The couple were heard quarrelling outside their house. During the altercation, the boyfriend was seen pouring a liquid on the woman before burning her,” Kosiom told the Standard newspaper in Kenya. “The suspect was also caught by the fire and sustained serious burns.” Ndiema was being treated at the same hospital as Cheptegei.

Cheptegei’s parents said their daughter bought land in Trans-Nzoia to be near the country’s many athletic training centres. A report filed by the local police chief states that the couple were heard fighting over the land where the house was built before the fire started.

Last month Cheptegei finished 44th in the marathon at the Paris Olympics and she was 14th in the event at last year’s world championships in Budapest. In 2022, she won the mountain race at the World Mountain and Trail Running Championships in Thailand.

Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine has been shot in the leg in a confrontation with police just outside the capital, Kampala, his opposition group said.

Photos posted online on Tuesday showed Wine surrounded by followers who yelled that he had been shot in the leg before some supported him into a waiting car.

His party, the National Unity Platform, holds the most seats of any opposition group in the national assembly. In a post on X, the party said that Ugandan security operatives “have made an attempt on the life of” Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu.

“He was shot in the leg and seriously injured in Bulindo, Wakiso District,” it said.

Street confrontations between Wine and the police have frequently descended into violence.

There was no immediate comment from the police and other authorities.

Wine ran for president in 2021, losing to President Yoweri Museveni in an election he claimed was rigged against him.

Wine, a former singer, won a seat in the national assembly in 2017. He is especially popular among young Ugandans in urban areas.

Museveni, a U.S. ally on regional security for many years, has held power since 1986 and had the constitution amended to remove the age limit for presidents. Now 79 years old, he has resisted calls to announce when he will retire.

Uganda has not had a peaceful transfer of power since independence from the British in 1962.

More details soon…

A daughter of the former South African president Jacob Zuma and the king of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, have become engaged during a traditional ceremony in which Nomcebo Zuma was among hundreds of women and girls dancing for the monarch.

Zuma, 21, appeared on Monday night at the annual reed dance as the liphovela – the royal fiancee or concubine – and will become King Mswati III’s 16th wife.

The 56-year-old king has led Africa’s last absolute monarchy since taking power in 1986, days after his 18th birthday, and has been criticised for his lavish lifestyle while most of the population lives in poverty.

The days-long reed dance is a traditional rite of womanhood, with young women singing and dancing bare-chested, wearing traditional clothing that includes anklets and thick colourful tassles, some carrying mock swords and shields.

Also known as the umhlanga, it was regarded as an example of Eswatini’s “graceful” culture, said Bianca Dlamini-Holman, a Swazi influencer, in a 2023 YouTube vlog about that year’s dance. About 5,000 people attended this year’s celebrations at the Ludzidzini royal village in Lobamba.

It is not the first time King Mswati, who has dozens of children, has announced a much younger bride at the umhlanga. In September 2005, 17-year-old Phindile Nkambule was presented as his 13th fiancee at a reed dance, with the BBC reporting at the time that she had caught his eye at the main dance the previous month.

Just days before, the king had rescinded a ban on sex for and with girls under 18, which he had implemented in an effort to fight HIV/Aids. Two months after imposing the ban in 2001, Mswati fined himself a cow for breaking his own rule by taking a 17-year-old as his ninth wife, according to the BBC.

The king rules the country of 1.2 million people by decree, with political parties banned and elected officials only existing in an advisory capacity.

In 2003, Mswati’s 10th wife, Zena Mahlangu, was abducted, aged 18, while preparing for her A-level exams, her mother, Lindiwe Dlamini, who fought an unsuccessful legal battle to have her daughter returned, alleged.

The king’s latest bride also comes from a large polygamous family. Jacob Zuma, 82, has been married six times and currently has four wives and more than 20 children.

He was South Africa’s president from 2009-18, when he was forced to resign by his African National Congress party after a series of corruption allegations. The shrewd political operator upended the country’s elections earlier this year, when his new uMkhonto we Sizwe party came third, with 14.6% of the vote.

Associated France Presse contributed to this story.

More than 100 people were killed while trying to escape from a prison in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early hours of Monday, the security minister has said.

In a post on X on Tuesday morning, Jacquemain Shabani Lukoo said 129 people had died and 59 others were injured in the escape attempt at Makala prison in Kinshasa. Twenty-four of those who died were killed by gunfire, while the others lost their lives in a crush during the chaos, he said.

He also said a fire broke out and destroyed the prison’s administrative buildings, registry, hospital and food depots.

Lukoo said the situation was under control and investigations taking place. A crisis meeting has been called with the heads of defence and security services.

On Monday, a government spokesperson, Patrick Muyaya, said on X there had been an escape attempt at the prison.

Makala prison is the largest in the country. It was built to hold 1,500 prisoners but housed more than 12,000 as of October last year, most of them awaiting trial, according to Amnesty International.

In 2017, at least 4,000 prisoners – more than half its population at the time – escaped after armed men stormed the building at night. More than 80 people were killed during the incident.

Unrelenting heat will continue across parts of Brazil this week with temperatures about 5C to 10C above the 1991 to 2020 average.

