April 2020

Enugu, Nigeria – Each morning, 56-year-old Clinton Kanu wakes up on a thin mattress laid on the tiled floor of his tiny flat.

He lives on the third floor of a modest apartment building in the southeastern Nigerian city of Enugu, in a flat not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

He takes a moment to look around the room. There is not much to see. A battered, rust-coloured armchair sags in the corner beside a barred window that overlooks the neighbourhood’s red dirt roads. Sunlight filters through a lace curtain, exposing the dirt caked into the textured pattern painted …

Twenty people were killed on Wednesday when a lightning strike damaged a high-voltage power line in a suburb of the Congolese capital Brazzaville, the local mayor and witnesses said.

The mayor of Kintele, Stella Mensah Sassou Nguesso, told state radio that seven bodies had been sent to a nearby morgue and another 13 to a mortuary in the capital.

An eyewitness said lightning “cut through two high-voltage cables,” electrocuting people on the ground.

“One cable fell on a house… and electrocuted three occupants,” said the eyewitness, who gave his name only as Rock.

“The other cable, which fell into a …