Jozef Naudts

Today marks five years since the start of the Tigray War.

I remember as if it were yesterday. The faces of those who lost their lives remain vivid.

Still asking myself what we could have done differently.

www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-...

Very interesting ideas by Bill Gates on fighting climate change and prioritizing human development! @billgates.bsky.social

Niet de humanitaire, maar de zakelijke belangen van het Westen bepalen de reactie op gruwelijkheden in Soedan, ziet correspondent Joost Bastmeijer Met de verovering van een legerhoofdkwartier in de Soedanese stad El Fasher door de RSF-paramilitairen heeft de burgeroorlog in het land een nieuw hoogtepunt bereikt. El Fasher was het laatste bolwerk...

De eerste verschrikkelijke video’s die uit El Fasher komen, doen de vrees over een nieuwe etnische massaslachting sterk toenemen. Ik vertelde aan Yassin Boutayeb wat we hier in Port Soedan meekrijgen van de inname van deze belangrijke stad in Darfur: www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/n...

VN belegt spoedvergadering na massaslachting in Soedanees ziekenhuis: "460 mensen geëxecuteerd door RSF" | VRT NWS: nieuws De VN-Veiligheidsraad heeft een spoedvergadering belegd over de situatie in Soedan, nadat steeds meer details naar buiten komen over wreedheden van de Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Volgens hulporganisat...

www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/20...

📍 Sudan | We are deeply saddened by the killing of five Sudanese Red Crescent Society volunteers in Bara, North Kordofan. Humanitarian workers must never be a target. Our hearts are with their families, colleagues, and all those they served with compassion and courage.

Sudan |We are deeply saddened by the killing of five Sudanese Red Crescent Society volunteers in Bara, North Kordofan.

Humanitarian workers must never be a target. Our hearts are with their families, colleagues, and all those they served with compassion and courage. ms.spr.ly/63324t8NCe

Soudan : l’insupportable passivité internationale face à la tragédie Alors que que la prise de la ville d’El-Fasher par les paramilitaires, dans la région du Darfour, constitue une nouvelle escalade dans la guerre fratricide qui ravage le pays, aucune des grandes puissances qui se disent officiellement préoccupées par le sort des Soudanais n’a jamais demandé le moindre compte à ceux qui entretiennent le chaos.

Soudan : l’insupportable passivité internationale face à la tragédie

'Trapped and terrified': Genocide warnings after RSF's Darfur advance Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim they've seized the Sudanese army's last base in El Fasher, Darfur - trapping hundreds of thousands and stoking fears the country could split in two.

Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim they've seized the Sudanese army's last base in El Fasher, Darfur - trapping hundreds of thousands and stoking fears the country could split in two.

Grave fears for civilians after Sudanese paramilitary claims capture of El Fasher RSF says it has seized control of army’s main base in Darfur, home to famine-stricken displacement camp Fears are growing for hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El Fasher after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said it had captured the city, which it has been besieging for more than a year in Sudan’s civil war. The group said on Sunday that it had seized control of the army’s main base in the city in Darfur, where famine was declared in a displacement camp last year. It then released a statement saying it had “extended control over the city of El Fasher from the grip of mercenaries and militias”. Continue reading...

Grave fears for civilians after Sudanese paramilitary claims capture of El Fasher

The exodus out of Tigray Young people are leaving en masse – and don’t know if they’ll ever come back.

In 2024, the IOM tracked 446,000 people leaving the Horn of Africa via the “Eastern route”, crossing into Yemen to reach the Arabian Gulf. Ninety-six percent were Ethiopian, and a third of those were Tigrayan – although Tigrayans make up only 6% of Ethiopia’s population.

Mulatu Astatke, le père de l’éthio-jazz, toujours en mission à 81 ans Le musicien revisite dans son dernier album son répertoire et continue de se battre pour faire reconnaître la contribution de l’Ethiopie à la musique mondiale.

Mulatu Astatke, le père de l’éthio-jazz, toujours en mission à 81 ans

Sudan is bleeding in silence: A humanitarian crisis the world cannot ignore The armed conflict in Sudan seems to be one of the world's most forgotten civil wars. The reigning silence surrounding this conflict plunges the population into daily turmoil.

globalvoices.org/2025/07/26/s...

