INTL Africa: Politics, Economics, and Military- September 2020

[Plain Jane]

August's thread:

INTL - Africa: Politics, Economics, Military- August 2020

Here is July's thread: https://www.timebomb2000.com/xf/index.php?threads/africa-politics-economics-and-military-july-2020.577737/#post-7904437 Regional Conflict in Mediterranean beginning page 35...

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Regional Conflict in Mediterranean thread from page 54:

WAR - Regional conflict brewing in the Mediterranean

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Rwanda president: 'Hotel Rwanda' hero a terrorist leader – DW – 09/07/2020

The man who saved more than 1,200 lives during the country's 1994 genocide has been accused by the president of supporting violent opposition groups. The former hotelier said he has not given them any financial aid.

www.dw.com

Rwandan president calls 'Hotel Rwanda' hero a terrorist leader
The man who saved more than 1,200 lives during the country's 1994 genocide has been accused by the president of supporting violent opposition groups. The former hotelier said he has not given them any financial aid.





Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Sunday accused the hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who saved more than 1,200 lives during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, of being a terrorist leader.

"Rusesabagina heads a group of terrorists that have killed Rwandans. He will have to pay for these crimes," said Kagame during a broadcast on national television. "Rusesabagina has the blood of Rwandans on his hands."

Rusesabagina has been accused of supporting rebel groups in the country and was arrested last week. The Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) said he will face charges of terrorism, financing terrorism, arson, kidnap and murder. He has denied the charges.

Authorities said he supported several groups, including a group of political parties in exile opposed to the Rwandan government known as the MRCD and its armed group, the National Liberation Front (NLF). Rusesabagina has been a vocal Kagame critic, but he has denied financially supporting rebel groups.


Watch video00:26
Hotel Rwanda figure Paul Rusesabagina faces terrorism charges
Forced return?
Rusesabagina had lived outside of the country since 1996 as a Belgian citizen and US resident, but returned to Rwanda last week. He suggested that he came on his own accord.

Kagame did not believe that he came on his own volition. "What if someone told you that he brought himself — even if he may not have intended it? You will be surprised how he got here. He was not kidnapped or hoodwinked. His coming to Rwanda has more to do with himself than anybody else," Kagame said during Sunday's broadcast.

Read more: Rwanda: No hero's welcome
The US government said it expects the Rwandan government to provide "humane treatment, adhere to the rule of law and provide a fair and transparent legal process" for Rusesabagina.
The Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation said the former hotelier has had no consular visits and rejected the government's claim that it had talked to his children about a potential visit. His family said they believed he was "kidnapped" during a trip to Dubai and would have never knowingly boarded a plane to Rwanda's capital Kigali. Kagame has denied that charge.

It is not clear when Rusesabagina will appear in court. The law states that a suspect can be held in detention for 15 days, which is renewable for up to 90 days.
Rusesabagina's actions during the 1994 Rwandan genocide were widely acclaimed throughout the world. He was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award.

Actor Don Cheadle, who portrayed Rusesabagina in the film Hotel Rwanda, told AP, "it is my sincere hope that Paul is being treated humanely and fairly, and that a transparent and just legal process designed to reveal the veracity of these charges is advanced in a timely manner."
kbd/sri (AP, dpa, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Ghana and Nigeria's historic spat flares – DW – 09/01/2020

The two West African nations have been at loggerheads over trade for decades, without serious consequences. That could change now that the region is in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and several deep political crises.

www.dw.com

Ghana and Nigeria's historic spat flares
The two West African nations have been at loggerheads over trade for decades, without serious consequences. That could change now that the region is in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and several deep political crises.





The intensifying diplomatic row came to a head in recent days, with Abuja and Accra trading insults and grievances over the alleged mistreatment of Nigerian nationals in Ghana.
"Nigerians who have been doing business in Ghana have been harassed. Their shops are being closed, with all sorts of molestation and intimidation," Ken Ukoha, president of the National Association of Nigerian Traders, told DW.
Ghanaian authorities deny that Nigerian traders are being specifically targeted. Some 700 Nigerians who were recently deported were allegedly involved in criminal activities, they said.
But Ghana's Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, hinted at what could be at the root of the current tiff, when she blamed Nigerian policies for hurting Ghanaian businesses: "August 2019 saw Nigeria close its land borders without notice to community trade," she said, alluding to the partial closure of borders with Benin, Niger and Cameroon.
Read more: Ghanaian traders livid at Nigeria border closure

• 
  
  
  INNOVATION IN GHANA
  William Senyo, Found and CEO iHub Accra
  William Senyo, Found and CEO iHub Accra demands for more original innovation: “We are big consumers of technology and we adapt technology to local use and we call that innovation. Thats is incremental innovation at best. So there is that reality we are not creating enough to actually shape the future of digital society. “
  
  
  Border disputes
  At the time, Abuja explained that the aim of the measure was to protect local industries from goods being smuggled into the country.
  
  "But it was also very much perceived as a means of the Nigerian government preventing the import of goods from these countries to allow domestic producers of rice and other staple foods to be able to be more competitive," said Ryan Cummings, director for the South Africa-based consultancy, Signal Risk. The aim was to stimulate local production and consumption of Nigerian goods.
  
  
  Presidents Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana (left) and Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, do not see eye to eye on trade issues
  Nigerians like former ambassador Suleiman Dahiru argue that "Nigeria and Ghana share no borders. So what has Ghana to do with the closure of our borders?," he asked.
  
  "Obviously it had an impact," expert Cummings told DW. "ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], for instance, mentioned that Nigeria's trade policies were contrary to the framework of the regional block," and that they had consequences also for countries not immediately affected by the ban. Ghana was one of them.
  
  Cummings pointed out that Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came into power in 2015 on a policies platform "driven by economic nationalism and very protectionist." Serious economic problems resulting from two current major crises: the COVID-19 pandemic and nosediving oil prices did nothing to mitigate his protectionist tendencies.
  
  Read more: No end in sight to Nigeria's border closures
  
  Widespread protectionism
  Nigeria doesn't have a monopoly on protectionism. Ghana has its own laws that clash directly with the so-called ECOWAS' protocol, which ensures the free movement of community citizens, as well as free and fair trade.
  
  A case in point is the 2013 Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act (GIPC), that bars foreigners from retail trade, including the sale of goods or provision of services in a market or anywhere else, as well as from operating taxis, beauty salons or barber shops, among other measures.
  
  An exception is made for a noncitizen able to invest at least $1 million (€834,745) in their own enterprise, something not many Nigerians are able to finance.
  
  "We are going to get in touch with ECOWAS," Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama said. "Once we have the facts, then we will consider all our options."
  
  The organization will hardly want to mediate between the two regional economic powerhouses. "ECOWAS has demonstrated a real hesitancy to impact on how a country is operating from an economic perspective, in terms of laws and regulations," expert Ryan Cummings said. "It is highly unlikely at this stage that ECOWAS will exert any pressure on the Ghanaian or even on the Nigerian government."
  
  ECOWAS has repeatedly criticized Abuja for its continuing embargo against products from neighboring countries, but without taking any "punitive measures against the Buhari government."
  
  Elections in Ghana
  Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo had originally struck a conciliatory tone, condemning hostilities between Ghanaian and Nigerian traders and calling for talks with Abuja. In January he said: "Trade issues, the border and our own internal problems with the Nigerians involved in Ghanaian retail business; these are matters that friends should be able to sit down and resolve."
  
  
  A protracted slump of oil prices has added to the Nigerian economy's problems
  Now, a couple of months later, the tone has become much less friendly. The recent flare-up of the traditional trade rivalry "has to be seen in the light of forthcoming elections," in Ghana on December 7, expert Cummings said. The incumbent administration of Nana Akufo-Addo will want to appear strong "both from a foreign policy and also domestic perspective" in a "context where all countries are trying to shield their respective populations from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic," he added.
  
  Cooperation is the key to recovery
  Traditional competitiveness between Ghana and Nigeria has never had any significant negative political or economic repercussions for the region. But current circumstances might change that. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic "any form of economic recovery, especially in West Africa, will require greater cohesion between member states to increase intra-bloc trade," Cummings said.
  
  Add to that the challenges that ECOWAS is facing at the moment, including a coup in Mali, fraught elections coming up in Ivory Coast and Guinea, and political insecurity in Guinea-Bissau. Not only will ECOWAS have little time and energy to waste on a relatively minor ongoing dispute between two major members. It is also dependent on major members' support to help solve the crises which already have a huge impact on the region, and threaten to make problems worse. "Countries as powerful as Ghana and Nigeria need to be sitting at the same table and focus more on cooperation, as opposed to antagonism," Cummings said.
  

 

[Plain Jane]

IS group claims fatal stabbing of Tunisian security official

The Islamic State (IS) group Monday claimed responsibility for a knife attack in Tunisia the previous day, which killed one National Guard officer and badly wounded another.

www.france24.com

https://www.france24.com/en/tag/coronavirus/

IS group claims fatal stabbing of Tunisian security official
Issued on: 07/09/2020 - 15:38Modified: 07/09/2020 - 15:41

Tunisian forensic police investigate the site of an attack on Tunisian National Guard officers on September 6, 2020, in Sousse. AFP - BECHIR TAIEB
Text by:FRANCE 24Follow
|
Video by:Wassim NASR
4 min
The Islamic State (IS) group Monday claimed responsibility for a knife attack in Tunisia the previous day, which killed one National Guard officer and badly wounded another.

The IS group said its "fighters" carried out the attack Sunday in the Tunisian coastal city of Sousse, in a statement posted by its propaganda arm Amaq on the Telegram messenger service.

The claim came as Tunisian authorities said they arrested seven people suspected of links to Sunday’s deadly attack in a tourist district in Sousse.

National guard spokesman Housameddine Jbabli on Monday told Radio Shems that seven suspects are being held by anti-terrorism authorities.

On Sunday, Tunisian forces fatally shot three alleged attackers. Among the seven detained is the wife of one of the dead attackers and two brothers of another. Jbabli said a preliminary investigation showed that the attackers had developed online links with foreign networks to find out how to make explosives.

Sousse was the site of Tunisia’s deadliest extremist attack in 2015, when a massacre killed 38 people, most of them British tourists. That attack dealt a heavy blow to Tunisia’s tourism sector, a pillar of the North African nation's economy.

Series of attacks
Tunisia, since its 2011 popular revolution, has been hit by a string of jihadist attacks that have killed dozens of security personnel, civilians and foreign tourists.

A suicide attack against security forces protecting the US embassy in Tunis killed a Tunisian police officer and left several others wounded in March.

Three major deadly attacks claimed by the IS group rocked the country in 2015.
An attack at the capital's Bardo museum in March killed 21 foreign tourists and a security guard.

It was followed three months later with the shooting rampage at Sousse, which killed 38 tourists.

Then in November 2015, a bomb blast on a bus in central Tunis killed 12 presidential guards.
While the situation has significantly improved since then, Tunisia has maintained a state of emergency. Assaults on security forces have persisted, mainly in remote areas along the border with Algeria.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

 

[Plain Jane]

A region's defiance strains Ethiopia's unity – DW – 09/08/2020

The Tigray region is scheduled to vote Wednesday — in defiance of Ethiopia's federal government. National officials are nervous, but their counterparts in Tigray say they are safeguarding democratic rights and autonomy.

www.dw.com

Tigray region's defiance puts strains on Ethiopia's unity
The Tigray region is scheduled to vote Wednesday — in defiance of Ethiopia's federal government. National officials are nervous, but their counterparts in Tigray say they are safeguarding democratic rights and autonomy.





On Monday, about a dozen people, including four journalists and a senior analyst, were barred from boarding a flight to Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's northern Tigray Region. Three more journalists reported that they had received calls warning them not to attempt to travel to cover the elections.

Led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the federal government postponed the general election in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. The decision was supported by his Prosperity Party and major opposition parties.

The government of the Tigray region refused to abide by the decision, seeing the postponement as an attempt by Abiy, the 2019 Nobel Peace laureate, to prolong his hold on power and curtail the region's autonomy.
Read more: Political tensions rise ahead of Ethiopia's planned regional elections

"[Tigrayans] forget that there is a real pandemic going on," said Jan Abbink, a professor of politics and governance at the African Studies Centre at Leiden University.
On Saturday, the House of Federation, the upper chamber of Ethiopia's legislature, unanimously declared elections for the regional parliament "unconstitutional" and the results "therefore void." But the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which governs the region, is expected to press ahead with the vote for a new administration.

Officials for both the federal and regional governments see themselves as following Ethiopia's constitution and the rule of law. The Tigrayan political scientist Yemane Zerai told DW that there was little point to legalistic theorizing. "The political relations will determine the relationship," he said, "which can lead us into a peaceful coexistence or it can take us to total disengagement, which can lead to the disintegration of the Ethiopian state — or at least to the separation of the Tigrayan state."

Electoral campaigning in Mekelle proceeded in defiance of Addis Ababa

Domino effect
Relations between the TPLF and the federal government have deteriorated markedly since the former refused to join the prime minister's Prosperity Party when it was formed in 2019. "We know there is an open threat by Abiy to militarily intervene against Tigray and to cut funds, but we will still go ahead with the vote," said Getachew Reda, the TPLF spokesman and a former federal information minister.

According to an analysis by the International Crisis Group think tank, Abiy told a local media outlet that talk of a military intervention in the Tigray region was "insane" and said there were no plans for one under any circumstances. But he has repeatedly said there would be consequences, without going into details.

Since taking power in 2018, Abiy has liberalized the politics and economy of Ethiopia. But ethnic tension and outbreaks of violence have followed his changes as politicians in the provinces try to assert their authority against that of the federal government.

