Africa’s cocoa makes the world’s chocolate, its fish, fruit and vegetables reach tables around the globe and its oil powers vehicles and factories from China to the United States. Yet far from benefiting from soaring commodity prices, African states are being squeezed as hard as any by the costs of fuel and food imports.
South Africa’s aspirations to lead the continent are being shredded by the xenophobic mobs who have hacked, shot and beaten to death at least 42 African migrants in the land where apartheid was defeated. The mobs accuse the immigrants of depriving South Africans of scarce jobs and fuelling crime.
Senegal is to reclaim control of its airports and air traffic from a pan-African body it has threatened to quit, a Transport Ministry official said on Friday. ”As of May 10, Senegal will take back from ASECNA [Agency for the Security of Navigation in Africa and Madagascar] the running of its aeronautical activities,” said Yoro Sarr, an adviser to Air Transport Minister Farba Senghor.
African governments are nervously confronting a mounting wave of often deadly social unrest caused by the soaring cost of food and fuel. Forty people died during price riots in Cameroon in February. There also have been deadly troubles in Côte d’Ivoire and Mauritania and other violent demonstrations in Senegal and Burkina Faso — where a nationwide strike against price rises is to start on Tuesday.
Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade launched construction of an ”African renaissance” monument on the continent’s westernmost tip late on Thursday, which he said would stand taller than the Statue of Liberty in the United States. The 50m bronze statue will stand atop a 100m hill looking out over the Atlantic Ocean on the edge of the capital Dakar.
Britain and other Western donors need to spend money on strengthening African Parliaments to ensure they can hold governments to account for how aid is being spent, a group of British MPs said on Monday. The cross-party delegation, which toured four African countries, said that foreign aid may have weakened Africa’s democracies.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was due to attend a rescheduled peace accord signing with Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno on Thursday after failing to show up on Wednesday and telling mediators he had a headache. The mediators hope the non-aggression pact will end years of hostility between Sudan and Chad.
Centuries before European colonialists carved up Africa, Arab traders marvelled at the profits to be reaped in the fabled lands south of the Sahara. ”In the country of Ghana, gold grows in the sand as carrots do and is plucked at sunrise,” wrote Ibn al-Faqih, a ninth-century chronicler.
Senegal wants the international community to guarantee a peace accord between Chad and Sudan to end years of conflict between the two feuding neighbours, President Abdoulaye Wade said. The Senegalese leader will host the signing of a peace pact on Wednesday between Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
No image available
/ 22 February 2008
Violence in eastern Chad is preventing aid workers from reaching thousands of refugees who fled Sudanese government attacks in Darfur last week. Beatrice Godefroy, head of the Swiss branch of Médecins Sans Frontières in Chad, said that up to 8 000 refugees had poured across the border from Darfur last week.
No image available
/ 6 February 2008
Hungry for oil and minerals, India and China have become Africa’s new colonialists, exploiting the world’s poorest continent in the same way as its old European masters, financier George Soros said on Tuesday. ”They are in the process of repeating the mistakes that the colonial powers have made,” said Soros.
No image available
/ 16 January 2008
Press-freedom groups agree that an increase in arrests, intimidation and harassment of journalists in Niger is impeding development in one of the poorest countries in the world. At least 14 journalists were arrested in Niger in 2007. Four of them are still in prison awaiting sentencing.
No image available
/ 28 November 2007
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade will fly to Zimbabwe on Wednesday for talks with President Robert Mugabe in an attempt to resolve a row between Harare and London that threatens to derail a European Union-Africa summit next month. Wade will fly to Zimbabwe after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday he would boycott the planned December 8 to 9 summit in Lisbon.
No image available
/ 25 November 2007
A lack of rainfall will likely halve Senegal’s agricultural production for the 2007/08 season, with the country’s leading export peanut crop among those affected, its agricultural head said on Saturday. ”The [rainy season] generally has not delivered the results we hoped for,” he said.
No image available
/ 23 November 2007
Recent violent unrest over soaring food prices in several West African nations points to new signs of trouble on a continent where nearly half the people live on a dollar a day, experts warn. After Mauritania and Morocco, Senegal this week was the latest country hit by violent protests.
No image available
/ 22 November 2007
Sporadic riots broke out in the Senegalese capital on Thursday against a ban on street hawking the day after one of the country’s most violent protests in recent decades. Police said at least 200 people have been arrested following violent protests that rocked the otherwise stable West African country on Wednesday.
