by Donovan McGrath
Suspicion surrounds death of US influencer Ashly Robinson in Zanzibar
(Guardian online – UK) Extract: Ashly Robinson, a US lifestyle influencer, died … while on vacation in the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar with her boyfriend, Joe McCann. Robinson’s death on 9 April, just days after her birthday and a marriage proposal from McCann, has sparked suspicion on social media, with users doubtful of the current narrative surrounding her death. No arrests have been made, and police previously said that McCann was not suspected of wrongdoing. But officials in Zanzibar released a statement … saying that McCann’s passport has been “withheld”. Robinson’s family is seeking answers into her death. The visit was supposed to be “one of the happiest of trips”, according to a statement the family issued … Instead, Robinson was “found unconscious in her villa and taken to hospital, where her death was confirmed hours later”… According to the BBC, Robinson’s parents said they had heard from McCann 11 hours after the incident that is thought to have led to her death, though with not much detail. He told them at the time that Robinson was OK. Later, Zuri Zanzibar, the hotel at which they had been staying, informed the family that Robinson was dead. . . The family told TMZ that McCann had not reached out since the initial call. The confusion around her death grew from there. Initially, Zanzibar police reported that Robinson, 31, had attempted to take her own life, according to the local outlet Mwananchi. Zanzibar’s North Unguja police chief, Benedict Mapujira, said that the couple had a misunderstanding that led to hotel management splitting them into different rooms – something the hotel did not confirm. Local police … maintain that McCann is not suspected of wrongdoing. “We cannot take legal action or detain him under these circumstances,” Mapujira said to Mwananchi. (15 April 2026)
The donation drive that became a movement: ‘If anyone’s got any kit, we’re taking some to Tanzania’
(Guardian online – UK) Extract: It began with a social media post from a 13-year-old playing in Chelsea’s academy who wanted to offer spare kit to people less fortunate than her. A decade on Malaika Meena, an established WSL2 player, finds herself sifting through more than 1,000 items collected from players, fans and coaches in the past month alone, as her family tradition of donating football boots and kit to schoolchildren in Tanzania has blossomed into a movement larger than anything she could have imagined… Meena was born in England and raised west of London but her parents were born in Tanzania and when the 23-yearold visits family in the country she usually stays with her grandma, who lives in Dar es Salaam, though her mum’s side of the family are from a more rural area in the north-east nearer to Kilimanjaro. The family have always tried to make charitable donations of football boots and Meena’s successful career has raised the profile of the operation dramatically, to the extent that she is trying to register a charity… Many tourists enjoy visiting Tanzania for spectacular safari holidays, beach trips to Zanzibar or trekking up Kilimanjaro, but last year the Global Finance Magazine listed Tanzania as the 29th-poorest country in the world. The women’s national team are 121st in Fifa’s rankings, the men 113th, but the sport is beloved by schoolchildren… Meena has dreams of expanding and helping to provide school equipment such as desks, chairs, educational resources or even decorating classrooms… Meena started playing football for her local boys’ team, Burnham Juniors, just north of Slough, and, despite initially being “very shy” and worrying that “none of the boys were passing to me,” she went on to captain that team at the age of seven. She then played for Chelsea’s academy from eight to 16, before switching to Arsenal’s youth team and moving to the US to play in the college system while studying at Wake Forest University in North Carolina… (19 May 2026)
Woman has sentence quashed by Tanzania court after a decade on death row
(Guardian online – UK) A woman with severe intellectual disabilities in Tanzania has had her conviction and death sentence quashed after spending more than a decade in prison awaiting execution. Extract continues: Lemi Limbu, now in her early 30s, was convicted of the murder of her daughter in 2015. On 4 March, a court in Shinyanga, northern Tanzania, declared she can appeal. She will face a retrial, but a date has yet to be set. Lawyers and activists have condemned her sentence, saying she should not be in prison at all. Limbu, who remains incarcerated, is a survivor of brutal and repeated sexual and domestic violence and has the developmental age of a child. Under Tanzanian and international law, Limbu should not be held criminally liable, given her intellectual disability… At her first trial, Limbu pleaded not guilty. Unable to read or write, she said she did not know the contents of a statement that police claimed she had made admitting to the murder. Her original conviction in 2015 was nullified in 2019 due to procedural errors. In 2022, she was retried and sentenced to death a second time. The court did not allow evidence to be heard from medical professionals about her intellectual disabilities or history of abuse. A clinical psychologist who evaluated her had concluded she had a severe intellectual disability and the developmental age of a 10-year-old child or younger… Growing up, Limbu lived in a household where her father beat her mother. She was repeatedly raped by men in her village and gave birth for the first time aged 15. At about 18, she married an older man and had two more children. She suffered domestic violence until she fled to another village with her youngest child, Tabu, who was about a year old. She later met Kijiji Nyamabu, an alcoholic, who told Limbu he would marry her – but he said he would never accept her baby daughter, Tabu, because he was not the biological father. Shortly afterwards, Tabu was found strangled. There were no witnesses and Nyamabu had already fled by the time Limbu brought the authorities to her daughter’s body. She was arrested in August 2011. Nyamabu was never detained. A coalition of 24 African and international human rights groups last year condemned Limbu’s sentence as part of an appeal to the African court on human and peoples’ rights to look at the plight of women on death row throughout Africa… In Tanzania, the death penalty is the mandatory sentence for murder, although no executions have been carried out since 1995. There are more than 500 people on death row in the country … (19 March 2026)
Is Samia Suluhu Hassan Africa’s most disappointing president?