The TPLF has cast the election as a question of safeguarding democratic rights and autonomy. On the streets of Mekelle, opinions are divided. "This is a way to show the world and Ethiopia that we are helping to secure our self-administration rights," resident Leake Zegeye told DW.

But Merha Selam Meressa told DW that he was afraid of what might result from this act of defiance. "The situation is not good," he said. "It could lead us to a conflict."

• 
  
  
  ETHIOPIA'S NEGLECTED CRISIS
  Starting over again
  Authorities have started returning home some of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Gedeos who fled attacks in Ethiopia's southern Oromia region, which is mainly populated by ethnic Oromos. But humanitarian organizations accuse the government of forcing Gedeos back to villages where they have lost everything – and still don't feel safe.
  
  Though he acknowledged the potential for violence, Abbink said he did not think it would come in the form of a military intervention by the central government. "Knowing the leadership's aims and the style of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, it is unlikely that he will do it," he said. "He will try to keep the dialogue going, in the hope that some modus vivendi will be worked out."
  
  Many analysts believe that the sides could find a compromise in which the TPLF would agree to hold a second election as soon as the pandemic is under control and the federal government would work with the election winners in the meantime.
  
  Read more: Ethiopia's democratization at risk
  
  The TPLF's struggle
  There is a real danger stemming from this situation. "It may well be that other regions, like the Somali Region, the Oromia Region, the Amhara Region, will be inclined to say, 'Well, if the Tigray holds elections, I can do the same,'" Abbink said.
  
  "This doesn't apply to most of Abiy's allies in the government," he said, "but as far as what we might call ethnonationalism goes, there are a few in the Oromia and Amhara regions who really want to increase autonomy and they may put pressure on the government."
  
  This is particularly true for the TPLF. "It is obvious that Tigray has a real problem and it's struggling to reinvent itself in terms of its role within the Ethiopian federation," Abbink said. Despite representing an ethnic minority, The TPLF dominated Ethiopia's ruling coalition for nearly three decades before anti-government protests led to Abiy's appointment as prime minister in 2018. Having lost its national prominence, the TPLF turned inward.
  
  Read more: In test run for 2020 elections, Ethiopia’s government wrangles with ethnonationalism
  
  "They have been disengaging themselves from the federal level," Abbink said. "If you talk about Tigray members of the government being sacked, the problem was that they never came to meetings. They didn't do their jobs. They had no willingness of being a part of the federal government."
  
  
  Military parades have been held in various cities of Tigray in recent weeks
  In the past six months, Zerai said, the government of the Tigray region has instituted what he considers ade facto state. "The institutional establishments that we have seen, the laws that are being enacted in Tigray and the actions which are being taken in mobilizing the people show that it is separating from the federal government," he said. He pointed out, however, that — contrary to other regions of Ethiopia — Tigray has experienced peace.
  
  Miilion Haileselassie contributed to this article.
  

 

[Plain Jane]

UN protection back for threatened Nobel-winning Congo doctor

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — For weeks, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Congolese doctor has faced death threats, leading alarmed supporters to urge the United Nations to reinstate the peacekeepers who were withdrawn from his hospital months ago.

apnews.com

UN protection back for threatened Nobel-winning Congo doctor
By CARA ANNAyesterday



1 of 3
FILE - In this Dec. 11, 2018 file photo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege speaks to the media during a news conference in Oslo, Norway. Death threats against the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Congolese doctor have alarmed his supporters who are urging in Sept. 2020 the United Nations to reinstate protection by its peacekeepers, but it likely won't return. (Lise Aserud/NTB Scanpix via AP, File)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — For weeks, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Congolese doctor has faced death threats, leading alarmed supporters to urge the United Nations to reinstate the peacekeepers who were withdrawn from his hospital months ago. On Wednesday, after international expressions of concern, the peacekeepers returned.

“They will be there as long as necessary,” a spokesman with the U.N. mission, Mathias Gillmann, told The Associated Press.

The death threats against Dr. Denis Mukwege, famous for his work with survivors of sexual assault at Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo, drew condemnation from U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, Amnesty International, and others. Hundreds of people have marched in support of Mukwege in the eastern city of Bukavu, where his hospital is located.

Mukwege has had U.N. protection over the years since he survived an assassination attempt in 2012 while returning to his home.

On Wednesday, he thanked the U.N. peacekeepers for returning to the hospital “to assure the security of the patients and personnel.”

The peacekeepers were withdrawn this year amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday, the U.N. said it could not provide protection indefinitely and the personal security of Congolese personalities is the responsibility of national authorities.

Gillmann said the U.N. is working on finding a new security arrangement with national police as the mission in Congo faces an expected reduction. The U.N. has trained Congolese security forces for such protection work in the future.

Those denouncing the death threats against Mukwege have not said where they originated, but a statement from Physicians for Human Rights last month said Mukwege has been the target of an “intimidation campaign” after a security adviser to the president in neighboring Rwanda, Gen. James Kabarebe, “denounced Dr. Mukwege on Rwandan state television.”
Mukwege has received death threats via text message, and he and his family have received threats on social media, the statement said.

“I have received various hate mail and members of my family have been intimidated and threatened,” Mukwege said in a separate statement posted by the Panzi Foundation.

Mukwege has long been outspoken about the need for accountability for the years of attacks by armed groups in eastern Congo that have killed thousands of people, and he seeks the implementation of recommendations in a years-old U.N. human rights report mapping abuses in the region between 1993 and 2003.

Eastern Congo remains one of the world’s most unstable regions, with millions of civilians displaced or living under the threat of attack.

In his Nobel speech in 2018, Mukwege repeated his call to act on the U.N. report, asking, “What is the world waiting for? ... Let us have the courage to reveal the names of the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity to prevent them from continuing to plague the region.”

In late July he tweeted about a new massacre in eastern Congo, saying that as long as the U.N. mapping report is “ignored” such killings will continue.

Rwanda’s government in the past has objected to suggestions that its forces had any involvement in the unrest in eastern Congo shortly before and after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame in a nationally televised interview on Sunday said of the U.N. mapping report, “I don’t know what that nonsense is about.” He asserted that “people are starting the narrative at the time of their choosing.” He didn’t mention Mukwege in the interview.

Rwanda’s state-run newspaper, The New Times, on Sunday published an unsigned commentary criticizing Mukwege and the U.N. report and dismissing suggestions that Rwanda or Kabarebe was behind the death threats as “unfounded allegations.”

The commentary alleged a “defamation campaign” against Kabarebe and suggested that Mukwege and his allies had “staged” the threats themselves, asserting that they see the instability in eastern Congo as “the essential milk cow on which to build careers and get rich.”

In a statement to the AP, the director of policy for Physicians for Human Rights, Susannah Sirkin, had said the organization was “dismayed by the inadequate, slow, and bureaucratic response to date by the United Nations in light of the serious threats against our esteemed colleague ... The U.N. needs to step up now by restoring the presence of a permanent and around-the-clock (peacekeeping) unit on-site at Panzi Hospital.”

Amnesty International in a statement this month also called on Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to follow up on his pledges of protection for Mukwege and investigations into the threats.

In comments to European Union lawmakers late last month, Mukwege called for assistance for other human rights defenders who do not benefit from the same public profile that he has.

“It’s very important to create an alert system so that even those human rights defenders hidden in the farthest corners of the country, doing marvelous work ensuring that their people do not suffer atrocities, can be protected as well,” he said.

https://apnews.com/99916044401d8f8e24eb7bedfec1d5d2

 

[Plain Jane]

Chickens roost in Kenya's empty classrooms amid COVID-19 shutdown

Rows of spinach sprout in the sports field where the students of Roka Preparatory school once played football, and clucking chickens fluff their feathers in sawdust-covered classrooms where children once sweated over their exams.

www.reuters.com

NEWS
SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 / 4:05 AM / UPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Chickens roost in Kenya's empty classrooms amid COVID-19 shutdown

Edwin Waita
3 MIN READ

MWEA, Kenya (Reuters) - Rows of spinach sprout in the sports field where the students of Roka Preparatory school once played football, and clucking chickens fluff their feathers in sawdust-covered classrooms where children once sweated over their exams.

No students have thundered down these eerily quiet corridors since March, when Kenya abruptly closed its schools three days after the first case of COVID-19 was detected. The loss of income means some private schools will shut permanently.

“I had to think of how to use the classrooms because they were haunting,” James Kung’u, the school’s director, told Reuters as he tended vegetables in the fields around 100 kilometres (62 miles) northeast of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

“When you wake up in the morning, and you find the empty classes looking at you - as an investment, (it’s) very discouraging.”

Kenya’s 11,400 private primary and secondary schools serve about 2.6 million students, the Kenya Private Schools Association says. They vary from bare classrooms charging a few thousand shillings a term to ultra-manicured campuses serving the nation’s elite.

Peter Ndoro, the association’s chairman, said around 150 schools have already gone bust. Most of the 158,000 teachers working in private schools are on unpaid leave, he said.

While some schools have been able to oversee distance learning, in others the pupils - and the teachers - have no way to connect to the internet. They have to look for creative ways to make money.

But Kung’u said turning to farming means Roka, which had 530 pupils in March, will not close. He said to date, the school had lost at least 20 million shillings ($184,500) in school fees but was still paying partial salaries to teachers.

Schools are expected to stay closed at least until January. Kenya’s education ministry says they can only reopen when the number of COVID-19 cases drops substantially.

As of Sept.9, Kenya had 35,460 confirmed coronavirus cases, 607 deaths and 21,557 recoveries, the health ministry said. The rise began to slow in August but its unclear whether that is due to lower rates of testing due to a shortage of materials.

Additional reporting by George Obulutsa; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Katharine Houreld and Alexandra Hudson
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

[Plain Jane]

Lengthy but eye-opening. And it doesn't mention Bill Gates at all but vaccine-derived polio has become a huge problem.

Now free Africa of vaccine-derived poliovirus – DW – 09/10/2020

Africa is free of wild poliovirus. But the continent is still fighting another form of the paralyzing disease caused by the oral vaccine used to stop it.

www.dw.com

Now just free Africa of vaccine-derived poliovirus
Africa is free of wild poliovirus. But the continent is still fighting another form of the paralyzing disease caused by the oral vaccine used to stop it.





Even as the World Health Organization (WHO) prepared to declare Africa free of wild poliovirus at the end of August, it knew the fight was far from over.

Earlier that month, Sudan had officially reported a new outbreak of poliomyelitis. Two cases of what's called vaccine-derived poliovirus had been confirmed in the Sudanese states of South Darfur and Gedaref.

Environmental samples of poliovirus type 2 had also been found circulating in seven other states in Sudan. The WHO said those environmental samples indicated a "wide circulation of the virus."

That puts about 5.2 million children at risk of contracting the disease, which in extreme cases can cause paralysis, especially in children under the age of five. Polio can also be fatal if the virus affects breathing muscles.

Fourteen other African countries have cases of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, or cVDPV. None of them have reported cases of wild poliovirus (WPV) in recent years.

"It is a very disappointing setback we're facing with vaccine-derived poliovirus, but that shouldn't undermine the incredible success we've achieved in eradicating wild poliovirus in Africa," says Dr. Michel Zaffran, outgoing director of the WHO's polio eradication program.

So, what's the difference between WPV and cVDPV?
WPV is a naturally occurring form of poliovirus. While cVDPV is derived, as the name suggests, from an oral polio vaccine, known as the Sabin vaccine, or OPV.


Watch video03:21
Nigeria: polio-free and fighting to stay that way

The oral polio vaccine is used to immunize children against the wild forms of poliovirus. It uses live but genetically modified versions of the virus.

These so-called vaccine-viruses need to be active — as close to the real thing as possible — without making the recipient sick. They have to replicate in the child's gut, just as the real virus does, to spark an immune response and have the child's body develop long-term protection.

The problem is that these vaccine-viruses are shed from the body and can survive in communities where sanitation standards are poor.

Then, through a complex process, there is a risk that the vaccine-virus can mutate back into a stronger, virulent form of the virus, circulate in a community, for instance in contaminated drinking water, and infect unvaccinated people.

"The risk is quite significant because there's a large proportion of children who have never been exposed to a type 2, live attenuated vaccine-virus," says Zaffran (attenuated viruses are deliberately weakened or less virulent).

"As a result, the outbreaks are spreading. We are responding, and we are successful in stopping those outbreaks, but because of the low immunity, a vaccine-derived poliovirus can spread to areas outside of the area where a response is taking place."

Three types, times two
There are three types of wild poliovirus — types 1, 2 and 3 — and, correspondingly, three types of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus — cVDPV1, 2 and 3.

A child is vaccinated against polio in Ethiopia
"Type 2 of wild poliovirus has not been seen since 1999 and type 3 not since 2012," says Zaffran. "Both have been officially declared eradicated."

That leaves just WPV type 1 in circulation, which remains endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "I wouldn't compare the two countries, they are different," says Zaffran, "but Pakistan could eradicate the wild virus, they just need to decide to do so."

As for vaccine-derived poliovirus, the most common types of cVDPV are type 2, and not just in Africa. As recently as 2019, there were cases of cVDPV2 in the Philippines and China, while cVDPV1 was found in Myanmar and Indonesia.

A report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April cited 31 ongoing and new cVDPV2 outbreaks between July 2019 and February 2020. Nine of those outbreaks spread internationally.

"Polio is still circulating in a few areas and that comes from the way that eradication has been done," says Dr. Andrew Macadam, a principal scientist at the UK's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. "It was carried out using a live attenuated virus. And because it's live (infectious), it replicates and can mutate and evolve over time."