Sudan 🇸🇩 MAP UPDATE: the situation in Sudan as of 01/10/2025.

-This past month the SAF achieved some critical victories in northern Kordofan, seizing control of Bara and pushing the RSF further away from the city of El Obeid. But the RSF assault on El Fasher has only intensified

The Continent 27 SEPTEMBER 2025 | ISSUE 215 15 INVESTIGATION The Djiboutian massacre Ethiopia won’t acknowledge Djibouti drones killed eight people on the other side of its border with Ethiopia. Djibouti claimed they were terrorists. Ethiopia said nothing. This investigation found that some of the dead were Ethiopians, revealing another episode in Addis’s tendency to let its neighbours kill its citizens with impunity. Crossing the line: Djibouti’s bombs landed inside Ethiopia, killing civilians – not armed fighters. zecharias zelalem On 30 January this year, a drone manned from Djibouti dropped a bomb on a funeral gathering in Siyaru, a remote, semi-arid village near the Ethiopia Djibouti border. As rescuers rushed in, a second bomb dropped. And then a third. At least eight people were killed, including three children. Several others were injured. Given the village’s remoteness, the incident might have gone unreported if graphic images of the dead hadn’t spread across Ethiopian social media. A statement from the Djibouti’s defence ministry said the drone struck rebel fighters from the Front for the

Restoration of Unity and Democracy (Frud), a Djiboutian political party with a military wing. It has been fighting for Afar interests in Djibouti since the 1990s. The Afar are a community split by the colonial border separating Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. “Eight terrorists were neutralised on site,” said a Djibouti military statement. “Unfortunately, collateral damage among Djiboutian civilians in the area has been documented.” International media, including Voice of America, Agence France Presse, and Radio France Internationale reported this version of events. Now, new findings from an open In recovery: Mariam Mohammed Abdullah was injured in the drone strike. source investigation by The Continent reveal a different reality. The bombs landed inside Ethiopia, not in Djibouti, and civilians – not armed fighters – were killed. That distinction matters. It shows Ethiopia is once again tolerating a foreign military targeting its own citizens, as it did with Eritrea during the Tigray conflict. A transparent lie Even before the ink could dry on the Djiboutian military’s statement, The Addis Standard and human rights groups in Djibouti were emphatic that the strike had actually occurred inside Ethiopia’s Afar region. But Alexis Mohamed, an adviser to Djiboutian President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, rubbished these reports in now-deleted social media posts. The Continent got to work to figure out what really happened. Over the course of eight months, we collected eyewitness testimonies, interviewed human rights activists in Ethiopia and Djibouti, and examined images and footage from the strike. Our findings align with those of Djiboutian activists, who pinpointed Siyaru in Ethiopia’s Afar region as the site of the strike. The ammunition residue found on the night of the strike confirms the bomb was manufactured by Roketsan, a state run weapons manufacturer in Türkiye. Former US army explosives expert Trevor Ball identified t…

THREAD: this investigation took up over half my year, but it's here in @thecontinent.org:
A Djiboutian drone strike in January was depicted as a army operation targeting rebels. It was actually a massacre of civilians. The bloodshed & coverup implicating Ethiopia, Djibouti, France & Turkiye.
#OSINT

Measuring mortality is getting even harder in Africa One estimate puts deaths in the war in Tigray at 5,325; another at 600,000

In many African armed conflicts, estimates of fatalities differ widely, including in #Sudan and regarding the war in Northern #Ethiopia 2020-22. While numbers matter, it is important not to present sometimes mere guesses at the same level as mortality studies.
www.economist.com/middle-east-...

Debate: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Ethiopians view the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as a development right long denied by colonial-era rules. Egyptians call it an existential threat.

Debate: Ethiopians view the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as a development right long denied by colonial-era rules. Egyptians call it an existential threat. We asked a contributor from each country to weigh in.

Vanishing returns: Sudan’s ‘disappearing’ crisis Thousands of people have gone missing without a trace in Sudan’s war, exacerbating a decades-old pattern that leaves their families trapped between hope and despair.

Thousands of people have gone missing without a trace in Sudan’s war, exacerbating a decades-old pattern that leaves their families trapped between hope and despair.

