Thousands of white South Africans, predominantly Afrikaners aged between 25 and 45, have expressed interest in relocating to the United States following a recent executive order by President Donald Trump.
The order offers refugee status to those claiming racial discrimination in South Africa, particularly in light of new land reform laws allowing expropriation without compensation.
Neil Diamond, head of the South African Chamber of Commerce in the U.S., reported that over 67,000 individuals have registered interest through their platform.
While the U.S. embassy in Pretoria has acknowledged the surge in inquiries, it emphasizes that applicants must follow official asylum procedures
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) began on Tuesday the withdrawal of its peacekeeping forces from the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)through Rwanda.
Local media sources in Rwanda reported seeing SADC forces moving several trucks of soldiers and equipment from Goma in North Kivu province through Rwanda.
Reports indicate that the convoy will travel to Chato in north-western Tanzania before repatriation to various countries.
“Our orders say by May 30, everyone and everything needs to be out of Goma and on its way. It was chaos over the weekend, but nobody is complaining because we’re finally going home,” one soldier is reported as saying.
Rwanda had agreed in April to give safe passage to the SADC forces.
The force of several thousand peacekeeping troops from South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania had been sent to eastern Congo by the SADC in 2023 to help the Congolese government pacify a mineral-rich region plagued by various insurgencies.
The SADC military mission had suffered heavy losses in the previous months, with around a dozen soldiers from South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania killed as the M23 rebels seized control of Goma.
Their termination came after losing about 17 soldiers to the rebels in the DRC.
The rebels have said they want to take their fight to the far-off capital, Kinshasa, while Congo’s president has called for a massive military mobilization to resist the rebellion.
The M23 rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, and at times have vowed to march as far as Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, over 1,000 miles away.
Rwanda has rejected charges, including by the Congolese government and U.N. experts, that it backs M23 in eastern Congo, a region that is now one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with more than 7 million people displaced.
The withdrawal of SADC troops comes after the M23 took control of eastern Congo’s main city of Goma and seized the second largest city, Bukavu, in offensives over the past two months.
Fourteen South African soldiers, and at least three from Malawi, were killed in January in the fighting. The United Nations later evacuated a group of critically injured South Africans.
Opera Mini, with over 100M users worldwide, now offers AI integration in its browser
According to Opera surveys*, 89% of Nigerians and 80% of South Africans are interested to try an AI tool integrated in the browser
Opera Mini now provides all its smartphone users its own free built-in browser AI, Aria, including AI chat, Ask Aria and image generation, responding to the demand of 86% of Nigerians and 78% of South Africans to use AI from a trusted brand
59% of Nigerians and 80% of South Africans say data is too expensive, so Opera offers its users free data packages in Nigeria and South Africa to allow people to browse more, and Aria is a part of that offer***
As a response to high data costs in Nigeria and South Africa, Aria is available within Free Data offerings, so users will minimize their data usage when exploring AI
OSLO, Norway, 16 April, 2025 -/African Media Agency(AMA)/- Opera is adding its free browser AI, Aria, to Opera Mini, its popular Android-based browser with millions of users in Africa. This update brings powerful AI capabilities, such as up-to-date information from the web, research assistance, content summarization, and image generation directly into the browser at no additional cost.
“AI is rapidly becoming an integral part of the daily internet experience, and we’re seeing a great interest in AI solutions among Africans, so bringing Aria to Opera Mini is a natural addition to our most-downloaded browser. With the integration of our built-in AI, Aria, we’re excited to
explore how AI can further enhance the feature set our users across Africa can rely on every day,” said Jørgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera.
Opera Mini is known and appreciated for numerous unique features – from live football scores to the built-in digital wallet MiniPay, and now – also Aria.
Addressing data costs – a priority for users across Africa
While internet access is becoming increasingly more available on the continent, nearly 60% of people in Africa still don’t have web access. Moreover, the cost of the internet is disproportionately high compared to income or GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Opera surveys from March 2025, 59% of Nigerians and 80% of South Africans said data is too expensive, and more than half (55% Nigerians and 69% South Africans) reported regularly running out of data before the end of the month: data consumption remains a key concern.
For years, Opera Mini has played a key role in enabling internet access across the region. Opera Mini’s turbo data-saving mode can reduce data usage by up to 90% compared to other major browsers. For the past three years, Opera has saved Nigerians an equivalent of $27M (60M GB) and South Africans an equivalent of $10M (6M GB) in data through this unique data compression technology. The free data campaigns**, active since 2020, allow Opera Mini users across Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya to benefit from up to 3GB each month for free, which can be used for anything, including interacting with Aria. Since 2022, Opera has invested millions of dollars in free data campaigns, bridging the digital divide and ensuring information access.
With Aria integrated into Opera Mini, users get the benefits of an advanced AI tool without sacrificing precious data. Aria is optimized for minimal data consumption and is included within Opera’s free daily data bundles — making it an ideal solution for the 46% of Nigerians and 69% of South Africans who said they would use AI tools only if they didn’t add to data usage.
Aria – Opera’s native built-in AI
Aria browser AI integrates into Opera’s browsers on both desktop and mobile to enable an accessible chat-based interface to AI. It enhances user interaction through information retrieval, text or code generation, image generation and understanding. Aria is powered by Opera’s own Composer AI engine, which utilizes both OpenAI and Google AI technologies to provide the most relevant answers, and it integrates image generation through Google’s Imagen3 fast model. With today’s update, Aria is now available across all Opera browsers. For the 47% of Nigerians and 24% of South Africans surveyed who already use AI tools several times a day, and for the 67% of Nigerians and 59% of South Africans who rely on AI for academic purposes, Aria within Opera Mini offers a way to make those experiences even more accessible and fully affordable, as it’s free. There are more exciting and unique features coming to Opera Mini soon – and some of those are being built for football fans across Africa!
To use Aria in Opera Mini, download or update via Google Play Store.
Launched in 2005, Opera Mini is a small, fast, and powerful browser. It comes with unique features such as Data Compression, Offline File Sharing, and a built-in ad-blocker. Today, Opera Mini has been downloaded over 1 billion times on the Google Play Store by people who chose it over the pre-installed browsers on Android mobile devices. Opera Mini has a 4.6-star rating on Google Play and has been reviewed by more than eight million people worldwide.
The Biden campaign has launched a summer drive to shore up support from Black voters. Pope Francis has issued an apology for using a slur to refer to gay men during a private meeting with Italian bishops. And South Africans head to the polls in what could be a major political turning point since apartheid ended 30 years ago.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Cheryl Corley, John Helton, Lisa Thomson and Claudia Peschiutta. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Lindsay Totty. We get engineering support from Phil Edfors. Our technical director is Zac Coleman.
South African celebrated comedian and television host of The Today Show on Comedy Central has a sharp message to his fellow South Africans who are in a violent rampage against their fellow black African immigrants.
“Your your anger and outrage is misplaced. African immigrants don’t own lands, don’t run companies, don’t own mining companies, don’t operate trophy hunting companies, do not ship out capital to European banks,” Noah said on his show this past week after a wave of violent outbreak waged by South Africans against African immigrants living in South Africa.