Changing the way eradication is done
Macadam is part of an international consortium that has been working on a novel oral polio vaccine. It's called nOPV2 and it may just be the first major upgrade for global polio vaccination programs in 50 years.

The original oral polio vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin, as a trivalent vaccine. This means it contained each of the three types of poliovirus.

After the eradication of wild type 2 poliovirus, the most "useful" oral polio vaccine was bivalent (containing two strains) says Macadam: "It so happened that type 2 [of the vaccine-virus] interfered with the efficiency of the other two, so by taking it out of the trivalent, giving you a bivalent, it made the other two work better."


Watch video03:11
Pakistani government suspends polio vaccination drives
There is also a monovalent OPV (containing one strain), which is used to handle live outbreaks of the disease.

But whichever it is, live attenuated oral poliovirus vaccines come with the risk that the vaccine-virus may mutate and start a cVDPV outbreak, even after the wild type of the virus has been eradicated.

"So, in the face of that issue, the answer would seem to be to develop a new oral live attenuated vaccine, which does all the good things which the old one did but has less ability to evolve back into a wild type of virus," Macadam says.

The order of mutation
Clinical trials so far have shown nOPV2 to be more genetically stable than the current oral polio vaccine — that is, the vaccine-viruses it contains are less likely to mutate into a virulent virus.

The team behind nOPV2 has discovered three steps in the virus' mutation, which appear to happen in a particular order.

First, it loses its attenuation. Second, it re-combines with another form of polio or a "cousin," as Macadam puts it, such as another enterovirus, which on its own would mostly only cause mild symptoms. And third, it adapts further to its environment.

"We don't definitely know that they have to happen in that order, but it is tempting to think they do," says Macadam, "in which case if we stop the first step, then the others shouldn't happen."

So, for instance, the team has designed part of the vaccine-virus in such a way that if it does change through mutation, "it can only become more attenuated," says Macadam. They have also targeted the second step in the process to reduce the risk of a vaccine-virus re-combining with another virus and grow in strength or virulence.

"But, clearly, until you try it out in a large population, you can't know for sure that you haven't overlooked something. So, rolling it out to the entire population would be a little bit premature. And secondly, there simply wouldn't be enough vaccine to do that. You would use it where it is most needed, and that's in areas that are experiencing outbreaks of vaccine-derived polioviruses."

The nOPV2 has gone through two phases of clinical trials and may receive a so-called Emergency Use Listing (EUL) before the end of the year to accelerate its use in communities, and they would aim to distribute 100 million doses at first.

"We were we're thinking that Sudan might be a good candidate for using this vaccine. But the outbreak is spreading now and the local authorities don't want to wait until mid-October to respond to the outbreak," says Zaffran.

 

[Plain Jane]

Part 2

Now free Africa of vaccine-derived poliovirus – DW – 09/10/2020

Africa is free of wild poliovirus. But the continent is still fighting another form of the paralyzing disease caused by the oral vaccine used to stop it.

www.dw.com

Salk vs. Sabin
Many countries have replaced the Sabin vaccine with what's known as the Salk, or inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). It was developed by Jonas Salk and introduced in the 1950s, about ten years before the Sabin vaccine became a standard in the US.

A Salk vaccine uses an inactivated or killed virus and is given by injection, either into a muscle, into the skin or into a layer of fat under the skin.

It's more expensive to produce because it takes more time to grow a vaccine-virus in a lab and then kill it, with a view to making hundreds of millions of doses.

But the big advantage is that the virus cannot pass into the environment, spread, mutate and cause an outbreak of vaccine-derived poliovirus — simply, because it's already dead.


Cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus have risen dramatically in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2019
Over the past 15 years, there's been an effort to stop using Sabin altogether. It's been a slow process, with both financial and scientific problems along the way.

First, there aren't enough doses of IPV in production. About 130 million children are born every year, and every one of them needs protection.

"Based on current WHO recommendations, you would have to give each child three doses of IPV, which means you need about 400 million doses in production," says Dr. Suresh Jadhav, executive director at the Serum Institute in India.

In 2012, the Serum Institute bought a Dutch firm called Bilthoven Biologicals, one of only three companies worldwide making an inactivated polio vaccine. The other two were GSK and Sanofi.

"Back then, GSK and Sanofi production only took care of children in the developed world. It was not available for the developing world," says Jadhav.

The problem was price.

"I wouldn't call it a bias or discrimination [against the developing world] but a difference in the pricing between OPVs and IPVs," says Jadhav. "The oral polio vaccine cost about $0.15 per dose, if UNICEF was buying it. The inactivated vaccine cost about $3 or $3.50 per dose. And on the private market, in Europe or in the United States, the price was at least 10 times more."


Watch video02:18
Polio in Afghanistan: Children fall victim to conspiracy theories
Today, Jadhav says the off-market price of IPVs has come down by about a dollar. He says IPVs are used in over 30 countries in Africa, with Bilthoven Biologicals planning to increase production from about 25 million doses to 100 million doses per year.

But vaccination campaigns still lag behind the outbreaks, and the growing number of cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus in Africa.

The WHO says routine vaccination programs should continue even after wild poliovirus has been eradicated and even where there are no cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus because there is still a theoretical risk that it could return.

Certainly, as long as Pakistan and Afghanistan have circulating poliovirus (of whichever type or form), the whole world is at risk of the virus being reintroduced through global travel, for instance.

"That's the WHO's fear," says Jadhav, "and everyone's waiting for the production of IPVs to meet the quantities needed by UN agencies."

So far, we've "failed"
There is one other problem with IPVs, however — the very thing that makes them good also makes them bad.

The fact that they use killed virus-vaccines means they don't replicate in the human host — they stop the virus developing into a full sickness in people who have been vaccinated, but they cannot stop those people from passing the virus to people who haven't been vaccinated.

OPVs, on the other hand, do stop that kind of transmission.


Police guard a polio vaccination team in Karachi
"So, eradication is only possible with the live attenuated vaccine. That's the one that can stop person-to-person transmission," says Zaffran. "The plan has always been to eradicate the wild virus, then stop using the Sabin vaccine, and replace it with the inactivated Salk vaccine."

The WHO started that process globally in 2016 by introducing a dose of the Salk vaccine in all routine immunization programs. But it hasn't gone to plan.

"Unfortunately, this has been a failure. It's been a failure because too many countries have had poor routine immunization coverage," says Zaffran. "That's allowed some of these [vaccine-derived poliovirus] outbreaks to occur. And we've had to respond by reintroducing the Sabin type 2 vaccine, which has also, over time, caused outbreaks."

It's a difficult dance: You can't stop wild poliovirus without Sabin, but Sabin brings the risk of vaccine-derived poliovirus, and the only way to fight that is with Sabin.

If the novel oral vaccine is as stable as the scientists believe at this stage, it may help to prevent new outbreaks.

But people can act as well. Poliovirus is spread via food or water that is contaminated with fecal matter from an infected person. So, if countries did more to improve sanitation standards, it may relieve some of the pressure on vaccines.

 

[Plain Jane]

Suspected militia fighters kill dozens in DR Congo’s eastern Ituri province

Fifty-eight people have been killed in attacks in a restive province of eastern DR Congo, local officials said on Thursday, blaming a notorious militia.

www.france24.com

Suspected militia fighters kill dozens in DR Congo’s eastern Ituri province
Issued on: 11/09/2020 - 07:49

Moroccan soldiers from the UN mission in DRC patrol in the violence-torn Djugu territory in the Ituri province, eastern DR Congo, on March 13, 2020. © Samir Tounsi, AFP (file photo)
Text by:NEWS WIRES
3 min
Fifty-eight people have been killed in attacks in a restive province of eastern DR Congo, local officials said on Thursday, blaming a notorious militia.


Large numbers of the population have fled following the attacks in Irumu, a territory in the province of Ituri, provincial interior minister Adjio Gidi told AFP.

He blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which originated in the 1990s as a Ugandan Muslim rebel group and has been accused of killing hundreds of civilians since DR Congo’s armed forces launched a crackdown against them last November.

The attacks took place in a heavily forested area called Tshabi, a local resident said, adding that a number of people were feared kidnapped.


“People were killed with every sort of weapon, knives, guns,” a member of the Nyali community in Tshabi, Richard Balengilyao, told AFP.

The search effort was being complicated by thick forest, he said.

“Right now, the Congolese army, supported by local people, is still looking for victims in the forest,” he said.

“Seventeen people are listed as disappeared, but they have almost definitely been kidnapped.”

Minister Gidi said that 23 people were killed on Tuesday, and another 35 on Thursday.
“It was ADF, fleeing military pressure in (neighbouring) North Kivu province, namely in (the) Beni (region),” Gidi said.

“Our forces are already in the area and are in contact with the enemy,” he said without elaborating.

Reprisals
The ADF is one of more than 100 armed groups that trouble the eastern provinces of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, many of which are the legacy of fully-fledged wars of the 1990s.

The group has been blamed for more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the Beni region of North Kivu province since 2014.

It has carried out hundreds of civilian killings since the army launched an offensive against it late last year, apparently as reprisals for the operation or to warn locals against collaborating with the army.

And five civilians were killed in fresh clashes between Congolese Tutsis and three other communities in the eastern South Kivu province, local sources said.

“We have registered the deaths of five civilians, all men,” the mayor of Minembwe, Gadi Mukiza, told AFP, adding that 400 families had fled the fighting.

The northern part of Ituri this year has seen brutal killings in the territory of Djugu, blamed on an armed group called the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, or CODECO, blamed on ethnic attacks.

A senior delegation from the central government was scheduled to arrive in Ituri on Friday to discuss the province’s security problems.

The delegation will include the interior and defence ministers, the army chief of staff and the head of internal intelligence, a government source told AFP.

President Felix Tshisekedi sent a group of former warlords to Ituri last month to convince CODECO to stop its attacks.

The armed political-religious sect is drawn from the Lendu ethnic group.
Conflict erupted between the Lendu, mainly farmers, and the Hema, herders and traders, in the gold-mining and oil-rich Ituri province between 1999 and 2003, killing tens of thousands.

The militia has for several months been divided, and some fighters have signed a commitment with the government to surrender arms.

A peace agreement was also signed earlier this year with another armed group in the province, the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Force (FRPI), formerly active in the south in Irumu territory.
(AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

More than 50 killed at collapsed gold mine in eastern Congo

Officials say more than 50 people are dead after landslides caused the collapse of three artisanal gold mines near the city of Kamituga in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province on Friday.

apnews.com

Click to copy
More than 50 killed at collapsed gold mine in eastern Congo
By JEAN-YVES KAMALE27 minutes ago



1 of 3
People gather at the scene of a gold mine collapse near the town of Kamituga, South Kivu province, in eastern Congo Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. More than 50 people are dead after landslides collapsed three artisanal gold mines near the town of Kamituga in eastern Congo's South Kivu province on Friday, officials said. (Jeff Mwenyemali/Maisha RDC via AP)

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — More than 50 people are dead after landslides collapsed three artisanal gold mining wells near the city of Kamituga in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province on Friday, officials said.

Heavy rains for days led to the disaster.

“The diggers and the transporters of the stones were swallowed up by the waters,” said the Kamituga mayor, Alexandre Bundya. “A team of rescuers with motor pumps came to recover the bodies of the victims.”

Diwa Honoré, who survived the tragedy, said more than 50 people had been in the three wells, which are about 50 meters (54 yards) deep.

Artisanal mining quarries are often unsafe in eastern Congo and the Kasai region. Women and children also work in the mines to make ends meet. Deadly collapses occurred earlier this year in Maniema and in Katanga, killing at least 18 people.
.

 

[Plain Jane]

Mali's M5-RFP coalition rejects junta's post-coup charter

The M5-RFP coalition in Mali that led anti-government protests before last month's coup has rejected a political charter pushed through by the ruling junta on Saturday, M5-RFP said.

www.reuters.com

SEPTEMBER 13, 20204:45 AMUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO
Mali's M5-RFP coalition rejects junta's post-coup charter
By Reuters Staff
1 MIN READ

BAMAKO (Reuters) - The M5-RFP coalition in Mali that led anti-government protests before last month’s coup has rejected a political charter pushed through by the ruling junta on Saturday, M5-RFP said.

After three days of negotiations with political leaders and civil society groups, the junta’s roadmap was meant to chart an agreed transition for Mali after the Aug. 18 coup that toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

M5-RFP said the final version of the charter did not reflect the results of talks, which it said included a majority vote for a civilian interim president.

“M5-RFP distances itself from the resulting document which does not reflect the views and decisions of the Malian people,” it said in a statement released late on Saturday.

Under the junta’s charter, the interim president can be a civilian or a soldier and will preside over a transitional period of 18 months before elections are held, according to a spokesman for the talks.

Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Catherine Evans
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

[Plain Jane]

West Africa keen to feed the UK post-Brexit – DW – 09/12/2020

Ghana is spearheading a new project that explores how small farmers in the ECOWAS bloc can supply produce to the UK once it severs ties with the EU. Researchers are looking at how "what ifs" could become reality.

www.dw.com

West Africa is keen to feed the UK post-Brexit
Ghana is spearheading a new project that explores how small farmers in the ECOWAS bloc can supply produce to the UK once it severs ties with the EU. Researchers are looking at how "what ifs" could become reality.





In a small room at Ghana's University for Development Studies (UDS), a team of Ghanaian and British researchers trade farming ideas under blistering heat. The team from the University of York are on campus in Tamale for a 6-month collaboration with their West African counterparts. Their work focuses on the potential of small farmers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as future suppliers of produce to the UK.

"The network is simply to look at how to bring the ECOWAS region together to produce and export to the UK market," says Dr. Mahamudu Akudugu, the lead local facilitator for the Ghana-ECOWAS Food Systems and Export Network. Researchers at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria are also involved.