Daytime temperatures will reach 35C to 40C in parts of the Central West region, affecting cities such as Belo Horizonte, Brasília and Manaus. This extreme heat is likely to continue into next week, with temperatures above 40C possible in places.

This heat will amplify the risk of wildfires that have been raging across parts of Brazil, especially across the Amazon rainforest, Cerrado savanna, Pantanal wetlands and the southern state of São Paulo. Local reports say these fires have been exacerbated by high temperatures, strong winds and low relative humidity, with São Paulo and the Amazon suffering the worst fire season in decades.

Over the past week, 2,700 fires have ripped through São Paulo state, and authorities say more than 59,000 hectares (146,000 acres) have been destroyed by the fires. Brazil’s largest sugar group, Raizen SA, has estimated that about 1.8tn tonnes of its sugarcane have been affected by the fires, about 2% of its total forecasted crop for the year.

People in the region have been reporting coughs, a burning sensation at the back of their throats, and reddening of their eyes from smoke in the area.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there have been 53,620 fire spots in the Amazon between 1 January and 27 August this year – an 83% increase on the same period last year.

Parts of Africa will experience anomalously high rainfall totals from heavy showers and thunderstorms through this week. Extending from the far west including countries such as Sierra Leone and Guinea to the east, including Sudan and Eritrea, up to 100mm of rainfall is expected widely by Friday, including in parts of the Sahara.

However, closer to 150 to 200mm is possible more locally, particularly across northern Mali, Niger and northern Nigeria. The northern half of Mali usually receives less than 200mm of rainfall annually, so could get half a year’s worth of rain this week alone.

Already, at least 170 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 injured across Nigeria owing to flooding-related incidents in the past two weeks. At least 60 people have been killed after a dam burst in Sudan. Floods in Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso have also caused significant damage.

A former Miss South Africa contestant hounded over a nationality row was crowned Miss Universe Nigeria on Saturday, bringing to an end a difficult few weeks for the contender.

Born to a Nigerian father in South Africa, 23-year-old Chidimma Adetshina withdrew from the country’s competition “for the safety and wellbeing of my family” after a backlash that exposed anti-foreigner sentiment in South Africa.

“This journey has been a tough journey for me … I am so proud of myself and I’m really grateful for the love and the support,” Adetshina told AFP minutes after being crowned in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos. “This is something that I’ve always wanted, and I’m really glad that I have a second shot as well at achieving it.”

Her Nigerian heritage attracted vicious xenophobic attacks and sparked controversy when she was announced as a Miss South Africa finalist in July, while the government said it was investigating a claim that her mother may have stolen the identity of a South African woman.

Even though she had not been in the country for 20 years, organisers of the Nigerian contest invited her to join their final, saying it was a chance for her to “represent your father’s native land on an international stage”.

“We all need to stop with the xenophobia … with the tribalism,” first runner-up Paula Ezendu told AFP. “We’re all one family. We’re all human beings.”

Adetshina insisted she loved South Africa despite the nationality controversy and was grateful for the support from the country.

She will represent Nigeria at the international Miss Universe competition in November. “I know we are going to win,” she told reporters.

None of the African countries affected by the outbreak of a new variant of mpox have received any of the promised vaccine, pushing back a rollout that had been planned for last week.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been at the centre of an outbreak of the new clade 1b variant, with 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The variant has also been found in Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Sweden and Thailand.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that the first doses should arrive in the DRC “within days” but similar statements were recently made regarding donated shots from the US, which did not materialise on time.

There has been no coordinated response, with Spain pledging as many as 500,000 doses while France and Germany have promised 100,000 each and the US said it will donate 50,000. None of the pledges have so far been delivered.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said on Wednesday that the $245m (£187m) it had requested to tackle the outbreak was only 10% funded.

Despite mpox being first identified in humans in the DRC in 1970, African nations vulnerable to its spread are reliant on donations of vaccines from the stockpiles of richer nations.

Dr Dimie Ogoina, an infectious disease physician at the Niger Delta University teaching hospital, said neglect both internationally and by African governments meant that, decades after mpox was first identified, there were still not enough vaccines or even treatments available to the affected countries.

He said it was only during the global outbreak in 2022, which saw the virus spread to Europe and North America, that there was a wider international reaction to the disease.

Ogoina said it was important for African countries themselves to invest in protecting against diseases such as mpox to ensure they are not reliant on donors.

“The manufacturers are not based in Africa,” he said. “They tend to favour, knowingly or unknowingly, the global north. So if there’s a list of people to procure, Africa is always last in the list, and we are always the last to get supplies.”

The WHO declared a public health emergency in mid-August in response to the spread of clade 1b, a recently identified variant that spreads through close physical contact, including sexual contact but also within households.

Concern has been raised about high numbers of children dying, with a mortality rate of up to 8% for under-15s, according to the WHO. The latest update from Africa CDC on Tuesday showed a sharp rise in cases of almost 4,000, compared with 1,200 the previous week.

Last week, civil society groups published a letter to Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, urging it to push for lower pricing of the vaccine produced by pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, which currently costs between $50 and $75 a dose.

“The continuously unfolding injustice of mpox owes to long indifference and inequity, stigma, slowness, anaemic use of public power and yes, greed,” said Peter Maybarduk, access-to-medicines director at US-based campaign group Public Citizen, which signed the letter.

