Officials from Cameroon and Congo on Tuesday began meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, to discuss the border demarcation issue between the two countries.

This is the first time that experts from the two sides, who are members of the technical sub-commission in charge of the border demarcation, met to discuss the border issue.

“We also expect that this meeting will provide a legal framework to facilitate the demarcation of our common borders,” said Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji at the beginning of the meeting. He believed that the meeting will help trace the border between the two countries and determine the geographical distinctions, among other issues.

Both countries want to make the border “an instrument of peace and shared development,” the minister said and stressed that there is no border dispute between the two countries.

The two sides are expected to finalize a working document that will help the experts when they visit the border Friday.

Source: Xinhuanet

The UN children’s agency UNICEF on Saturday condemned an Ethiopian air strike that “hit a kindergarten” in the rebel-held Tigray region, killing at least four people including two children.

The government denied targeting civilian areas in Friday’s air raid and accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of staging deaths.

 “UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike …  (that) hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others,” the agency’s executive director Catherine Russell said on Twitter.

“Yet again, an escalation of violence in northern Ethiopia has caused children to pay the heaviest price. For almost two years, children and their families in the region have endured the agony of this conflict. It must end.”

The bombardment came just days after fighting erupted on Tigray’s southern border between government forces and TPLF rebels, ending a five-month truce and dashing hopes of peace talks.

The TPLF said the air strike, the first in many months on Tigray, demolished a kindergarten and hit a civilian residential area.

The government said only military sites were targeted and accused the TPLF of “dumping fake body bags in civilian areas” to maximise outrage.

Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief clinical director at Mekele’s Ayder Referral Hospital, told AFP four people died in the strike, including two children.

Nine others were receiving treatment for injuries, he said.

Tigrai TV, a local network, said the death toll had reached seven and broadcast footage of mangled playground equipment and a brightly painted compound in ruins at the apparent scene of the strike.

The claims could not be independently verified as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted.

‘Respect international law’ 

The EU condemned the strike and called for a peaceful settlement to the 21-month war.

“I urge again for the respect of International Humanitarian Law. Civilians are #NotATarget,” the EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said on Twitter.

In March, the UN said at least 304 civilians had been killed in airstrikes in the three months prior in northern Ethiopia.

The UN human rights office has warned that disproportionate attacks against non-military targets could amount to war crimes.

Ethiopia’s air force operates the only known military aircraft over the country’s skies.

A truce in March paused the worst of the bloodshed and allowed aid convoys to return slowly to Tigray, where the UN says millions are severely hungry, and fuel and medicine are in short supply.

But on Wednesday, the warring sides each accused the other of firing first as fresh offensives erupted along Tigray’s southern border.

The flare-up alarmed the international community, which has been pushing both sides to peacefully resolve the war in Africa’s second most populous nation.

The conflict has killed untold numbers, with widespread reports of atrocities including mass killings and sexual violence.

Abiy sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF, accusing the region’s former ruling party of orchestrating attacks on federal army camps.

Source: AFP

Mali has requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting as the country has accused France of violating its airspace and delivering weapons to armed groups, an attempt considered to destabilize the West African country.

In a letter to the head of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, Mali’s foreign minister, Abdoulaye Diop, said its airspace has been breached more than 50 times this year, mostly by French forces using drones, military helicopters, and fighter jets.

Malian authorities have “several pieces of evidence that these flagrant violations of Malian airspace were used by France to collect intelligence for terrorist groups operating in the Sahel and to drop arms and ammunition to them,” the letter said.

Diop called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council in his letter in order to ensure that France “immediately ceases its acts of aggression,” in the form of the alleged violations of its sovereignty, support for terrorist groups, and spying.

“In the event of the persistence of this posture which undermines the stability and security of our country, Mali reserves the right to use self defense,” he said.

“France has obviously never supported, directly or indirectly, these terrorist groups, which remain its designated enemies across the planet,” said the French Embassy in Mali in a Twitter thread.

The Malian army says that after an attack on Tessit camp one week ago that claimed the lives of 42 Malian soldiers, “clandestine and uncoordinated overflight operations” were conducted.

The letter is the latest in a barrage of accusations that have strained the relationship between the West African country and its former colonizer. On Monday, France allegedly completed the withdrawal of its forces from Mali, ending a nine-year operation in the country.

A French mission began in Mali in 2013 to allegedly counter militants that Paris claimed were linked to the al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorist groups. Accordingly, the French government deployed thousands of soldiers to purportedly prevent separatist forces from reaching Bamako.

The war caused several thousand deaths and more than a million people to flee their homes. There have been two military coups in roughly a year, amid growing demonstrations against France’s military presence.

