Russian military instructors have arrived in Niger with an air defence system and other equipment as part of the West African nation’s deepening security ties with Moscow, state television announced late on Thursday.

Niger’s military government agreed in January to step up security cooperation with Russia, after expelling French forces that were helping fight jihadist rebellions in several Sahel nations.

Source: France 24

Troops from Chad and Cameroon have freed scores of civilians who were kidnapped for ransom or to fight with jihadist groups on both sides of the two central African states’ border.

Military officials from both countries say the number of civilian kidnappings has increased along the border, with several hundred people still in captivity.

Cameroon’s military said Tuesday it received five civilians — a 54-year-old man and four people between 17 and 24 years old — from Chadian government troops.

The five men, who were escorted to the office of the governor of Cameroon’s Far North region on Wednesday, were abducted this year from villages around Kousseri and Logone Birni, towns on the border with Chad, Cameroon government officials said.

Victor Boukar, one of the former hostages, said heavily armed men chained their legs every night and tied their hands with ropes during the day. He said they were tortured regularly and were given only one meal per day during their 70 days in captivity.

Boukar said captors regularly forced 35 captives, including seven women, to move to different localities on both sides of the Cameroon-Chad border to avoid government troops trying to rescue them.

Hostages whose families paid a ransom were abandoned in the bush, he said, adding that armed men have representatives who collect the ransom money in border towns and villages.

Last week, Chad said its troops launched attacks on border villages in Mayo Kebbi East and Mayo Kebbi West provinces where several hundred people were held hostage by armed gangs and jihadists. It said soldiers freed scores of civilians. Cameroonian nationals were returned to their home country, while Chadians were reunited with their families after receiving medical care.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North region, said Chad and Cameroon are reuniting to fight rebels and bring peace along their porous, 1,100-plus kilometer (680-mile) land border.

He said Cameroonian border troops will arrest or kill armed men and jihadists hiding in local towns and villages, and Cameroon is allowing Chadian troops to cross the border in hot pursuit of Boko Haram militants and armed gangs.

General Ahmat Kogri, a military adviser to Chad’s transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby, told Chad’s state TV on Wednesday that Boko Haram militants have renewed attacks and abductions to acquire supplies, after their fire power was drastically reduced in battles with the Multinational Joint Task Force.

Kogri said forces fighting to restore peace have taken note that Boko Haram and its splinter jihadist groups are again attacking people and seizing goods. He said civilians should report all strangers in border towns and villages to government troops.

Boko Haram attacks began in Nigeria’s Borno state in 2009 and spread to Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

The United Nations says the Islamist insurgency has left more than 37,000 people dead, mainly in Nigeria, and displaced more than 3 million.

Source: VOA

Niger’s government announced on Saturday that it was breaking off “with immediate effect” its military cooperation agreement with the United States.

The declaration came just a day after a senior US delegation left Niger, following a three-day visit to renew contact with the military junta that ousted the president and moved closer to Russia.

The statement said the government had decided to “denounce with immediate effect” the agreement relating to US military and civilian employees of the US Department of Defense inside Niger.

It was read out Saturday evening on national television.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington was aware of the statement, and that it came after “frank discussions … about our concerns” with the junta’s “trajectory.”

Miller said on X that the US was still in touch with the junta and would provide updates “as warranted.”

The Pentagon provided AFP with an identical statement.

The United States still stations some 1,000 troops in Niger at a desert drone base built at a cost of $100 million.

Movements there have been limited since the July 2023 coup and Washington has curbed assistance to the government.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a rare visit to Niger a year ago in hopes of shoring up president Mohamed Bazoum, a stalwart ally in Western security efforts against jihadists.

Just four months later, the military deposed Bazoum and put him under house arrest.

The junta took a hard line against former colonial power France, forcing the withdrawal of French troops in place for nearly a decade.

Niger’s military had in the past worked closely with the United States.

But the junta has sought cooperation with Russia, while stopping short of the full-fledged embrace of Moscow by military-run neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso.

Source: AFP

Communication ministers from the Economic Community of Central African States, ECCAS, are meeting in Bangui, Central African Republic, this week to map out ways to stop the spread of hate speech.

Officials from central African states say some influential politicians, business moguls and community leaders are using radio, television and social media to propagate information that has fueled regional crises, resulting in the displacement of millions of people.