He said that while the US government had invested in the development of the Jynneos vaccine used against mpox, the production and “outrageously high” prices were now being controlled by Bavarian Nordic.

Victorine de Milliano, policy adviser at Médecins Sans Frontières’s wing for campaigning for fair medical treatment, MSF Access, said there was a “systematic issue” that meant that lower-income countries struggle to access medical tools in public health emergencies, which was highlighted during the Covid pandemic, when richer countries were able to stockpile vaccines, tests and treatments.

“It’s a real feeling of deja vu. You would have thought that we would draw some lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic, but we see the same patterns again,” she said. “Low- and middle-income countries are also now reliant on those donations from high-income countries who do have access to the vaccines. And we also see a vaccine monopoly, [where they are] sold to the highest bidder.”

Bavarian Nordic has told Africa CDC that it can provide 2m doses this year if it gets approval for orders, allowing it to reallocate resources from other production lines.

A spokesperson for the company told the Guardian it had donated 55,000 doses and would provide an update when an agreement was made to start delivering more widely.

The company also said it was open to using tiered pricing so that countries with smaller economies would be charged less as well as those who were able to order more vaccines and over longer periods of time.

Ogoina said there were promising signs of political leaders in Africa showing vigilance in response to the public health emergency and discussing how they can invest in tackling it, as well as pledges of support from outside the continent, but it would have to be sustained.

“[There have been] a lot of commitments, pronouncements, promises, but what happens after three months? What happens after six months? What happens after one year? Will people still be interested, or will they lose interest?” he asked.

A crisis in the Libyan economy sparked by an escalating and sometimes violent contest over the control of the country’s central bank can only be cured through diplomacy, the US embassy in Libya has said, as it backed efforts by the UN to convene an emergency meeting of the groups involved.

The embassy, led by the ambassador Richard Norland, pleaded with all sides to heed a UN call to hold talks, saying the contest over the administration of the bank “undermines confidence in Libya’s economic and financial stability in the eyes of Libyan citizens and the international community, and increases the likelihood of harmful confrontation”.

The embassy added: “Reports of arbitrary arrest and intimidation of central bank employees are particularly concerning – those responsible must be held strictly accountable.”

There was no sign on Tuesday that the UN-backed institutions in the west of Libya, led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, were backing down over their dismissal of the bank’s governor of the past 20 years and installation of a new leadership.

The bank dominates the Libyan economy, owning the two main commercial banks as well as holding $27bn in reserves, most of it from oil revenues. Sadiq al-Kabir, the sacked governor, has recently started to attack Dbeibah’s overspending and is now seen to favour the forces in the country’s east.

Abdel Fattah Ghaffar, the new interim deputy governor appointed by the Tripoli-based government, held a press conference in the capital and insisted he could ease the current liquidity crisis, pay unpaid salaries within two days and be accountable to a board of governors.

He called on Kabir to hand over the secret codes that would make payments possible, revealing the extent to which the practical contest for control of the bank’s operations is in reality far from resolved.

Kabir has run the bank since 2011, the year that Col Muammar Gaddafi was toppled with western backing, leading to a paralysing split between the west and east of the country.

The rival eastern administration has opposed Kabir’s sacking and said on Tuesday it would continue with “suspending all oil production and exports until Kabir is reappointed”, citing “force majeure”. The oilfields affected constitute about 90% of the country’s oilfields and terminals.

The eastern-based administration linked its move to “repeated attacks on the leaders, employees and administrations of the central bank” and blamed “outlaw groups”.

Kabir said on Tuesday for a second day running the bank had been unable to operate due to threats from militia and the kidnapping of four staff, leading him to warn that August salaries may not be payable. His statement said the bank’s ability to send emails had been stopped illegally by those trying to overthrow the bank’s leadership.

Libya’s latest descent into chaos and fragmentation is part of a near decade-long contest over state resources within a divided Libyan political elite that has repeatedly shelved nationwide elections since 2014, fearing that democracy may lead them to lose privileged access to Libya’s massive oil revenues.

In recent months Kabir has become openly critical of the Tripoli-based government’s spending excesses, saying the profligacy was increasing pressure on the exchange rate and boosting inflation. Dbeibah has hit back, rejecting claims of resource mismanagement and corruption.

In an attempt to justify the dismissal of Kabir against the wishes of the US and European diplomats, the Libyan Presidential Council – linked to Dbeibah and headed by Mohamed al-Menfi – said it understood the concern but it believed the decision strengthened the rule of law and would lead to the appointment of a governor with integrity and competence.

It said it would also ensure that a board of directors is formed for the first time in many years, ending Kabir’s one-man show. Menfi said the council had the constitutional right to dismiss the governor, a widely contested claim that only underscores the extent to which Libya’s political institutions need renewal.

The man originally appointed as the replacement governor, Mohamed al-Shukri, has now refused to take on the role unless his appointment is also sanctioned by the eastern-based parliament, the House of Representatives.

He said: “My professional and career history and my ethics absolutely do not allow me to be part of this chaos. By God, a single drop of our children’s blood is more precious to me than all the spoils of the world and the jobs of the Libyan state. Oh God, I am innocent of what the oppressors are doing.”

