You are watching Africa 54, your daily news and feature magazine-style program, from the Voice of America. Host Esther Githui-Ewart and a team of correspondents zero in on the big stories making news on the continent and around the world with context and analysis.
Top Stories:
Government and medical officials in the United States on Tuesday are scrambling to contain a major surge of COVID-19 cases, as the death toll in the U.S. now tops 130,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world not only in terms of coronavirus deaths but total number of confirmed cases, with 2.9 million.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's order allowing travel in and out of Nairobi, Mombasa and Mandera counties went into effect Tuesday. Kenyatta says, “the relaxing of travel restrictions should not be taken lightly, and people should avoid reckless behavior.” The president also announced that international flights will resume beginning August first. Kenyatta, however, extended the nationwide 9pm to 4am curfew 30 days.
South Africa’s market theater is one of several African cultural institutions that has recently gone entirely online because of coronavirus restrictions that prevent large gatherings. But for this small institution often known as the "theater of the struggle" for its flouting of apartheid-era laws, obstacles are nothing new. Now, they hope their artistic message -- which touches on local and global events -- will resonate beyond the continent.
Across the United States, many young people are speaking out on social justice issues by taking to the streets to march in protests. This generation of digital natives is also active online, capitalizing on various social media and digital tools to organize and mobilize their peers. During the pandemic, Tiktok, Twitter and Snapchat are proving to be effective in rallying the younger generation.
Companies such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, Ford and Lego are boycotting Facebook this month, pulling ads that appear on the social network in the United States. Some advertisers are part of an organized boycott demanding the company do more to crack down on hate speech, conspiracies and misinformation on its site, on topics such as voting.
A54 Health: The first human trials for a potential vaccine against COVID-19 is ongoing in South Africa, the research is by Oxford University. Clinical trials are studies performed by researchers primarily to find out, among other things, if a new treatment, like a drug or vaccine is safe and effective in people. To find out more about the process of clinical trials in Africa and their safety, Africa 54 health correspondent Linord Moudou spoke with Dr. Bartholomew Dicky Akanmori, regional adviser for regulations of vaccines with the World Health Organization's regional office for Africa and in charge of the secretariat of the African Vaccine Regulatory Forum.
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