France has been a former colonizer in Africa, and, after years of outright colonization, still seeks control over countries spread over more than 12 territories and treats their people as second-class citizens. It has had more than 50 military interventions in Africa since 1960, when many of its former colonies gained nominal independence.

As French troops were pulled out of Mali, the Malian military leaders said they invited “Russian trainers” to strengthen national defense. The swap has worried Western powers, who see their influence slipping in the Sahel.

Over the past few years, Russia has built military alliances with governments in African countries facing violent armed conflicts, including Libya, Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Mozambique. Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed possibly supplying food, fertilizers, and fuel to Mali in a call with the country’s interim president last week.

Culled from Presstv

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday said the United States was “concerned” by “credible” reports that Rwanda is supporting rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The resurgence of the M23 group in Congo’s restive east has exacerbated tensions between the neighbours, with Kinshasa accusing Kigali of backing the rebels.

Blinken was speaking in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, where he arrived on Tuesday for the second leg of a three-nation African tour and met President Felix Tshisekedi.

Rwanda has denied the allegations and Blinken is due to visit the country following a one-day stay in Kinshasa.

“We are very concerned by credible reports that Rwanda has supported the M23,” the top US diplomat told a press conference in Kinshasa.

“All countries have to respect their neighbours’ territorial integrity,” he added, saying he was “not turning a blind eye” and would discuss the issue with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Blinken said his trip to the region was to ensure US support for mediation efforts led by Angola and Kenya “to prevent further violence, to end conflict (and) to preserve the territorial integrity of the DRC”.

The DRC is seeking international support as it struggles with Rwanda over the M23, a primarily Congolese Tutsi group that is one of many operating in the troubled east.

After lying mostly dormant for years, the rebels resumed fighting late last year, seizing the strategic town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June and prompting thousands of people to flee their homes.

In a 131-page report to the UN Security Council seen last week by AFP, experts said Rwandan troops had intervened militarily inside the DRC since at least November.

Rwanda also “provided troop reinforcements” for specific M23 operations, the experts’ report said, “in particular when these aimed at seizing strategic towns and areas”.

Kinshasa and Kigali have had strained relations since the mass influx of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Relations began to thaw after Tshisekedi took office in 2019 but the M23’s resurgence has revived tensions.

The group, also known as the “March 23 Movement”, first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured the city of Goma before a joint Congolese-UN offensive drove it out.

Rwanda and M23

Blinken arrived in Kinshasa from South Africa, where he said the United States was seeking a “true partnership” with Africa and was not vying with other powers for influence on the continent.

Tshisekedi was to “raise the questions of strategic partnership” between the DRC and the United States during his meeting with Blinken at the presidential palace, his office said in a statement Monday.

On the eve of Blinken’s swing through the DRC and Rwanda, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged him to condemn the M23 attacks and press Rwanda on its rights record, which included a “brutal” crackdown on dissent.

“As in 2012, the M23 are committing war crimes against civilians,” said a HRW statement.

“Witnesses described summary killings of at least 29 people, including children, in June and July… The US should raise with Rwanda the reliable reports that it is again supporting the M23’s abusive conduct in eastern Congo.”

The M23 is just one of scores of armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared late last century.

One of the bloodiest militias is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — an organisation the Islamic State group describes as its “Central Africa Province” affiliate.

The State Department placed the ADF on its list of IS-linked “terrorist” organisations in March 2021.

Source: AFP

Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré, sentenced in absentia to life in jail for the 1987 assassination of revolutionary icon Thomas Sankara, apologised to the ex-leader’s family on Tuesday.

“I ask the Burkinabe people for forgiveness for all the acts I may have committed during my tenure, and especially the family of my brother and friend Thomas Sankara,” he said in a message read out by government spokesman Lionel Bilgo.

Compaoré seized power in the West African nation in a 1987 coup that toppled and killed serving leader Sankara.

A Burkina court handed him a life term in absentia in April for his role in the assassination.

“I take responsibility for, and regret from the bottom of my heart, all the suffering and tragedies experienced by all victims during my terms as leader of the country and ask their families to grant me their forgiveness,” he added.

Compaoré, 71, has been living in exile in neighbouring Ivory Coast since being ousted from power by mass protests in 2014.

He returned to Burkina Faso for several days this month, without facing arrest, after the country’s military leader Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba invited him in the name of “national reconciliation”.

The visit sparked an outcry among civil society groups and political parties, who said uniting the nation should not come with immunity from punishment.

Compaoré expressed his “deep gratitude” to Burkina Faso’s military-dominated transitional government.

He called on his compatriots to join “a sacred union, tolerance, moderation, but above all forgiveness so that the national interest prevails”.

