NANA AKUFO-ADDO

Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta said Thursday that Africa is at a crossroads, poised on one hand to reap the economic benefits of its youthful population and economic reforms but facing the spread of terrorism and insurgency on the other that are challenging almost all 54 nations on the continent. Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo pointed to multiple threats to the territorial integrity of some African countries, many civilians facing serious threats, and instability in some nations complicated by the interests of different actors not only within conflict areas but also from outside the continent. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also cited “worrying trends” in Africa -- too many countries where the military has seized power and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic which has exacerbated “poverty, inequalities and all the drivers of conflict.”

Thousands of new coronavirus cases have been reported in West Africa in recent weeks amid low vaccination rates and the spread of the delta variant.

Mali's military has released the transitional president and prime minister Moctar Ouane from detention Thursday May 27, 2021, after they resigned from their respective posts. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited)ACCRA, Ghana — (AP) — Leaders of the West African regional bloc gathered in Ghana for an emergency summit on Mali in response to the latest political crisis that threatens the stability of the country, Ghana's president said Sunday. Their arrests Monday by the military took place hours after a new Cabinet was named the left out two major military leaders. The transitional government was set up with Goita as transitional vice president. The African Union and ECOWAS were in Mali for mediations when N’Daw and Ouane resigned.

West African leaders have suspended Mali from their regional bloc over what they say amounted to a coup last week.

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 20, 2011 file photo, the African Union envoy to Somalia, Jerry Rawlings, inspects a guard of honour of African Union peacekeepers, during a visit to displaced persons camps in southern Mogadishu, Somalia. Ghana's former president Jerry Rawlings, who staged two coups and later led the West African country's transition to a stable democracy, has died aged 73, according to the state's Radio Ghana and the president Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 20, 2011 file photo, the African Union envoy to Somalia, Jerry Rawlings, inspects a guard of honour of African Union peacekeepers, during a visit to displaced persons camps in southern Mogadishu, Somalia. Ghana's former president Jerry Rawlings, who staged two coups and later led the West African country's transition to a stable democracy, has died aged 73, according to the state's Radio Ghana and the president Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)ACCRA – Ghana’s former president Jerry Rawlings, who staged two coups and later led the West African country's transition to a stable democracy, has died, according to the state’s Radio Ghana and the president. President Nana Akufo-Addo said that Rawlings died Thursday morning at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in the capital, Accra, where he had been receiving treatment after a short illness. They have three daughters: Zanetor Rawlings, Yaa Asantewaa Rawlings, Amina Rawlings; and one son, Kimathi Rawlings.

Many world leaders at this week's virtual U.N. summit hope it will be a vaccine made available and affordable to all countries, rich and poor. Many world leaders at this week’s virtual U.N. summit hope it will be a vaccine made available and affordable to all countries, rich and poor. “Are people to be left to die?” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a COVID-19 survivor, said of the uncertain way forward. This week's speeches make clear that such questions have existential meaning. But whether this week’s impassioned speeches at the U.N. will make any difference, Madhi said, is still “difficult to tell."

Member state flags fly outside the United Nations headquarters during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020. This year's annual gathering of world leaders at U.N. headquarters will be almost entirely "virtual." (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)TANZANIA – World leaders gathering remotely Wednesday criticized a haphazard global response to a microscopic virus that has unleashed economic havoc and taken nearly 1 million lives in its march across the globe. In the words of Kazakhstan’s president, it was “a critical collapse of global cooperation.”“Our world has been turned upside down,” said Ghana's president, Nana Akufo-Addo. Switzerland's President Simonetta Sommaruga, one of the few women leaders to speak, said the pandemic “has caused untold suffering in the world," with the most vulnerable hit hardest.

FILE - In this Monday, June 29, 2020, file photo, men in face masks walk past a hair product billboard on the street in Soweto, South Africa. The coronavirus pandemic has fractured global relationships as governments act in the interest of their citizens first, but John Nkengasong, Africa's top public health official, has helped to steer the continent's 54 countries into an alliance praised as responding better than some richer nations. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)

While the U.S. surpassed 200,000 COVID-19 deaths and the world approaches 1 million, Africa's surge has been leveling off. Experts caution that data collection in many African countries is incomplete, and Nkengasong warned against complacency, saying a single case can spark a new surge. Nkengasong urges African countries not to wait for help and rejects the image of the continent holding a begging bowl. When the pandemic began, just two African countries could test for the coronavirus. Less than half of Africa's countries have access to modern health care facilities, he said.

