Safaricom Ethiopia’s M-PESA mobile money platform has reached 5.2 million active users, reflecting a 258.5 per cent year-on-year surge in the quarter ended December 2025, driven by expanded interoperability and merchant adoption across the country.

The rapid growth follows M-PESA’s integration with EthSwitch in October 2025, connecting it to over 30 banks and digital wallets regulated by the National Bank of Ethiopia. This enables real-time wallet-to-bank transfers, bank-to-wallet payments and EthQR merchant transactions, expanding acceptance to more than 50,000 merchants nationwide.

Transaction values jumped 192 per cent to KSh364 million ($2.8 million) during the period, showing users shifting from peer-to-peer transfers to broader payments and commerce applications.

Safaricom Ethiopia CEO Peter Ndegwa said the expansion targets everyday economic use cases for merchants, MSMEs, enterprises and households while building toward profitability. “M-PESA expansion into more diverse everyday use cases is designed to support merchants, MSMEs, enterprises and households while maintaining a path toward profitability,” he stated.

The feline is highly sought after by wealthy collectors of wild animals, who are numerous on the Arabian Peninsula. Across the way, in the Horn of Africa, Somaliland has become the main hub of a thriving trafficking network, even as the species itself is under threat. Neptune, Enki, Anuket … The eight young cheetahs pacing in their enclosure have survived against all odds. They all bear the names of water deities because the Somaliland Coast Guard rescued them at sea in September 2025. In total, 11 cheetah cubs – three of which have since died – just a few days old, were crammed into potato sacks hidden in the hold of a dhow. While this traditional boat is usually used for fishing, in the strait separating Somalia from Yemen, it also serves as a vehicle for all kinds of trafficking, including cheetahs taken from the Horn of Africa and bound for Gulf countries. In the opulence of the Gulf petromonarchies, these trophy animals are displayed on social media as the ultimate status symbol, sometimes seated in the passenger seat of luxury cars, sometimes tethered in enormous private zoos. Le Monde

Yordanos Bezabih, an Ethiopian women’s rights activist, had faced online threats for years: of acid attacks, gang-rape and death. She tried her best to ignore the abuse as she continued her advocacy work. But in 2025, the threats became more menacing. In April, an anonymous Telegram group with 6,000 subscribers organised an effort to track down her location. They shared deepfakes of her – nude images and videos. The following month, a stranger started to film her in the streets, calling her by her social media handle. In summer, thieves broke into her house and stole her laptop. Soon after, her Telegram account was hacked and her private photos and messages were circulated on social media. The perpetrators later circulated her address, she says, demanding she be found and “executed”. … Bezabih is one of a small but growing number of feminists and women’s rights defenders who have left Ethiopia over the past two years, as online violence has become all-pervasive and uncontrolled. Three years after Facebook was accused of allowing hate speech to spread unchecked in Ethiopia, amid genocidal violence against ethnic Tigrayans during the civil war – claims rejected by Meta – social media inciters in Ethiopia have found a new target: women online. The Guardian

Rape and sexual violence remain “part of everyday life” in areas of Sudan even when fighting in the country’s civil war has moved elsewhere, according to a new report by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Calling rape a “defining feature” of the conflict, it says sexual assault is overwhelmingly carried out by armed men and is often accompanied by acts of brutality and humiliation. But MSF says rape persists as an “insidious” part of life for communities in the western region of Darfur that are no longer on the front line. The report is the most comprehensive account yet on sexual violence in Sudan’s nearly three-year war. … The warring parties – Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – are both accused of sexual violence. But Darfur is the stronghold of the RSF and the vast majority of perpetrators identified by survivors were their fighters. Many of the cases in the report took place in the conflict hotspot of North Darfur last year, following the RSF takeovers of the displaced persons camps of Zamzam and Abu Shouk, and of the city of el-Fasher in October, which MSF calls “one of the most shocking iterations, unfolding the most unimaginable brutality”. BBC