Global News by Region: Africa
ISEYIN, NIGERIA – Bamidele Alhazan, who is in her 70s, is sitting on a mat with her legs stretched out in front of her in her house in Iseyin, a city in southwestern Nigeria.
Alhazan is growing old. Not only have wrinkles nestled in around her eyes, but her traditional marks are also fading.
DIKOME BALUE, CAMEROON – James Elangwe, 87, is a native of Dikome Balue. Dikome Balue is one of the 28 villages that make up the Balue tribe in the Ndian division of Cameroon’s Southwestern province.
Of the 10 tribes that make up the Oroko community in Cameroon, the Balue is the only clan that practices matrilineality, the practice whereby inheritance passes through the female line.
NAIROBI, KENYA – It is 2:30 p.m. in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. The sun is vengefully hot, and foreheads are polka-dotted with sweat droplets.
A 5-foot-5-inch figure wearing a green and white checkered dress, matching socks and a red sweater approaches from the shade. With each step the shadowy figure takes, the bright sunshine reveals the face of a smiling young girl. She cradles a wooden box in her sturdy arms like a newborn.
MBERENGWA, ZIMBABWE – Phineas Moyo, 31, works in a small mine and as a farmer in Mberengwa, a district in southern Zimbabwe. He is married and has two children.
His wife is pregnant with their third child. She is a housewife and also takes care of the family vegetable garden for household consumption.
KAMPALA, UGANDA – Nancy Acieng stands outside the door of Pride Microfinance Limited, a bank in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. A fairly educated woman, she works hard to earn money selling fresh food and fruit from a roadside stall.
She says her hard work used to go to waste because her husband routinely stole her ATM card and withdrew the contents of her account. But thanks to the bank’s new security measure that requires customers’ fingerprints to withdraw money, she now has full control over her finances.
ARGENTINA, KASHMIR, KENYA AND NEPAL – May 1 marks International Workers’ Day, or May Day. It is a public holiday in some countries in honor of the international labor movement and an unofficial holiday in many others. Global Press Institute senior reporters from four news desks use the occasion to highlight traditional and unique jobs in their regions.
KIGALI, RWANDA – It’s Friday afternoon at Groupe Scolaire St. André, a secondary school in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. Students are headed home for the three-week spring holiday.
Clad in white shirts, khaki skirts and trousers with yellow sweaters, the nearly 700 students, who range in age from 11 to 20, gather excitedly. They talk and wave their newly received report cards.