3, March 2023

Berlin and Paris to host King Charles III on first state visits ⁰

King Charles III will make his first state visits as UK monarch when he travels to France and Germany later this month, Buckingham Palace announced Friday.

The choice of the two European nations and close allies is widely seen as an attempt to build post-Brexit bridges and an acknowledgement of the affection the late Queen Elizabeth II had for France.

The visits will take place from March 26 to March 31, ahead of the king’s coronation on May 6.

The tour “will celebrate Britain’s relationship with France and Germany, marking our shared histories, culture and values,” the palace said.

Charles and his wife Camilla will be in France from March 26 to March 29, and will join President Emmanuel Macron for a ceremony of remembrance and wreath laying at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The king will make an address at the French Senate, while Camilla and the French first lady Brigitte Macron will officially open the new Manet and Degas exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay.

The royal couple will then be guests of honour at a state banquet hosted by the Macrons at the Palace of Versailles, and will also pay a visit to Bordeaux in southwestern France.

While there, Charles will “witness first-hand the devastation caused by last summer’s wildfires” on the outskirts of Bordeaux and visit an organic vineyard, the palace said.

The visit will take place shortly after a first trip to France by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on March 10 for a bilateral summit.

Historic relationship

The trip will mark the king’s 35th official visit to France, and 29th official visit to Germany.

His mother Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by her husband Prince Philip, last undertook state visits to France and Germany in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Elizabeth, who was a fluent French speaker, made five state visits to France during her reign, in addition to numerous private visits.

Her first visit to France was in 1948 as the 22-year-old Princess Elizabeth.

In 1957, when she returned to France as queen, thousands lined the streets to cheer her as she travelled through the streets of the capital.

“Look at our Parisians, how much they love you,” president Rene Coty told her.

On her last state visit to France in 2014, she joined 1,800 World War II veterans and 18 heads of state and government, including the US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landing.

A Macron aide has previously said the visit would illustrate the “age-old attachment of his country to ours, beyond Brexit.”

It would also be a sign of “family continuity, because Elizabeth II was a Francophile and a Francophone”, the aide told Le Parisien newspaper.

Macron himself paid tribute to Britain’s late monarch following her death in September 2022.

In a message to the British people, he recalled a “great head of state” and a “unique example of devotion to her people, and a very close ally”.

“With her, France and the United Kingdom shared not just an ‘entente cordiale’, but a warm, sincere and loyal partnership,” he added.

Charles will head to Berlin on March 29, and undertake engagements there and in Brandenburg before heading to Hamburg, the palace added.

The royal couple are due to receive a ceremonial welcome by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at the Brandenburg Gate and will be guests of honour at a state banquet, hosted by the President and his wife.

The king will also make a speech in the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, a first for a British monarch, and will also meet refugees recently arrived from Ukraine.

Source: AFP

3, March 2023

PSG and Morocco football star Hakimi charged with rape by French prosecutors ⁰

Paris Saint-Germain and Morocco defender Achraf Hakimi has been charged with rape, French prosecutors told AFP on Friday.

Hakimi, 24, was questioned by prosecutors Thursday in connection with accusations from a 24-year-old woman, and subsequently charged.

The Madrid-born player, who was a key part of Morocco’s historic run to the semi-finals of the World Cup in Qatar last year, was seen at PSG training on Friday morning.

Contacted by AFP, the club made no comment.

Hakimi allegedly paid for his accuser to travel to his house while his wife and children were away on holiday.

On Monday, Hakimi appeared at the FIFA Best awards ceremony in Paris, where he was named in the FIFPro men’s world team of the year.

In Qatar, he was a cornerstone of the Morocco team that became the first nation from the Arab world to reach the last four of a World Cup.

Under French law, being charged does not necessarily mean the case will go to trial.

