Polling stations opened Wednesday in a high-stakes Democratic Republic of Congo general election pitting the incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi against a fragmented opposition, as much of the east of the country is mired in conflict.

Polling stations opened in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country at 6 am (0400 GMT) and will close at 5 pm local time.

AFP journalists saw the first voter casting his ballot at a polling station in the eastern city of Kisangani, which sits in a region an hour ahead of the rest of the huge country, which straddles two time zones.

Voters still waiting in line at 5 pm will be given tokens and polling booths will stay open until they cast their votes, an official at the electoral commission told AFP.

The government declared a bank holiday for Wednesday, and as during previous elections, it closed the borders and suspended domestic flights.

Around 44 million Congolese, in a nation of 100 million, are registered to choose their president as well as lawmakers in national and provincial assemblies, and local councillors.

In a first, Congolese citizens residing in South Africa, Belgium, the United States and France will also cast ballots.

More than 100,000 candidates are running for various positions, and while counting is set to begin as soon as polling stations close, results are not expected to be announced for several days. 

Several observation missions will be watching the voting process, with the largest one run by a union of Catholic and Protestant churches mobilising 25,000 election observers.

Leaders of this influential mission promised Tuesday to conduct a “parallel count” for the presidential election.

‘Foreign candidates’

Tshisekedi, 60, faces 18 challengers.

The incumbent, who took office in 2019 and is running for a second five-year term, is considered the front-runner to win in the single-round presidential vote.

Tshisekedi’s record, as he himself has acknowledged, is mixed. He has presided over years of economic growth but little job creation and soaring inflation. He is asking for another term to “consolidate his gains”.

Throughout the campaign, he also poured scorn on what he termed “foreign candidates” – suggesting that his opponents have dual loyalties and lack the will to stand up to Rwanda, which the DRC accuses of funding rebel groups on its soil.

Moise Katumbi, a 58-year-old businessman and former governor of mineral-rich Katanga province, is the main target of such attacks.

Armed conflict in eastern DRC overshadowed much of the electoral campaign. Militias have plagued the troubled region for decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.

Tensions have resumed since the M23 group, which is allegedly backed by Rwanda, began capturing swathes of territory in late 2021.

Clashes with M23 fighters have subsided in recent weeks but the rebels continue to hold sway over large parts of North Kivu province. Citizens living in those areas will not be able to vote.

Other presidential candidates include Martin Fayulu, a 67-year-old former oil executive who says he was the true winner of the 2018 election that brought Tshisekedi to power.

Surgical gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, 68, who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping rape victims, is also running.

All the major opposition candidates say they suspect the government of preparing electoral fraud.

Flory Tshimanga, a 32-year-old seller of mobile phone credits in Kinshasa, said he thought the vote would proceed without hiccups.

“It’s when the results come in that there could be problems,” he said.

Source: AFP

Liberian leader and football legend George Weah conceded defeat to opposition leader Joseph Boakai after a tight presidential run-off, saying it was “time to put national interest above personal interest”.

The latest and nearly complete results showed Boakai leading with nearly 51 percent of the votes in Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic founded by freed American slaves.

“The results announced tonight, though not final, indicate that… Boakai is in a lead that we cannot surpass,” Weah said in a speech on national radio late on Friday.

He said his CDC party “has lost the election but Liberia has won,” adding: “This is the time for graciousness in defeat”.

The 78-year-old Boakai lost to Weah, 57, by a large margin in the second-round presidential vote in 2017.

With more than 99.5 percent of the polling stations reporting vote tallies after Tuesday’s second-round vote, Boakai had garnered 50.89 percent of ballots cast, according to the election commission.

Boakai was 28,000 votes ahead of Weah, according to Friday’s figures. The two finished neck-and-neck in the first round last month, with a national lead of just 7,126 votes for Weah.

The election of Weah —  the first African footballer to win both FIFA’s World Player of the Year trophy and the Ballon d’Or — had sparked high hopes of change in Liberia, which is still reeling from back-to-back civil wars and the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic.

But critics have accused his government of corruption and him of failing to keep a promise to improve the lives of the poorest.

The United States congratulated “president-elect Boakai on his victory and President Weah for his peaceful acceptance of the results”.