The west, including the IMF, has had concerns about the central bank’s lack of accountability for years, but is opposed to the unilateral manner of Kabir’s removal, fearing that it will slow the process of unification. The British ambassador to Libya, Martin Longden, denounced “unilateral decisions that only destabilise the country” and stressed the UK’s “support for a solution through legal means and not exposing Libya’s financial situation internationally to danger”.

Surging waters have burst through a dam, wiping out at least 20 villages and leaving at least 30 people dead but probably many more in eastern Sudan, the United Nations has said, devastating a region already reeling from months of civil war.

Torrential rains caused floods that overwhelmed the Arbaat dam on Sunday, which is 25 miles (40km) north of Port Sudan, the de facto national capital and base for the government, diplomats, aid agencies and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

“The area is unrecognisable,” Omar Eissa Haroun, head of the water authority for Red Sea state, said in a WhatsApp message to staff. “The electricity and water pipes are destroyed.”

One first responder said that between 150 and 200 people were missing. He said he had seen the bodies of gold miners and pieces of their equipment wrecked in the deluge, and likened the disaster to the devastation in the eastern Libyan city of Derna in September last year when storm waters burst dams, swept away buildings and killed thousands.

On the road to Arbaat on Monday a Reuters reporter saw people burying a man and covering his grave with driftwood to try to prevent it from being washed away in mudslides.

The homes of about 50,000 people were affected by the flooding, the UN said, citing local authorities, adding that the number only accounted for the area west of the dam as the area east was inaccessible.

The dam was the main source of water for Port Sudan, which is home to the country’s main Red Sea port and working airport, and receives most of the country’s much-needed aid deliveries.

Officials said the dam had started crumbling and silt had been building during days of heavy rain that had come much earlier than usual. Sudan’s dams, roads and bridges were already in disrepair before the war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Forces began in April 2023.

Both sides have since funnelled the bulk of their resources into the conflict, leaving infrastructure badly neglected.

Some people had fled their flooded homes and headed to the mountains where they were now stranded, the health ministry said.

On Monday, the government’s rainy season taskforce said 132 people had been killed in floods across the country, up from 68 two weeks ago. At least 118,000 people have been displaced by the rains this year, according to United Nations agencies.

Macklemore has cancelled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that has been fighting government troops there.

The announcement by the US rapper reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.

Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions including Darfur. Estimates suggest more than 18,800 people have been killed in the fighting, while more than 10 million have fled their homes. Hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.

At a contentious UN security council meeting in June, Sudan’s embattled government directly accused the UAE of arming the RSF, and an Emirati diplomat angrily told his counterpart to stop “grandstanding”. The UAE has been a part of ongoing peace talks to end the fighting.

The Emirati foreign ministry offered no immediate comment on Macklemore’s public statement on Sunday, nor did the city-state’s Dubai Media Office. Organisers last week announced the show had been cancelled and refunds would be issued, without offering an explanation for the cancellation.

In a post on Saturday on Instagram, Grammy-winner Macklemore said he had a series of people “asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan and to boycott doing business in the UAE for the role they are playing in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis”.

Macklemore said he reconsidered the show in part over his recent, public support of Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip. He recently has begun performing a song called Hind’s Hall, in honour of a young girl named Hind Rajab, who was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, along with her four cousins, her aunt and uncle and two paramedics. All streaming proceeds generated from Hind’s Hall go to UN relief agency Unrwa.

“I know that this will probably jeopardise my future shows in the area, and I truly hate letting any of my fans down,” he wrote. “I was really excited too. But until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there.”

He added: “I have no judgment against other artists performing in the UAE. But I do ask the question to my peers scheduled to play in Dubai: If we used our platforms to mobilize collective liberation, what could we accomplish?”

The RSF formed out of the Janjaweed fighters under the then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.

Dubai has tried to draw A-list performers in the city-state at a brand-new arena and other venues. However, performers in the past have acknowledged the difficulties in performing in the UAE, a hereditarily ruled federation of seven sheikhdoms in which speech is tightly controlled.

That includes the US comedian Dave Chappelle, who drew attention in May in Abu Dhabi when he referred to the Israel-Hamas war as a “genocide” and joked about the UAE’s vast surveillance apparatus.

South Africa’s new environment minister has said he wants to stop African penguins from going extinct by taking measures including settling a case brought by two environmental charities to stop fishing around the birds’ major colonies.

BirdLife South Africa and the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCOB) said they want an extension of no-fishing zones around six beaches and islands where the penguins breed, after failing to reach an agreement with fishing industry groups demanded by the previous minister.

African penguins face the threat of extinction by 2035 if their population continues falling at the current rate of 7.9% a year. A century ago, there were up to 1 million breeding pairs. Now there are fewer than 10,000.

Dion George, who became environment minister in early July as part of a new coalition government, said: “My objective is to ensure that the penguins do not go extinct and I think everybody has that objective in mind.

“I cannot see the benefit for the penguins of lawyers fighting in court, possibly for [a] long [time],” he said.

