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.
Britain’s top retailers are not doing enough to prevent conflict diamonds from Africa reaching consumers, rights groups said on Tuesday. Global Witness and Amnesty International said a survey of 42 British retailers found more than three-quarters of them had no auditing procedures to curb the trade in illicit gems.
Carried in the stomachs of human ”mules”, hidden in ship containers or packed by traffickers into planes, boats or jeeps, Colombian cocaine is criss-crossing the remote coasts and deserts of West Africa on its way to Europe. Latin-American drug cartels are setting up air and sea supply routes and drugs stockpiles in the region.
The election of right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy as the new president of France has raised fears in Africa because of his tough line on immigration. But some hope for a paradigm shift in ties with France’s former colonies removed from the so-called ”Francafrique” network of past French leaders.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) added child soldiers to its army as it embraced the forces of former warlords, an international human rights group said on Thursday. The Central African country has been working to combine forces from a number of rebel groups into the regular army as the newly elected government struggles to gain control.
Workers at Air Senegal International, 51% held by Morocco’s state-owned Royal Air Maroc, launched a two-day strike on Monday, grounding flights to France and destinations across West Africa. Staff at Air Senegal called the stoppage to demand an increase in their wages, their unions said.
Nigeria, Cameroon and Senegal all won African Cup of Nations qualifiers this weekend to stay at the top of their groups. Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Angola and Tunisia, four of the five teams that qualified for last year’s World Cup, also won. Ghana, the other World Cup participant, automatically qualifies for the 2008 tournament as host and faces Brazil on Tuesday.
Senegal’s highest court confirmed President Abdoulaye Wade’s landslide re-election in last month’s elections on Sunday, throwing out an appeal by the main opposition over alleged irregularities. ”Candidate Abdoulaye Wade is first with 1 914 403 votes, representing 55,90% of valid votes,” said Ndeye Magatte Mbengue, chief clerk of the Constitutional Court.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade comfortably won a second term in Sunday’s election, results showed on Thursday, and he warned opposition leaders they could now face corruption probes suspended during the poll campaign. The octogenarian president, who has ruled the West African state since 2000, won nearly 56% of votes and almost four times as many as his nearest rival.
No image available
/ 28 February 2007
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has secured re-election by winning more than half of votes cast in Sunday’s poll, government sources said on Tuesday, but the main opposition said it would contest the result. Opponents had already accused Wade’s camp of jumping the gun in claiming a first-round victory.
No image available
/ 26 February 2007
Senegal’s veteran President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday claimed he had won a second mandate in Sunday’s presidential vote, but his assertion was challenged by opponents. No official results had been published hours after polling stations closed, and Wade’s opponents described his victory claim as a ”bluff”.
No image available
/ 25 February 2007
Senegal goes to the polls on Sunday with President Abdoulaye Wade facing 14 candidates for the top job in a West African country celebrated as one of the few democracies on the continent. The octogenarian incumbent president is seeking a second term.
No image available
/ 23 February 2007
Campaigning for Sunday’s presidential election in Senegal has begun to close with tensions raised by clashes between supporters of incumbent leader Abdoulaye Wade and those of one of his main challengers. The wooing of voters officially ends at midnight on Friday, sealing three weeks of a generally peaceful campaign marred by the violence on Wednesday night.
No image available
/ 22 February 2007
After a historic change of power in 2000, Senegal, one of Africa’s oldest democracies, elects a new president on Sunday. Voters have a simple choice: to give a new mandate to incumbent 80-year-old Abdoulaye Wade, who promised much but disappointed some, or to turn the page with one of the 14 other candidates.
No image available
/ 5 February 2007
Child soldiers are still being recruited in at least 13 countries from Afghanistan to Uganda, 10 years after international guidelines were agreed to eradicate their use, a British-based charity said on Monday. Save the Children said hundreds of thousands of under-age soldiers are being forced to fight around the world despite guidelines laid down in the Cape Town Principles in 1997.
No image available
/ 30 January 2007
Chad President Idriss Déby Itno accused Sudan on Tuesday of waging a genocidal ”racial war” in Darfur and complained that African and international leaders were shying away from confronting Khartoum squarely on the issue. In an interview, Déby criticised what he called the world’s ”head in the sand” attitude over Sudan’s actions in its Darfur region.
No image available
/ 27 January 2007
Senegalese authorities on Saturday arrested three opposition candidates in next month’s presidential elections, after police broke up a banned anti-government demonstration, an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported. Police detained Ousmane Tanor Dieng, secretary general of the former ruling Socialist Party, former prime minister Moustapha Niasse and another opposition party leader.