“We call on all citizens to follow President Weah’s example and accept the results,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

‘Liberian people have spoken’           

Weah said he had spoken to Boakai “to congratulate him on his victory”.

“The Liberian people have spoken, and we have heard their voice. However, the closeness of the results reveals a deep division within our country,” Weah said in his speech.

“Let us heal the divisions caused by the campaign and come together as one nation and one united people.”

Weah who remains president until the handover of power in January pledged to “continue to work for the good of Liberia”.

It will be the second peaceful handover of power from one democratically-elected government from another in two decades.

The elections were the first since the United Nations in 2018 ended its peacekeeping mission, created after more than 250,000 people died in the two civil wars in Liberia between 1989 and 2003.

International observers, including the European Union, have commended Liberia for holding a peaceful election.

Regional bloc ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, said the poll was “largely” peaceful, but noted isolated incidents that led to “injuries and hospitalisations” in four provinces.

Clashes during the campaign left several dead before the first round and raised fears of post-election violence.

Around 2.4 million Liberians were eligible to vote on Tuesday and the turnout was roughly 66 percent, according to the electoral commission website.

Boakai is an old political hand, having served as vice president to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, from 2006 to 2018.

Liberia is home to around five million people and one of the poorest countries in the world.

More than a fifth of the population lives on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank.

Source: AFP

Gabon’s military leaders who deposed president Ali Bongo Ondimba in August announced on Monday that elections would be held in August 2025 under a timetable that first foresees national dialogue.

“August 2025: elections and end of the transition,” a regime spokesman said on live state TV, referring to an official but “indicative” transition timeframe, adopted by cabinet but to be submitted to a national conference next year.

The conference, scheduled for April 2024, would be made up of all the country’s “vital actors”.

Ali Bongo, 64, who had ruled the central African country since 2009, was overthrown by military leaders on August 30, moments after being proclaimed the winner in a presidential election, which both the army and the opposition declared fraudulent.

Gabon’s new Prime Minister Raymond Ndong Sima has said that a two-year transition before the free elections promised by the country’s new military rulers was a “reasonable objective”.

Ndong Sima was appointed as head of the transitional government by General Brice Oligui Nguema, who led the coup d’etat against Ali Bongo Ondimba.

Source: AFP

Liberians began voting Tuesday on whether to give football legend George Weah a second term as president, with peace among voters’ main concerns in a nation still scarred by back-to-back civil wars.

An hour before polling got under way at 0800 GMT, hundreds of people were already waiting to cast their ballots at voting stations, mostly set up in schools, in the capital, Monrovia.

“I vote for the good of my country. I expect peace and development,” Agostina Momo, 18, who is voting for the first time, said.

The main political parties have pledged that the presidential and legislative elections in the West African country will pass off peacefully.

But the recent killing of three people in clashes between their supporters has fuelled fears of a return to violence.

Trouble also marred the close of Weah’s re-election campaign Sunday, with his supporters and opposition members throwing stones at each other and police intervening with tear gas.

AFP counted at least five men with injuries, some with large gashes on their heads.

“What we expect most is peace,” said Melvine Zoega, 37, among a group of men discussing their concerns in the city of Buchanan, 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of the capital Monrovia.

Healthcare, education and roads, jobs and the cost of living all came up, but only after fears of a return to violence.

Between 1989 and 2003, the conflicts in Liberia left more than 250,000 people dead.

Incumbent Weah, 57, — the first African to win football’s most prestigious individual award, the Ballon d’Or, in 1995 — faces 19 presidential candidates and a likely second-round runoff in early November.

But he has campaigned on the slogan “One round victory”.

“We must all cherish this peace and continue to preserve it, because without peace, our world will be difficult,” Weah told thousands of people gathered in Monrovia Sunday.

“Without peace, development will not take place.”

The former international footballer came to power promising to create jobs and invest in education, but critics say he has failed to keep his pledges.

The national electoral commission is seeking to reassure people it can organise fair and credible polls.

“Everything’s ready… We anticipate that all should go well,” said commission chairperson Davidetta Browne-Lansanah.

The election is the first held since the United Nations ended its peacekeeping mission in Liberia in 2018.

The European Union, the African Union, the West African bloc, ECOWAS, and the United States have deployed observers, in a region hit by a string of recent coups.

Development and corruption

Polling stations are due to close at 1800 GMT, with the 2.4 million voters also electing members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

First results are expected within 15 days.