No image available
/ 21 November 2007
Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters who rampaged through the Senegalese capital Dakar on Wednesday, burning tyres and smashing car windows after authorities cleared away street vendors. Several hundred rioters set fire to piles of rubbish, blocking streets and traffic and forcing businesses to close their shutters, witnesses said.
No image available
/ 10 November 2007
The enthusiasm that came with the storming to office of Guinea’s latest prime minister has waned and there are doubts over his capability to lift the country out of misery, a global think tank said on Friday. Lansana Kouyate, an ex-United Nations diplomat, was early this year named Prime Minister by ailing President Lansana Conte.
No image available
/ 2 November 2007
The publisher of a Senegalese private daily, Le Courrier, has been arrested and his paper shut down by police for yet unclear reasons, the paper’s editor said on Friday. Pape Amadou Gaye was picked up from his office on Thursday evening by officers of the six criminal investigation division.
No image available
/ 2 November 2007
The sight of frightened, bewildered children torn from their homes by wars or poverty is one of the most recurring and haunting faces of Africa. But the case of 103 African children who were to be flown out of Chad to Europe by a French group has touched raw nerves on the continent, where trafficking of minors is still widespread.
No image available
/ 25 October 2007
France is trying to shed its reputation as ”Africa’s policeman” but, despite efforts to involve European partners in peacekeeping missions, there are no signs it will hang up its baton just yet. France won backing last month for an European Union force to be deployed soon in east Chad and Central African Republic, where it already has troops stationed.
No image available
/ 12 October 2007
The United Nations secretary general is "deeply concerned" by the failure of the government and former rebels in Côte d’Ivoire to achieve steps toward peace. In his latest report on Côte d’Ivoire, released this week, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says lagging progress is undermining the Ouagadougou peace accord.
No image available
/ 10 October 2007
A woman stuffed the ends of her veil in her mouth to choke her cries, as men carried the wooden coffin of a 48-year-old Senegalese officer killed in the deadliest blow to peacekeepers in Darfur. Ten peacekeepers, including both soldiers and policemen, were killed when an estimated 1 000 rebels stormed an African Union base.
The United States military presents its new Africa Command as a helping hand offering aid and training to the world’s poorest continent, but many Africans fear it could bring double trouble to a conflict-racked region. US officials dress the new regional command to be launched on Monday in a shiny altruistic uniform, saying it is designed to help Africa improve its own stability.
No image available
/ 27 September 2007
Militants are exploiting weak law enforcement in West Africa to raise funds from rackets ranging from people smuggling to drug trafficking and even fake Viagra, experts said. In the past two years, South American cartels have switched their trafficking routes into Europe to funnel drugs via lawless swathes of war-scarred West Africa.
No image available
/ 19 September 2007
The number of people affected by Africa’s worst floods in decades has risen from one million to 1,5-million, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday. ”Floods across Africa are reported to be the worst in decades in some places and extend in an arc from Mauritania in the west to Kenya in the east,” WFP said in a statement.
Senegal’s movie business, home of some of the continent’s first black filmmakers, is in the throes of crisis with cinema theatres downing shutters as cheap and mostly pirated DVDs flood the markets. Many cinema halls have been turned into warehouses for anything from spare car parts to cheap Chinese trinkets hawked on the streets.
Faced with mounting energy crises, many African nations in recent years have zealously launched projects to produce cheaper biofuels, but few have gained steam. Struggling under the ever-rising cost of fossil fuels while fighting crippling levels of poverty and disease, Africa hopes biofuels will boost its economic fortunes.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, proposed a ”Eurafrica” partnership between the continents to tame the harmful effects of globalisation. Sarkozy acknowledged the damaging effects of colonialism but he said it was not responsible for all of the continent’s ills.
Mamadou Konté, a Senegalese music producer who became a global ambassador for African music, died at the age of 65, a member of his entourage announced. Konté died on June 20 at a hospital in Dakar from an undisclosed illness, Lamine Fall said.
Africa is suffering a crisis of leadership and its heads of state must show more mutual confidence and solidarity if they want to advance continental integration, the African Union’s top diplomat said on Monday. Alpha Oumar Konare, who chairs the AU Commission, was giving his analysis of an inconclusive AU summit in Ghana last week.
Chadian rebels fighting a hit-and-run guerrilla war against President Idriss Déby Itno said on Monday that failure to clinch a deal at peace talks in Tripoli would mean a return to all-out hostilities. Libya brokered the talks to try to end an insurgency by a coalition of rebels fighting government forces in eastern Chad.