A fiery Marxist-Leninist who blasted the West for neocolonialism and hypocrisy, Sankara was gunned down by a hit squad on October 15, 1987, little more than four years after coming to power as an army captain aged just 33.

Damiba took power in a January coup that ousted former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, amid widespread anger at the government’s failure to deal with a bloody jihadist insurgency that spread from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

Source: AFP

Mali’s army said it repelled a “terrorist attack” on Friday against its main base outside the capital Bamako, which was carried out with car bombs.

The attack on the Kati military base near Bamako began at 5am local time with two vehicles packed with explosives, said the Malian army in a Twitter post. 

“The provisional death toll is two assailants neutralised. The situation is under control and clearing operations are under way to flush out the authors and their accomplices,” said the army.

Residents from the area said they were woken up around 5am on Friday by gunfire and explosions. 

“we don’t know what’s going on,” a resident told AFP.  Another source told AFP, “Our base is being attacked.”

 At 8am local time, an AFP journalist also heard detonations that came from inside the camp.

 Malian special forces personnel were deployed in the area, and two helicopters flew overhead.

The French embassy sent text messages to French nationals saying “attack underway at Kati” and urging caution.

Military base at heart of past coups

The Kati base is the nexus of the Mali’s military apparatus. The base was the site of mutinies in 2012 and 2020 that led to successful coups,

The impoverished landlocked country is governed by a junta headed by Colonel Assimi Goita, who forced out the elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, in August 2020 and carried out a second coup the following May.

The junta staged a second coup in 2021 to force out a civilian interim president who was at odds with Goita.

Goita then became interim president. He plans to continue to lead a transitional government until elections are held in 2024.

His government has sparred repeatedly with neighbouring countries and international powers over election delays, alleged army abuses and cooperation with Russian mercenaries in the fight against the Islamist insurgency.

Despite coming to power pledging to stamp out the insurrection, the junta has been unable to prevent the insurgents from extending their operations further south from their havens in the north and centre.

Source:  Reuters

Malian authorities arrested nearly 50 soldiers from Ivory Coast who came to Mali to work for a contracting company of the United Nations mission in Mali. The government made the announcement Monday calling the Ivorian soldiers “mercenaries,” in a move that could raise tensions between the two West African countries.

Two aircraft arrived at Mali’s international airport Sunday with the 49 soldiers “with their weapons and ammunition of war, as well as other military equipment,” said Malian government spokesman Col. Abdoulaye Maiga. They “were illegally on the national territory of Mali,” and the transitional government considers them mercenaries, he added.

U.N. mission spokesman Olivier Salgado said these Ivorian soldiers “are not part of one of the MINUSMA contingents, but have been deployed for several years in Mali as part of logistical support on behalf of one of our contingents.” He said that their arrival as relief would have been communicated beforehand to the national authorities. They are working for a German company that is contracted by the U.N. mission known as the Sahelian Aviation Services.

Government spokesman Maiga said they would put an end to the protection activity of the Sahelian Aviation Services by foreign forces and demand their departure from Malian territory. The government invited “the airline “ Sahelian Aviation Services “to henceforth entrust its security to the Malian defense and security forces,” he said.

Mali’s transitional government affirmed in June that it will not authorize the U.N. mission to investigate ongoing human rights violations in Mali, adding to further tensions as France also withdraws its forces.

Source: AP

Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79, the Angolan presidency said Friday.

Dos Santos died at 11.10am Spanish time at the Barcelona Teknon clinic following a prolonged illness, the presidency said.

The announcement said dos Santos, who ruled Angola for almost 40 years from 1979, was “a statesman of great historical scale who governed … the Angolan nation through very difficult times.”

Dos Santos had mostly lived in Barcelona since stepping down in 2017 and he reportedly had been undergoing treatment there for health problems.

Angola’s current head of state, Joao Lourenco, announced five days of national mourning starting Friday, when the country’s flag will fly at half-staff and public events are canceled.

One of Africa’s longest serving leaders, dos Santos came to power four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal and became enmeshed in the Cold War as a proxy battlefield. His rule was marked by a brutal civil war lasting nearly three decades against US-backed UNITA rebels and a subsequent oil-fuelled boom.

Shy, but shrewd political operator

His political journey spanned single-party Marxist rule in post-colonial years and a democratic system of government adopted in 2008. He voluntarily stepped down when his health began failing.

In public, dos Santos was unassuming and even appeared shy at times. But he was a shrewd operator behind the scenes.

He kept a tight grip on the 17th-century presidential palace in Luanda, the southern African country’s Atlantic capital, by distributing Angola’s wealth between his army generals and political rivals to ensure their loyalty. He demoted anyone he perceived to be gaining a level of popularity that could threaten his command.

Dos Santos’ greatest foe for more than two decades was Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA rebels whose post-independence guerrilla insurgency fought in the bush aimed to oust dos Santos’ Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.