Former vice president Joseph Boakai, who lost to Weah six years ago, is among the frontrunners for the presidency.

He has said that any vote cheating or manipulation will lead to “the end of this country”.

The 78-year-old has forged alliances including with former warlord and senator Prince Johnson, who has threatened a popular revolt if the ruling party manipulates the elections.

Boakai has pledged to restore the country’s image, develop infrastructure and improve life for the poorest.

More than a fifth of the population lives on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank, and the price of staple foods has soared.

Boakai, who served as vice president between 2006 and 2018, presents himself as an honest alternative to Weah, whom he accuses of presiding over a corrupt system.

The United States has sanctioned five senior Liberian officials for alleged corruption in three years.

The watchdog Transparency International ranked Liberia 142nd of 180 countries in its 2022 corruption perceptions index.

‘Man of the situation’

Corruption is not a key concern, however, for George Mobo, in Monrovia’s West Point slum.

“Look at African countries and tell me which country is not corrupt,” the 30-year-old said.

Education, peace and job creation are his top priorities.

His friends agreed, sitting near a brand-new football stadium, built under the president’s watch.

“President Weah is the man of the situation. He built roads, made education free. And there was coronavirus for two years. Now he will do better,” said John Seaton, 24.

Weah, who entered politics after a football career playing for PSG, Monaco and AC Milan, grew up in the slums of Monrovia and is popular with young people in a country where over 60 percent of the population is under 25.

Source: AFP

Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara has removed the prime minister and dissolved his government, the presidency’s secretary general Aboudramane Cisse said on Friday.

No reason was provided for the move.

“The president expresses his gratitude to Prime Minister Patrick Achi and to all members of the government for their commitment to serving the nation over the past years,” Cisse said.

They will remain in temporary charge until a new prime minister and government are appointed, he added. Ivory Coast will hold a presidential election in 2025.

Source: REUTERS

France’s ambassador to Niger landed in Paris Wednesday, the foreign ministry said, after weeks of tensions between Paris and the post-coup regime in the West African country who demanded his expulsion.

It comes two months after a coup in Niger ousted its pro-Paris president and prompted a souring in relations between France and its former colony.

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced in a TV interview that Sylvain Itte would leave “in the next hours” but gave no details.

Niger’s military leaders – who overthrew the democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum on July 26 – welcomed the announcement but said they were waiting for it to be followed up by official actions.

They had told Itte to leave the country after they overthrew Bazoum and took away the envoy’s diplomatic immunity and visa.

But a 48-hour ultimatum for him to go, issued in August, passed with him still in place, as the French government refused to comply or to recognise the military regime as legitimate.

Paris had said that only Bazoum’s deposed government could order the envoy out.

Born in the Malian capital Bamako in 1959, Itte has been in the post as ambassador to Niger for a year.

His diplomatic career spans 35 years and he was previously ambassador to Uruguay and Angola.

Military pullout

Macron also announced in his Sunday TV interview that French troops would withdraw from Niger in “the months and weeks to come” with a full pullout “by the end of the year” – another demand of the Niger regime.

The French president, who had sought to make a special ally of Niger, said military cooperation was “over”.

France keeps about 1,500 soldiers in its former West African colony as part of an anti-jihadist deployment in the Sahel.

The coup against Bazoum was the third such putsch in the region in as many years, following similar actions in fellow former French colonies Mali and Burkina Faso in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

They too forced the pullouts of French troops.

Macron said on Sunday that Niger’s post-coup authorities “no longer wanted to fight against terrorism”.

He also reaffirmed France’s position that Bazoum was being held “hostage” and remained the “sole legitimate authority” in the country.

The elected president has remained confined in the presidential palace with his wife and son.

Niger welcomed Macron’s announcement on Sunday as “a new step towards sovereignty” but has said the timeframe for the pullout “must be set out in a negotiated framework and by mutual agreement”.

Niger, like Burkina Faso and Mali, has been targeted by jihadist attacks for several years.

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people have joined demonstrations and gatherings in Niamey calling for the withdrawal of the French troops from the country.

The United States, which has some 1,100 military personnel in Niger, has said it will “evaluate” its future steps on the crisis following France’s announcement.