Conservationists and fishing industry groups have already been battling outside court for years. Among the things they disagree on is the extent to which the commercial fishing of the sardines and anchovies eaten by penguins is causing the birds’ population decline, and how far expanding no-fishing zones would arrest that fall.

Successive governments have been unable to get the two sides to come to a compromise on the trade-off between the losses to the fishing industry and those whose livelihoods depend on it, and the protection of the penguins. And, without a deal, they have been unwilling to implement the more drastic conservation measures that the environmentalists say are needed.

Alistair McInnes, who leads BirdLife South Africa’s seabird conservation work, said: “When these populations are at this sort of vulnerable level, and they are starting to dwindle, they actually become more sensitive to other random impacts.”

“If you, for instance, have a disease outbreak or [oil spill] out at sea, a disproportionate proportion of that colony will be affected,” he said. “So the sooner we can get these protections in, the better the chance the penguins can maintain their population sizes now and [have a] buffer [against] other random events.”

An “island closure experiment” was launched by the government in 2008 to try to settle the debate. The seas around four islands were closed to sardine and anchovy fishing for alternating three-year periods.

But, after more than 50 hours of meetings between two rival groups of scientists about the data, there was still no agreement. In late 2022, Barbara Creecy, the environment minister at the time, appointed a panel of international experts in a bid to break the deadlock.

Their report, published in July 2023, said that banning fishing around the breeding colonies would benefit penguin conservation, but the benefits were “small”. Fishing limits alone wouldn’t stop the penguins’ population from continuing to decline, it concluded.

Creecy said she would impose fishing bans around the colonies, but only if the conservationists and the fishing industry agreed. Since then, there have been partial bans, which the two charities have said are “biologically meaningless”. This prompted them to launch their court case, which named Creecy, two of her colleagues and two fishing industry groups as respondents. The case argues that the minister is legally mandated to implement the wider restrictions.

“Contrary to environmental NGOs’ statements in the media that the main driver is the purse-seine fishing industry, the impact of fishing [on penguin numbers] is small,” one of the respondents, the South African Pelagic Fishing Industry Association, told the Guardian earlier this year.

“As an industry, we have a responsibility to take all reasonable measures to protect penguin populations,” it said by email, adding it was committed to “having the matter resolved amicably”.

McInnes said that the “small” impact of fishing closures is still significant noting other factors affecting the penguin population, from shipping noise to predators and the climate crisis. SAPFIA previously said that the NGOs had delayed a “process that is tasked with establishing what are the main drivers causing the decline in penguin numbers”, which the NGOs’ lawyer denied.

George said he did not have an opinion yet on the science or policy of the issue, but had asked for a meeting with the fishing industry and environmental groups next week. “Lines are drawn and [there are] vested interests,” he said. “But where does that leave the penguins?”

Africa’s first batch of mpox vaccines will this week finally reach the continent, weeks after they have been made available in other parts of the world.

The 10,000 shots, donated by the US, will be used to tackle a dangerous new variant of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, after a 2022 outbreak triggered global alarm.

Vaccines have already been made available in more than 70 countries outside Africa, and the failure to provide the continent with anti-mpox shots until now displays worrying problems in the way international agencies deal with global health emergencies, medical officials and scientists warned last week.

They say that it took the World Health Organization (WHO) until this month to officially start the process needed to give African countries easy access to large quantities of vaccines via international agencies – despite the fact that the disease has afflicted people there for decades. That process could have begun years ago, they told Reuters.

Mpox is a potentially deadly infection that causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions, and spreads through close physical contact. It was declared a global health emergency by the WHO on 14 August after the new variant, known as clade Ib, began to spread from the Democratic Republic of the Congo into neighbouring African countries.

The long wait for WHO approval for international agencies to buy and distribute the vaccines has forced individual African governments and the continent’s public health agency – the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) – to instead request donations of shots from rich countries.

That cumbersome process can collapse – as it has before – if donor nations feel they should keep the vaccines to protect their own populations.

Helen Rees, a member of the Africa CDC’s mpox emergency committee, and executive director of the Wits RHI Research Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa, said to Reuters it was “really outrageous” that, after Africa struggled to access vaccines in the Covid pandemic, the continent had once again been left behind.

The Africa CDC has said that 10m doses may be needed across the continent to cope with the outbreak.

But the WHO asked vaccine manufacturers only this month to submit the information needed for the mpox shots to receive an emergency licence – the WHO’s accelerated approval for medical products. It urged countries to donate shots until the process was completed in September.

For its part, according to the New York Times, the WHO said it did not have the data it required to do a full review for approval of the vaccine, and an emergency licence process can be carried out only after a public health emergency of international concern has been declared.

African health officials have appealed to the international community not to impose travel bans on countries dealing with an outbreak of mpox, but instead to support the continent in rolling out testing and vaccinations.

There have been about 1,400 new cases and 24 deaths linked to a new variant of mpox over the past week, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Don’t punish Africa,” said Africa CDC’s head Jean Kaseya at a media briefing on Tuesday. “We hear from here and there that you want to apply travel bans … we need solidarity, we need you to provide appropriate support, this vaccine is expensive.

“I clearly request our partners to stop thinking about travel bans against Africa, that will bring us back to the unfair treatment from the Covid period and not help the world to move forward.”