(Economist online – UK) Extract: Tanzania has had dramatic ups and downs. In the 1970s the government of this east African country forced farmers into collective villages at gunpoint, causing horrific food shortages. In the 1980s it abandoned utopian socialism and the economy took off. After the cold war, it scrapped its one-party system and let others contest elections (though the ruling Party of the Revolution, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, has never lost). Political stability and better economic policies lifted living standards: since 1995 income per person has quintupled. But now the repressive regime of President Samia Suluhu Hassan threatens Tanzania’s achievements and its future. The latest whitewashing of a post-election massacre of protesters and bystanders suggests that her government does not think the country’s 70m people deserve a say in how they are ruled. When Mrs Samia first came to power in 2021, she gave many signs of being a reformer. Her predecessor, John Magufuli, had started a lurch back towards authoritarianism, erratically bullying dissidents and foreign investors. When he died, reportedly of covid-19, a virus whose presence in Tanzania he denied, he was succeeded by his vice-president, Mrs Samia. The first woman to hold the top job, she initially inspired widespread optimism. She rescinded Magufuli’s bans on opposition rallies and independent media outlets, began improving ties with investors and promised to accelerate a constitutional overhaul. Tanzania’s youthful population, though fed up with the ever-ruling party, hoped Mrs Samia would usher in a more open society. Five years on, she has dashed such hopes. After a brief flicker of tolerance, she has energetically persecuted opposition leaders and critical journalists… In October she claimed to have won 98% of the vote in a general election. That ludicrous result came after the main opposition party had been barred and its popular leader, Tundu Lissu, had been jailed on trumped-up treason charges. When Tanzanians took to the streets in protest, security forces gunned them down. . . Mrs Samia appointed a commission to investigate. On April 23rd it acknowledged that 518 people died in the clashes. But it shamelessly distorted what happened, blaming the carnage on “trained agitators”, allegedly helped and financed by unspecified “outside forces”. It went on to praise the police for their supposed restraint. The full findings remain secret, making it impossible for observers to take them seriously… She should free Mr Lissu, publish her commission’s report, allow independent investigations of the election and mend fences with her unhappy citizens. It is not too late for Tanzania to turn off the ruinous road it is racing down. (30 April 2026)
Hero rat who sniffed out over 100 land mines is honored with giant statue
(Washington Post online – USA) Extract: Although Magawa weighed less than three pounds, his impact was monumental. The African giant pouched rat sniffed out more than 100 land mines during his five-year career, saving countless lives. To honor his bravery, a seven-foot statue of Magawa was unveiled … in Cambodia, where he spent his time nose-down on high-stakes missions. Magawa died in 2022, but his legacy lives on. “Magawa was one of the best rats we’ve ever had,” said Michael Raine, a program manager in Cambodia for Apopo – a Belgium-based nonprofit that trains animals to detect land mines… Born in 2013 at Apopo’s headquarters in Tanzania, Magawa was trained as a “HeroRAT,” learning to harness his strong sense of smell to detect explosives. In 2016, he was relocated to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to begin his career, quickly rising to the top among Apopo’s rats. . . Raine said Magawa could search a field the size of a tennis court within about 20 minutes – a task that would take a human several days… Apopo trains rats using positive reinforcement, teaching them to identify chemical compounds in explosives, such as trinitrotoluene. When a rat detects a land mine, it scratches the surface, alerting its handler. The rat is then rewarded with a treat, typically a peanut or a slice of banana. Rats are well-suited to this work, Raine said, mainly due to their small size and highly developed olfactory system… Cambodia has one of the world’s highest concentrations of land mines, largely stemming from the Khmer Rouge era in 1979 and the Vietnamese occupation between 1979 and 1989… Magawa’s individual impact is remarkable, Raine said. He cleared more than 1.52 million square feet – roughly 26 football fields – and detected dozens of land mines. In 2020, Magawa became the first rat to receive the PDSA Gold Medal, which rewards animal bravery and devotion to duty… (8 April 2026)