A need to upskill small farmers
The researchers agree that the UK's exit from the European Union could hold opportunities for the 15-member West African bloc to negotiate fresh economic partnerships, Akudugu tells DW. Even more so, he believes, if the UK is unable to conclude a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU. "As a bloc, we feel it is good to look at it at the ECOWAS level rather than just looking at it at the country level."

The UK's existing partnerships with Africa's regional economic blocs were made as part of a larger settlement negotiated through the EU. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, renegotiation will be necessary in order to retain current trade flows.

Read more: Brexit: UK introduces new bill, what you need to know
On a bean farm in Kumbungu District, around 14 kilometers (9 miles) from the university campus, where the British and ECOWAS researchers have set up a temporary office, Adam Sulemana is preparing to spray pesticide.

The manner in which he mixes the substances cuts to one point the researchers had raised: The methods of small farmers in countries such as Ghana are not standardized. That would be necessary to export produce to the UK.

"You fill the water half of the knapsack and measure the chemical to half a tin of milk," Sulemana says. "That is what the chemical dealer taught me."

His measurement is a little off — on the pesticide bottle, the manufacturer recommends 40 milliliters per knapsack, 10 milliliters less than the volume of the half-tin of milk he is holding. Literacy levels among West Africa's smallholders are low. Sulemana suggests that governments could provide a little support to make the food network possible.

London has been calling
The cards are looking right for West Africa now that the UK has revised its foreign policy to include a redraft of its position towards Africa.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson even skipped last year's World Economic Forum in Davos to host more than a dozen African heads of state at the first-ever UK-Africa Investment Summit in London. Deals worth nearly $8 billion (€7.3 billion) were announced.
The UK government has said it is interested in continuity agreements with its partners in Africa.

In Tamale, Ghana the researchers say they hope that if ECOWAS small farmers who want to supply produce to the UK are able to standardize, London's politicians would be swayed.
"If you are going to export, we want them to be uniform," says Prof. Gabriel Ayum Teye, vice chancellor of the University of Development Studies.

A future UK-ECOWAS food network would not only require farmers to measure their pesticides accurately. The farmers would also have to weigh and label their produce to accurate standards to avoid rejection by the new potential market.

"If somebody wants all the mangos to weigh 500 grams, it means you have to weigh them. You cannot export 100 tubes of yam and some are like water bottles, some are big — it doesn't work like that," says Ayum Teye.

Watch video42:36
Ghana - Business on the Go
Read more: Has Africa's green revolution failed?

Commonwealth is not enough
Experts say the UK's withdrawal from the EU is likely to substantially increase the costs for developing countries to access the British market. The University of York and UDS project say standardizing the methods of smallholder farmers in the West African economic bloc could drive down export costs, thereby making it cheaper for African products to reach the UK.

In 2019, the UK supplied just over half (55%) of its domestic food consumption. To keep its supermarket shelves full after a hard Brexit, in which no trade deal with the EU can be reached, some experts suggest the UK would need to tap into the potential of the Commonwealth for its agricultural products. However, due to distance and trading interests of the countries involved, the Commonwealth alone is not a viable trading partner.

 

[Plain Jane]

Mozambique slams 'horrifying' execution video – DW – 09/15/2020

Mozambique has condemned video footage that appears to show a group of men in military uniforms executing a naked woman accused of being an Islamist militant. Officials deny the army is involved in acts of torture.

www.dw.com

Mozambique condemns 'horrifying' execution of naked woman
Mozambique has condemned video footage that appears to show a group of men in military uniforms executing a naked woman accused of being an Islamist militant. Officials deny the army is involved in acts of torture.





Mozambique's government and military have condemned the apparent brutal execution of a naked woman by men wearing fatigues, shown in video footage.

The video, which has been widely shared on social media, shows the armed men chasing and beating the woman who has been stripped of her clothing.

They beat her with sticks and shout at her in Portuguese, accusing her of being a member of the al-Shabab jihadist group.

The men then open fire, shooting the woman dead.
DW has been unable to verify the authenticity of the footage. The identity of the people in the video remains unknown.

The country's defense ministry called for an instant investigation into the "horrifying" images.

"The defense and security forces reiterate that they do not agree with any barbaric act that substantiates the violation of human rights," the ministry said in a statement.
Read more: Peace in Mozambique: Third time lucky?

In May, human rights group Amnesty International obtained videos that allegedly showed soldiers abusing prisoners who had been arrested on suspicion of being Islamist militants.


Watch video01:59
Thousands flee Islamist insurgents in northern Mozambique
Last week, it accused the Mozambican military of torturing suspected extremists in the northern Cabo Delgado region.

Officials denied the claims, saying jihadists carried out the violence by impersonating government troops.

Read more: Mozambique: Jihadi militants making inroads
Islamist militants have launched a series of attacks in the country's north over the past three years. Last year, one of the main groups behind the insurgency pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

The area is home to one of Africa's biggest liquefied natural gas projects.
Last month, jihadists seized the strategic port of Mocimboa de Praia, where there are plans to develop offshore gas fields.
jf/rc (AFP, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

'Hotel Rwanda' hero declines to plead to terrorism charges

Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed as a hero in a Hollywood movie about Rwanda's 1994 genocide, declined to plead on Monday to all the 13 charges facing him, demanding he be allowed to plead to each separate count in a case that has also thrust a spotlight on to President Paul Kagame's government.

www.reuters.com

WORLD NEWS
SEPTEMBER 14, 20204:04 AMUPDATED 11 HOURS AGO
'Hotel Rwanda' hero declines to plead to terrorism charges
By Clement Uwiringiyimana
4 MIN READ

KIGALI (Reuters) - Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed as a hero in a Hollywood movie about Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, declined to plead on Monday to all the 13 charges facing him, demanding he be allowed to plead to each separate count in a case that has also thrust a spotlight on to President Paul Kagame’s government.

Rusesabagina, who once called for armed resistance to the government in a YouTube video, appeared in a Kigali court accused of terrorism, complicity in murder and forming or joining an irregular armed group, among other charges.

His trial promises to be the most high-profile yet in a string of cases against Kagame’s opponents.

Brought to court handcuffed in a van inscribed “RIB” for Rwanda Investigation Bureau, the 66-year-old Rusesabagina wore a tan suit and an anti-coronavirus mask. He sat pensively before responding.

He told the court that he had contributed 20,000 euros ($24,000) to the National Liberation Front (FLN), the military wing of the Mouvement Rwandais pour le Changement Démocratique, which he co-chairs.

“FLN killed people,” he acknowledged. “If there are bad acts that were done against the people, I regret that and I ask forgiveness to the families of victims.”

Rusesabagina refused to enter a plea for any of the charges. He was due to appear again on Thursday to apply for bail.

HOLLYWOOD MOVIE
The Oscar-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda” portrayed Rusesabagina, a former hotel manager, using his connections with the Hutu elite to protect Tutsis fleeing the slaughter.

After the genocide, Rusesabagina acquired Belgian citizenship and became resident of the United States. He became a vocal critic of Kagame, whom he accused of stifling opposition, an accusation the government denies.

Rusesabagina has not been allowed to meet lawyers appointed by his family, they said in a statement. But one of his government-appointed lawyers, David Rugaza, argued he was on trial for exercising freedom of speech.

He got a Belgian citizenship in 1999,” Rugaza told the one-judge hearing. “Rwanda is trying a foreign citizen (for) freedom of expression that he enjoyed while abroad.”

Some in Rwanda, including Kagame, have accused Rusesabagina of exaggerating his heroism, which he denies.

It is still unclear how Rusesabagina came to be in Rwanda. His family say he was disappeared from Dubai.

The court struck out a defence objection that the arrest was irregular, ruling that it had jurisdiction because Rusesabagina was arrested in Rwandan territory, without providing further details.

JUSTICE SYSTEM UNDER SCRUTINY
Kagame has ruled Rwanda since the end of the genocide and won the last elections - in 2017 - with nearly 99% of the vote.

He has enjoyed widespread credit and support from Western donors for restoring Rwanda to stability, cracking down on corruption and boosting economic growth in the East African nation of 12 million.

But international rights groups and political opponents say his rule is increasingly tainted by repression.

“Kagame and other government officials regularly threaten those who criticize the government,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a briefing note, adding that the judiciary lacked independence and torture of prisoners was common.

The government denies accusations of torture of detainees.

Tibor Nagy, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, tweeted earlier this month that the United States wanted to see Rusesabagina receive a “fair trial”.

Michaela Wrong, a British author researching a book about Rwandan politics, said the trial was already putting the Kagame government under greater scrutiny.

“The Rwandan government’s traditional supporters may well start asking themselves why so many opposition activists disappear and meet violent ends in Rwanda, why so many human rights activists and journalists flee abroad,” she said.

Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld in Nairobi; writing by Katharine Houreld and Duncan Miriri; Editing by Alex Richardson
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

[Plain Jane]

West African leaders press Mali's junta over transition to civilian rule

West African leaders met the head of Mali's military junta on Tuesday to press for the return to civilian rule nearly a month after rebel officers seized power in the fragile state.

www.france24.com

West African leaders press Mali's junta over transition to civilian rule
Issued on: 15/09/2020 - 21:09

Assimi Goita, president of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP) in Mali, is seen at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting in Accra, Ghana, on September 15, 2020. © Nipah Dennis, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES
3 min
West African leaders met the head of Mali's military junta on Tuesday to press for the return to civilian rule nearly a month after rebel officers seized power in the fragile state.


The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) slapped sanctions on Mali after the putsch, including closing borders and a ban on trade and financial flows, and has called for elections within 12 months.

The 15-nation bloc also gave the new military rulers until Tuesday to name a civilian president and prime minister to head a transitional government.

"My reason for this meeting is simple. We need to bring finality to our deliberations on Mali," Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo said in an opening statement at a lodge at Peduase, eastern Ghana.

"That country can no longer afford any delay in putting a responsible government in place."
Akufo-Addo, the current ECOWAS rotating chairman, reiterated that Tuesday was "supposed to be the day the military junta is supposed to put in place a government".

"Closure should be brought to the matter now," he said.

Junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita, who was appointed interim head of state, was attending the talks on his first trip abroad since his seizure of power.

He was set to deliver a speech behind closed doors to the assembled leaders from across the region outlining his plans.

Opposition criticism
The military junta over the weekend backed an arrangement for an 18-month transition government in which the junta would be given the leading role in choosing the interim president.

But the document was rejected by Mali's protest movement.
It underscored its objections on Tuesday, while stressing it did not want to "break or get involved in a conflict" with the junta.

The communique said that consultations about the transition -- which culminated in a document published on Saturday after a three-day forum -- were marked by "intimidation (and) anti-democratic and unfair practices" and "the desire to monopolise and confiscate power to the benefit of (the junta)."

"Corrections must be able to be made to the national consultation documents," said Mountaga Tall, a leader of the so-called June 5 Movement, or M5, an alliance of political parties, trade unions, religious figures and NGOs.

Mali's former president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, 75, was toppled after months of protests by the M5 demanding his resignation.

He had been facing deep anger over an eight-year-old jihadist insurgency, economic problems and entrenched corruption.
The M5 wants to be given equal status with the junta during the transition.

Other criticism it has made of the junta-backed transition charter concerns the powers that would be given to the vice president, tasked with defence and security -- a job description considered to be tailor-made for Goita.

Unstable past
Mali's neighbours, who are anxious to avoid the fragile Sahel state spiralling into chaos, have not yet reacted to the transition roadmap.
Last month's coup is Mali's fourth since gaining independence from France in 1960.

A further reminder of its chronic instability came on Tuesday with the death on Tuesday of Moussa Traore, who led the country for 22 years.

In 1968, Moussa Traore, then a lieutenant, was the main instigator of a coup that overthrew Modibo Keita, the country's first post-independence president. He stayed in power until he in turn was ousted in a coup in 1991.

Traore died aged 83 in the capital Bamako, his nephew Mohamed Traore told AFP.
(AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

UN 'extremely concerned' over Burundi's president – DW – 09/17/2020

A human rights report voiced disappointment at Burundi's new leader, who took power in June. The report cites political appointees accused of human rights abuses and lawlessness among Evariste Ndayishimiye's supporters.

www.dw.com

UN 'extremely concerned' as Burundi's president appoints suspected rights abusers
A human rights report voiced disappointment at Burundi's new leader, who took power in June. The report cites political appointees accused of human rights abuses and lawlessness among Evariste Ndayishimiye's supporters.





When Evariste Ndayishimiye was elected president of Burundi this May, observers hoped he would chart a new course for his country. A United Nations report presented by the Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Burundi on Thursday in Geneva did much to dispel such hopes.

"The democratic space remains very narrow, impunity persists, and there is no indication that the level of human rights violations has abated under the new government," said Doudou Diene, head of the COI.

In its report, the commission said it was "extremely concerned" with the direction the country was heading under its new leader. Most troubling for the committee were President Ndayishimiye's political appointments of a number of individuals facing sanctions for human rights abuses, in particular two whom he appointed to his Cabinet.

The charges against the two stem from the unrest that swept the country in 2015, as citizens revolted against then-President Pierre Nkurunziza after he announced he would run for a third term in office — something critics said was unconstitutional. With the opposition largely boycotting the vote as illegal, Nkurunziza won the contentious election. The country has remained in a state of chaos since and his 15-year rule came to an end when he died, purportedly of a heart attack, this June.
Read more: Burundi to demand €36 billion from Germany, Belgium for colonial rule: report

UN report outlines May violent presidential election
Despite the fact that Evariste Ndayishimiye was Nkurunziza's interior minister and handpicked successor, many had hoped he would turn away from the "destructive path" of his predecessor, Thursday's report, however, said "few positive changes" took place since he assumed office.