Source: AFP

Cameroon’s president Paul Biya spends so much time at Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel that dissidents routinely picket the opulent lakeside premises to voice their discontent at his 40-year rule.

From his suite overlooking the Swiss city’s pristine lake, Biya will have had ample time to ponder the wave of coups that have swept western and central Africa and ask himself who might be next.

Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, Niger and now Gabon have all faced the upheaval of military takeovers over the past three years, removing democratically elected presidents and tainted family dynasties alike.

It is impossible to say which country — if any — will follow, but deficiencies in the political systems of several countries offer a guide to which leaders are vulnerable, analysts said.

Biya, Cameroon’s head of state since 1982 and prime minister before that, is high on the list.

“There’s an unpopular president who’s been there for decades,” François Conradie, an analyst at the Oxford Economics Africa consultancy, said. The Cameroonian president, 90, is “widely seen as corrupt” and is said to want his son Franck to succeed him, which would be an unpopular move, added Conradie.

“He’s also very old, with the people around him limiting access to him and running the state while he’s more or less absent,” the analyst said. Biya spends months at a time away from the central African country, much of it at his European hideaway.

Each of the recent African coups has had unique characteristics, but an increasingly common theme has been emboldened militaries realising that they are likely to face little effective resistance for their actions.

“Would-be coup leaders look at this as a proof of concept,” said Kholood Khair, director of Confluence Advisory, a Sudanese think-tank. “These things happen and there’s very little pushback.”

The removal of Gabon president Ali Bongo last week underscored this point. Coup leader General Brice Oligui Nguema has faced little domestic or international criticism since detaining Bongo, a distant cousin, and dissolving his government. Nguema was on Monday sworn in as interim president and the end of the Bongo family’s five-decade dynasty has been celebrated on the streets of the capital Libreville.

The threat from Nigeria to use force to overturn the coup in neighbouring Niger that removed president Mohamed Bazoum was not followed with military action. As far back as 2017, Zimbabwe’s generals faced little or no censure for removing Robert Mugabe.

“It’s just a question of ‘coup’s next’?” said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, research analyst at the Centre for Democracy and Development think-tank. “In an era of controversial elections, it’s clear that the military and political elites see alternatives. The question is now how accepted, effective and sustainable these changes are — for better or worse.”

The regimes of Denis Sassou Nguesso, Republic of Congo president who seized power in a 1997 coup; Teodoro Obiang, the world’s longest-serving president who has ruled Equatorial Guinea since ousting his uncle 44 years ago; and Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, president since 2005 who succeeded his father after another long reign, are all at risk if their country’s generals moved to capitalise on popular discontent over their prolonged rule.

Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno, Chad’s president who took over from his father, is another under threat, according to analysts. Déby is widely seen to lack the charisma and grip on power of his father, a feared soldier killed during an offensive against rebels in 2021.

A rebel group with links to the Central African Republic and supported by Russia’s Wagner Group has been plotting against him, according to leaked US intelligence documents reported this year. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitary leader fighting on one side of Sudan’s civil war, also has designs on Chad, according to analysts.

Relatively stable west African democracies such as Senegal and Ivory Coast are considered less vulnerable. Yet analysts say that discontent against French influence in Senegal, which has witnessed political unrest this year, and in Ivory Coast, where president Alassane Ouattara is an ally of Paris, could be a motivating factor for would-be mutineers.

Many of the governments that have fallen to coups have been one-time French colonies while coup leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have all ridden to power on a rising tide of anti-French sentiment.

Paul Melly, an expert with the Africa programme at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said vulnerable leaders would now be considering how to better distribute state wealth to other parts of their elite to keep them from fomenting revolt.

Yet sometimes, even a share of the spoils is not enough. The coups that removed Bongo — which Melly called an “inside job” — and Bazoum were led by the heads of their presidential guards whose main job was to protect them.

There are signs that the message has begun to sink in. Cameroon pushed through a significant reshuffle of its military top brass on the same day Gabon’s Bongo was deposed. This was seen by many as a signal that Biya was aiming to coup-proof his regime.

A person with knowledge of Cameroon’s politics dismissed that suggestion and claimed the changes were long-planned but conceded the timing could be interpreted as regime protection.

Such pre-emptive moves are a reminder to would-be plotters that there are risks to pointing tanks at the presidential palace, as militaries come under renewed scrutiny from leaders who might themselves have come to power via a coup, and so are perpetually worried about being ousted.