US sanctions Tanzanian police chief over human rights violations
(Independent online – UK) Extract: The United States has sanctioned Tanzania’s police chief and barred him from entering the U.S., citing alleged human rights violations committed by the police force. The sanctions … followed a general election in October in which President Samia Suluhu Hassan won a full term with 97% of the vote after a crackdown on the opposition figures. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said … the country was reviewing its ties with Tanzania over repression and election violence. Rubio said the sanctions designation against police Senior Assistant Commissioner Faustine Jackson Mafwele was based on credible information he was involved in rights violations. “One year ago, members of the (Tanzanian police) detained, tortured, and sexually assaulted Ugandan activist Agather Atuhaire and Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi, who were in Dar es Salaam to observe the trial of opposition leader Tundu Lissu,” he said in the statement. The Ugandan and Kenyan activists were arrested and detained in Tanzania in May last year. They alleged that they were tortured by Mafwele while in detention before being abandoned near the Kenya-Tanzania border. A commission Hassan appointed to investigate postelection violence found 518 people were killed and thousands were injured. The opposition believes the casualty figures are much higher in the first major violent protests in the East African nation in decades… (22 May 2026)
Fears for press freedom as tycoon takes control of East Africa’s largest media house
(BBC News online – UK) Extract: After the acquisition … of East Africa’s biggest media outfit by a wealthy, politically well-connected businessman, questions are being asked about the future of independent journalism in the region. Every day millions of people in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda turn to one of the dozens of newspapers, TV and radio stations or digital outlets owned by the Nation Media Group (NMG) for reliable news. In countries where journalists have come under pressure from the authorities, titles such as Kenya’s Daily Nation, Tanzania’s Mwananchi or Uganda’s Daily Monitor have become the standard-bearers for trusted information. But NMG now has a new majority shareholder. Rostam Aziz, who was named Tanzania’s first dollar billionaire by Forbes in 2013 – although he has since dropped off that list – announced … that his company, Taarifa Ltd, had bought a controlling stake in the group – amounting to 54% of the business. The deal still has to get approval from media regulators in the various countries. As a former MP for Tanzania’s long-governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and someone who courts leading politicians across the region, critics have expressed concerns that Aziz might be tempted to influence NMG’s editorial output. But … at a press conference… [he] said he backed “credible and independent journalism” as being “essential for the development of our society”… Asha Abinallah, CEO of Tech and Media Convergency, a tech firm based in Tanzania … said it was “a possibility” that NMG outlets could align themselves with Kenyan and Tanzanian governments now that Aziz had bought a controlling stake… Aziz is also widely seen as close to Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan and the country’s former President Jakaya Kikwete, who are from the CCM party where he was an MP. Analysts say that these are relationships that have helped support his expanding business interests across East Africa… Born in western Tanzania in 1960 to a family who had moved from what is now Iran to East Africa more than a century ago, Aziz was educated to secondary level in his home country before studying economics at university in the UK. He returned to Tanzania and began making his money in trading before expanding his business empire into telecoms, mining and energy… Aziz is not a novice in the media business. In the late 1990s, he co-founded Mwananchi Communications, which published the Mwananchi, The Citizen and Mwanaspoti newspapers in Tanzania before the company was later acquired by NMG… Sceptics will be scrutinising whether he sticks to this commitment, but not everyone is alarmed over the change in the group’s owners… (14 March 2026)