No image available
/ 21 January 2007
France’s Stephane Peterhansel, driving a Mitsubishi, and compatriot Cyril Despres, riding a KTM, were crowned champions of the 2007 Dakar Rally after the 15th and final stage in Dakar on Sunday. It was Peterhansel’s third Dakar Rally car crown and ninth overall while for Despres this represented a second title after winning the 2005 edition.
No image available
/ 20 January 2007
Spanish motorcycle rider Marc Coma blew his chances of a second successive Dakar Rally win on Friday when he lost his way in the desert, hit a tree and knocked himself unconscious. The runaway leader was picked up by a medical helicopter just 57km into the 13th stage from Kayes to Tambacounda in Senegal.
No image available
/ 27 December 2006
A young girl, unconscious by the time her mother brought her to a rural clinic in southern Burkina Faso, had the classic symptoms of meningitis: fever, stiffness, vomiting. With treatment, doctors hoped to be able to save her life although she may be permanently disabled: deafness, epilepsy or paralysis are among the effects of the disease.
No image available
/ 18 December 2006
Aircraft and navy vessels were still searching on Monday for about 100 people who went missing at sea after their boat capsized off northern Senegal, but a naval spokesperson said nobody else had been found. Senegalese fishermen on Saturday rescued 25 of the would-be migrants to Europe, who had been heading for the Canary Islands but turned back because of stormy seas off Morocco.
No image available
/ 9 December 2006
Hollywood’s take on conflict diamonds has brought attention back in a big way to how gems associated with wealth and glamour have too often meant war and suffering in Africa. The film Blood Diamond is set in late 1990s Sierra Leone, when the country was in the throes of a civil war in which untraceable diamonds allegedly funded fighters.
No image available
/ 25 November 2006
”I didn’t know it was wrong to beat my wife,” says a man featured in the documentary Women Wake Up, one of the films that won a prize on Thursday in Senegal at the first pan-African film festival promoting public awareness of gender-based violence.
No image available
/ 22 October 2006
The last remaining hippos in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are facing extinction and could be wiped out in many parts of a national park by the end of the year if intense poaching by hungry militiamen continues, conservationists said on Saturday.
No image available
/ 12 October 2006
Equatorial Guinea’s president says it is too soon to pardon foreign mercenaries jailed for trying to overthrow him, and he believes their South African leader Nick du Toit should stay inside for at least 20 years. In an interview with Jeune Afrique magazine, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo said it was too early to talk of a blanket pardon for the remaining prisoners.
No image available
/ 29 September 2006
Africa is going to miss United Nations development targets of doubling access to drinking water and sanitation by 2015, and the situation in many countries is actually getting worse, a United Nations official said on Friday. On a global level, the world is on track to achieve the target of improving access to clean water, according to a report published by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef.
No image available
/ 25 September 2006
”We talk of globalisation, of the global village, but here in Africa, we are under the impression of being that village’s septic tank,” says Senegalese ecologist Haidar al-Ali. A series of pollution scandals, ranging from the discharge of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire to radioactive tanks in Somalia, show that Africa’s poverty, corruption, and non-existent or malfunctioning democracies make it the world’s preferred dumping ground.
At an internet café in Senegal’s capital Dakar, a Senegalese woman skims through men’s online profiles, zeroes in on a thirtysomething Canadian and says hello. A few computers down, a young man browses through photos of foreign women. They’re looking for friends, conversations and possible romance just like internet chat users anywhere else.
An international media watchdog group on Tuesday welcomed the release of a local correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corporation in Gambia, but lashed out at the tiny country for the continued imprisonment of two other reporters. Lamin Cham had been held since May 30 by Gambian authorities as part of a government crackdown on the Freedom Newspaper website.
West Africa has become an increasingly important transit hub for trafficking cocaine to Europe. The ”tightening of border controls in the Netherlands and in Spain … forced South American traffickers to tackle the European market via West Africa”, said Fabrice Pothier of Senlis Council, an independent global think-tank fighting against narcotics trafficking.
Russian-speaking pilots sat coolly behind locked cockpit doors, unaware of the failed air conditioning in the passenger-packed cabin of their geriatric aircraft as it sat on a sun-baked African runway. Weasua Air Transport, the Liberian operator of that jet-prop aircraft, was among 92 airlines banned on Wednesday from European airspace due to safety concerns.