Source: AFP

2, March 2023

Buea: Woman dies due to wounds caused by blasts in mountain race ⁰

A woman died Tuesday from wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device exploded during a mountain race in Cameroon’s war-torn English-speaking region of Southwest, medical officials said.

Martin Mokake, director of the Buea Regional Hospital where the mother of three was undergoing treatment, said the woman died of cardiac arrest which was caused by the blast and wounds.

“We did everything to save her life,” Mokake told Chinese News Agency Xinhua over the phone.

The woman was among some 20 victims who were hit when three blasts went off three days ago during an annual athletic competition, dubbed Mount Cameroon Race of Hope, in Buea, the chief town of the Southwest region.

Separatists who want to create an independent nation in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest claimed on social media that they were responsible for the blasts.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

2, March 2023

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Spain court absolves arms firm of graft over contracts with Biya regime ⁰

A Spanish court on Tuesday absolved defunct state-owned arms company Defex of graft charges related to contracts to provide material to Cameroon.

Defex was accused of using a complex bribery and embezzlement system to secure the contracts in the Central African country between 2005 and 2013.

Spain’s National Court, which deals with major criminal cases, said it found evidence that Defex paid for gifts such as trips and cosmetic surgery to Cameroon officials to secure the contracts.

But it said this happened before Spain’s criminal code was reformed in 2015 to extend criminal responsibility to state companies like Defex, so its ruling “must be to absolve”.

The court, however, sentenced Defex’s former commercial director to a two-year jail sentence for corruption.

Public prosecutors had sought a 23-year jail sentence, but the court absolved him of the charges of forgery, money laundering and embezzlement of public funds.

It said the money which was allegedly embezzled did not belong to Defex, but was from a private bank which financed the projects in Cameroon.

The National Court is investigating two other suspected cases of corruption involving the sale of weapons and military equipment by Defex to the governments of Angola and Saudi Arabia.

Defex was founded in 1972 by the Spanish state to help export products made by the country’s defence industry. It was dissolved in 2017 as a result of the scandal.

Source: AFP

2, March 2023

French interference in Africa ‘well over’, President Macron says during four-nation tour ⁰

President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said the era of French interference in Africa was “well over” as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties.

Anti-French sentiment runs high in some former African colonies as the continent becomes a renewed diplomatic battleground, with Russian and Chinese influence growing in the region.

Macron said France harboured no desire to return to past policies of interfering in Africa ahead of an environment summit in Gabon, the first leg of his trip.

“The age of Francafrique is well over,” Macron said in remarks to the French community in the capital Libreville, referring to France’s post-colonisation strategy of supporting authoritarian leaders to defend its interests.

“Sometimes I get the feeling that mindsets haven’t moved along as much as we have, when I read, hear and see people ascribing intentions to France that it doesn’t have.”

“Francafrique” is a favourite target of pan-Africanists, who say that after the wave of decolonisation in 1960 France propped up dictators in its former colonies in exchange for access to resources and military bases.

Macron and his predecessors, notably Francois Hollande, have previously declared that the policy is dead and that France has no intention of meddling in sovereign affairs.

Military revamp

Ahead of his visit, Macron on Monday said there would be a “noticeable reduction” in France’s troop presence in Africa “in the coming months” and a greater focus on training and equipping allied countries’ forces.

France has in the past year withdrawn troops from former colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic.

The pullout from Mali and Burkina Faso, where its soldiers were supporting the Sahel nations battle a long-running jihadist insurgency, came on the back of a wave of local hostility.

In his remarks on Thursday, Macron insisted the planned reorganisation was “neither a withdrawal nor disengagement”, defining it as adapting to the needs of partners.

More than 3,000 French soldiers are deployed in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Djibouti, according to official figures.

Another 3,000 are in the Sahel region of West Africa, including in Niger and Chad.

Forest protection drive

Macron landed in Libreville on Wednesday and will later head to Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

His comments came before several heads of state were due to attend the One Forest Summit in Libreville, which will focus on preserving rainforests that play a vital role in the global climate system.