When a dozen members of the Gabonese Republican Guard stormed the premises of the state radio station in 2019 as part of a plan to “restore democracy” it was swiftly put down by special forces. Two of the soldiers were killed and the others arrested.

Sassou Nguesso in the Republic of Congo is another leader who has been put on his guard. The 79-year-old, a former military officer, is known as “The Emperor” by fellow African leaders due to his strict demeanour and the firm grip he exerts on his country.

“You’d have to be a brave man to challenge Denis,” said one analyst who is a frequent visitor to Brazzaville. “He’s terrifying.”

Culled from The Financial Times

The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) has suspended Gabon’s membership during an extraordinary summit in Djibloho, Equatorial Guinea, and condemned the use of force to resolve political conflicts.

One week after a coup ousted Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo, little has been said about him and he hasn’t been seen since a video in which he was pleading for international help.

Monday’s extraordinary summit was held under the presidency of Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Obiang said ECCAS wants Gabon to return to constitutional order so that all the institutions in the country can function. ECCAS said it expects the international and regional communities to help Gabon out of difficult times, but gave no details.

ECCAS said Gabon was suspended from proceedings because of an unconstitutional power change.

Chad’s foreign affairs minister, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, read the summit’s resolutions on Equatorial Guinea’s National Television.

He said ECCAS leaders are asking the military junta in Gabon to guarantee the physical integrity, safety and security of ousted President Bongo and his family. He said Gabon has an obligation under international law to protect all citizens and ensure a quick return to civilian rule.

Annadif said the summit designated Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera to negotiate with Gabon’s military junta to hand over power.

Etienne Ngola, an international affairs lecturer at the Omar Bongo University in Libreville, said via a messaging app that the coup in Gabon was one of the most peaceful in the world with no bloodshed. He said ECCAS should allow Gabon’s military junta, which has much internal support, enough time to bring back order and prepare civilians for democratic rule before handing over power.

Gabon’s ousted president has not been seen in public since August 30, when a group of Gabon military officers appeared on national television and announced that they had seized power and put Bongo under house arrest.

But an audio extract from a video of Bongo has gone viral on social media platforms. In the video, Bongo cries for help, asking people he calls his friends to come to his rescue.

“I am Ali Bongo Ondimba, president of Gabon, and I want to send a message to all the friends that we have all over the world, to tell them to make noise for the people here have arrested me and my family,” he said on the video. “My son is somewhere and my wife is in another place and I am at the residence, nothing is happening, I don’t know what is going on so I am calling you to make noise. I am thanking you.”

Shortly after the coup, Bongo’s son, 31-year-old Noureddin Bongo Valentin, was arrested and accused of high treason and corruption.

The ECCAS summit did not make any public statements regarding the arrest of Bongo’s son.

The military junta led by General Brice Oligui Nguema, a former commander of the Republican Guard, who was sworn in on Monday as Gabon’s transitional president, has not commented on his predecessor’s family situation.

During the summit, Niger-born Abdou Abarry, who is the special representative of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for Central Africa and Head of the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa, pleaded for the establishment of rules and strong institutions he said will consolidate Gabon’s democratic foundations at the end of a transition within a reasonable time.

Abarry also expressed hope that ECCAS and the regional office of Central Africa would equip themselves with what he called adequate instruments to deal with the resurgence of unconstitutional changes.

Presidents Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, Joao Lourenco of Angola, Faustin-Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic, as well as Sao Tome and Principe Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada and a representative of Cameroonian President Paul Biya were present at the ECCAS summit. ECCAS also has Chad, Burundi, Gabon, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo and Rwanda as members.

The summit said all member states agreed that more sanctions will be meted out on Gabon should the military junta fail to hand over to civilian rule soonest.

During his swearing-in ceremony on Monday, Nguema said he would hand over civilian rule, but did not say when.

Source: VOA

General Brice Oligui Nguema has taken the oath of office as Gabon’s interim president, less than a week after he led a coup that toppled the 55-year-old ruling dynasty.

Oligui, the head of the republican guard, led officers in detaining President Ali Bongo Ondimba in the early hours of July 30, moments after the election body announced President Ali Bongo had won a third term.