Fantastic show yesterday evening by Mulatu Astatke, the father of the #Ethiojazz, at the Ancienne Belgique Concert Hall in Brussels! What an honour to be able to listen to Mulatu and his band of world class jazz musicians!

A boat capsized yesterday (Friday) in DR Congo, killing at least 86 people. In the past 5 years, boat disasters have killed at least 646 in DR Congo, the deadliest for boat tragedies over this period, compared to about 250 in Bangladesh, nearly 200 in Indonesia, and about 150 in the Philippines.

Happy New Year to all Ethiopian friends! May the new year 2018 EC bring lots of peace and happinness!

Ethiopië opent controversiële megadam, tot onvrede van Soedan en Egypte

Ethiopië opent controversiële megadam, tot onvrede van Soedan en Egypte

Burundi zet directeur Belgische ontwikkelingshulp het land uit omdat hij kritisch nieuwsartikel deelde Burundi geeft de landendirecteur van het Belgische ontwikkelingsagentschap Enabel 48 uur de tijd om het land te verlaten. De reden: de directeur deelde een nieuwsartikel over brandstoftekorten via sociale media. Belgisch buitenlandminister Prévot noemt het een “disproportionele maatregel”.

www.standaard.be/buitenland/b...

Burundi expulses Country Director of Belgian Development Agency #Enabel after reposting article published by @thecontinent.org

Market in Gondar, Ethiopia
ca. 1936-41

#archivesxt

"People have had to move once, twice, three times. Every time people are forced to flee, there’s a psychological impact, a loss of livelihoods, and a loss of property. This is the tragedy of Sudan: not a single Sudanese person today can say they haven’t been affected by conflict.”

📍 Sudan | Armed conflict has forced millions of people to flee again and again, each time leaving behind homes, relatives, and a sense of security.

Daniel Gerard O’Malley, ICRC head of delegation in Sudan, shares 👇🏽

Est de la RDC : une enquête de l’ONU relève de possibles crimes de guerre de toutes les parties Malgré l’accord de paix des gouvernements congolais et rwandais, signé en juin à Washington, la violence persiste entre le groupe armé antigouvernemental M23, soutenu par le Rwanda, et l’armée congolaise ou ses affiliés.

Est de la RDC : une enquête de l’ONU relève de possibles crimes de guerre de toutes les parties

House construction

ca. 1938
Kano, Nigeria
-Quai Branly
#archivesxt

#DRC: Health authorities have declared an outbreak of #Ebola Virus Disease in the Bulape health zone, Kasaï province.

As of Sept. 4, 28 suspected cases have been reported, with 16 fatalities, including 4 health workers.

A devastating landslide wipes out a village in Sudan's Darfur, killing more than 1,000 people A devastating landslide has wiped out a village in Sudan's Darfur region, killing at least 1,000 people.

BREAKING: At least 1,000 people killed in Sudan after a landslide wipes out a village in Darfur, rebel group controlling the area says.

The cover of The Continent (30 August 2025, Issue 211) is a cartoon illustration by Gado. It shows an old, broken-down bus painted in Burundi’s national colors (red, green, and white), with a Burundian flag at the front. The bus is overloaded with an enormous, unstable pile of goods on its roof — suitcases, sacks, baskets, furniture, bicycles, even a skull. Inside the cramped bus, passengers look weary and squashed. The bus sits propped up on bricks instead of wheels, symbolising that it can’t move. Next to it, a smiling man is holding a yellow jerrycan of fuel, as if about to pour it in. The headline at the bottom reads: “The country that’s run out of fuel.”

All Protocol Observed

Welcome to Issue 211 of The Continent.

Fuel’s been scarce in Burundi since 2018, thanks to political unrest. Now, people are risking bullets, crocodiles, even prison just to fill up.

Get your copy here: bit.ly/211_TC

Bagamoyo, Tanzania
ca. 1907
#archivesxt

-University Library Frankfurt am Main

China Pours Exports Into Africa Faster Than Anywhere Else China’s exports to Africa so far in 2025 are more than in the whole of 2020 and on track to exceed $200 billion for the first time. Although the trading relationship shows no sign of becoming less lo...

China’s trade with Africa is booming, as barriers rise elsewhere. Total exports to the continent are expected to pass the $200 billion mark this year for the FIRST TIME.