The Angolan strongman frequently described himself as an accidental president, taking the reins after Angola’s first leader, Agostinho Neto, died during cancer surgery in 1979.

With Neto having only served for four years and the 37-year-old dos Santos regarded as a relatively weak outside candidate, few could have imagined he would go on to rule for just shy of four decades.

But dos Santos proved an extremely astute politician.

In 2003, dos Santos banished his party’s secretary general to a junior position for appearing a little too eager to replace him. João Lourenço would have to wait 14 years to finally get his wish to become Angola’s next president.

Humble roots, grand ambitions

Born on August 28, 1942 to immigrant parents from the archipelago of Sao Tome, dos Santos was raised in the poor Luanda neighbourhood of Sambizanga. His father was a builder, his mother a maid.

But from a young age dos Santos had grander ambitions and joined the then-nascent MPLA.

Like many of his fellow liberation fighters, he spent his early 20s in exile in the Republic of Congo before moving to Baku in Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union, to study petroleum engineering. There he met his first wife, Tatiana Kukanova, a Russian chess champion with whom he had his first and most famous daughter – Isabel dos Santos.

By 1977 and the death of Neto, dos Santos was among half a dozen senior MPLA members with a shot at the leadership. He won partly because he seemed the weakest candidate.

His opening speech as leader set the tone for future public appearances, lasting just one minute and 54 seconds. Over the next 38 years he would do just a handful of interviews.

Oil boom feeds family fortunes

Although he would increasingly be regarded by his critics as a dictator, it was his apparent willingness to compromise and stand by election results in 1992 as part of a UN negotiated peace process that would seal the popularity of his party.

Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA that fought on the other side of the civil war, refused to accept the result of that election and took the tired country back to war. When the Angolan army eventually succeeded in killing Savimbi, Unita had lost much of its support.

Between 2002 and 2014, as oil production grew in tandem with booming prices, the size Angola’s economy multiplied by 10, from $12.4 billion to $126 billion.

While little of the money trickled down to the poor, those closest to dos Santos became billionaires.

His eldest daughter Isabel became, according to Forbes, Africa’s richest woman and youngest billionaire worth about $3 billion. Forbes has since dropped Isabel from its list of billionaires because of the asset freezes.

Isabel also became chairman of state oil company Sonangol, while son José Filomeno headed a $5 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Dos Santos, who said in a rare 2013 interview he would like to be remembered “as a good patriot”, never specifically responded to the allegations that he had allowed corruption to become rampant.

Source: Reuters

The scant remains of DR Congo’s fiery independence hero Patrice Lumumba were to be interred on Thursday after a pilgrimage that revived traumatic memories but also stirred national unity.

A single tooth is all that remains of the young nationalist who was murdered in January 1961 at the age of 35, just months after becoming Congo’s first post-colonial prime minister.

A coffin containing the remains was to be enshrined in a mausoleum in Kinshasa, in a ceremony hosted by President Felix Tshisekedi coinciding with the country’s 62nd anniversary.

Topped by a large statue of Lumumba, the mausoleum is located on a main avenue of the capital which also bears his name.

Lumumba was among the vanguard of pan-African leaders who led the charge to end colonialism in the late 1950s.

He rose to prominence in 1958 when he launched a political party, the Congolese National Movement (MNC), which called for independence and a secular Congolese state.

His party won national elections in May 1960, a month before independence from Belgium, leading him to be named first prime minister of the country when it became independent.

He stunned Belgium with a speech on independence day — attended by King Baudouin — that accused the exiting colonial masters of racism and “humiliating slavery” of the Congolese people.

Within three months, Lumumba was forced out by a coup fomented with the help of Belgium and the CIA, which also opposed the support he had requested from the Soviet Union.

In January 1961, Lumumba was handed over to the authorities in mineral-rich southeast Katanga province, which had seceded from the fledgling nation months earlier with Belgium’s support.

He was shot dead and his body was dissolved in acid, but a Belgian police officer involved in the killing kept one of his teeth as a trophy.

After years of campaigning by his family, Belgium returned the tooth on June 20, a move that followed a visit of reconciliation by Baudouin’s nephew and successor, King Philippe.

The remains were taken to Lumumba’s home area of Sankuru in the centre of the country, to his political stronghold of Kisangani in the northeast and finally to the place where he was murdered before being flown to Kinshasa.

Five former prime ministers joined a funeral vigil on Thursday alongside current government chief Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde.

“The figure of Patrice Lumumba is a prime symbol of national unity, transcending political differences,” said Evariste Mabi, a premier in the 1980s under Lumumba’s nemesis, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

“(He) embodies the people’s successful struggle for freedom.”

Source: AFP