On Tuesday Argentine authorities quarantined a cargo ship in the Paraná River near the inland grains port of Rosario over a suspected case of mpox onboard.

Fernando Morales, president of industry body the Argentine Naval League, said that a Liberian-flagged ship had been ordered to drop anchor in the river while a test on a crew member was carried out.

“A crew member with fever and weakness was taken to a hospital in San Nicolas. There they carried out some tests and they say that in principle it could be mpox,” Morales said, adding that the diagnosis was not yet confirmed.

Kaseya said he hoped vaccines would soon arrive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the source of an outbreak that has spread to at least three other countries.

He said there had been promising collaboration between countries and health organisations, but that he would not be satisfied with progress in tackling the outbreak until community-level testing networks had been established to ensure no cases were missed. Richer nations could help in expanding testing and procuring vaccinations, he added.

He said there had been talks with the vaccine manufacturer Bavarian Nordic to allow local production, which would help to lower the price.

The company has told Africa CDC it could provide 2m doses this year, but only if it begins to work immediately by switching focus to mpox rather than other vaccines.

It said it would begin diverting resources to mpox vaccines even before orders were placed depending on the outcome of talks with the World Health Organization (WHO).

DRC’s health minister, Roger Kamba, said on Monday that 16,700 cases and 570 deaths had been recorded this year.

Africa CDC said there needed to be more education about the spread of the disease, especially to ensure people knew that it was not only spread through sexual contact, as many believe. It can spread through close contact with an infected person.

Gay and bisexual men made up the majority of cases in the global outbreak in 2022, but children have accounted for 70% of cases DRC during latest one.

The Congolese virologist Prof Jean-Jacques Muyembe said the lessons learned from Covid-19 in terms of distancing and hygiene should be remembered, as well as ensuring people practise safe sex, as was encouraged to avoid HIV.

“We must put all this in place again and not lose from our memory what we’ve learned from past diseases, to apply it to save lives,” he said.

WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said mpox should not be compared to Covid-19, because more is known about how to contain it through surveillance, investigating cases and changing the behaviour of the communities most affected.

Most cases are in DRC, but the clade 1b variant has also been detected in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Lewis Hamilton has spoken out in support of the plight of refugees and displaced people in Africa, decrying the lack of empathy toward them in the UK. He pledged to consider what he could do to support them after an emotional visit to the continent during the Formula One summer break.

Hamilton was speaking before this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix, the first since the sport shut down for the summer, during which period the British driver travelled in Africa, visiting Senegal and Morocco and then the Maratane refugee settlement in the north of Mozambique, where he saw the work of UN refugee agency, the UNHCR.

When asked if the plight of refugees was not sufficiently recognised in the UK, the seven-time world champion was unequivocal.

“1000%. If you don’t see it and experience it or speak to someone who has been seriously affected by it, you couldn’t even imagine. We need more empathy for it for sure,” he said. “I’ve been to Africa before so it’s not the first time I have been shocked by it. It gets me working my mind. It’s great to see organisations like the UNHCR who do amazing work and so I think: ‘How can I get on board, how can I help?’ So that’s now what I am trying to do.”

The UNHCR cites Mozambique as being home to over 33,000 refugees and asylum seekers and more than 830,000 displaced people, because of conflicts and natural disasters. Hamilton, who has been outspoken on social issues including equality and diversity in the past and invested in projects to improve both in F1, said the experience had a profound effect.

“I am still digesting the trip, going to a refugee camp and seeing the work being done there, how people who are displaced are affected,” he said. “It’s one thing reading about it or being on the news but actually seeing or speaking to kids who are walking 10km to school to get an education then walking 10km back.

“They have tough lives over there and it is mostly women and children that are affected the most. There wasn’t a lot of men because they are either killed or taken in the different conflict areas. That was really heavy to see and experience.”

Hamilton also reiterated his long-held belief that it was time F1 hosted a race in Africa. “We can’t be adding races in other locations and continue to ignore Africa, which the rest of the world takes from. No one gives anything to Africa,” he said. “There’s a huge amount of work there that needs to be done. I think a lot of the world that haven’t been there don’t realise how beautiful the place is and how vast it is. Having a grand prix there would really be able to highlight how great the place is and bring in tourism and all sorts of things. So why are we not on that continent?”

On Thursday in Zandvoort, Max Verstappen also suggested he could call time on his career in Formula One when his current contract with Red Bull ends in 2028. The world champion will compete in his 200th race at this weekend’s GP, his home race, where he admitted his enjoyment of the sport would play a key role in deciding his future.

The 26-year-old driver enters the second half of the season looking to secure his fourth F1 world championship in his 10th season but was explicit that he felt the bulk of his career was already complete. When asked if he expected to compete in another 200 races he was blunt.

“No. we have passed halfway for sure,” he said. “It’s been an incredible ride. It doesn’t feel like 200, we do a lot of races now in a year so you add them quite quickly.”

The Dutchman was the youngest driver to race in F1 when he made his debut aged 17 in 2015. With the current F1 season a record 24 races amassing a further 200 meetings would take just over eight years, taking Verstappen into his early 30s, an age past which with many drivers now still race and are competitive. Hamilton is 39 years old, while Fernando Alonso is now 43, driving for Aston Martin.