The forests of the vast Congo River basin represent the planet’s second-largest carbon sink after the Amazon.

They are also home to huge biodiversity including forest elephants and gorillas, and bear traces of the settlement of early humanity.

But they face threats such as poaching, deforestation for the oil, palm and rubber industries, and illegal logging and mineral exploitation.

Macron spoke of the challenges of mobilising international finance as he and Gabonese Environment Minister Lee White toured the Raponda Walker Arboretum, a protected coastal area north of Libreville.

“We always speak of billions in our summits, but people see little of it on the ground because the systems are imperfect,” he said.

His schedule included meeting scientists, NGOs and private sector actors at the presidential palace.

Other presidents expected to attend the summit are host Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon; Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville; Faustin Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic; Chad’s Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno; and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

The gathering kicked off on Wednesday with exchanges between ministers, civil society representatives and experts.

Macron heads to the former Portuguese colony of Angola on Friday, where he is set to sign an accord to develop the agricultural sector as part of a drive to enhance French ties with anglophone and Portuguese-speaking Africa.

He then stops in the Republic of Congo, another former French colony, where Sassou Nguesso has ruled for a total of almost four decades, and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Source: AFP

2, March 2023

Bayern Munich to extend Choupo-Moting’s contract with hefty pay rise ⁰

Choupo-Moting will extend his contract until 2024! NO option for one year more. The 33 year old striker will get a significant pay raise as reported. This season, the Cameroonian international has participated in 25 matches scored 16 goals and made 4 assists.

The 33-year-old Cameroonian striker joined the club as a backup from PSG, but has emerged as a key player, especially in the absence of Robert Lewandowski who joined Barcelona in July 2022. Choupo-Moting has made the jersey no.9 his own, resisting any competition from Sadio Mane, Thomas Muller, or Mathys Tel. His exceptional scoring record this season has earned him a significant pay rise, with his Bayern Munich salary doubling to around 10 million euros per year, according to German publication Bild.

By signing Choupo-Moting to an extension, Bayern have quashed any rumours of a pursuit for Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane or other recognized strikers like Dusan Vlahovic and Victor Osimhen. Choupo-Moting may not be a young striker, but he is effective in his role, and the club seemed satisfied with his performance. This move has also given Mathys Tel time to grow into the future striker position at Bayern instead of being replaced by a new signing from abroad. With his new deal, Choupo-Moting has secured his future at the club, and Bayern Munich have secured a reliable backup for Lewandowski.

Source: Planetsport.com.

2, March 2023

Pace of Reform Toward Equal Rights for Women Falls to 20-Year Low ⁰

The global pace of reforms toward equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low, constituting a potential impediment to economic growth at a critical time for the global economy, a new World Bank report shows.

In 2022, the global average score on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index rose just half a point to 77.1—indicating women, on average, enjoy barely 77 percent of the legal rights that men do. At the current pace of reform, in many countries a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she will be able to gain the same rights as men, the report notes.

“At a time when global economic growth is slowing, all countries need to mobilize their full productive capacity to confront the confluence of crises besetting them,” said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics. “Governments can’t afford to sideline as much as half of their population. Denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women; it is a barrier to countries’ ability to promote green, resilient, and inclusive development.”

Women, Business and the Law 2023 assesses 190 countries’ laws and regulations in eight areas related to women’s economic participation—mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions. The data—which are current through Oct. 1, 2022—offer objective and measurable benchmarks for global progress toward legal gender equality. Today, just 14 countries—all high-income economies—have laws that give women the same rights as men.

Worldwide, nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men. Closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20% on average across countries. Studies estimate global economic gains of $5-6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.

In 2022, only 34 gender-related legal reforms were recorded across 18 countries—the lowest number since 2001. Most reforms focused on increasing paid leave for parents and fathers, removing restrictions to women’s work, and mandating equal pay. It will take another 1,549 reforms to reach substantial legal gender equality everywhere in the areas measured by the report. At the current pace, the report, notes, it would take at least 50 years on average to reach that target.

