A coalition of Comoran and African Union (AU) troops on Wednesday combed Anjouan hunting for its renegade leader after invading the Indian Ocean island the day before. The coalition staged its long-awaited landing in Anjouan’s capital and main port of Mutsamudu, where they were greeted by cheering residents.
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/ 29 January 2008
The African Union starts a heads-of-state summit in Addis Ababa on Thursday seeking to bolster the body’s capacity to solve conflicts such as the crises in Darfur and Somalia. Since its inception in 2002, the pan-African body has lacked the funds and political drive to take effective action on the continent’s flashpoints.
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/ 10 December 2007
Back-to-back bloody clan battles in Somalia — now spanning 16 years and worsened by nearly a year of insurgency — have wiped out basic services in Mogadishu, where the latest clashes on Sunday claimed the life of a civilian and wounded three others.
African diplomats presented a united front on Saturday to support Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s presence at an upcoming European Union-Africa summit despite strong European reservations. "The African Union wants all African countries to take part" in the summit in Lisbon in December, an official from the body’s headquarters in Addis Ababa said.
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/ 12 September 2007
Ethiopia entered the third millennium seven years after the rest of the world on Wednesday, amid lavish celebrations, religious fervour and messages of hope from the troubled country’s leaders. As the giant countdown board in central Addis Ababa flashed the year 2000, thousands of faithful gathered in churches.
The future of the African Union will come under scrutiny only five years after its creation at a summit this weekend where some heads of state will launch a push for a closer federation across the continent. The three-day meeting will take place in Accra, the capital of Ghana.
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/ 29 January 2007
A summit of African Union leaders began in Addis Ababa on Monday, with Sudan receiving a public dressing-down over violence in Darfur. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was set to add his weight to the mounting pressure on Omar al-Bashir’s regime when he holds showdown talks with the Sudanese president.
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/ 27 January 2007
African leaders gather next week to debate the conflicts holding back development on the world’s poorest continent, as well as the threat of global warming. Africa has been cursed by more conflicts than any other part of the world, and two of the bloodiest battlegrounds of recent years — the Sudanese region of Darfur and Somalia — will top the agenda.
Hundreds of dangling telephone cables bridge bullet-dented masts in downtown Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, but few can carry a conversation. Yet the city is a haven for making cheap phone calls. Mogadishu and the whole country remain in touch with the rest of the world thanks to mobile telephony.
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/ 27 November 2006
Rwanda moved on Monday to clear vestiges of French interests in the country after breaking all ties with Paris in a major diplomatic row stemming from the Central African nation’s 1994 genocide. As a 72-hour deadline for the French embassy to close its operations in Kigali neared, authorities also ordered Radio France International to halt its local broadcasts.