Hours later, the president appeared in a video and called on his “friends” to “make noise.” He said he was under house arrest at his residence and that his wife and son were being held separately. In a speech after taking the oath, General Oligui promised “free, transparent and credible elections” to restore civilian rule.

He said he was seeking the participation of all “core groups” in the country to draft a new constitution, which “will be adopted by referendum.”

The general did not give a timeframe for election though.

“When the people are crushed by their leaders … it’s the army that gives them back their dignity,” he said. “People of Gabon, today the times of happiness that our ancestors dreamt of are finally coming.”

Oligui said he would instruct the future government “to consider ways of amnestying prisoners of conscience” and “facilitating the return of all exiles” from abroad.

The general strongly defended last week’s coup, describing it as a moment of national liberation and a manifestation of God’s will.

He said the military had acted to save lives following “an electoral process that was obviously loaded.”

After detaining the president, the coup leaders said they had dissolved the institutions, cancelled the election results and temporarily closed the borders.

In his remarks on Monday, Oligui hit out at “international organizations” for criticizing the military takeover.

“We are greatly surprised to hear certain international organizations condemn the act taken by soldiers who were simply upholding their oath to the flag – to save their country at the risk of their lives.”

The United States, Britain, France and certain other states have condemned the coup in Gabon.

Gabon joined Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger in the ranks of African countries that have undergone coups in the past three years.

Source: Presstv

Adama and Moussa Sarr had lost track of the exact number of days they had been at sea.

The brothers were drifting somewhere off the coast of West Africa, in a traditional Senegalese fishing canoe known as a pirogue. They were two of 39 passengers in total – all malnourished, many close to death.

When a fishing vessel appeared in the distance one day, Adama, 21, was so weak he could only stare, he said. Moussa, 17, slipped into the water to swim.

He would almost certainly have drowned, had the fishing crew not spotted him in the water and plucked him to safety.

When they drew alongside the pirogue, they found Adama and the rest of the survivors and seven bodies. The pirogue had set out from Senegal five weeks earlier, with 101 souls on board.

The survivors had drifted hundreds of miles on one of the most dangerous migrant routes in the world – the North Atlantic sea passage from Senegal to the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago about 1,000 miles away by sea.

They had left on 10 July, from the coastal village of Fass Boye. Adama and Moussa came from a long line of fishermen in the village. The boys learned to fish together and worked a pirogue together.

But like many young people in Senegal, they felt the pull of Europe. “Everyone wants to go on the boats,” Adama said. “It’s the thing you’re supposed to do.”

He was sitting in the shaded courtyard of a family home, safely back in Senegal but noticeably thinner than before. The journey had begun at dusk, he said. He and Moussa, along with two cousins, Pape and Amsoutou, aged 40 and 20, joined the pirogue a little way off the coast as it set off into the night.

Unlike the Mediterranean, there are no patrols on the North Atlantic route – no-one proactively searching for lost or distressed boats. It is easy to founder without being seen. If you miss the Canaries, or Cape Verde, you can drift into the Atlantic and disappear.

For the first three days, Adama and Moussa’s pirogue, powered by an outboard motor, battled against strong headwinds. But on the fourth day, the wind died down and the boat began to progress, Adama said. The passengers believed they had only a few more days at sea.

When the sixth day passed with no sight of land, an argument erupted over whether to push on or turn back.

“The captain ruled that we should push on, because we had enough food and water and the wind was quiet,” Adama said.

The passengers grew confident again and began to eat lots of food, he said, and they used drinking water to wash their hands for prayers.

It was around day six that the food and water began to run out. There were four children on board, and some older people gave the last of their food to the young. Some hoarded even after people began to die.

Adama couldn’t remember the exact date of the first death, but it was shortly after the first week passed, he said – a fishing captain, used to being on the water but not young. It was six more days until the next person died. Then the deaths came every day.

“At first, we said a prayer for each dead person and laid their body onto the ocean,” Adama said. “Then later we just threw the bodies into the water because we didn’t even have the energy to pray. We just needed to get rid of the corpses.”

Back in Fass Boye, news was spreading through the village that the boat had not arrived. “We all knew it should be five or six days by boat to Spain,” Adama’s mother, Sokhna, said. “When a week had passed with no news I stopped eating. I became sick from stress.”