Moreover, the report cited unsettling accounts of the systemic targeted intimidation, sexual assault and murder of opposition supporters in the run-up to this May's disputed presidential election.

The report said some of the crimes documented may be crimes against humanity, pointing specifically to the ruling party's Imbonerakure youth wing, police and members of Burundi's intelligence services, whom the report said, "have continued to enjoy nearly total impunity." The report noted that the sexual abuse of men and women, often during detention, was a common "intelligence gathering tool" used by the president's supporters.

Such abuses have been common practice in Burundi since 2015, and have continued to provoke condemnation. Criticism became so intense that Burundi withdrew from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2017 and took the unprecedented step of expelling the UN Human Rights Office from the country.

The ICC investigation into abuses in Burundi, nevertheless, continues. That is where Prime Minister Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni and Security Minister Gervais Ndirakobuca come in. Recently appointed to their Cabinet posts by Ndayishimiye, the two men face ICC sanctions for human rights abuses stemming from 2015. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi has requested a response from the government over the appointments but said it has yet to receive one.

The UN said that at least 1,200 people were killed and over 400,000 displaced across Burundi, mostly by state security forces, between April 2015 and May 2017.

Some had hoped that Ndayishimiye would break from the "destructive" governance of his predecessor

Ballot box abuses and a tiny bright spot
It has also been reported that the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy — Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) forced children to attend party functions as well as to cast votes after officials "gave them the voting cards of deceased or exiled voters."

The only bright spot the COI on Burundi found was the fact that Ndayishimiye appeared to be taking the threat of the coronavirus pandemic more seriously than his predecessor, who said there was nothing to worry about because Burundi had "divine protection."
Read more: OHCRC: Burundi's elections aren't 'credible and free'

Report lists litany of problems
Still, the UN bemoaned the fact that civil rights were not being protected, nor was the government seeking to foster democracy. The commission called on Burundi to release what it says were arbitrarily arrested human rights activists, journalists and political prisoners.
Burundi has long been plagued by corruption and poor governance. Only 5% of the population in the East African country has access to electricity and the average length of schooling is three years.

The World Health Organization has also urged Burundi to resume cooperation with the global agency, after its top official was thrown out of the country in May for voicing concerns over the health risks posed by large-scale political rallies.

The abuse goes on
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi was created by the UN Human Rights Council (ONHCR) in September 2016. The body has previously stated, in relatively certain terms, that crimes against humanity — including rape and extrajudicial killings — have been routine occurrences in Burundi since 2015.

The commission's latest report, it's fourth overall, covers the period from May 2019 to present and claims it: "still has reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity ... have been committed in Burundi. These crimes include murder, imprisonment or other severe forms of deprivation of physical liberty, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity and political persecution."
Read more: WHO warns coronavirus could kill 150,000 in Africa, as Burundi expels experts


Watch video03:04
Colonial Belgium abducted children with African mothers
js/sms (AFP, AP, KNA, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Africa: The big rip-off in arms deals – DW – 09/18/2020

Africa's armies are kitting out: The US and Europe, in particular, spend big to support countries on the continent in the war on terror. That has drawn corrupt arms dealers to the scene.

www.dw.com

Africa: The big rip-off in arms deals
Africa's armies are kitting out: The US and Europe, in particular, spend big to support countries on the continent in the war on terror. That has drawn corrupt arms dealers to the scene.





South African author and former ruling African National Congress MP Andrew Feinstein has been researching international arms deals in Africa for over two decades. He observes that the continent is increasingly becoming the hotspot for international arms trading.

"Where there are armed conflicts, triggered by terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, or civil wars such as in Sudan or South Sudan, the arms dealers are not far away," says Feinstein.

In most cases, arms deals in Africa are a huge part of corruption and fraud, says Feinstein, who penned the book "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade" in 2011.
Read more: South Africa's Jacob Zuma to stand trial for corruption

Scandal in Niger: tip of an iceberg
Feinstein recently took part in an investigation that uncovered a particularly blatant arms scandal in Niger. The country is currently battling insurgents from across the Sahel region. Its government purchased weapons and equipment for roughly US$1 billion between 2011 and 2019. The money came mainly from the United States and European Union countries, including France. The acquisition was part of Niger's arms spending as part of the G5-Sahel alliance to advance the fight against Islamist terrorists.

However, research by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a network of journalists of which Andrew Feinstein is a member, shows that businessmen in Niger, as well as Russia and Ukraine, were likely to have enriched themselves in the process.

Andrew Feinstein investigates corruption in the arms trade

"A considerable part of the billion ended up in the pockets of corrupt middlemen and did not go to equipping the arsenals of the Nigerien army," says Feinstein.

The OCCRP report concluded that a large part of the money did not increase the strength of the Nigerien army, but instead made fraudsters rich.
Read more: Was Russia behind the coup in Mali?

A rigged bidding process
More specifically, the OCCRP report named two Nigerien business people with connections to the president's network as having benefited from the arms deal. The two had placed orders for arms in China, Russia, and Ukraine, and simultaneously rigged the bidding process. Offshore suppliers in Great Britain, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic, owned by the two middlemen, made offers to pay the only real and highly overpriced bid. The payments were made through dubious financial institutions. Some of them were redirected to the Nigeriens, according to the report.

This information was contained in an internal Nigerien government audit document, which Feinstein and the OCCRP journalists obtained. The audit report also listed numerous fraudulent arms deals. For example, in 2016, two MI-171Sh combat helicopters were purchased from the Russian state-owned export agency Rosoboronexport for €55 million ($59 million), almost €20 million above the regular price.
Read more: SIPRI: Weapons boom shows no signs of slowing

'Different banks, different locations'
The government audit report highlighted millions paid as bribes by Russian and Ukrainian arms suppliers to their Nigerien middlemen. The Russian companies partially laundered the money through Germany, Feinstein tells DW: "It is extremely difficult for investigative authorities to track money flows made through different banks in different locations.

" If payments were processed through banks in Germany, this would generally arouse less suspicion among American money-laundering investigators than when processed through a bank in Russia, says Feinstein.

Germany, along with the United States, is a key partner in the war on terror

According to Feinstein, one of the criminal masterminds in Niger, Aboubacar Hima, also had a personal relationship with Ukraine's ex-president Viktor Yanukovych and bought several apartments in Prague. Currently, Nigerien intermediaries are purchasing expensive villas in Niamey, he says.

Niger not an isolated case
For anti-corruption activist Paul Holden, the OCCRP report highlights how such businesses work. The arms trade is particularly prone to corruption, says the South African, founder of the London-based anti-corruption organization Shadow World Investigations.

The Niger scandal is not an isolated incident, explains Paul Holden: "In Africa, there is definitely a lot more corrupt arms deals. The arms trade is responsible for 40% of corruption in world trade, and unfortunately, this also affects many African countries."

Read more: Luanda Leaks point to international complicity as Isabel dos Santos faces scrutiny
Corruption is by no means restricted to African go-betweens, says Holden. The perpetrators in Africa always had help in the northern hemisphere, where corruption officials are still not afraid of the justice systems. And not just in less transparent countries like Russia.

For instance, Holden recalls a suspected case of corruption in 2000 in his native South Africa and Germany: At that time, the South Africans bought four Meko A-200 warships from a German consortium for a whopping €731 million, a deal in which the Germans paid millions in bribes. Holden says the investigations in both countries remain buried.

"Much of the arms that are shipped to Africa come from Europe or North America. These countries have a major responsibility to ensure that their own companies in Africa do not pay bribes. And they can do so by enforcing them the fight against corruption," Holden adds.

 

[Housecarl]

Yup. Arms sales being what they are and the difficulty of oversight make them prime for such corruption.

 

[Plain Jane]

Somalia: Al-Shabab attacks intensify ahead of poll – DW – 09/18/2020

In the past week alone, Somalia has been the scene of over a dozen deadly terror attacks by al-Shabab. The Islamist militant group is seen to be bent on thwarting the forthcoming elections in the Horn of Africa country.

www.dw.com

Somalia: Al-Shabab attacks intensify as election looms
In the past week alone, Somalia has been the scene of over a dozen deadly terror attacks by al-Shabab. The Islamist militant group is seen to be bent on thwarting the forthcoming elections in the Horn of Africa country.





More than a dozen attacks by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab were recorded in Somalia this week, with civilians and military officers among the casualties. The upsurge in violence comes despite ongoing airstrikes by the US military on the group.


Watch video01:22
Somalia: Mogadishu hotel attack leaves at least 15 dead
The attacks come as Somalis prepare to go to the polls for a staggered general election. The process is due to start with legislative elections on November 1 and culminate in a presidential election by the beginning of 2021.

The dates were announced on Thursday following the resolution of a drawn-out dispute over the electoral model between the federal government in Mogadishu and the leaders of regional states. After a series of talks, the two sides reached a consensus on an indirect election similar to that held in 2016.

Some of the leaders had pushed for universal suffrage, last in force in the country half a century ago. Somalis who have sought refuge abroad in the face of drought, famine and al-Shabab attacks and counterattacks had also hoped to return home to cast their ballots in a one-person, one-vote election.

An election amid insecurity
The legislative election will see 101 electoral delegates vote in the members of parliament, who will then elect the president. President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo's mandate expires in February.

Political analysts predict a highly contested election and the kind of political bickering that for months held up the decision on the electoral model. The elections offer hope to a country that is recovering from around 30 years of civil war.
Read more: Somalia's tumultuous 60-year journey after independence

Security analysts are meanwhile warning that the vote is likely to take place against the backdrop of renewed insecurity. The recent stalled military operations in the war on al-Shabab have allowed the militants to regroup and launch significant attacks, according to analysts.

Somalis have not experienced peace since the country plunged into civil war in 1991
On August 16, at least 15 people were killed when al-Shabab militants attacked a hotel in the Lido beach area of Mogadishu.

Targeted killings — part of the group's modus operandi — have also increased. On September 11, a lone al-Shabab suicide bomber killed Shafi Rabbi Kahin, a senior Chamber of Commerce official in the southern state of Jubaland. Scores of people were injured in the attack. US troops based in the country have also been affected in the latest wave of attacks.

A US military service member was injured in a car bombing at a military base operated jointly by Somali and African Union peacekeepers (AMISOM) and US military forces in the small town of Jannay Abdalla near Kismayo.
Read more: US-Kenya military base attack claimed by al-Shabab

US airstrikes continue
In April, torrential rains and flash floods displaced tens of thousands of people across Somalia. The destructive weather also contributed to the heightened al-Shabab activities, according to Hussein Sheikh Ali, a former national security adviser and founder of the Mogadishu-based security think tank Hiraal Institute.

Al-Shabab militants have stepped up attacks as Somalia gears up for the election

"There was also the absence of countermeasures deployed by the allies, in this case," Sheikh Ali told DW. "That, coupled with the rains and logistics that are inadequate for asymmetric warfare, has made it possible for al-Shabab to intensify its operations," he said. Somalia's war on al-Shabab is supported by African Union forces and the US military.

US military air raids targeting key al-Shabab militants and bases have continued. On August 25, the US Air Force said it had eliminated a senior al-Shabab militant identified as Abdulkadir Commando during an airstrike near the southern town of Sakow. Commando had reportedly held numerous positions within al-Shabab and recently served as a senior commander.

In a statement issued at the time, the commander of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Army General Stephen Townsend, said the airstrikes and targeted operations are critical to downgrading al-Shabab's capability to spread chaos and violence in Somalia and beyond.


Watch video02:14
Mogadishu tries to rebuild after years of war
"The country is entering an uncertain election period due to no agreed model so far, which would further increase security vulnerabilities for al-Shabab to exploit and cause great suffering to the population," General Townsend said. Military operations should continue to keep the pressure on al-Shabab, he added.
Read more: Al-Shabab attack on US air base in Kenya signals resurgence

Bent on thwarting the upcoming election
In recent months, the militant group beefed up its intelligence-gathering activities, with moles planted at government institutions. A year ago, a blind woman staff member of the former mayor of Mogadishu, Abdirahman Osman, came under suspicion when he was targeted in a suicide bombing.

Abdirahman Mohamud Turyare, the former director of the National Intelligence and Security Agency, believes that al-Shabab is exploiting the fragility of the institutions of government. The militants also want "to show that the situation is still out of control as part of a plan to thwart the election."

There is growing fear that al-Shabab may target the election in a bid to destabilize the government

"Because of the increased attacks, our forces themselves are affected by the transition period because our government institutions have been dysfunctional for a long time,"
Mohamud Turyare told DW. "We know that al-Shabab is now collecting more taxes. We know that they are recruiting more militia. We know that they are forcing nomads to bring capital and young people to fight for them."

In the run-up to the elections, lawmakers are concerned about their safety. In various towns, militants have killed dozens of former election delegates.

"It's easy to be killed and targeted," MP Abdi Ali told DW. "An indirect election will bring a security risk. Al-Shabab militants will easily target the people selected for casting the votes," Ali said. However, Ali thinks a direct election would pose fewer security challenges.

 

[Plain Jane]

Ethiopia charges prominent opposition figure with terrorism

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia has charged its most prominent opposition figure, Jawar Mohammed, and 23 others with terrorism-related offenses, telecom fraud and other crimes, the attorney general’s office announced Saturday.

apnews.com

Ethiopia charges prominent opposition figure with terrorism
By ELIAS MESERETyesterday

FILE - In this Thursday Oct. 24, 2019 file photo, Jawar Mohammed speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at his house in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Ethiopia's most prominent opposition figure, Jawar Mohammed, and 23 other people have been charged with terrorism-related offenses, telecom fraud and other criminal activities, the attorney general's office announced Saturday, Sept. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Ethiopia has charged its most prominent opposition figure, Jawar Mohammed, and 23 others with terrorism-related offenses, telecom fraud and other crimes, the attorney general’s office announced Saturday. They could face life in prison if convicted.