Simplice Mathieu Sarandji, prime minister of the Central African Republic, said leaders of the 11-member ECCAS expect communication ministers at the meeting in Bangui to propose lasting solutions to xenophobic statements that are propagated on media outlets.

Sarandji said humanitarian crises are spiraling in ECCAS states because of widespread hate speech.

A separatist crisis in western Cameroon, which has killed more than 6,000 people, was fueled in part by social media propaganda by rebel leaders who are based in Europe and the United States, according to Cameroonian officials.

Hate on social media also fueled an ongoing conflict between ranchers and fishers in northern Cameroon and Chad. Clashes there have killed more than 100 people and displaced more than 80,000.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was sparked by hate speech, mostly over radio, by Hutu extremists against Tutsis.

Joanne Adamson, deputy head of MINUSCA, the U.N. stabilization mission in the Central African Republic, spoke about the Bangui meeting on state TV in the CAR.

She said the focus on hate speech is an important step toward finding solutions to fighting that sparked a mass movement of people fleeing in search of safety. By organizing the forum, Adamson added, the 11 ECCAS member states indicate they are ready to support and defend values that are vital to consolidate peace and security and promote human rights.

The ministers said they will enact legislation to punish people who use TV, radio and print media to propagate hate speech, but gave no further details. They also have agreed to control harmful content they say runs rampant on social media.

Charly Gabriel Mbock, an anthropologist and conflict resolution specialist at the Yaounde-headquartered Catholic University of Central Africa, said the ministers should launch campaigns against hate speech in restive central African towns and villages.

To do this, Mbock said, ECCAS communication ministers must educate clerics and traditional rulers that peace is priceless, before using radio, television and print media to call on civilians to reject and denounce calls for violence, especially on social media. He said central African governments should also make sure media laws being prepared against hate and xenophobic language do not infringe on press freedom.

The communication ministers say they will submit their recommendations to ECCAS governments with the hope that if hate speech and xenophobic statements can be stopped, peace will return to restive areas.

Source: VOA

Floods have wreaked chaos in Kinshasa – the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – with water pouring into homes and residents navigating submerged roads via canoe.

The overflowing River Congo, passing through much of the country, has also swamped places outside the capital.

The vast, vital waterway has reached its highest level in six decades.

More than 300 people have died in floods over the past months, officials say.

On Thursday, residents in the impoverished megacity of Kinshasa told the BBC how “schools, hospitals and churches” have been washed away.

“I had lived here with my relatives… I have lost everything,” Jonas Mungindami said.

Similarly, Denise Tuzola said her house is now “full of water”.

“There is no church here anymore and there is no way for the children to go to school,” she added.

Kinshasa is home to several small rivers and streams, which often double as open sewers. Many have now overflown.

On one flooded street, a man waded through through thigh-level water, hauling a canoe full of passengers behind him. Trucks drove cautiously through the same waters, while dozens of discarded bottles bob on the surface.

The RVF, the agency overseeing DR Congo’s waterways, sounded the alarm in late December.

It warned that heavy rains would cause “exceptional flooding” around the Kinshasa area.

By this point, provinces such as Mongala and Ituri had already faced serious flooding.

In Kinshasa, flooding is common but this year the Congo River has risen just shy of 6.26 metres, the level reached during record flooding in 1961.

Further upstream, in the city of Kisangani, the mayor said that over 200 houses have been submerged.

The Congo River has also caused turmoil in Congo-Brazzaville, a nation that borders DR Congo.

Flooding there has impacted more than 336,000 people and 34 health facilities, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.

Just over a year ago, floods in Kinshasa left more than 120 people dead.

Source: BBC

Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye has called on citizens to stone gay people, escalating a crackdown on sexual minorities in a country where LGBT people already face social ostracism and jail terms of up to two years if convicted of same-sex offences.

“If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality,” Ndayishimiye said in a question and answer session with journalists and the public held in Burundi’s east on Friday.

“I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin,” he said, describing homosexuality as imported from the West.

His comments were the latest show of widening intolerance of LGBT people in the region.

Uganda passed a law in May that carries the death sentence for certain categories of same-sex offences and lengthy jail sentences for others – a move that was widely condemned by Western governments and human rights activists.

