Three jihadist groups operating in the Sahel region of Africa have merged to form one single organisation, Mauritania’s private news agency ANI said Thursday, citing a video distributed by the Islamists. Among the groups joining the merger south of the Sahara are Mali’s Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and Al-Murabitoun, led by Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar. The new movement will operate… Read more »
Two police posts in Burkina Faso were attacked by jihadists on Monday night, officials said, just months after 12 soldiers were killed by militants in a raid near the Mali border. It was unclear whether there had been any casualties from the latest attack, which took place in Soum province in the country’s north, security minister Simon Compaore told AFP…. Read more »
Armed kidnappers have taken hostage five gold mine workers, including a Frenchman, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the French foreign ministry said Thursday. The kidnapping victims work for Banro, a Canadian gold mining corporation that runs two mines in DR Congo and is exploring for the mineral elsewhere in the vast, resource-rich nation. “We confirm the presence of a… Read more »
Roughly a month ago, Donald Trump spoke with the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa. Of the two meetings, the one with Nigerian leader Muhammadu Buhari is the more important, as it pertained to improving U.S. cooperation with Nigeria in combating terror in the region, specifically the Nigerian-based group Boko Haram. The U.S. refused to sell weapons to Nigeria under the… Read more »
A South African court on Wednesday ruled the government’s plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) was “unconstitutional and invalid”, providing a boost to the embattled Hague-based institution. The ICC has been rocked by threats of withdrawal in recent months, with complaints focusing on its alleged bias against Africa.
At least 110 people, most of them women and children, have died from starvation and drought-related illness in Somalia in the past 48 hours, Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire said Saturday. Khaire made the announcement while speaking to the drought committee in Mogadishu, four days after President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo declared the drought a national disaster. The death toll covers… Read more »
Morocco on Sunday announced the withdrawal of its forces from a U.N. buffer zone in the disputed Western Sahara territory, where for months they had been in a standoff with troops from the Polisario independence movement. The move took place days after a phone call between Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and will reduce military… Read more »
The forces of eastern Libya’s military strongman Khalifa Haftar have lost control of a key oil export terminal they had seized last year, a spokesman conceded on Saturday. Colonel Ahmad al-Mismari said that the rival forces had overrun the main airfield in the oil port of Ras Lanuf and identified them as Islamists of the Benghazi Defence Brigades.
In 2016, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to have been the weakest since the 2008/9 global financial crisis. This was largely because of the weak performance in its two largest economies – South Africa and Nigeria – which together make up about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP. Although oil and mining economies were hurt… Read more »
IN THE mid-2000s Playpumps International, a charity, hit on a photogenic way of providing clean water to African villages: a pump powered by children playing on a merry-go-round. Donors and celebrities pledged more than $16m. But the system was costlier than alternatives, and needed so much “playing” that it started to look like thinly disguised child labour. It became a… Read more »