The latest Women, Business and the Law report provides a comprehensive assessment of global progress toward gender equality in the law over the past 50 years. Since 1970, the global average Women, Business and the Law score has improved by about 2/3, rising from 45.8 to 77.1 points.

The first decade of this century saw strong gains towards legal gender equality. Between 2000 and 2009, over 600 reforms were introduced, with a peak of 73 annual reforms in 2002 and 2008. Since then, reform fatigue seems to have set in—particularly in areas that involve long-established norms, such as the rights of women to inherit and own property. New analysis of the data shows that economies with historically larger legal gender gaps have been catching up, especially since 2000.

Currently, equality of economic opportunity for women is highest in OECD high-income economies but important reforms have continued in developing economies. Sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year. The region accounted for over half of all reforms worldwide in 2022, with seven economies—Benin, the Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda—enacting 18 positive legal changes.

Although great achievements have been made over the last five decades, more needs to be done worldwide to ensure that good intentions are accompanied by tangible results —that is, equal opportunity under the law for women. Women cannot afford to wait any longer to reach gender equality. Neither can the global economy.

1, March 2023

Head-on train crash kills dozens in Greece ⁰

At least 36 people were killed and another 66 injured after two trains collided head-on near the Greek city of Larissa, authorities said, as emergency services raced Wednesday to find survivors among the charred wreckage.

Several carriages were almost completely destroyed in the collision between a passenger train and a freight train just before midnight on Tuesday, with at least one car appearing to catch fire and trap passengers inside.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life,” said one rescue worker, emerging from the wreckage. “It’s tragic. Five hours later, we are finding bodies.”

Several cars had overturned or caught fire when they came off the tracks in the impact, leaving a tangled mess of metal and shattered glass.

The passenger train, carrying 350 people, had been travelling from the capital Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Health Minister Thanos Plevris said most passengers were “young people”, with the train carrying many students returning to Thessaloniki after a long holiday weekend.

“It was a nightmare… I’m still shaking,” 22-year-old passenger Angelos told AFP.

“Fortunately we were in the penultimate car and we got out alive. There was a fire in the first cars and complete panic.”

“The collision was like a huge earthquake.”

“I was stained with blood from other people who were injured near me,” a passenger named Lazos told the newspaper Protothema.

Source: AFP

1, March 2023

Nigeria’s ruling party candidate Tinubu wins presidential election ⁰

Ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu won Nigeria’s highly disputed weekend election, electoral authorities said on Wednesday, securing the former Lagos governor the presidency of Africa’s most populous democracy.

With President Muhammadu Buhari stepping down after two terms, many Nigerians hoped Saturday’s vote would usher in a leader capable of tackling the country’s widening insecurity, economic malaise and growing poverty.

Tinubu, 70, the candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, won 8.8 million votes against 6.9 million for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar and 6.1 million for the Labour Party’s Peter Obi, according to final results.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, confirmed Tinubu also secured the required 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of Nigeria’s 36 states and capital, a threshold to be confirmed president.

“Tinubu, Bola Ahmed, of the APC, having satisfied the requirements of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is returned elected,” INEC chairman Mahmood Yakubu said.

Even before the final tallies, Labour and PDP had already called for the vote to be cancelled, alleging massive manipulation of the results. It was not clear whether they would take their case to court.

Tinubu, 70, a longtime political kingmaker who ran on his experience as Lagos governor from 1999 to 2007, campaigned saying “It’s my turn” to govern Africa’s largest economy.

He promised “Renewed Hope” but faced questions from rivals over his health, past graft accusations and ties to Buhari, who many critics say failed in his promise to make Nigeria safer.

Supporters cheered and danced to Afrobeats music at the APC’s campaign headquarters in the capital Abuja as the final results were being tallied in the early hours of Wednesday.

