At St Michael’s Hospital in Donomanga, Chad, a team of health professionals, co-ordinated by the Mexican Comboni Missionary Brother and medical doctor, Juan Carlos Salgado, does everything possible to ensure that patients are treated with respect and professionalism, healing them and helping them to have hope. We went to visit the Hospital. We left Laï,…
After the initiation ceremony (Anfura-la) or the passage from adolescence to youth, the young Kunama sets out to find a girl to marry. This phase is also marked by some rites, such as that of engagement (Sussa-ma). Among the Kunama, young people are free to choose the girlfriend they want and girls are equally free…
When the Kunama are asked: ‘Ayshila mekobino?’, they reply: ‘Ánnala’la makobinke’ (we believe in God). The word ‘Anna’ (God) comes from the word ‘Annena’ (in Kunama it means creator). The Kunama believe in Anna (God) who created the heavens and the earth. For them, God lives far away, up there in the universe, and no…
The life of the Kunama, from birth to old age – and even after death, is a tapestry of traditional rites and ceremonies handed down from the ancient fathers (ande) and scrupulously observed. The first of these rites is the celebration of the Isata Olà, (Gettng out), the purification of the mother after childbirth (dagosa)…
An initiative of the Huruma Self-Help Group, it makes credit accessible to that segment of the population excluded from formal economic circuits. It all started in the Christian communities of Kariobangi, a suburb of Nairobi. In 1991 Verona Huruma Savings and Credit Cooperative (VH Sacco) was founded, an informal savings group made up of 15…
The political instability seen before, the ethnic tensions both in the country and in the region, the collapse of the institutions in some of the neighbouring countries (first Mali then Burkina Faso) and other factors created the conditions for an increase of the terrorist risk in Ivory Coast Jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda or…
Competing for the continent are the French Groupe Castel and the Dutch Heineken. An informal economy strongly rooted not only in the villages but also in the big cities, slow and insufficiently extensive distribution channels for goods, and low purchasing power on the part of the local populations are the three factors that in recent…
In the eastern regions of the country, strong presence of Wagner paramilitaries, arms traffickers, and former soldiers of the Foreign Legion. Former soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces, veterans of the French Foreign Legion, businessmen engaged in arms trafficking and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are used as a front to finance rebel militias. It looks like…
The revelation that 2.5 tonnes of uranium were missing from a warehouse in Southern Libya, by the International Atomic Energy Agency provides one more example of the damaging consequences of the 2011 attack by NATO to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. In 2016, President Barrack Obama admitted that this Libyan episode was the worst mistake of…
The upcoming World Synod of Bishops and its preparations in synodal processes around the world show how the signs of the times challenge the Church today in the light of the Gospel. We can no longer hide the great general problems currently shaking it. Sr. Anne Béatrice Faye, Senegalese, a religious of the Congregation of…
A leading country in West Africa, Ivory Coast has weaknesses that could not only block economic development but also lead to turmoil. The consequences of two civil wars fought in the past decades are still felt and the leadership, who is responsible for these wars, has not yet implemented measures that could avoid the troubles…
Ingoma Nshya is the country’s first female percussion troupe. Reconciliation, healing and peace are part of the group journey. We went to meet them. About 125 kilometres south of Kigali, and after an endless sequence of hills, is Huye. With nearly 320,000 inhabitants, until 2013 it housed the oldest university in the country. Here you…
In Burkina Faso, the ‘Mother of the Sahel’ brings education and hope to forcibly displaced children.
As conflict forced thousands of children to flee to the…