Verstappen, however, insisted he would consider his options before deciding to race on beyond 2028, in four years time. “2028 is so very far away, in my mind I am not thinking about a new contract, at the moment I just want to see how it goes,” he said. “Also to see about the new regulations, if it is fun or not then in 2026 or 2027 there is a lot of time to decide what happens. So I just keep everything open. I am quite easy going about it.”

A 2,492 carat raw diamond discovered in Botswana could be the second-largest gem-quality example to be unearthed.

The Canadian mining company Lucara Diamond Corp said it had recovered the “exceptional” stone from its Karowe diamond mine, with a photo showing the hefty rough diamond sitting in the cupped palm of a hand.

The largest gem-quality diamond ever discovered was the 3,106 carat Cullinan diamond, which was mined in South Africa in 1905 when it was still a British colony and gifted to King Edward VII. It was cut up into several gems, some of which are now part of the Crown Jewels.

Lucara’s president, William Lamb, said: “We are ecstatic about the recovery of this extraordinary 2,492-carat diamond.”

Lucara did not say what the value of the “high quality” diamond was or if it could be cut into gems. Botswana’s government said it was the biggest diamond discovered in the country.

Its Karowe mine has been yielding progressively bigger stones. In 2019, Lucara dug out the 1,758-carat Sewelo diamond, then the world’s second-biggest mined diamond. Louis Vuitton bought it for an undisclosed sum, even though it was black in appearance and it was unclear how many gems could be cut from it.

The 1,111-carat Lesedi La Rona diamond, also from Karowe, was bought by a British jeweller for $53m (£40m) in 2017.

The largest diamond ever found was the black Sergio stone, which was discovered above ground in Brazil in 1895 and cut up to be used in industrial drills. Black “carbonado” stones such as the Sergio are thought to be parts of meteorites.

Russia is the world’s largest diamond producer, but most large valuable finds have been made in Botswana in recent years. The southern African country has been trying to increase its power in the industry, negotiating a progressively bigger share of stones mined by Anglo American-owned De Beers last year, in a new 10-year agreement.

Botswana’s president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, will be one of the first people to see Lucara’s new, as yet unnamed, diamond before it is shown to the world at his office, the government said.

Six African cities will have more than 10 million people by 2035, with the continent’s booming young population making it the world’s fastest urbanising region, according to a report.

Angola’s capital, Luanda, and Tanzania’s commercial hub, Dar es Salaam, will join the metropolises of Cairo, Kinshasa, Lagos and Greater Johannesburg with populations of more than 10 million, the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report on African cities.

Africa’s youthful, growing cities are seen as a boundless source of creativity and innovation, but many have also been the focus of waves of protests this year amid corruption, tax rises, a lack of jobs and political classes that are more often than not regarded as out of touch.

This fast-paced urbanisation, which will result in more than half of Africans living in towns and cities by 2035, is expected to create wealth, dynamism and business opportunities, the report says.

But, it adds: “Overcrowding, informal settlements, high unemployment, poor public services, stretched utility services and exposure to climate change are just some of the major challenges that city planners will have to grapple with.”

By 2035, on top of the six megacities, the continent will have 17 urban areas with more than 5 million people and about another 100 with more than 1 million.

Of the 100 largest cities by 2035, Addis Ababa is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 10.6%, followed by Kampala, Dar es Salaam and Abidjan at above or near 9%.

The continent’s urban population is forecast to reach almost 1 billion by 2035, up from about 650 million last year. East Africa is expected to be the region with the fastest growing urban population, followed by central Africa and west Africa.

The EIU said “megalopolises in the making” include a 370-mile (600km) stretch of west Africa’s coast from Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, east through Ghana, Togo and Benin to Lagos, in Nigeria, which “could become one of the world’s largest urban corridors by 2035”, with more than 50 million people.

Other potential megalopolises it identified centre on Cairo and Alexandria, in Egypt; Johannesburg and Pretoria, in South Africa; a “Great Lakes city hub” encompassing Nairobi, in Kenya, and Kampala, in Uganda; and clusters in Morocco and Algeria.

The UN estimates that Africa’s population will almost double in the next 30 years, to 2.2 billion. About 70% of the population is under the age of 30.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.

Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakwa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.

On and off school campuses, cybercafes were the only way for most of the population to surf the internet. Young men saved or borrowed to “buy time” as ticket slips were called, to quickly tweak letter templates and send to mass recipients, hoping for a lucky break given stark unemployment levels in Nigeria.

As telcos reduced data subscription prices and security personnel began hunting letter-writers, more scammers invested in home-based connections and pivoted to newer techniques – targeting elderly foreigners, cryptocurrency scams, business compromise emails, catfish romance scams and online Ponzi schemes – to boost success rates. And then the fast-growing scam of sextortion: the art of blackmailing people for money for sexual footage in the possession of perpetrators.

The rise in global fintechs and, consequently, multiple payment options has also widened their target reach to more people. In parts of Ghana and Nigeria, apartments turned incubator campuses called “hustle kingdoms” (HK) or academies are springing up: there, groups of young people, some as young as 13, stay and learn fraud basics.