They will appear in court on Monday. The charges relate to deadly violence that erupted in July in parts of the capital, Addis Ababa, and the Oromia region after the killing of singer Hachalu Hundessa, a prominent voice in anti-government protests that led to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed coming to power in 2018. Authorities said over 180 people were killed in July’s unrest.

Jawar, a media mogul-turned-politician, has huge support among youth in the Oromia region and returned to Ethiopia after Abiy took office and urged exiles to come home amid sweeping political reforms that led to him receiving the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

The Oromo make up Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group but had never held the country’s top post until they helped bring Abiy to power. Now ethnic tensions and intercommunal violence are posing a growing challenge to his reforms.

Jawar has become fiercely critical of the Ethiopian leader, most recently over the postponement of the general election once planned for August because of the coronavirus pandemic. The government’s mandate expires late next month, and a new election date has not been set.

Jawar has been detained since he and several thousand people were arrested during the July violence. His lawyers have repeatedly asserted he was locked up because of his political views and have called for his release.

His lawyer Tuli Bayissa told The Associated Press that the charges astonished the legal team, and he couldn’t comment on them because he found out only by reading the official announcement on social media.

“This is unethical. I haven’t heard anything like this,” he said. He expects to receive details at Monday’s court appearance.

Human rights groups have warned that such arrests show that Abiy’s political reforms are slipping.

Youth in Oromia have staged a number of recent protests calling for the release of political prisoners, including one in late August that left “scores” of people dead, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and witnesses who spoke to the AP.

Abiy in a opinion piece published this week in The Economist wrote that “individuals and groups, disaffected by the transformations taking place, are using everything at their disposal to derail them. They are harvesting the seeds of inter-ethnic and inter-religious division and hatred.” He rejected “dangerous demagogues.”

The prime minister also acknowledged alleged abuses by security forces during the bouts of unrest, saying that “given the institutions we have inherited, we realize that law-enforcement activities entail a risk of human-rights violations and abuse.” Security reforms take time, he said.
Recommended Links

https://apnews.com/e68f82982ec8c12a82b35d532c1acb78

 

[Plain Jane]

Ethiopians are dipping into digital wallets – DW – 09/14/2020

In several parts of Africa, paying for food, clothes or public transport with a phone is commonplace. Mobile money is taking off in Ethiopia, too, with COVID-19 as the catalyst.

www.dw.com

Ethiopians are dipping into digital wallets
In several parts of Africa, paying for food, clothes or public transport with a phone is commonplace. Mobile money is taking off in Ethiopia, too, with COVID-19 as the catalyst.





It's early in the afternoon, yet small groups of men have already started to gather around the khat stands in the city of Jijiga. Hundreds of these stands form part of the urban scenery in Ethiopia's Somali region, where the amphetamine leaf is widely consumed. The practice of khat-chewing has a long tradition, but the business is modernizing.

Mohammed Abdehashi, a regular user, is not paying in cash for the first of his two daily fixes of the shiny green plant, but with mobile money. The digital form of payment is becoming increasingly common in Jijiga, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated what was already a trend.

"I am afraid of COVID-19," the middle-aged man admits. "The counting of money with the hands causes disease, so instead I use HelloCash."

Read more: Young inventor helps Ethiopia's COVID-19 crisis

The khat plant causes euphoria, loss of appetite and sometimes paranoia
Mobile money leader

The dramatic increase in the number of mobile-money providers and subscribers in recent months has made Jijiga a leader among Ethiopian cities. In the Somali region, the main providers are HelloCash, which has been present there for years, E-Birr and Sahay.

Ethiopia has lagged behind its neighbors like Somalia or Kenya in this business. The government's protectionist policies in the cash-oriented society have stood in the way.
In the Somali region, the shift was in part influenced by the mobile-money market in Somalia. Ethiopia's federal government is starting to promote the technology, too.

Read more: Coronavirus pandemic boosts online trade in Africa
Abdulaziz Hassan is the CEO of Sahay, a new microfinance institution, known for its mobile-money branch. The company has been operating in the Somali region since the end of February and now has more than 200,000 customers.

"It's easy to penetrate in this region and that's because [it's easy for] the customers who are in this area to adapt to new technologies, and they like simplicity and all those things," he says.

Fewer than half of Ethiopia's more than 100 million people have mobile phones

Easy and safe
Anywhere you look in Jijiga, posters and stickers promoting mobile-money providers incite consumers to pay using their phones. Cafes, small shops and even some transport providers now accept mobile payment. The technology aims to make transactions safer and allows users to leapfrog credit card technology.

Card payments are still very expensive and facilities for carrying them out are almost nonexistent in Ethiopia. With mobile money, a phone is used to send and receive payments.
Abdukani Mohammed, who works as a cashier in one of Jijiga's many cafes, says mobile money has brought many advantages. "We are getting our money faster," he says. About half of his customers use mobile banking to pay for coffee.

One of his regular customers, Mohammed Abdulrahman, says he enjoys paying for drinks, food and clothes without carrying large sums of cash. "The mobile-money service is very good because it makes easy to access your money. It's safe money because even if you lose your phone, you can still retrieve your money easily."

The birr is the unit of currency in Ethiopia

New users targeted
In Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, using a phone to pay checks is not yet commonplace, but companies such as Amole have found ways to target new users. Football fans pay for tickets via the mobile-money facility of the company, which is partnered with the government-owned Dashen Bank.

Customers of Addis Ababa's high-class supermarket chains such as Shoa who are already familiar with mobile technology also have the option to use the payment method.

It is still difficult to reach the wider population in a country where about 80% of people live in rural areas. A recent policy shift allowing non-financial institutions to act as mobile-money providers could make mobile money more accessible.

"The previous regulation was more or less focused on the financial sector. The new proclamation enables technology services providers like ourselves to have an electronic payment issuer license, giving us more flexibility acquiring customers, merchants, agents and running transactions," says Samson Getu, the vice president of operations at Amole. "It really gave us a lot of room for growing and expansion."

Ethiopians still feel "more comfortable carrying cash," says Samson Getu. "So we need a lot of behavioral change and education, not from the mobile-money perspective only, but from the financial inclusion aspect of it as well."

Read more: Online shopping in Africa: Somewhere between smartphones and paper catalogues

Kenyans have for years used various phone-based money transfer services

A pandemic opportunity
Despite its many negative impacts, COVID-19 has given the mobile-money market a boost. The government introduced incentives for citizens to increase their use of digital payment methods. But it's too soon to say whether and how exactly the pandemic has benefited the mobile money market.

The transfer of money from one bank to another, or from one digital wallet to another, has just recently become possible. Not all banks have finalized the process, but mobile-money professionals like Samson Getu are optimistic. "We are 100% sure that this will increase the mobile usage," he says.

One challenge still remains untouched, and that is the issue of connectivity, as Ethiopia's internet and mobile networks are very unreliable. Internet shutdowns are sometimes even enforced by the government in times of political turmoil.

Tuk-tuk driver Hussein Ali asks his passengers to pay cash. "Sometimes the network is saturated or absent for several days in a row. For me it's better to receive cash and leave than to wait for the money to be sent slowly through the phone and thereby waste time," he says before riding his blue three-wheeler back into the Jijiga traffic.

 

[Plain Jane]

Bah N'Daw named Mali interim president – DW – 09/21/2020

The ruling junta had come under massive pressure from other West African nations to return the country to civilian rule. It has appointed a former colonel and defense minister on an interim basis, with a military deputy.

www.dw.com

Former Mali defense minister named interim president, with colonel as his deputy
The ruling junta had come under massive pressure from other West African nations to return the country to civilian rule. It has appointed a former colonel and defense minister on an interim basis, with a military deputy.





Former Malian defense minister and retired colonel Ba N'Daou was named interim president on Monday. If all goes according to the military leadership's plans, he would oversee an 18-month transition period for new elections and returning Mali to civilian rule.

The leader of the junta, Assimi Goita, was named vice president. The junta has come under intense pressure from neighboring West African nations to return power to civilians after last month's coup that removed President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Regional neighbors had demanded a civilian interim president but told the junta that they could tolerate a soldier as vice president.

N'Daou was once an aide-de-camp [a role akin to a personal assistant or secretary, usually to a high-ranking military or government official] to Mali's ex-dictator Moussa Traore, who died last week aged 83. The retired colonel was a defense minister under president Keita.

Goita made the announcement on state television channel ORTM. The junta intends to inaugurate its transitional government on Friday.

The coup and its aftermath
Mali was rocked by weeks of protests against Keita prior to his August ousting. But division between the opposition in the weeks following the coup lead to tense discussions for forming a transitional government.

The main point of opposition was who should take the top two positions. The junta wanted two military leaders as president and vice president. The opposition coalition M5-RFP movement has called for civilians to occupy the top two political offices. The coalition was key for mobilizing the protests leading up to the coup.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had demanded that Mali "immediately" appoint a civilian as president to lead the nation following the coup. ECOWAS has already placed sanctions on Mali and closed borders with the nation. The economic group had threatened more sanctions if civilians were not president and vice president.
ECOWAS did not immediately comment following the junta's appointments on Monday.
kbd/msh (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)

 

[Plain Jane]

Cameroon soldiers jailed for murdering women and children

Four Cameroonian soldiers received 10-year prison sentences on Monday for the killing of two women and two children in an incident that sparked international outcry, their lawyers said.

www.france24.com

Cameroon soldiers jailed for murdering women and children
Issued on: 21/09/2020 - 19:37

Cameroon troops patrol on the outskirts of Mosogo in the far north of the country, where Boko Haram jihadists have been active since 2013. © Reinnier Kaze, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES
3 min
Four Cameroonian soldiers received 10-year prison sentences on Monday for the killing of two women and two children in an incident that sparked international outcry, their lawyers said.


They and three other soldiers were arrested after a video surfaced on social media in July 2018 showing uniformed men levelling rifles and firing at the victims, one of whom had a baby strapped to her back.

The video was one of several to emerge in recent years of alleged atrocities by Cameroonian forces during operations against Islamist Boko Haram militants in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west.

The trial started in January and has been conducted behind closed doors. On Monday, the court found three of the soldiers guilty of murder, while their commander Etienne Fabassou was found guilty of complicity in murder, according to his lawyer Sylvestre Mbeng.

All four were given ten years.
Another soldier received a two-year sentence for violating orders, while two others were found not guilty on all counts and released, Mbeng told Reuters.

Under Cameroonian law, some of the defendants could have faced the death penalty, although Cameroon has not executed anyone since 1997.

Mbeng said Fabassou would likely appeal the verdict as witnesses gave contradictory accounts of whether he gave the order to shoot.

Government and army officials initially dismissed the video as "fake news".

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 app
But the soldiers' eventual arrest and prosecution were welcomed by activists, including Amnesty International, who accuse government soldiers of repeatedly engaging in torture and extra-judicial killings in the far north.

The government denies systematic abuses.

"All victims of human rights violations perpetrated by Cameroonian security forces in the fight against Boko Haram deserve fair justice granted by ordinary courts," said Amnesty's regional director Samira Daoud in response to the ruling.
(REUTERS)

 

[Plain Jane]

Extremist violence causes food shortages in north Mozambique

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The escalating extremist insurgency in northern Mozambique has displaced 310,000 people, creating an urgent humanitarian crisis, the World Food Program said Tuesday.

apnews.com

Click to copy
Extremist violence causes food shortages in north Mozambique
By ANDREW MELDRUMyesterday



1 of 7
In this handout photo provided by the World Food Program on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020, a woman collects a monthly food parcel in Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020. The WFP says the escalating extremist insurgency in northern Mozambique has displaced 310,000 people, creating an urgent humanitarian crisis. (Falume Bachir/World Food Program via AP)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The escalating extremist insurgency in northern Mozambique has displaced 310,000 people, creating an urgent humanitarian crisis, the World Food Program said Tuesday.

The rebels have recently stepped up attacks in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, seizing the strategic port of Mocimboa da Praia, which they have held for six weeks. Clashes between the extremist fighters, aligned with the Islamic State group, and government forces have caused massive numbers of local residents to flee their homes and fields.


The conflict has killed more than 1,500 people since it began in 2017 and the increased violence this year has caused widespread upheaval across the area.

“We are deeply concerned about the unfolding humanitarian situation in Cabo Delgado where conflict and violence have left people without access to food and livelihoods,”
Antonella D’Aprile, the World Food Program’s representative for Mozambique, said Tuesday.
“The growing insecurity and poor infrastructure have meant that reaching out to people in need has become harder and now with COVID-19 the crisis becomes even more complex,” she said.

The threat of hunger has grown in Mozambique’s north as entire communities have lost access to food and income, warns WFP. Crisis levels of food insecurity are expected to continue into next year, according to the region’s Famine Early Warning Network.

Cabo Delgado province already had Mozambique’s second-highest rate of chronic malnutrition with more than half of children under 5 chronically malnourished and any additional shocks could rapidly worsen the situation, especially for women and children, said WFP.

“The situation is extremely volatile and dangerous, but we managed to locate large numbers of the displaced and distribute food to about 200,000 people last month. We hope to reach close to 300,000 people this month,” Lola Castro, WFP’s director for southern Africa told The Associated Press. “Families have lost everything and need food urgently.”