Nearly everyone on the pirogue was from Fass Boye or nearby, and everyone in the village seemed to know someone aboard. The families began to do anything they could, alerting local authorities and migration NGOs. The founder of one NGO even tweeted a warning that the boat was missing, two weeks after its departure, but the warning went unheeded and the boat drifted for three more weeks.

On the pirogue, the four men from the family stuck together, but they were growing weaker and weaker. The eldest cousin, Pape, died first, Adama said. “Before he passed, he said, ‘If death must happen, I wish that I die and you three survive’.”

Then Adama’s younger cousin, Amsoutou, disappeared. One morning they woke up and Amsoutou was simply gone.

Adama and Moussa hung on, sipping seawater and baking under the sun. Each night they looked for lights from the Canary Islands but the lights never appeared.

Nobody in Fass Boye seemed to blame the migrants for taking the risk. More than a third of the country lives in poverty, according to the World Bank. The young see few opportunities at home. “Macky Sall sold the ocean,” said Assane Niang, a 23-year-old fishing captain, referring to the Senegalese president. Fishermen in Fass Boye say the government has granted too many licences to foreign trawlers, which overfish their waters and deplete the catch.

Niang was sitting on the beach in the shade of a pirogue, knitting generator covers he can sell to help make ends meet. “If we had other alternatives we would stay, but we cannot sit here and do nothing,” he said. “We are trying to support our families.”

There is social pressure on the young to try to leave on the boats, and there can be stigma attached to those who fail or never try.

So much so that the sea route to Spain has earned its own grim slang in Senegal’s Wolof language: “Barcelona or death.”

The wooden pirogues the smugglers use are not suitable for the voyage. They are often poorly constructed. They lack navigation technology and are liable to run out of petrol and be pushed off course. And yet the number of migrants using the route to reach Spain has been rising every year.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, about 68,000 people have successfully reached the Canary Islands by boat from West Africa since January 2020 and about 2,700 have been recorded dead or disappeared. But the number of casualties is likely significantly higher, because fatal accidents are more likely to go unrecorded on this route.

“We call them invisible shipwrecks,” said Safa Msehli, a spokeswoman for the IOM. “A boat washes ashore with nobody aboard, or a body washes ashore not linked to a known capsized boat.”

Part of the problem was that people leaving Fass Boye, particularly fishermen, were too confident in their chances, said Abdou Karim, a lifelong fisherman and the father of Pape Sarr, who died on the boat.

“The fisherman think that, if they get into trouble, they will be able to swim,” he said. “But there is a limit. You cannot swim forever. The ocean will not hold you.”

And yet, young fishermen in Fass Boye said they were still willing to take the risk.

“I am thinking about going on a boat right now,” said Niang, the fisherman on the beach. “The tragedies will not stop us from trying.”

About a month into Adama and Moussa’s voyage, a large ship appeared on the horizon and more than 20 people decided to to take their chances in the water, Adama said. But he knew it was too far.

Many of the remaining survivors were barely able to move, he said. Then on 14 August, exactly five weeks after they had departed, they caught sight of the Spanish fishing boat that would rescue them.

The Spanish crew helped them aboard and put the seven bodies into plastic sheets. Adama and Moussa lay together on the deck of the fishing vessel.

They had survived the pirogue. But Moussa was too weak. He was the last of the 63 people who died on the voyage.

“He died right there on the deck,” Adama said. “In front of my eyes.”

The survivors were taken to Cape Verde and spent six days receiving medical treatment, before the majority were flown back to Dakar. Those who could walk were given prescriptions and sent back to Fass Boye.

When news had broken of the number of deaths, there was a brief spasm of violent protest in the village that brought the police to town. Some relatives were arrested, including a member of Adama and Moussa’s family.

The survivors were harassed in their homes by curious residents and relatives of the dead, families said. So one day after they arrived home, they were all sent back out of Fass Boye to recuperate elsewhere. Adama and his mother Sokhna went to stay with close relatives nearby. They were spending their days resting, praying, and avoiding asking Adama about his ordeal.

The family had lost three sons and got one back. Fass Boye had seen 101 set out on the water and 37 come home.

“It changes a place,” said Abdou Karim, Pape’s father, silently counting prayer beads in one hand.

“Even one soul is a lot,” he said. “And this is more than 60. It is a lot for one place.”

Culled from the BBC