People hold a banner showing Col. Assimi Goita, leader of the junta which is now running Mali and calls itself the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, outside a conference in Bamako, Mali, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020. Leaders of Mali's military junta who deposed the West African country's president last month are meeting with political parties and civil society groups to outline a transition to a civilian government and, ultimately, elections.

(AP Photo)ABURI – West African leaders have emphasized that Mali’s junta should nominate civilian transitional leaders within days to lead the nation toward elections, Ghana’s president said following a regional summit. Six leaders from the West African regional economic bloc, ECOWAS, met with Mali's junta Tuesday in Ghana, whose president now serves as the bloc’s new chairman. They agreed the junta must install a civilian president and vice president. ECOWAS insisted that the transitional leaders must be civilians, rejecting the junta’s suggestion that the leaders could come from the military. Those sanctions could be lifted once a transitional civilian government is in place, it said in its Tuesday statement.

The latest talks on the Mali crisis came after the 15-nation regional bloc known as ECOWAS met in neighboring Niger and tapped Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo as its new chairman. However, the military junta already says it wants to rewrite the country's constitution first, proposing instead a three-year transition with an election in 2023. ECOWAS, backed by former colonial power France, has said that is out of the question. West African leaders fear that protracted political chaos could further destabilize Mali, which has been battling an Islamic insurgency with international help since 2013. The jihadists though have regrouped in the surrounding rural areas, and have continued to launch scores of attacks on U.N. peacekeepers and the Malian military.

A lab technician works during research on coronavirus, COVID-19, at Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceutical in Beerse, Belgium, Wednesday, June 17, 2020. Janssen Pharmaceutical hopes to begin clinical trials on a potential vaccine for COVID-19 in the middle of the summer. Worldwide, about a dozen potential COVID-19 vaccines are in early stages of testing. In a briefing Tuesday, senior Trump administration officials said there will be a tiered system to determine who in America is offered the first vaccine doses. GAVI and partners have inked a $750 million deal with AstraZeneca to supply 400 million doses by the end of 2020.

Hong Kong Disneyland, which has been closed since January due to the coronavirus pandemic, will reopen with limited visitor capacity. ___BEIJING China has reported 49 new confirmed coronavirus cases as the capital Beijing reinstated measures to contain a new outbreak. ___ACCRA, Ghana Ghanas president says Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang-Manu is being treated for COVID-19 at a hospital. In a state broadcast Sunday night, President Nana Akufo-Addo said the health minister had contracted the virus in his line of duty leading the West African nations fight against COVID-19. If the health minister is contracting the disease, what is the guarantee that my son will be safe? said Peter Owusu, whose son studies at the University of Cape Coast.

But leaders of traditional allies of the United States have taken pains to avoid criticizing Trump directly. But at the top, the leaders of traditional allies of the United States have taken pains to avoid criticizing Trump directly, walking a fine line to reconcile international diplomacy with domestic outrage. German Chancellor Angela Merkel sidestepped questions from ZDF public television about Trump last week, saying the killing of Floyd was "really, really terrible. Trump, he has, amongst many other things, he is president of the United States, which is our most important ally in the world today, Johnson said. I share and stand in solidarity with the demonstrations that are taking place in the United States, he said.

South Africa will began a phased easing of its strict lockdown measures on May 1, although its confirmed cases of coronavirus continue to increase. In South Africa, which has the continent's highest number of reported cases at 5,350, community health workers continued testing in Johannesburg. The Ghana Health Service reported 403 new cases, bringing the total to 2,074. The spike was announced 10 days after President Nana Akufo-Addo eased a three-week lockdown in the capital of Accra and in the city of Kumasi. Adwoa Nyarku said she used to earn about $100 a week cleaning houses in the capital of Accra, where 89% of the country's confirmed cases have been reported.

Many countries evacuated citizens from Wuhan after the virus outbreak started there, but thousands of students from African countries have been left behind. Despite pleas with governments for evacuation, several African countries have said it's safer to stay in place. More than 4,000 African students have been estimated to be in Wuhan, a result of China's push to expand its influence on the youthful African continent. That leaves African students stuck on ever-emptier campuses in Wuhan, worrying about running out of food or the money to buy it. At least 70 Ugandan students are stranded in Wuhan.