Many communities have fled to small islands along Mozambique’s Indian Ocean coast and others have gone to remote inland areas. WFP is working with Mozambique’s government and other aid agencies to get food and supplies the displaced using boats and trucks and soon it hopes that airplanes and helicopters will be available, said Castro.


Such a large-scale emergency operation was not in the budget and WFP is appealing to its donors for funds to keep delivering food to the hungry.

“We need $4.7 million per month to feed the most vulnerable,” said Castro. “We need the funds to purchase food for distribution.”

Access and communication have been cut off to the area surrounding the rebel-held port of Mocimboa da Praia and surrounding towns, including Palma, she said. United Nations security teams are trying to open communications with the rebels in order to negotiate access to hungry communities, she said.

Atrocities have been committed by both the rebels and government forces, according to human rights groups, but WFP’s workers and operations have not been targeted.
Amnesty International has released videos in the past month that appear to show government troops torturing and killing several people in northern Mozambique. One video showed troops shooting a woman in the back more than 30 times and another showed a uniformed man killing a civilian by cutting his throat. The government denied the videos are genuine, Amnesty insisted that its analysis of the videos shows that government troops carried out the violent abuses.

Although hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, there are not massive camps of displaced people. Instead, many of the displaced have been taken in by local residents in safer areas, said Castro.

“We are seeing poor families opening their homes and their meager resources to help the displaced,” said Castro. “It is quite remarkable how these people, who have so little themselves, can offer such hospitality. Everybody is sharing what little food they have. When we see such generosity, it is a responsibility for us to help them all.”

 

[Plain Jane]

Amnesty: Migrants face 'vicious cycle of cruelty' in Libya

CAIRO (AP) — Amnesty International said Thursday that thousands of Europe-bound migrants who were intercepted and returned to Libyan shores this year were forcefully disappeared after being taken out of unofficial detention centers run by militias allied with the U.N.

apnews.com

Amnesty: Migrants face ‘vicious cycle of cruelty’ in Libya
By SAMY MAGDYtoday

FILE - In this Sept. 9, 2020 file photo, migrants of different nationalities rest on board the Spanish NGO Open Arms vessel, after being rescued as they were trying to flee Libya on board a precarious wooden boat, in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Amnesty International said Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020, that thousands of Europe-bound migrants who were intercepted and returned to Libyan shores this year were forcefully disappeared after they were taken of detention centers run by militias allied with the U.N.-supported government in the capital, Tripoli. The report also said that rival authorities in eastern Libya forcibly expelled serval thousands “without due process or the opportunity to challenge their deportation.” (AP Photo/Santi Palacios, File)

CAIRO (AP) — Amnesty International said Thursday that thousands of Europe-bound migrants who were intercepted and returned to Libyan shores this year were forcefully disappeared after being taken out of unofficial detention centers run by militias allied with the U.N.-supported government in the capital, Tripoli.

In its latest report, the group also said that rival authorities in eastern Libya forcibly expelled several thousand migrants “without due process or the opportunity to challenge their deportation.”

Libya, which descended into chaos following the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has emerged as a major transit point for African and Arab migrants fleeing war and poverty to Europe.

Most migrants make the perilous journey in ill-equipped and unsafe rubber boats. In recent years, the European Union has partnered with Libya’s coast guard and other Libyan forces to stop the flow of migrants and thousands have been intercepted at sea and returned to Libya.
Officials in Libya’s east and west did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment.
Amnesty said about 8,500 migrants, including women and children, were intercepted and brought back to Libya between Jan. 1 and Sep. 14. Since 2016, an estimated 60,000 men, women and children have been captured at sea and taken to Libya where they disembarked, it said.

“The EU and its member states continue to implement policies trapping tens of thousands of men, women and children in a vicious cycle of abuse, showing a callous disregard for people’s lives and dignity,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty’s deputy regional director.

Thousands have been subjected to enforced disappearances in 2020, after being taken to unofficial detention centers in western Libya, including to the so-called Tobacco Factory in Tripoli, run by a government-allied militia, Amnesty said.

There, the migrants and refuges face a “constant risk” of being abducted by militias, armed groups and traffickers.

They are “trapped in a vicious cycle of cruelty with little to no hope of finding safe and legal pathways out,” the report said. “Some are tortured or raped until their families pay ransoms to secure their release. Others die in custody as a result of violence, torture, starvation or medical neglect.”

Eltahawy urged the EU to “completely reconsider” its cooperation with Libyan authorities and make “any further support conditional on immediate action to stop horrific abuses against refugees and migrants.”

In 2020, eastern Libya authorities forcibly expelled over 5,000 refugees and migrants, citing their alleged carrying of “contagious diseases” among reasons cited for the deportations.

Amnesty cited an incident, without saying when it happened, in which eastern Libyan forces blocked a bus from entering the southeastern city of Kufra unless three Chadian nationals got off. They were ordered to take a COVID-19 test and left in the desert outside the city, while other passengers, all of them Libyans, were allowed to enter without further checks or testing.

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Africa Is The Undeniable Final Frontier For Oil

by Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/25/2020 - 03:30
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Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
The pandemic has been devastating for the oil industry globally. Explorers suspended drilling, producers, idled wells, Big Oil majors put up assets for sale. But the world continues to need oil, albeit lower amounts of it than a year ago, and it will continue to need it.
Exploration is not dead. It is especially not dead in Africa - a hot spot in oil and gas before the pandemic.


The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline
Earlier this month, French Total and the Uganda government signed an important deal, for the construction of a pipeline that will carry Ugandan oil to the Kenyan coast. Two weeks later, the presidents of the two countries signed their own deal about the $3.5-billion infrastructure.

The final investment decision on the pipeline is expected by the end of the year in a rare good sign about the future of oil demand. Uganda and Kenya are both newcomers on the oil scene with hopes to join the oil exporting community soon. If the construction of a $3.5-billion oil pipeline still makes economic sense for countries that are not among the wealthiest in the world, there may be some hope for oil demand.

The South African oil discovery
Africa Energy, a Canadian exploration company, said last week it expected to strike a lot of oil in an offshore block in South Africa with reserves that could exceed those of an earlier discovery made by Africa Energy and Total in the same block. Earlier this year, Africa Energy doubled its stake in the consortium exploring the block to 10 percent. Total is the operator.

Africa Energy should announce the results of the drilling project by the end of next month.
The Luiperd prospect is the largest of five prospects in the offshore block 11B/12B in South African waters that have attracted explorers’ attention. Consortium members estimate the resources of Luiperd alone to be in excess of 500 million barrels.

What’s more important is that, according to Africa Energy, the Luiperd prospect offers as much as 80 percent of success—"unheard of in frontier exploration today," the company’s chief executive Garrett Sodden told an industry conference. The entire offshore block has potential reserves of several billion barrels.

Drilling in Zimbabwe
An Australian company, Invictus, is meanwhile preparing to start drilling exploration wells in Zimbabwe, with the start date scheduled for October 2021. These would be the first oil and gas wells to be drilled in South Africa’s neighbour to the north—another country hopeful it will strike oil, which will boost its energy self-sufficiency.

The drilling project is seen to cot some $15 million, Africa Oil and Power reported last week, adding that it builds on promising results from earlier exploration conducted by Exxon. In the 1990s, Exxon identified an area that was highly likely to contain hydrocarbons but dropped the project because it was after oil and the area was more likely to contain gas. The government of the country, which is currently 100-percent dependent on exports for its energy needs, seems fine with gas, too. It is currently putting the finishing touches to a production sharing agreement with Invictus in case oil and gas are found.

The Gambian license
UK-based explorer PetroNor earlier this month received a 30-year drilling license from the Gambian government after an arbitration process concerning two offshore blocks. After the successful completion of the arbitration, PetroNor will have rights to explore just one of the blocks, with the other passing to an unnamed “major oil company”.
The new license is based on a new production-sharing framework developed by the Gambian government, which, according to PetroNor, is more favourable for explorers and producers. The company now has a year to decide if it wants to proceed with drilling in the offshore block.
Pandemic delays
Despite all the positive news from frontier regions in Africa, the continent has not been spared the fallout of the pandemic that destroyed a lot of oil and gas demand. Kenya’s government, for instance, said recently that Covid-19 had slowed down exploration in the Turkana region, which would delay Kenya’s ambitions to become an oil exporter until 2024, from an earlier plan to start shipping oil abroad in 2022.

The pandemic has also delayed exploratory drilling in Mozambique following the distribution of new blocks in a government tender. It was supposed to begin this year but “some adjustments” the pandemic necessitated have pushed the schedule to 2021-2022.

One of the biggest producers on the continent, meanwhile, is working on a new exploration strategy to boost its oil and gas reserves. Angola’s government earlier this month approved a plan, to take effect by 2025, that would see the country boost its exploration activities to increase recoverable reserves and make sure it produces at least 1 million bpd by 2040.

South Africa, on the other hand, has delayed a new oil and gas exploration and production bill that was supposed to be passed this year, again because of the pandemic. Now, the deadline for the approval of the bill has been moved to the end of the third quarter of 2021.
Overall, however, the picture appears to be better in Africa’s frontier oil regions than in legacy producing parts of the world.

 

[Plain Jane]

Hero of 'Hotel Rwanda' admits forming militant group behind armed attacks

Paul Rusesabagina, the polarising hero of the hit movie "Hotel Rwanda," admitted to a Kigali court on Friday that he had helped form an armed group but denied any role in its crimes.

www.france24.com

Hero of 'Hotel Rwanda' admits forming militant group behind armed attacks
Issued on: 25/09/2020 - 16:36

'Hotel Rwanda' hero Paul Rusesabagina (R) in the pink inmate's uniform arrives from the Nyarugenge prison with Rwanda Correctional Service officers at the Nyarugenge Court of Justice in Kigali, Rwanda, on September 25, 2020. © Simon Wohlfahrt, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES
4 min
Paul Rusesabagina, the polarising hero of the hit movie "Hotel Rwanda," admitted to a Kigali court on Friday that he had helped form an armed group but denied any role in its crimes.

Rusesabagina is famed for his depiction by Don Cheadle in the 2004 film in which a moderate Hutu is shown as saving hundreds of lives at a luxury hotel during the 1994 genocide, which left some 800,000, mostly Tutsi, dead.

However, a more complex image has emerged since he appeared in Kigali under arrest in mysterious circumstances last month, after years living in Belgium and the United States.
He is being tried on 13 charges including terrorism, financing and founding militant groups, murder, arson and conspiracy to involve children in armed groups.

Rusesabagina appeared in court Friday clad in Rwanda's pink prison outfit and accompanying pink mask, to appeal his denial of bail last week.

In 2017 Rusesabagina co-founded the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), an opposition party based abroad.

During the hearing he admitted to the formation of an armed wing, the National Liberation Front (FLN), which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in Nyungwe, near the border with Burundi.

"We formed the FLN as an armed wing, not as a terrorist group as the prosecution keeps saying. I do not deny that the FLN committed crimes but my role was diplomacy," he said in court Friday.

"The agreement we signed to form MRCD as a political platform included the formation of an armed wing called FLN. But my work was under the political platform and I was in charge of diplomacy."

In April 2019, Rwandan authorities arrested the commander of the FLN, Callixte Nsabimana, who had previously claimed responsibility on social media for attacks including setting fire to a passenger bus in 2018, leaving two dead and many injured.

However in court, Nsabimana tried to distance himself from the killing of civilians.

"When we attacked the Nyungwe area, we had given FLN specific orders that whatever operation they launch, it should be about destroying bridges, ambush military vehicles, attack government offices as well as police and military camps. We didn't expect them to attack civilians," Nsabimana said in court last year.

Nyungwe is a region popular among tourists coming to see endangered mountain gorillas and the attacks prompted many western countries such as France, Germany, Canada and Australia to advise their nationals against travel to the area.

In a 2018 video supporting the FLN, Rusesabagina said: "The time has come for us to use any means possible to bring about change in Rwanda, as all political means have been tried and failed."

A polarising hero
Rusesabagina left Rwanda in 1996 along with other moderates who believed the space for political opposition was fast shrinking.

The release of the Oscar-nominated film "Hotel Rwanda" thrust him into the global spotlight, giving him a greater platform for his criticism of Paul Kagame's government.

Kagame, who has been in power since his troops flushed out the genocidal regime in 1994, is championed abroad for turning the country around.

However critics such as Rusesabagina accuse his government of authoritarianism, ruling through fear and crushing the opposition. Several critics of his regime have been assassinated abroad.

As Rusesabagina grew more critical, railing against Kagame's anti-Hutu sentiment - an extremely sensitive topic in Rwanda - so his image at home worsened as the regime attacked his character.

Detractors claimed he embellished his heroics, while some survivors groups accused him of profiting from their misery.

Rusesabagina's family said he would never have willingly returned to Rwanda, and the details of his arrest are still murky.

In an interview with The New York Times, Rusesabagina, speaking with Rwandan officials in the room, said he boarded a private jet in Dubai which he thought was taking him to Burundi, but landed in Kigali instead.

His family says Rusesabagina has not been allowed to consult with lawyers of his choosing.
A ruling on his bail appeal will be made on October 2.
(AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

Western Togoland declares sovereignty – DW – 09/25/2020

An area of eastern Ghana has declared itself a sovereign state. The region known as Western Togoland has had secessionist attempts in the past.

www.dw.com

Ghana's Western Togoland region declares sovereignty
An area of eastern Ghana has declared itself a sovereign state. The region known as Western Togoland has had secessionist attempts in the past.





Armed men demanding the secession of Western Togoland from Ghana blockaded major entry points to the Volta region of Ghana on Friday morning.