The United States has imposed a range of sanctions including travel restrictions and removing Uganda from a tariff-free trade deal. The World Bank also suspended all future loans to the east African country in protest.

Some lawmakers in Kenya, South Sudan and Tanzania are pushing for similarly tough anti-gay laws in their countries.

The politicians in these countries see their efforts as buttressing African values and sovereignty against what they view as Western pressure on the issue.

By Miriam Metchane Ewang

UN peacekeepers are due to finish their withdrawal from Mali on Sunday, after a long-running mission lasting a decade.

Minusma – the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission – began in 2013 after an armed rebellion, but has been asked to leave by the country’s ruling military government.

The UN mission’s head said it did a lot but fell below expectations.

With some 310 peacekeepers killed, Minusma was the UN’s second deadliest mission worldwide, after Lebanon.

In the summer, Mali told the UN that its 12,000 peacemakers needed to leave, and the UN Security Council voted to withdraw the mission.

UN staff have been leaving in stages for months, with a deadline of 31 December for full withdrawal.

On Friday, local media reported that Minusma had handed over control of one of its last major camps in the northern Timbuktu region ahead of the deadline, for security reasons.

Timbuktu was one of three sites which were supposed to remain open to manage the end of the mission after 31 December, but the UN was worried about the presence of militants, reports said.

Source: BBC

The last French troops deployed in Niger left on Friday, an AFP journalist reported, marking an end to more than a decade of French anti-jihadist operations in west Africa’s Sahel region.

“Today’s date (…) marks the end of the disengagement process of French forces in the Sahel,” Niger army lieutenant Salim Ibrahim said at a ceremony in Niamey marking the end of France’s military presence.

The French exit from Niger leaves hundreds of US military personnel, and a number of Italian and German troops, remaining in the country.

France said it would pull out its roughly 1,500 soldiers and pilots from Niger after the former French colony’s new ruling generals demanded they depart following the coup on July 26.

It was the third time in less than 18 months that French troops were sent packing from a country in the Sahel.

They were forced to leave fellow former colonies Mali last year and Burkina Faso earlier this year following military takeovers in those countries too.

All three nations are battling a jihadist insurgency that erupted in northern Mali in 2012, later spreading to Niger and Burkina Faso.

But a string of coups in the region since 2020 have seen relations nosedive with former colonial power France and a pivot towards greater rapprochement with Russia.

French President Emmanuel Macron in September announced the withdrawal of all French troops from Niger by the end of the year, with a first contingent leaving in October.

The Nigerien army said last week their departure would be complete by Friday.

Perilous desert routes

Most French troops in Niger are at an air base in the capital Niamey.

Smaller groups have been deployed alongside Nigerien soldiers to the border with Mali and Burkina Faso, where jihadist groups linked to the Islamic State group and al Qaeda are believed to operate.

The withdrawal is a complex operation, with road convoys having to drive up to 1,700 kilometres (1,000 miles) on sometimes perilous desert routes to the French centre for Sahel operations in neighbouring Chad.

The first French road convoy of troops withdrawing from Niger arrived in neighbouring Chad’s capital N’Djamena in October, after 10 days on the road.

From Chad, French troops can leave by air with their most sensitive equipment, although most of the rest has to be moved by land and sea.

According to a source close to the matter, some of the French containers carrying equipment will be driven from Chad on to the port of Douala in Cameroon, before they can be ferried back to France by sea.

US, German troops

France’s former ally in Niger, overthrown president Mohamed Bazoum, remains under house arrest.

A US official said in October that Washington was keeping about 1,000 military personnel in Niger but was no longer actively training or assisting Niger forces.

The United States said earlier this month it was ready to resume cooperation with Niger on the condition its military regime committed to a rapid transition to civilian rule.

Niger’s rulers want up to three years for a transition back to a civilian government.

Military leaders in Niamey early this month said they were ending two European Union security and defence missions in the country.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius visited Niger earlier this week to discuss the fate of around 120 German troops based in the country.

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in September banded together in a joint defence pact to fight jihadists.

France’s withdrawal from Mali last year left a bitter aftertaste, after the bases it once occupied in Menaka, Gossi and Timbuktu were rapidly taken over by the Wagner Russian paramilitary group.

Source: AFP