They are increasingly inspired by an aspirational lifestyle known as “Dorime culture”, which is named after the worldwide dance music megahit Ameno Amapiano Remix, and revolves around lounges and nightclubs across Nigeria where patrons compete in the showy purchase of expensive alcohol to flaunt how wealthy and popular they are.

Titi Adesanya, director of operations for the Africa arm of the music label Empire, said: “[People] want to see their name in the lights and some beautiful girl carrying drinks walking to them and the entire club stops … human beings are inherently selfish and egotistical.”

The new dream for many youths, especially in suburban areas, is to drive flashy cars and have young girls ooh and aah their every move. That love for the spotlight has driven many into cybercrime, just like Ramon “Hushpuppi” Abbas, the Instagram influencer serving 11 years in a New Jersey prison for money laundering after targeting his victims with online scams.

But his case is not a deterrent: instead, minors keen to get started in fraud are getting creative.

“When you hear that a 12-year-old boy has been sent to jail … [it is] because they go and agree with some authorities and do age declaration [affidavits, falsely] stating that they are 18 just to enable them to open [a bank] account and put their criminal structures in place,” said Effa Okim, a director at Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in charge of Edo, Delta and Ondo states, a known axis for cybercrime.

In recent months, there has been a wave of sextortion-related arrests in Nigeria.

Two men were arrested and charged in March after an Australian teenager killed himself last year. Within days, the US attorney’s office in Michigan announced the extradition of two brothers from Lagos in another case of sextortion investigated by the FBI.

According to US law enforcement agencies, there are many perpetrators of sextortion in west Africa, especially in Nigeria and Ivory Coast. At the end of July, the tech company Meta announced the closure of 63,000 Nigerian-based Facebook accounts used for these scams, which targeted adult men primarily.

The surge in sextortion crimes led to the FBI director, Christopher Wray, flying to Abuja in June to meet Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, and discuss, among other things, partnering to combat cybercrime. That same month, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission signed a deal in conjunction with the FBI to launch a cybercrime research lab.

“[This] will significantly enhance our capabilities to prevent, detect, and prosecute financial crimes,” the EFCC chair, Olanipekun Olukoyede, said at the time.

The rise of these cybercrime academies that are breeding a “new generation of skilled individuals with malicious intent” would hurt Nigeria’s “economy, national security and international reputation”, said John Odumesi, an Abuja-based cybersecurity expert. he said the government needed to address “the cultural influences of the Dorime phenomenon and promoting alternative values” immediately.

A Kenyan man who police claim has confessed to murdering and dismembering 42 women has escaped from a Nairobi police cell, along with a dozen other detainees, police have said.

Collins Jumaisi, 33, described by police as a “vampire, a psychopath”, was arrested in July after the discovery of mutilated bodies in a dump in a slum in the Kenyan capital.

A Kenya police spokesperson, Resila Onyango, told AFP: “They escaped last night, 13 in total, including the key suspect in the dump murder case.”

She said the other 12 detainees who had also escaped from the police station were all Eritreans.

Jumaisi had appeared in a court in Nairobi on Friday, where the magistrate ordered him to be held for a further 30 days to enable police to complete their investigations.

The remains of 10 women were found in plastic bags at an abandoned quarry in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said last month.

Jumaisi was detained on 15 July near a bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football final.

The head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Mohamed Amin, said after the arrest that Jumaisi had confessed to murdering 42 women over a two-year period from 2022, and that his wife had been his first victim. “We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin said at the time.

The dumped bodies were found just 100 metres from a police station.

The state-funded KNCHR said in July it was carrying out its own investigations into the Mukuru case because “there is a need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.

Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, had also said it was looking into whether there was any police involvement or a “failure to act to prevent” the killings.

Kenyan police are often accused by rights groups of carrying out unlawful killings or running hit squads, but few have faced justice.

A Kenyan man who police claim has confessed to murdering and dismembering 42 women has escaped from a Nairobi police cell, along with a dozen other detainees, police have said.

Collins Jumaisi, 33, described by police as a “vampire, a psychopath”, was arrested in July after the discovery of mutilated bodies in a dump in a slum in the Kenyan capital.

A Kenya police spokesperson, Resila Onyango, told AFP: “They escaped last night, 13 in total, including the key suspect in the dump murder case.”

She said the other 12 detainees who had also escaped from the police station were all Eritreans.

Jumaisi had appeared in a court in Nairobi on Friday, where the magistrate ordered him to be held for a further 30 days to enable police to complete their investigations.

The remains of 10 women were found in plastic bags at an abandoned quarry in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said last month.

Jumaisi was detained on 15 July near a bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football final.

The head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Mohamed Amin, said after the arrest that Jumaisi had confessed to murdering 42 women over a two-year period from 2022, and that his wife had been his first victim. “We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin said at the time.

The dumped bodies were found just 100 metres from a police station.

The state-funded KNCHR said in July it was carrying out its own investigations into the Mukuru case because “there is a need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.

Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, had also said it was looking into whether there was any police involvement or a “failure to act to prevent” the killings.

Kenyan police are often accused by rights groups of carrying out unlawful killings or running hit squads, but few have faced justice.