Local sources say the group are holding three police officers hostage, including a District Commander, and attacked two police stations. Prior to the blockade, the group reportedly broke into an armory and stole weapons.

Western Togoland is located in eastern Ghana, on the Togolese border
"This is a very serious situation because just few weeks ago we saw [what happened] when they mounted signs along the major roads welcoming people into the Western Togoland State," a local resident told DW. "Blocking the roads with heaps of sand, burning tyres [and ] even holding security personnel hostage."

About 12 hours before Friday's dawn operation, the Western Togoland Restoration Front (WTRF) published photos of the graduation ceremony for around 500 personnel who underwent training for months in secret locations, raising questions over the effectiveness of security agencies in the region.


Seeking sovereignty
Ghana's Western Togoland region is predominately wedged between Lake Volta and the Ghana-Togo border. Currently, a number of splinter groups are demanding the area be recognized as a sovereign state.

In a press release, the chairman of the WTRF, Togbe Yesu Kwabla Edudzi I, declared that efforts for consolidating statehoood, which began on 1 September 2020, were being put into practice.

Protestors gather for a demonstration demanding sovereignty of Western Togoland
The press release also claimed "roadblocks to assert its sovereignty are all over the Southern sector."

The movement says it wants to force the Ghanaian government to join United Nations (UN) facilitated negotiations aiming to declare Western Togoland an independent state.

Makeshift signs have appeared marking the Western Togoland border in Ghana's Volta region

Ghanaian police have been ordered to "leave the region in 24 hours" and surrender weapons. Some radio stations appear to have been taken over by members of the WTRF. The group has demanded the release of prisoners currently being held in detention for secessionist activities.


Travelers urged to be cautious
Meanwhile, on Facebook, Ghanaian police have cautioned travellers to be aware of "security operations" in some communities in the Volta Region.

Local media have reported the minister of the affected Volta Region, Archibald Letsa, urged travelers to remain calm and allow security personnel to do their jobs.

A tumultuous past
The territory of Western Togoland was first colonized by Germany in 1884 and incorporated into the Togoland colony. After Germany's defeat during the First World War, the colony of Togoland was divided between France and Britain as protectorates. The western part of Togoland became part of Britain's Gold Coast colony, which became independent in 1957 to form modern-day Ghana. Togo gained independence from France in 1960.

Western Togoland is a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). Four million people live in the region. In terms of language and culture, Western Togoland, especially the Volta region, has more in common with Togo. Locals in the region say they feel underrepresented by Ghanaian authorities.

Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to become independent in 1957, but is now facing sovereignty questions within its own borders

A previous unsuccessful attempt to declare Western Togoland independent from Ghana took place in 2017. In March 2020, around 80 members of the separatist group were detained for protesting the arrest of seven leaders of the Homeland Study Group Foundation. The charges were later dropped.

 

[Plain Jane]

Dozens killed in jihadist attack on Nigeria governor's convoy

The death toll from a jihadist attack on the convoy of the regional governor in northeast Nigeria has risen to 30, security sources said Saturday.

www.france24.com

Dozens killed in jihadist attack on Nigeria governor's convoy
Issued on: 26/09/2020 - 14:37

Nigerian soldiers take snapshots of vehicles allegedly belonging to the Islamic State group in West Africa (ISWAP) in Baga on August 2, 2019 © Audu Marte, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES

3 min
The death toll from a jihadist attack on the convoy of the regional governor in northeast Nigeria has risen to 30, security sources said Saturday.

Two sources told AFP fatalities from the attack Friday in restive Borno state had doubled as more bodies were found and now included 12 policemen, five soldiers, four members of a government-backed militia and nine civilians.

"The tally has increased to 30 as many bodies were picked in the surrounding areas after the attack," one of the sources said, adding that "many people were injured".

Sources had earlier told AFP that a convoy transporting Borno governor Babagana Umara Zulum came under attack from insurgents on Friday near the town of Baga on the shores of Lake Chad.

A second security source gave the same death toll of 30 from the assault and said the militants seized eight vehicles.

"The terrorists made away with an armoured personnel carrier, a gun truck and six sports utility vehicles in the convoy," the source said.

Police confirmed in a statement that the attack by suspected jihadists on the "security convoy" had killed eight policemen and three government-backed militia members.

It said 13 other people had been wounded and the attack had been "successfully repelled".

IS-affiliated group intensify its attacks
Zulum -- who sources said was unhurt in the attack -- had flown to the area to prepare for the return of residents displaced from Baga by the conflict.
He was driving in the convoy accompanied by government officials under tight security towards Baga ahead of the arrival of the returnees.

The IS-affiliated Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) group maintains most of its camps on islands in Lake Chad and the region is known as a bastion for the jihadists.The militant group has recently intensified attacks on military and civilian targets in the region.
In July Zulum's convoy came under gun attack from ISWAP outside Baga, forcing him to cancel his trip to the town.

The decade-long insurgency in northeast Nigeria has killed 36,000 people and forced over 2 million from their homes.

Most of the displaced have been housed into squalid camps where they depend on food handouts from international charities.

Local authorities have been encouraging the displaced to go back to their homes despite concern from aid agencies of the security risks.

ISWAP splintered from the main Boko Haram group in 2016 and has gone on to be the dominant insurgent force in the region.
(AFP)

 

[Plain Jane]

Moctar Ouane named new prime minister of Mali – DW – 09/28/2020

The decision to appoint a civilian as PM could result in the lifting of sanctions by neighboring countries. The restrictive measures were imposed following a military coup last month.

www.dw.com

Mali: Moctar Ouane named new prime minister by transitional government
The decision to appoint a civilian as PM could result in the lifting of sanctions by neighboring countries. The restrictive measures were imposed following a military coup last month.





Former Foreign Minister Moctar Ouane was appointed as Mali's new prime minister by the West African country's interim government on Sunday.

The choice of a civilian for the role is likely to pave the way for Mali's neighbors to lift sanctions imposed after a military coup on August 18.

Read more: An uncertain future for Mali 60 years after independence
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is a bloc made up of 15 member nations, had closed borders to Mali and stopped financial flows to put pressure on the military junta to swiftly return to a civilian government.

ECOWAS is also seeking the release of all detainees from last month's coup, which saw Mali's president at the time, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, detained. Though Keita was subsequently released, others, including former prime minister Boubou Cisse, are still in jail.


Watch video01:28
ECOWAS likely to lift Mali sanctions soon
Fresh elections next year
Mali's new interim President Bah N'Daw, a retired colonel, was sworn in on Friday as the transitional president while Colonel Assimi Goita, the head of the junta that staged the coup, was installed as vice president. The three government heads are to lead the interim government until an election in 18 months.

The appointment of new PM Ouane, who served in the Malian government as minister of foreign affairs from May 2004 to April 2011, was made by official decree Sunday and signed by President N'Daw.

Ouane also served as Mali's permanent representative to the United Nations from 1995 to 2002 and later as a diplomatic adviser to ECOWAS.


Watch video06:51
Mali: Resisting Climate Change
jsi/sri (AP, dpa)

 

[Plain Jane]

South Africa: Hatred of migrants on the rise – DW – 09/29/2020

South Africa often makes the headlines for violent attacks against immigrants. Xenophobia has now reached a new level with the creation of a group calling itself Put South Africa First.

www.dw.com

South Africa: Hatred of migrants reaches new heights
South Africa often makes the headlines for violent attacks against immigrants. Xenophobia has now reached a new level with the creation of a group calling itself Put South Africa First.





The movement Put South Africa First, which first appeared on social media, is seen as a cause for alarm by human rights defenders and foreign nationals, especially after it mobilized dozens of people for a march to the Nigerian and Zimbabwean embassies in Pretoria last week. The protesters demanded that undocumented immigrants, or those involved in criminal activities, leave South Africa.

One of the protest organizers, Nandisa Gschwari, warned that more demonstrations were to come. She told DW that she didn't care if the movement was called xenophobic.

"Children are going missing every day, and our government is not doing anything about it. Nigerians are known to be at the top of the list," she said.

Unfounded allegations
Without presenting any evidence, the movement alleges that foreign nationals are mainly responsible for crimes ranging from robbery, sex slavery, kidnappings, and human trafficking to the peddling of drugs.

Some of its leaders, like Ike Khumalo, went as far as demanding that immigrants be denied their rights. Khumalo told DW that even those documented should no longer enjoy the same rights as South Africans. "Our constitution should also be amended because our constitution is a problem," he said, insisting that a constitution should be valid for South Africans only.

Watch video05:00
Hate and violence against foreigners in South Africa
South Africa has a history of violence against foreigners. Xenophobic attacks left at least 62 people dead in 2008. Seven others were killed in 2015. Violence flared again in September last year when armed mobs attacked foreign-owned businesses in Johannesburg. The clashes left at least 12 people dead.

Weak response from the authorities
South African authorities took their time in acknowledging that the violence was motivated by xenophobia, preferring to classify it as crime driven. A year and a half ago, the government adopted a plan to fight xenophobia. So far, it seems to have borne little fruit.

Ambiguous statements by some politicians are seen as fueling hatred against foreigners. A recent report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused law enforcement officials of being complicit in the violence, often operating in "discriminatory" and "abusive ways" towards non-nationals.

It claimed that crackdowns on counterfeit goods disproportionately targeted foreign-owned businesses and that migrants were being arbitrarily detained for allegedly lacking the proper documents. According to HRW, police are reluctant to protect immigrants and investigate crimes against foreigners.

Migrants in South Africa are often blamed for the loss of jobs and dire economic situation
The Put South Africa First movement, the first organized group to openly say that solving South Africa's unemployment, crime, and social problems must include sending non-nationals back to their countries, is seen as cause for alarm by observers.

Looking for scapegoats
South Africans are feeling the pinch of COVID-19, which destroyed thousands of jobs in both the formal and informal sectors.

The pandemic exacerbated an already dire economic situation, tempting many to use foreigners as scapegoats, said Frans Viljoen, Director at the Human Rights Centre at the University of Pretoria.

"It is a deflection and inappropriate to target non-nationals in South Africa. We all know that after COVID-19, the economic stagnation created unease, and there is a quest to look for blame."

Nigerian ambassador to South Africa Karibu Bala agrees. "We are deeply concerned when Nigerians and indeed African nationals of foreign origin in South Africa are bashed left, right and center by individuals or groups of individuals for whatever reason. We are like endangered species. We are always the scapegoat when things are hot in South Africa, and it's to be condemned," he said.

South Africa has long been a magnet for economic migrants searching for better job prospects in the region. The country attracts people not only from neighboring Lesotho, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, but also Congo, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and South Asia. The county's last population census, in 2011, counted more than 2.2 million foreigners.

 

[Plain Jane]

WHO investigating sexual abuse allegations amid Ebola fight in DR Congo

The World Health Organization said Tuesday it was investigating allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by people identifying themselves as the UN agency’s workers fighting Ebola in the Democratic…

www.france24.com

WHO investigating sexual abuse allegations amid Ebola fight in DR Congo
Issued on: 29/09/2020 - 22:03

A health worker receives people at the Mpondwe Health Screening Facility in the Uganda border town with the Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 13, 2019. © Isaac Kasamani, AFP
Text by:FRANCE 24Follow
2 min
The World Health Organization said Tuesday it was investigating allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by people identifying themselves as the UN agency’s workers fighting Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.


The WHO said its leadership and staff were "outraged" by recent reports of sexual abuse by people saying they were working for the UN health agency in the Ebola fight in the DRC.

"The actions allegedly perpetrated by individuals identifying themselves as working for WHO are unacceptable and will be robustly investigated," it said in a statement.

"The betrayal of people in the communities we serve is reprehensible," it said, stressing that "we do not tolerate such behaviour in any of our staff, contractors or partners."



WHO investigating sexual abuse allegations amid Ebola fight in DR Congo
Issued on: 29/09/2020 - 22:03

A health worker receives people at the Mpondwe Health Screening Facility in the Uganda border town with the Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 13, 2019. © Isaac Kasamani, AFP
Text by:FRANCE 24Follow
2 min
The World Health Organization said Tuesday it was investigating allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by people identifying themselves as the UN agency’s workers fighting Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo.


The WHO said its leadership and staff were "outraged" by recent reports of sexual abuse by people saying they were working for the UN health agency in the Ebola fight in the DRC.
"The actions allegedly perpetrated by individuals identifying themselves as working for WHO are unacceptable and will be robustly investigated," it said in a statement.

"The betrayal of people in the communities we serve is reprehensible," it said, stressing that "we do not tolerate such behaviour in any of our staff, contractors or partners."

The WHO pointed out it had a "zero tolerance policy with regard to sexual exploitation and abuse". "Anyone identified as being involved will be held to account and face serious consequences, including immediate dismissal," it said.

Over 50 women accuse Ebola aid workers
WHO did not spell out the specific allegations, but its statement came after an investigative report by The New Humanitarian found that more than 50 women had accused Ebola aid workers from the WHO and leading non-governmental organisations of sexual exploitation, including forcing them to have sex in exchange for a job.

WHO said its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had initiated a thorough review into the allegations, as well as "broader protection issues in health emergency response settings."

DRC is currently battling a fresh Ebola outbreak in Equateur province, which has seen some 120 cases and 50 deaths since June.

The current outbreak is DRC's 11th, and its third in the past two years.
Around a billion dollars in aid, along with an army of external specialists, flooded into the DRC after the much-feared haemorrhagic fever surfaced in its volatile east in 2018.

That outbreak was declared over on June 25, 2020 after 2,287 lives were lost - the highest Ebola toll in the DRC's history and the second highest in the world, after the 2013-16 epidemic in West Africa that killed 11,000 people.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)