“He had done it before, and we know that he will do better than what he did in Lagos,” said supporter Adenike Mutiat Abubakar, 43. “He’s the man of the people, so that’s why everybody wants him.”

Tight race

The election was a tight race for the first time since Nigeria ended military rule in 1999, after the Labour Party’s Obi, 61, drew younger voters with his message of change from his political old-guard rivals.

PDP’s Abubakar, a 76-year-old businessman and former vice president, lost his sixth attempt at the presidency.

Saturday’s voting was mostly peaceful, but was troubled by long delays at many polling stations and some intimidation by thugs, while technical hitches disrupted the uploading of results to the INEC’s central website, fuelling concerns over vote rigging.

“The election is irretrievably compromised,” Labour Party chairman Julius Abure told reporters on Tuesday. “We demand that this sham of an election should be immediately cancelled.”

The INEC introduced biometric voter identification technology for the first time at the national level and its IReV central database for uploading results to improve transparency.

But opposition parties said failures in the system to upload tallies allowed for ballot manipulation and disparities in the results from the manual counts at local polling stations.

Nigerian elections have often been marred by vote rigging, ballot buying, violence and clashes between rival parties.

But the INEC dismissed opposition allegations.

“Contrary to the insinuation by both parties, results emanating from the States point to a free, fair and credible process,” the INEC said.

It said parties should allow the process to run its course and then take their claims to court.

But international observers, including from the European Union, noted major logistical problems, disenfranchised voters and a lack of transparency by the INEC.

In 2019, the INEC was forced to delay the election by a week just hours before voting started. PDP’s Abubakar cried fraud when Buhari beat him that time around, but the country’s Supreme Court later tossed out his claim.

Lagos surprise

One surprise result was Obi’s victory in Lagos, the state with the largest number of registered voters and the traditional bastion of APC’s Tinubu, known as the “Godfather of Lagos”.

After a grassroots and social media campaign, Obi, a former Anambra State governor, managed to attract voters with a message that he offered change from Nigeria’s establishment politics.

The state’s eponymous megacity has put Nigeria on the cultural map with its glitzy Nollywood film scene and global Afrobeats stars like Burna Boy, but nearly half of Nigerians live in poverty and inflation is in double digits.

Security challenges awaiting Nigeria’s next leader are huge.

A grinding Islamist insurgency in the northeast has displaced more than 2 million, bandit militias carry out mass abductions in the northwest and separatists attack police in the southeast.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer but struggles with sporadic fuel shortages, huge energy import bills due to a lack of refineries and crude theft from its wells and pipelines.

Source: AFP

28, February 2023

Yaoundé: Finance Minister Motaze banned from leaving country amid Martinez Zogo murder inquiry ⁰

Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze has been banned from leaving the country amid an investigation into his alleged involvement in the assassination of journalist Martinez Zogo.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered late today that a prosecutor is seeking charges against Mr Motaze, who has been asked to explain his links with a key suspect in the killing, French Cameroun business tycoon Amougou Belinga.

Records show the two men had multiple phone calls just hours before the assassination, prosecutors say.

Minister Motaze reportedly wrote to Prime Minister Dion Ngute asking for permission to lead a delegation abroad for the signing with Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland, an amendment to a contract on the program to secure customs revenues.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that on February 23, 2023, the Secretary General at the Prime Minister’s Office wrote to Minister Motaze to inform him that Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute has rejected his request.

Kidnapped during the night of January 17, 2023 in Yaoundé, the journalist and whistleblower Arsène Salomon Mbami Zogo alias Martinez Zogo, was found on January 22, lifeless and his body mutilated.

Motaze’s name and that of Justice Minister Laurent Esso were mentioned during the hearings related to the murder of Martinez Zogo. The Head of State could at any time give his high approval for the auditioning of these two ministers.

By Miriam Metchane Ewang