Following a visit to Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a senior United Nations humanitarian official has called on the international community to pay more attention to the dire needs of its residents.

“These two countries are most definitely not in the political and funding spotlight in the way they need to be,” John Ging, Operations Director of the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told journalists at the UN Headquarters in New York.

In the DRC, the humanitarian community has appealed for $690 million for this year, which is only 22 per cent funded, he added. Without additional funding, the capacity of aid organizations to operate will be hampered.

Meanwhile, some 1.8 million people are displaced from their homes, and 7.5 million people are in need of critical life-saving assistance, according to the latest UN figures presented at the briefing.

In addition, about half of the population lacks access to safe drinking water on a regular basis, which means greater exposure to water-borne diseases, such as cholera. While about 4.5 million people are food insecure, with about half of all children under the age of five malnourished.

Insecurity is another key concern in the country, for the 12.4 million people living in conflict-affected areas, and for the aid workers trying to assist them. The DRC has one of the highest numbers of security incidents against aid workers in the world.

Despite these challenges, there is a heightened sense of responsibility for ownership on the part of Government and local authorities, Mr. Ging said.

In Angola, 1.4 million people have been directly affected by El Niño, Mr. Ging said, adding that malnutrition is going up at an alarming rate.

On the yellow fever outbreak, the country is struggling to get the disease under control due to the limited vaccination coverage, he said. “This is a disease that should not affect anyone in 2016 because there is vaccination,” he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Angola’s Ministry of Health are conducting a campaign to vaccinate 19 million people, but only 12.7 million doses are available, he said. The yellow fever can be transmitted by mosquitos, he said, noting that China reported cases from some migrant workers who returned home.

The country also needs help as it is dealing with El Niño effect, yellow fever and the falling prices of oil, whose export accounts for a large portion of the country’s income, he said.

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The Nation Media Group, the largest media organization in East and Central Africa that also has interests in Uganda, is closing the operations of KFM in Kigali, while also scaling down on the operations of Kenya-based Nation FM and QFM.

In a release dated June 30 titled ‘transforming for a stronger future, nation media group embarks on implementing a new direction’ the NMG says it is changing strategy to meet 21^st century standards, by concentrating on the digital component of media.

‘In the past few months we have embarked on a new strategic direction that ensures we secure our current business and position the organization in future,’ the release signed by Clifford Machoka, the NMG Head of Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, states in part.

According to Mr Machoka, all employees that have been affected by the changes will be remunerated in accordance with the law.

‘We do recognize that today’s announcement will be difficult for the affected employees and their families. The exercise will be carried out with due respect to our employees and within the Kenyan laws. We will strive to provide all the necessary support to help them manage through this transition,’ the NMG release adds.

The Nation Media Group is owned the HH Aga Khan and in Uganda it owns the Daily Monitor, KFM and Dembe media outlets, where its radio stations are/were popular for shows like Andrew Mwenda and Patrick Kamara’s Hot Seat running from Monday to Friday, and the defunct Hard Talk on Saturday that was hosted by Chris Obore, the current Director of Communication in Parliament.

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The Lords Resistance Army (LRA) has been linked to a new rebel group in South Sudan that allegedly has an Islamist extremist agenda.

According to South Sudan Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, the LRA that is led by Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony is also collaborating with a pro-government Islamic Sudan group known as the Janjaweed, which has wracked havoc in the Darfur region since 2003.

By press time it was not possible to get comment from the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) spokesperson Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, about the LRA’s involvement in rebellion in Uganda’s northern neighbour.

However, available information indicates that the LRA, which previously received support from the Sudan before 2005, is now operating in the jungles of the Central Africa Republic (CAR), from where its fighters make incursions into the neighbouring countries in search of food and also to carry out forced recruitment, mostly of children.

Meanwhile, Lueth said the new South Sudan rebel group is led by ‘veteran’ politician Ali Tamim Fartak, and that it is behind the recent attacks in Wau, in which dozens of people have been killed.

Talk about the emergence of a new rebel group in South Sudan comes a few months after President Salva Kiir and his nemesis-cum-First Vice President Riek Machar formed a unity government, after their forces fought a bitter two-year civil war that left thousands dead and over a million people displaced.

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The first US Ambassador to Somalia since the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident got his start in world affairs by staring at a map of Africa in a classroom at Williamsville South High School.

“In ninth grade, I had a class in Afro-Asian cultures, taught by Karen Willyoung,” recalled Stephen M. Schwartz, a career diplomat who took the oath of office Monday as the first U.S. ambassador since 1991 to serve in Somalia, one of Africa’s most volatile countries. “There was something about it that really inspired me, and I was quite interested in learning about all these parts of the world.”

So he did it, in person, first in the Peace Corps and then in a 24-year career with the US Foreign Service that has largely found Schwartz toggling between Washington and various African countries.

And next month, Schwartz, 58, leaves for the challenge of his career: representing US interests in a country that spent the better part of two decades without a government, a country best known in America for a book and movie that told the story of the deaths of 18 American service members there in 1993, a country where the terrorist group Al-Shabaab killed 15 people in an attack in the capital only last weekend.

It’s a challenge that Steve Schwartz is most certainly up for, said two very disparate sources: Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, and Karen Willyoung.

Blinken heaped praise on Schwartz during Monday’s swearing-in ceremony, saying he was chosen for the post in Somalia after excelling at every position he has held at the State Department and its embassies around the world.

“Steve makes people feel listened to, looked at and lifted up,” Blinken said.

In the meantime, Willyoung – now 73, retired and living in Clarence – recalled Schwartz as ‘a very good student’ who dutifully memorized that map of Africa and who showed an unusual curiosity about the world beyond Buffalo.

Now, though Schwartz will have to work through a thicket of difficulties as he re-establishes an American presence in a country where the last US Embassy closed – and its diplomats fled by helicopter – amid a civil war in 1991. By late 1992, the civil war combined with a drought to cause mass starvation, which prompted then-President George H W Bush to provide military security and logistical support for the UN humanitarian aid mission.

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